no NFLuminati Index, or Neil

So hey folks, I don't feel like doing the NFLuminati Index. I mean I started doing it, but just ended up writing "fuck you" at the end of each blurb. The 49ers moved up to #1, which automatically seems weird since they got blown out on the road, but really there's no dominant for-real team this year. It's basically full-fledged NBA-style now, where we'll throw a bunch of kinda shiny shit into the playoffs and something will come out on top and we'll all pretend for a week that it's awesome and then it will fade completely from our memory just as quickly and we will have wasted all this time for essentially nothing. But I guess that's what being an NFL fan is all about.
Speaking of which, my prediction that an elaborate Failure Demon was at play with the Redskins, setting them up for a winner-takes-all Sunday Night showdown against the Cowboys has come true. I am afraid I predicted the future too correctly, and wish I had said they'd win 37 Super Bowls in a row and miraculously Robert Griffin III never aged and also made 7 sons who all played for the Redskins as well because they kept them hidden and not playing football publicly so that we could draft them all without anybody knowing about them, which started a whole thing where teams started doing speculative drafting like Freedom of Information requests, where they'd draft "Tom Brady's son between the ages of 17 and 24, should one exist" and things like that. But ultimately I am also shocked the Redskins did as well as they did so I am good.
Not sure what happened to Neil. I think he hates you all. He sent me a piece of driftwood with RIP TGWY #669. Not sure what all that means to be honest.
But a thing I am doing, I had previously asked Neil but he seems disinterested in contributing, but we will do some sort of Spirit Warrior thing here, not sure what exactly. If you guys would like to help suggest active players to include, please do so in the comments, or we can set up an hour next week where we do that shit inside the twitters. I've got a dude I went to school with who might help start writing shit here, but I'm not sure; you can never tell how people will be motivated. I might try to get him to jump on-board with the Spirit Warrior thing. But let me know how we proceed.
If anybody wants to do a guest column on any pro team whatsoever, let us know. We'd (meaning me) like this place to be more of a free-for-all. I mean, fuck it, it's the Internet right? Anybody can do anything, right?
Okay, I hope you assholes had a solid holiday whatever you celebrate, or just a chill ass end of the year if you don't celebrate shit.

Lions Lose The Mock Draft, Chaos And Stupidity Ensues

 The Lions Fan Ghetto on Friday Night

I’ve been letting stray thoughts sort of coalesce into something useful before I wrote this but everything is still sort of a seething mass of inanity and so if this just comes across like a formless rant, the wild eyed gibbering of some deranged street preacher with a head full of acid and a heart full of hate, well, then forgive me.  But goddamn, man, just . . . goddamn.

Anyway, I suppose I should start at the beginning.  Yes.  The beginning.  That’s always a good idea in situations like these.  Christ, I feel like I’m either giving a statement to the cops or addressing a support group for the criminally insane.  But that’s sort of how I feel at the moment, so I guess it’s okay.

Okay, right, the beginning.  Everything started fairly innocently enough.  I mean, I have a weird love/hate relationship with the draft.  Well, maybe it’s not so weird when you consider that there are a lot of people out there like me who understand where I’m coming from.  At least I hope so or we are doomed as a species.  I love the draft because it gives me a chance to see my team acquire fresh talent, new names, new faces, new stories, new . . . everything.  It is a time of great hope, of possibility and the grandeur of dreams in their innocent youth.  I also hate the draft because people are annoying and I hate them and I want to go stick my head in an oven.

Perhaps I should elaborate.  The thing is, is when the draft rolls around everyone and their drunk uncle thinks that he’s an expert.  Everyone has their little mock drafts, everyone thinks they know – note I said KNOW, not HAS A VAGUE IDEA – what their team HAS to do.  It’s become a terrible thing, rotten and stupid.  I know because I used to be sort of a mock draft junky myself – note I didn’t say a draft junky, I said a mock draft junky.  Big difference.  I used to pore through all the lists, see who was projected where and when and form Ideas and Thoughts and Beliefs and then Ideas and Thoughts and Beliefs turned into Convictions and Convictions turned into They Have To Do This And This And This Or Else Everyone Is An Idiot and then that turned into senseless hair pulling and wild gibbering because my team didn’t win the mock draft and goddammit, this shit is important you guys.

Except not really.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s back up a little bit.  Okay, so prior to the draft this year, I did a senseless thing and decided to livetweet the draft – yes, that’s actually a thing now, stupid as it sounds.  Naturally, this led to me getting completely out of control and getting thrown in Twitter jail – also, actually a thing (well, sort of anyway.)  Basically, I was given the equivalent of a live microphone – always a dangerous thing – and I went fucking wild, saying every goddamn thing that came to mind until Twitter sent some dudes in with white coats to take my mic away, slap a straitjacket on me and escort me from the building.  Somehow, this ended up with me doing the Twitter equivalent of riding around in a jeep a la Hard Harry in Pump up the Volume so the authoritahs couldn’t triangulate my position.  I continued covering the draft this way through most of the rest of the night, surrounded by only a few dedicated friends and followers.  Honestly, it was probably the most Armchair Linebacker way the whole night could have gone down.

So, anyway, the only reason I relate all that nonsense is to explain that things were already chaotic and entirely too stupid and the Lions hadn’t even made one goddamn pick yet.  In retrospect, it was a powerful omen for the rest of the weekend.

When the Lions did finally pick, miraculously everyone seemed pretty happy with it.  Building consensus amongst a fanbase is fucking impossible – as the rest of the weekend showed – and so we should all take the relatively sanguine way we collectively handled the Riley Reiff pick as a good sign.  Or maybe it’s a bad sign given that by the time the weekend was over we proved that we were incapable of the basic thought patterns which allowed our ancestors to move, knuckles scraping, from the trees to the savannas many moons ago.

But that is what my high school English teachers would call “foreshadowing” before they sank into their chairs at the end of the day and drowned the stark, naked horror of their reality in a flask of powerful spirits.  Anyway, the pick happened and we behaved like gentledudes and lady-gentledudes (gentleladydudes?  I’m getting confused by my own lexicon here.  Help me out.)  all shaking hands, smiling, patting each other on the back and saying shit like “Good show, old bean,” and “Let’s play cricket on the morrow before retiring to an evening of brandy, poetry and sexual repression.”  It was a civilized night – my shameful jailing notwithstanding – and it led to some high hopes for the rest of the weekend.  Of course there was some minor grumbling, some harrumphs about David DeCastro and some slight nail biting and flop-sweat about the Lions not taking a defensive player, but all in all Lions fans were remarkably well-behaved, almost like they – gasp! – dared to trust Martin Mayhew and the gang.

And then Ryan Broyles was picked on Friday night and all hell broke loose.  The gentlemen from the night before were suddenly beating each other to death with their croquet mallets, the ladies were wielding shotguns filled with hate and anarchy, dogs began howling and packs of raving lunatics began loping through the courtyard, hooting like feral apes, knuckles scraping, throwing their feces at anything and everything, the gentlemen dropped their now bloody croquet mallets and began dabbling in cannibalism, effigies of Martin Mayhew were hastily constructed and then burned by the naked and the damned and the whole world burned while the savages worshipped the fire and spoke in primitive grunts about the end times.

Somehow, I got caught up in all of this and much to everyone’s shock, tried to keep the peace.  It was a futile effort that left me battered and embittered and I spent much of the rest of the night naked, hiding in a cave, prepared to beat the savages to death with their own leg bones.  I think my role as The Voice of Reason actually shocked some people back into civility and rational thought.  I mean, if I was the one telling people to chill out and take a few deep breaths before getting wild then maybe, just maybe, shit had gotten a tad too out of hand.

It wasn’t even the disagreement or trepidation with the pick, it was the instant reversion to LOL JUST LIKE MILLEN THE LIONS WILL NEVER CHANGE AMIRITE shit that was so awe-inspiringly stupid and mind-meltingly maddening.  Let’s get that out of the way right fucking now, okay?  This is not about people not liking the pick.  I can talk to you guys.  Hell, I did talk to you guys.  There was disagreement and there was some sarcastic poop flinging done by both sides but in the end, we all remained relatively rational and sane people, all hiding in the same cave while the savages tore the rest of the world apart.

It’s those goddamn savages who ruined everything and to them I say this – fuck you.  Fuck you, fuck you, annnnnd fuck you.  These are the idiots who just wallow in their own misery and complain just to complain.  It was insane.  After the Lions picked Broyles, they went from criticizing the pick to inane vitriol about how the Lions draft strategy is terrible and about how Mayhew and the gang are worthless shitheads with no understanding of anything beyond the mechanics of spooning applesauce into their mongoloid heads.  Suddenly, Mayhew and Schwartz were drooling idiots who had to wear special helmets every time they tried to brave the outside world.  It was stupid and deranged and it left me wanting to roam the halls of MLIve with a shotgun and an ether rag.

I am not a man easily stunned.  I pride myself on my ability to see this shit coming and prepare accordingly.  But even I was shocked by the sheer level of hyperreactive insanity which took hold of Lions fans.  All facts were ignored.  All positive momentum obliterated.  To these ingrates, we were suddenly back in the dark days of 2008 and we were all wailing like idiots on the cracked floor of hell.  I guess I knew that these people existed – hell, I have made a habit of browbeating them and mocking them here so I definitely knew about them – but they existed as sort of a mutant subculture, easily ignored because they were just too stupid to worry about.  They could sit in their tiny little cells and bleat like idiots, gibbering about THE SAME OL’ LIONS HUR HUR HUR because I assumed most of us had gotten past that.  I mean, after all, 0-16 to 2-14 to 6-10 to 10-6 kinda speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

That’s the thing – the argument against these jackasses is so self-evident that there is almost no need to even make it.  Anyone insisting that the Lions are still the same ol’ Lions, no different than the Millen-era Lions, are clearly living in some bizarre fantasy land in which they get off on their own masochistic ravings, jerking off like lunatics to their own pain, whipping themselves because they have become so twisted and perverted by the years of pain and chaos that to them their own misery has become its own kind of twisted joy.  They live to bitch because, to them, that’s what being a fan means.  It is an outlet for their own stupid rage.  Rather than beating their wives and shotgunning their children to death in their own cribs, they sit at a keyboard and bitch about the Lions because that’s the only outlet for their misery.

Fuck them.  I’ve had enough of their bullshit, with their self-indulgent tripe.  These worshippers of The Fear are a fucking barnacle on our ship and we need to start scraping them off.  Again, this has nothing to do with being critical or wondering if the Lions should have done something else.  This has to do with the assholes who refuse to take one goddamn honest look at the situation and spend their time doing nothing but bitching and moaning and shitting all over anything and everything because they are stuck in a perpetual misery machine powered by their own bile, a picture of Matt Millen plastered in front of their eyes, eyes held open like in Clockwork Orange, while their brains turn to mush and their hearts to ash.  They will never be happy because happiness is antithetical to what they get out of their fandom.  Fuck them.

Every single one of those assholes will read this and gibber on about me being a Kool-Aid drinker or some other horseshit like that, conveniently forgetting that I am not exactly known as Mr. Sunshine myself.  Hell, prior to 0-16, I was the only dude sitting here telling everyone that we were headed for chaos and disaster while everyone else was gibbering on about the playoffs and about Rod Marinelli finally being the right man for the job.  I am not afraid to criticize.  Hell, I am not afraid to outright abuse.  I am the most vicious asshole this entire fanbase has so spare me the bullshit about me being some sort of hippie pacifist who thinks Love is the answer.

The funniest – and most ridiculous – part of it all is that after these assholes spent all of that second fateful day bitching and moaning and overturning cars and setting shit on fire because the Lions were ignoring defense in favor of –gasp! – another wide receiver, the Lions spent the rest of the draft picking nothing but defense, and  - surprise! – this then led to those same people turning around and bitching because the Lions were taking too many cornerbacks.  It was the most damning evidence possible of their fractured and idiotic view of the situation.  It proved inarguably that all they care about is their God-given right to bitch and moan.

You can’t argue with them.  There’s no point.  They will just twist and backtrack and split logic in half with their axes of lies and argue inane points that have no bearing on the original issue.  Arguing with them is a fool’s pursuit, a madman’s game and I’m fucking done with it.  I’m fucking done with them, the sub-mutant ingrates.  This is why I am not like the others, because the others are dumb and heinous and their mouth-breathing insipidity is an affront to all that is good and noble and decent.  They are the idiot peasants banging at the gate with torches and pitchforks, demanding blood, fed only with stupid rage and the fire of their own self-contempt, in need of a target, any target, to distract them from the fact that they are, in fact, utterly worthless and that their lives are meaningless slogs.  They are the cannon-fodder of the gods and I would pity them if they weren’t so goddamn contemptible.  Instead, I piss on them and I drink their milkshakes and . . . I have gotten entirely too out of hand here, haven’t I?

I would apologize but that is what this whole stupid lost weekend has driven us to.  It has made madmen and animals of us all.  The night is dark and full of terrors and so is being a fan of the Detroit Lions, and it’s not because of the actual Detroit Lions anymore but because of that idiot sect of their fanbase who worship hatred and despair and lick the wounds of a crippled god because happiness and hope are so beyond them that embracing madness is their only twisted road to salvation.  Sure, it’s a false salvation but people will cling to whatever bullshit gets them through the night.

As for the actual draft itself, well . . . I’m going to have to write an entirely separate post about that.  I’m sorry it has come to that, but, well, there were things a man needed to say and this man has said them.

I will elaborate on one thing, though, and it’s something I touched on at the beginning of this rambling manifesto.  The Mock Draft culture has finally reached the point where it is detrimental and just a goddamn headache to deal with.  I mentioned that I used to dabble in this bullshit myself before I got clean and started going to meetings for other mock draft junkies where we all detailed our embarrassing experiences and comforted each other over coffee and cigarettes.  You see, it’s all a bunch of bullshit.  Nobody knows a goddamn thing, including all the idiot “experts.”  Every year – every goddamn year – dudes who were supposed to be surefire second round picks fall to the seventh or don’t get picked at all.  My own personal epiphany came the year when Michigan safety Ernest Shazor was supposed to be a borderline first round pick.  Instead he wasn’t even drafted.  BUT . . . BUT THE MOCK DRAFTS SAID HE WAS A SECOND ROUNDER.  Yeah, and the mock drafts don’t know shit.

Again, this happens every fucking year and every year people bray like donkeys because their team doesn’t pick that year’s version of Ernest Shazor.  If a “surefire” second-round pick is still there in the 7^th, doesn’t it make more sense that the Mock Draft creators and connoisseurs fucked up rather than every single NFL team has suddenly developed an incurable case of space-madness? (Why space-madness?  Well, doesn’t it just seem worse than regular madness?)  I mean, it’s not just your team that’s passing him up.  It’s every other team too and I’m guessing not all of them are run by drooling idiots.  Sure, a few are but trust me, you don’t know better than the dudes who run the Patriots or the Steelers, even though you read paragraph long scouting reports on all the players and spent every night watching Youtube highlight videos (they’re called HIGHlight videos for a reason, you know?) instead of actually spending time with your wife and kids.  I’m sorry to tell you this, but just because you spend hours poring over highlights with shitty dubstep soundtracks while your wife sighs and pleasures herself with a vibrator because you are staring slackjawed at your computer screen for the 168^th night in a row, it doesn’t make you an expert on anything other than being a goddamn fool.

And that’s the biggest problem with draft day.  Leaving aside all the roving packs of idiots I discussed earlier, even rational people get tripped up by the draft because they fall in love with their mock drafts.  They judge everything based on what their mock draft says, not on what their team – and the dudes who run it – do.  It comes down to this – do you trust Martin Mayhew and Jim Schwartz?  If you do then everything else should be irrelevant.  I know that is overly simplistic, but the point is this:  if they determine that a specific player fits their system and, more importantly, their plan, and you trust them and their plan, and they go out and make it a point to grab that player, like they did with Broyles or with Tahir Whitehead later in the draft, then don’t you sorta have to give that precedence over your own fascination with your mock draft?  I mean, it’s not like they just shrugged and picked a guy.  They targeted these dudes and then went after them.  At that point, you have to ask yourself why you’re upset and if you still have a problem, then it’s with their philosophy and not with their decision making within that philosophy.

And that brings up the issue of trust.  If you do find yourself questioning their philosophy – and that’s okay, within reason anyway – just remind yourself that they took an 0-16 team, which I’ll remind you is basically worse than an expansion team – and took them to 10-6 and the playoffs within 3 years.  That’s fucking amazing and to me, that’s something that has earned my trust.  To me, questioning these dudes’ philosophy after what they have accomplished is fucking crazy.  What they have accomplished is damn near miraculous and it hasn’t been done with smoke and mirrors either.  This hasn’t been some random turn-around, the sort of phantom playoff run that, say, the Jacksonville Jaguars make every once in a while.  No, this has been a result of a sustained adherence to a larger plan, and that plan has been pretty self-evident – pass the ball on offense, and rush the passer on defense.  They have drafted to those strengths, consistently and with success over the last few years.  Anyone arguing that they haven’t is either a liar or completely insane. 

Their philosophy is forward thinking.  It understands the new reality of the NFL.  It’s all about who can throw the ball.  Anyone who doesn’t understand that just hasn’t been paying attention.  It’s an arms race and the Lions have made it a point to stockpile as many weapons as they can on both sides of the ball.  On offense, they are loading up on receivers, much like the Packers and Saints.  You don’t need two or three top receivers anymore.  You need four or five.  People arguing that Ryan Broyles is redundant and that he has nowhere to play are missing the point – the numbers have changed, the position breakdowns have changed.  You need a deep well, filled with receivers, if you’re going to keep up now.  Defensively, the Lions have put a premium on rushing the passer.  Their philosophy is that in order to stop a passing game – and create turnovers – you need to take away the quarterback’s ability to throw the ball.  If you can do this effectively, your secondary doesn’t necessarily need to be stocked with All-Pros.  Do the Lions need better cornerbacks?  Yeah, they do.  And they know that.  Hence, their drafting of three straight corners in the draft on day three.  I know that’s not good enough for some people since they want someone who can step in and start right now at cornerback but that dude wasn’t there.  I don’t care who you point to, when the Lions had their opportunity to draft, that dude wasn’t there. 

Everyone wants immediate starters when it comes to the draft, and that’s another issue that has just gotten in the way here.  When your team is a piece of shit, yes, that is what you want.  When you have a playoff team, no, you don’t want that because if you’re drafting dudes to start it means that you have to rely upon a rookie as a starter at a key position and let me tell you something, most rookies aren’t very good.  This is why the Lions never drafted anyone to replace Jeff Backus right away until this year.  It’s because whoever they drafted wasn’t going to be any better than what they already had.  Sure, they could have drafted a cornerback just to draft one, and that would have made some people happy, but that philosophy ends up with you reaching for players all the time and that shit never works out.  If you don’t believe me ask Jordan Dizon.  That’s the sort of shit that Matt Millen did – drafting and signing guys because they filled a perceived need, regardless of fit – and it’s fucking insane to see people arguing that’s what the Lions should do today.  Everyone hates Matt Millen for the shitshow he subjected us all to, but it’s become increasingly clear that a lot – and I do mean a lot – of Lions fans have no clue why he was so bad.  It’s maddening and comical to see them bitching at Mayhew and Schwartz and demanding that they do the exact same sort of shit that Millen did.  It’s fucking insane and I don’t even know what else to say.

This has been a lot longer than I anticipated.  That’s because this weekend from hell created a lot of shit to talk about.  The crazy thing is I haven’t even really talked about the dudes the Lions actually drafted.  In fact, I meant to roll the whole draft philosophy thing into another post in which I talked about the actual particulars of the Lions draft but I got carried away.  One thing led to another and now here I sit, almost 4,000 words later, my eyes feel like they’re fried, my fingertips are starting to get sore and I’m making typos all over the goddamn place.  So, I guess I’ll just leave you with this final thought – it’s time to grow up.  The self-indulgent wallowing in the misery of the past has to end.  Fuck Matt Millen and fuck your clinging to him like a life-raft, to your keeping of him in some sort of glass case that you can break open whenever you need an excuse for your own worship of The Fear.  This is not the same ol’ Lions and if you think a single second round draft pick is indicative of anything, you probably need to chill the fuck out.  I love you dudes and lady dudes, but goddamn.  Just . . . goddamn.

RGIII Redskins watch

On one hand, the dude had a weirdly shaped larger-than-life sculpture of himself built out of chicken. And on the other, apparently as a kid he was prophesied as some sort of saviour by some sort of preacher. Now granted most of my knowledge of the Bible is pretty much based on watching The Ten Commandments while stoned, I think the making of false idyls out of chicken is wrong in the eyes of your fake Christian God. So ultimately, what everything is leading me to believe, including my own rants and dissertations from earlier this week, is that perhaps Robert Griffin III is some sort of saviour, perhaps of the Redskins perhaps of all of mankind, but he has to navigate the prearious traps of Dan Snyder's devilry (insert that funny Dan Snyder with devil horns picture here, in your head... I'd do it, but he'd sue ACLB for anti-semitism, because Dan Snyder's a fucking dumbass devil). Perhaps I've been drinking too much poppy tincture this week, but this is starting to shape up as larger than football. Perhaps the salvation of Washington DC itself, and potentially ultimately America, is involved here. And where do we put Barack Obama? His false claims of change that have not been realized, but will surely be hyped again as the drums of alternativity are beaten across the political landscape, by all the status quo Rs and Ds big money can find stump the people. Will he be outed as a black devil, a wolf in sheep's clothing, perhaps even by Robert Griffin III himself? Could Robert Griffin III be the accomplice in salvation that Tim Tebow needs, to make Holiness cool, in Superman socks? I do not know, but I have been keeping precise notations in a composition book, and some disturbing patterns are emerging. I had initially gotten myself worked up about the Redskins maybe being good again, but now I am starting to wonder how the quest to breed a flawless red heifer in Alabama is coming, and whether the rebuilding of the Temple of the Mount is on the horizon. I wonder how Arab Spring plays into this, and how the sides will line up. I am hopeful that RGIII is able to take those lined sides and bring them together, for the sake of the Redskins, for the sake of professional football, for the sake of America, and ultimately for the sake of the fate of humanity on planet Earth.

Using Statistical Evidence to Make Myself Sad About RGIII

So it is fairly apparent without a shadow of a doubt that it will be #1 OVERALL QB ANDREW LUCK TO THE COLTS and then #2 OVERALL QB ROBERT GRIFFIN III TO THE REDSKINS, and I am equally hype-geeked and deathly afraid of this reality. And then the interwebs had this amazing (and depressing) for me today that said only three times has the QB been both 1st and 2nd pick, and those picks went something like this:

1993 - #1 Drew Bledsoe to the Patriots, #2 Rick Mirer to the Seahawks

1998 - #1 Peyton Manning to the Colts, #2 Ryan Leaf to the Chargers

1999 - #1 Tim Couch to the Browns, #2 Donovan McNabb

Now it is obvious from that entire sampling of previous samples that the Redskins stand a 67% of having this completely fuck them over, and the good 33% is only Donovan McNabb, who also sucked in a Redskins uniform, albeit at a more advanced age. In fact, look at that, between these six guys, not only were three outright busts, but the good half of the pairs has a combined one Super Bowl victory. One. So even if we leaned beyond the negative to the positive, it’s still not that positive, not necessarily the franchise-changing return to glory that I think myself and most Redskins fans are hyping ourselves up for.

So hey, since 1993 plus this year will make 20 drafts, I figured – without advance scouting them – I would look through the other 16 drafts first two drafted QBs, and see how often the second-picking team got over on the first one. So let us begin…

1994 – Heath Shuler drafted 3rd overall to Redskins, Trent Dilfer drafted 6th overall to Buccaneers: Well, Dilfer won a Super Bowl, though not with the Bucs, so the second team got over on this one. Only problem is the first team that screwed it up was the Redskins. 0-1 in favor of RGIII saving my life’s fall Sundays.

1995 – Steve McNair drafted 3rd overall by Oilers, Kerry Collins drafted 5th overall by Panthers: You have to consider the Oilers/Titans the winner in this pair, which means, statistically speaking, that Andrew Luck will one day be dead because some slut shot him. It also means the second-picking team picked a fucking loser, who in all likelihood was an alcoholic because of Jerry Sanduskey type things. 0-2, against RGIII saving things, but plus one for Andrew Luck dying tragically.

1996 – Tony Banks drafted 42nd overall by Rams, Bobby Hoying drafted 85th overall by Eagles: Holy fuck man, only two QB dudes taken in the first three rounds? Can you even imagine that in today’s NFL? It’s hard to believe this happened in the days of facemasks and television. Like I would expect this to be black-and-white footage and the NFL films guy going, “And then in the third round the Philadelphia Eagles drafted farmboy Bobby Hoying from Ohio State University, who had only been across the state line four times in his life.” You know who was even better drafted at QB that year? Nobody. Just a shit-storm of guys like Danny Kanell and Jon Stark and Spence Fisher. But I heard of Tony Banks, and don’t even remember Bobby Hoying, so again, score the ledger against RGIII, 0-3.

1997 – Jim Druckenmiller drafted 26th overall by 49ers, Jake Plummer drafted 42nd overall by Cardinals: I think Druckenmiller is in jail for statutory rape or something, and Jake Plummer was killed in action in Afghanistan, so he is an honorable man. 1-3, the score for RGIII saving my Sundays, and why must the good always die young?

2000 – Chad Pennington drafted 18th overall by Jets, Giovanni Carmazzi drafted 65th overall by 49ers: Oh fuck, we are doomed. 1 good, 4 bad.

2001 – Michael Vick drafted 1st overall by Falcons, Drew Brees drafted 32nd overall by Chargers: Finally, a satisfactory example of the second QB drafted being far superior to the first one. I am a Vick apologist, and even I couldn’t justify saying he is somehow better than Drew Brees. 2-4, moving upwards.

2002 – David Carr drafted 1st overall by Texans, Joey Harrington drafted 3rd overall by Lions: Man, Carr never amounted to much, but Harrington was an outright embarrassment. Another mark against RGIII’s draft slot, but shit man, if Andrew Luck only ends up as good as David Carr, and that is somehow better than RGIII, we are all fucked. 2-5.

2003 – Carson Palmer drafted 1st overall by Bengals, Byron Leftwich drafted 7th overall by Bengals: Top guy wins again. And yet has accomplished very little in his NFL career. I am feeling worse and worse with each example. 2-6, against RGIII being great, and probably about 4-4 against either he or Luck being worth a shit.

2004 – Eli Manning drafted 1st overall by Chargers, Philip Rivers drafted 4th overall by Giants: Finally, an example where both QBs picked first are good, although I fucking hate Rivers, and Manning too to be honest. But Manning is a gritty little cornhead, and he’s won a couple Super Bowls. He was also the first QB picked, not the second. 2-7.

2005 – Alex Smith drafted 1st overall by 49ers, Aaron Rodgers drafted 24th overall by Packers: You know, I would like to hang my hopes on this example, except when you look at the 25th overall draft pick and see “QB Jason Campbell, to the Redskins.” So even the positive examples recent NFL draft history has for me also mock my hopes and desires with terrible terrible memories. 3-7, I guess, cruel cruel universe.

2006 – Vince Young drafted 3rd overall by Titans, Matt Leinart drafted 10th overall by Cardinals: I guess Young would be considered better. I guess. I could also get all racialist and just make this a positive mark for RGIII, since he’s also a black QB from the state of Texas. But that wouldn’t be fair of me, would it? 3-8.

2007 – JaMarcus Russell drafted 1st overall by Raiders, Brady Quinn drafted 22nd overall by Browns: Haha, I’m not even sure who to say is better in this one. I guess Quinn because I think he’s still holding a clipboard somewhere, whereas JaMarcus is wiping the cough syrup off his mouth as he heads into his favorite soul food buffet joint on Sunday afternoons. 4-8, and if every second-picked QB from here on out, that’ll mean I stand a 50/50 statistical chance of not having RGIII ruin my life.

2008 – Matt Ryan drafted 3rd overall by Falcons, Joe Flacco drafted 18th overall by Ravens: Look, these guys are two white ass fratboy date rapist peas in a pod, so mix and match them. But my honest opinion, which may have been altered to help my psychic hopes here, I’d rather have Flacco. 5-8.

2009 – Matthew Stafford drafted 1st overall by Lions, Mark Sanchez drafted 5th overall by Jets: Obviously, Stafford is better, and also another mocking example of my fate as a Redskins fan, as the Skins did all they could to trade up to get Sanchez, who would’ve sucked even worse in burgundy and gold than he does in green and white. 5-9, against RGIII being better than Luck.

2010 – Sam Bradford drafted 1st overall by Rams, Tim Tebow drafted 25th overall by Broncos: This will go against popular opinion probably, but I’d prefer Tebow. He’s won a playoff game; Bradford hasn’t. In fact, before me and Neil quit working on the All-ACLB team to just go catfishing in the Ohio River and do codeine together (Louisville, Kentucky, is our “in-between point”), I had written a long and eloquent defense of Tim Tebow. Oh wait, maybe we used part of it in the Pro & Con thing we did. Who can fucking remember? So much insane gibberish, so little memory. Anyways, Tebow is better, for the sake of my argument. 6-9.

2011 – Cam Newton drafted 1st overall by Panthers, Jake Locker drafted 8th overall by Titans: Newton certainly had a bigger impact on the league last year, shocking everybody. Locker may end up being better in the long run, but I also may end up having a 12-inch dick if science figures out how to grow adult dicks. In other words, the future don’t mean shit to me right now. 6-10, positive to negative examples in favor of Robert Griffin III being better than Andrew Luck, much less leading the Redskins back to glory. Oddly enough, 6-10 is very much like a normal Redskins record at the end of the season, so it all makes perfect sense. I am now depressed enough to go watch some Harry Nilsson on YouTube and then cry myself to sleep. “Nothing lasts forever, and I will always love you…”

Pre-Draft Pretending-I-Know-Things Festival: The Top 10 Guys That Are Supposed to Go to the Bears.

Never forget.

It's that time again. The NFL Draft is right around the corner, and with it comes the hopes and dreams of a bright future for NFL fans everywhere, whether it be immediate, delayed, or imaginary, in the case of Cleveland Browns fans. As always, I approach matters of dreaming and hoping with cautious optimism, because with the Chicago Bears, things are never good, but rarely completely hopeless, and much like Whitesnake, I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams. So with that in mind, here I go again on my own, down the only road I've ever known, which is the road of science. And as a scientist, rather than try to figure out who the Bears are going to draft using outdated methods like "research" or "knowing anything at all about college football," I'm turning to more futuristic methods: Google and bullshit. Basically, I ran a Google search for "2011 NFL mock draft" and read the opinions of various people who all pretended to know things until I had come up with a list of the first ten guys that the experts all agreed the Bears would draft this year with their one first round pick. From there, I spun a line of bullshit that hopefully, you're all about to read. Now, in the order that Google gave them to me, the potential ten:

1. Kendall Wright - WR/KR, Baylor (Walterfootball.com)
WHY IT'S GONNA HAPPEN: The Bears still think that if there are any missing pieces to their offense, they're all at wide receiver.This, of course, ignores glaring weaknesses at center, left guard, right guard, left tackle, and maybe right tackle, too. This is standard procedure at this point, so what can you do? Still, I guess it almost makes sense for once, because even with Brandon Marshall in town, the thought of having two real-ass starting receivers is something the Bears haven't had in forever, and if Cutler has a bunch of guys that defenses actually have to bother covering, they can't just bank on sacking him ten times a game.I'm sure they'll come close, but eight or nine, tops.
WHY IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN: Wrong place at the wrong time. If Michael Floyd or various defensive linemen are there, they'll go that way first. Also, a Google Image Search for Kendall Wright throws up "kendall wright fat" as a related search, so clearly there are clearly problems with his conditioning. Clearly.

Whoa.

2. Michael Floyd - WR, Notre Dame (Steve Wyche and Albert Breer at NFL.com, Rotoworld.com, a bunch of others)
WHY IT'S GONNA HAPPEN: It seems like the big pre-draft buzz relating to the Chicago Bears is mostly around Whitney Mercilus and this guy, but for most of the early going, this guy. Between Floyd and Wright, everyone wants Floyd, because he's the one everyone expects to blow up into a potential number one guy, which might be something the Bears need at this point. Because you never know if or when Brandon Marshall and his wife are going to start stabbing each other or pushing each other down the stairs or dropping anvils on each other or whatever, and with Johnny Knox a big question mark from here on out, a disaster with him would lead to Earl Bennett as the Bears' top guy. And I like Bennett, but he's not that guy. Also, oh man, this would mark the first time the Bears have had two receivers that everyone was scared of since the 1995 Bears faked being good and Jeff Graham and Curtis Conway ruled the land. Oh man.
WHY IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN: He's not gonna be available. There's not many first-round wide receiver prospects, and due to NFL regulations, only one team gets to draft Justin Blackmon. Floyd might not make it out of the top ten.

3. Dontari Poe - DT, Memphis (Charlie Casserly at NFL.com)
WHY IT'S GONNA HAPPEN: For the first time in years, the Bears aren't so paper-thin at nearly all positions that they can actually draft to get better players at positions that aren't complete travesties, so defensive tackle is an option. And a big, beastly nose tackle to clog up offenses would be the perfect thing to throw next to Henry Melton, allowing him to go nuts with that "pressure up the middle" that Cover-2 defenses love so much. Because if you can get pressure up the middle, you take away an offense's ability to throw a hundred blockers at Urlacher and Peppers. Plus, pressure up the middle is its own reward anyway, which sounds so, so very dirty.
WHY IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN: The Bears are already on the verge of having defensive tackle be a team strength, with Henry Melton blowing up last year and the looming potential of Stephen Paea blowing up this year. Losing Amobi Okoye sucks, but I'm not sure that losing the fourth guy in the rotation is something worth blowing a first on. Even if we're going best player available, there are best players available at positions the Bears need more.

4. Quinton Coples - DE, North Carolina (Charles Davis and Bucky Brooks at NFL.com, Matt Vensel at the Baltimore Sun, others)
WHY IT'S GONNA HAPPEN: Israel Idonije is on the decline, Julius Peppers will probably start declining sometime soon, and the Bears don't have much else to get excited about at defensive end. And the Bears haven't had two defensive ends on the team at the same time who could rush the passer since the storied duo of Trace Armstrong and Richard Dent, (or Alonzo Spellman, if we're being generous) plus picking up a guy from the same college wearing the same number as Julius Peppers is just a good story, you know? He could be the Darth Vader to Peppers's Emperor Palpatine, or in Armchair Linebacker terms, the Unterklaw to his Uberklaw. Also, the related search term that Google Image Search threw up at me was "quinton coples SCAR," and holy shit, that's perfect.
WHY IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN: Same story as Michael Floyd. He'll probably make it out of the top ten, but not all the way to #19.

 

5. Stephon Gilmore - CB, South Carolina (Chad Reuter at NFL.com, DraftTek.com, DraftCountdown.com)
WHY IT'S GONNA HAPPEN: The Bears really aren't doing badly at cornerback at all right now, but Charles Tillman isn't getting any younger, and the Bears might never admit to themselves that Tim Jennings isn't a piece of shit. And hell, even if they ever do realize that Jennings is an actual worthwhile football player, he's still got the strike against him of being a tiny little dude. So in Gilmore, you get a big, physical corner who matches up with monsters like Calvin Johnson in ways that are faster and ten years younger than the ways Charles Tillman does it. And with new GM Phil emery's new-fangled strategy of having position depth consisting of more than just random dudes from the bus station, you can do a whole helluva lot worse than having Jennings, D.J. Moore, and Kelvin Hayden as your backup corners.
WHY IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN: He might jump all the way into the top ten by the time the actual draft happens, and if he falls, the pessimist in me says it would make too much sense, now that I've kind of talked myself into liking the idea. Also, I'm with the rest of the world in being convinced that the next guy is whose ass the Bears are fully stuck inside.

6. Whitney Mercilus - DE, Illinois (Brian Baldinger at NFL.com)
After hella internet articles and radio chatter about the Bears being high on this guy, inviting him to Chicago and all, it kind of shocked me to only see one mock drafter go with him as the Bears' guy. Because really, at this point, you'd think that the only way they'd pass on him was if Coples was still available, and some seem to think Mercilus might last into the early twenties. And god damn, if he's there at #19, look at the dude's name. It's pronounced the same as "merciless," and somehow looks even more evil spelled wrong. Can you imagine the sort of stupid-ass internet hell I could raise around here if the Bears teamed The Uberklaw up with Whtiney the Merciless? I could spin all sorts of weird tales of dark villainy, and it's just too bad that in between all these undead Dark Lords and wild island savages the Bears have stocked their defensive linemen with, that Henry Melton has to have a name that sounds like a dude who would join a volunteer fire department and maybe run for deputy sheriff. I know he's a good player and all, but maybe for weird internet football literary purposes, we could just work out a deal with Vince McMahon to trade Melton to the WWE for Lord Tensai.

WHY IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN: Whitney Mercilus is a superduper athlete who was really good at the college footballs last year, but he was only good for that one year out of the three he spent in college, which is always a huge warning sign. And now that we're in the post-Angelo era, there's a chance that the Bears might start actually paying attention to huge warning signs in guys that they use high draft picks on. Also, hell, a lot of people think he's going to go to the Chargers at #18.

7. Jonathan Martin - OT, Stanford (Don Banks at Sports Illustrated)
WHY IT'S GONNA HAPPEN: Because J'Marcus Webb is horrible and Gabe Carimi has been one big, giant, human injury so far.
WHY IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN: Mike Tice loves J'Marcus Webb as much as God hates me.

8 and 9. Riley Reiff - OT, Iowa (Gabe Zaldivar at the Bleacher Report) and Mike Adams - OT, Ohio State (FootballDraftNotebook.com)
WHY IT IS/ISN'T GONNA HAPPEN: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T MAKE ME TALK ABOUT THE STUPID TERRIBLE OFFENSIVE LINE ANYMORE, WHEN WILL IT STOP OH GOD ASFHJSFDJHSRKWDFJHSDF ASFJDHASFASF QWETRRHG SNAKES. I'm so tired, so very tired. And the Bears just signed Chilo Rachal, so hey, PROBLEM SOLVED.  *shoots self*

10. Michael Brockers - DT/DE, LSU (Jonathan Bales at the New York Times, NFLDraftDog.com, NewNFLDraft.com)
WHY IT'S GONNA HAPPEN: Hey, the Bears want a defensive tackle. They also want a defensive end. WHY NOT TAKE A GUY WHO DOES BOTH? And the dude is one of the more monstrous physical specimens in the draft, so if he even becomes half the player he looks like he should be able to become, he'll be pretty damn good. Also, when it's not all gnarled up and weird looking, his beard looks like the kind that dudes who play his position stopped having in the mid to late 1980s.
WHY IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN: Another one-year wonder like Mercilus, plus one that probably left school way too early. That being said, no one knows what to make of him, whether he'll be a 3-4 defensive end or a 4-3 defensive tackle, and no one can seem to decide whether he'll he end up being drafted just outside the top ten or almost in the second round as a result. The Bears are still paying for all the gambling in the early rounds that they spent the last decade doing, and once again, tackle isn't a huge need right now.

FINAL ANALYSIS: Expecting Mercilus or Wright, hoping for Gilmore, and performing voodoo rituals to somehow ensnare the minds of the previous 18 teams in the draft, to make them all pass on David DeCastro.

2001: A Spaced Out Lions Fan's Odyssey

I remember waking up on a friend’s couch, hungover, my mouth tasting like either a dirty ashtray or an asshole, take your pick, way back in the halcyon days of 2001 – yes, those space oddity days when I would occasionally look up at the sky and throw bones in the air and gibber on aimlessly to a robot named Hal – to the voice of my friend Scott, talking excitedly about the Lions first day of the NFL Draft. He liked the selection of Jeff Backus but he was really, really excited about Dominic Raiola, the Lions second round pick. As a fellow Lions fan, I agreed that sounded swell and then I probably either passed out or threw up a geyser of what was either blood or the previous night’s meatball sub (I wasn’t always a denier of animal flesh . . .) on the patio outside. Who can say for sure? There was a beautiful girl named Summer who was worried that it was blood and apparently her loving concern for my greater health triggered an argument with her and her boyfriend, who was one of my best friends – and whose couch I had violated the night before, as I had many nights before, which happens when you’re young and irresponsible but just responsible enough (or hell, just lazy enough) to know that driving home isn’t a good idea – although I didn’t know about it and had to be informed later when she apologized to me for the fight that I hadn’t heard because it never managed to penetrate my drunken haze. In the end, it was probably just the meatball sub but I appreciated her concern and I thanked her, assured her that everything was fine and went about my day and my life because I was bulletproof, I was immortal and the idea of puking up blood was actually kind of cool in that immature, macabre, fucked up way, because life was without consequence, just an orgy of the senses, filled with a sort of indefinable fuzzy manic hope which never coalesced into anything real, anything of substance or weight or direction, but resonated with a particular sort of wild energy which propelled me – and all of my reprobate friends – from one day to the next.

That was the last day before these beautiful worry free Mayhew days that I really, honestly trusted what was happening with the Lions. That’s because everything in their life was new. They had a new leader, a man with a Super Bowl pedigree whose promise seemed to reflect that of the world stretched out before us, and although his name is now only spoken with a sneer and a mouth full of bile and spit, back then it was easy to believe because hey, why not? Perhaps that is an artifact of my own place in the world back then. I don’t know. The reality is that my own football fandom was in a different place then. I was in college and my brain was elsewhere. Sure, sure, I still watched all the games, knew all the news, lived it, loved it, blah blah blah, but I’m not sure if I had any room in my head back then for any real, heartfelt opinions. It was simply easier to believe. Sure, Barry had walked out the door and there was still a pervasive sense that Things Were Not Good, but there was Hope too and I think people forget that. Matt Millen was not “Matt Millen” yet and everything that came to stand for and for a few brief precious heartbeats, I was able to smile and say “Cool, man,” and not only say it but think it and believe it when my aforementioned friend Scott – who at the time was probably slightly more of a football junky than I was, at least when it came to draft news and the like (I was more interested in pursuing the lifestyle of an actual junky – minus the crippling heroin addiction anyway. I wasn’t that far gone for fuck’s sake.) – came into the room, woke me from my wild haze and blathered excitedly about the future of the Lions offensive line. It was easy to hope because hope is what you do when Hope is all you have.

It’s weird, in retrospect, because that first Millen draft was his best – both Backus and Raiola are still playing for the Lions, for better or worse, depending on your viewpoint, your mood and your general level of sobriety at any given time – and yet no one really looks at it like a successful draft, more a relic of those bygone days when Hope actually seemed possible and Backus and Raiola were future Pro Bowlers and not just comfortable fixtures and human piñatas we smacked with baseball bats because they had the temerity to exist and to continue existing throughout that Decade of Infinite Pain. We have never celebrated them because, in our minds and our hearts, they have never been worthy of celebration. What does it say about what we went through as fans that while we eviscerate the legendary failures of yore – Mike Williams, Charles Rogers, Charles Rogers’ hollowed collarbone where he stored his weed, Roy Williams, Joey fuckin’ Blue Skies – and burn them in effigy before the altar of our despair, we also deride the few who actually made it, those souls who cooked in the fire for a decade and somehow lived to tell about it? We bitch about Backus and Raiola in the same vein as Harrington and his gang of fools. To us, they are all part of the same nuclear wasteland of the soul, that same era that can be summed up in one ugly, charged word: Millen.

That last paragraph is actually kind of a digression from what I meant to talk about. The truth is that I am just kind of writing and seeing what comes out, with only a loose idea of what I actually want to talk about, but sometimes those things happen and if I wander in my journey, forgive me. Hopefully, I am compelling enough to humor. Anyway, I suppose my larger point is that Hope can be a weird and ephemeral thing and history can twist it in weird ways into something ugly and perverse. But I think I was reminded of my earlier story about my friend and the couch and blood geysers, etc. because it was the last time I felt this loose, this carefree about the whole Draft. In a weird way, Hope can make you let go a little bit. The worse things got in those terrible Millen years, the more I – and I suspect many of you – clung to the notion that every little thing was important, that it was necessary to obsess over every little detail because who even knew what in the fuck could go wrong next? And more than that, it was necessary to look to the Draft, to the future, for a sign – any sign – that we could begin to hope again. Somewhere in there, there had to be a savior, and if we looked long enough and hard enough and argued amongst each other enough, somehow we would find it. It was all kind of absurd, and yet it was a coping mechanism, a necessary evil that let us somehow survive those strange and all too terrible times.

But now, we find ourselves believing again, and for the first time probably ever in my lifetime as a fan, we don’t just believe in Hope – in that ephemeral concept which exists only as a possibility, as potential and an idea but little more – but in Reality, in the realization of those wild hopes and silly dreams. Our Lions are on the verge of something special and we all know it, we all recognize it. And with that belief comes confidence, comes that ability to just let go a little bit and let things play out without obsessing over every little detail. We don’t have to argue about this shit because we know that Mayhew, Schwartz and company have got this. We trust them, and that’s the important thing, the thing that separates the Hope of the past from the Belief of today – Trust. They have it in a way that Millen never did, in a way that Millen never even came close to earning, in a way that frankly, no figure in the Lions organization has ever had or earned, at least in most of our lifetimes.

It’s hard to know how to proceed in this new environment. It kinda feels like we should be doing more, like we should be arguing or writing more or obsessing about dumb shit, but whenever we try – or whenever I try anyway; forgive my egotism in speaking for the collective – it just feels kind of forced, doesn’t it? It’s more natural right now to just want to sit back and see how this all unfolds. I’m conscious of all the names being bandied about, all the Mock Drafts and all the various scenarios and I’m aware that there are still people out there breathing into a paper bag and gibbering wide eyed about the need for a franchise left tackle or a brand new, shiny cornerback but it’s all just so much noise right now, noise which I have no real desire or need to penetrate. That’s because I believe, because I trust, and I know that in the end, when it’s all sorted out, that my dudes with the offices in Ford Field will do the right thing. Because that’s what Trust means, that’s what Belief means. Will I still have questions and thoughts and opinions (oh so many goddamn opinions) once it all shakes out? Of course I will. But lying beneath all of those questions and thoughts and opinions will be a core of Trust and Belief, a stabilizing force that will shape and guide everything else. That’s definitely different, which is kind of a ludicrously hilarious understatement given the horrors of the past and the explosions in the sky that have occurred on this here blog courtesy of yours truly, and yet it’s the place we find ourselves in today. It’s different, but I think it’s interesting and compelling in its own way.

I once lived like a savage Viking riding on the edge of a storm, and as long as I stayed out ahead of that storm, Hope was all that mattered. It was wild and stupid and carefree and without shape or texture, just a visceral force propelling me forward. It nodded and laughed and hi-fived because the Lions drafted dudes like Backus and Raiola and it assumed the future would eventually take shape the way that it needed to because that was just what happens, that was manifest destiny. And then the storm caught up and everything was chaos, man. Everything blew apart. Every assumption, every hope, every fantasy, every stupid and childish belief, born of equal parts innocence and arrogance, disintegrated in the heart of that storm and all that was left was either to let that storm blow me apart with it or to fight back, to rebel, to scream and spit into that storm’s vile heart in a desperate attempt to hang onto something, anything, even the tiniest particle still floating around from that childish Viking stormride.

Now, I’m a little bit older, a little bit wiser and I usually wake up in my own bed now and not on some filthy couch in someone else’s place. My heart is still wild and on fire, but it is cooled in the ice bath of experience. The storm came and it blew everything apart and then Martin Mayhew and Jim Schwartz found us floating in the wreckage, clinging to debris, on the verge of drowning, and they pulled us into their boat and they have sailed us to dry land. This is calmer, quieter and not nearly as frenetic as either the Viking stormride or the storm itself, but in its own way it is more self-assured. It is Hope made real, the gathering of all those different parts and particles that were blown apart, all those wild and discordant thoughts and ideals and beliefs, into something new, something whole and harmonic, something solid, and most importantly, for the first time, something real. This is where our journey has taken us, where time and experience and heartache and frenzied manic joy and sorrow have brought us and now I’m just ready to watch and to smile and to know that we not only survived, but we have thrived and no matter what happens during the Draft weekend (or week, or month or however fucking long ESPN decides it’s going to be from now on) when it’s over, deep in my heart, I’ll look at my friend Scott and I’ll say “Cool, man.” And this time, I probably won’t throw up.

NFL 2011: Week 14 - Playing For Draft Position (4th Quarter)

If you break the season into four quarters, like most coaches (and knowledgeable internet-based nerdbergs like myself) do, then this week we enter the 4th quarter of the NFL season of 2011 year of our fake Christian God who is ratcheting up the pressure for you to blow all your barely-earned leftover credit at this point on crap for other people in a weak ass attempt to prove you love them. For prefessional foozball teams though, there is no present to be given by anyone else. All you can do is suffer under the weight of your own mismanagement and terrible choices, and be rewarded with compensatory draft position the following season. And the NFL has mostly avoided the pitfalls of the NBA, where teams tank chunks of the season to get a more favorable slot in the draft, mostly because with football, one player really doesn't make that huge of a difference. (This is also why all the Andrew Luck talk, and Suck for Luck campaigns have been kinda funny, because there's no real proof he'll make that much of a difference on a team, and it's a shit-ton of pressure to put on that kid, to say he's the best prospect since Elway and that somehow it makes sense to outright get rid of Peyton Manning and replace him with a rookie Andrew Luck.) During the normal part of the season, I break off a quarter of the league for this index by divisions, but for the 4th quarter, I like to go back to what echelon of the league they are in. And for this first part of our 4th quarter, I figured there's no better place to start than the bottom. These are the teams that are already out of it, and are basically positioning themselves for the draft. Sure, some of them could bust off a four-game winning streak to close out the season at .500, but more likely than not, that ain't happening. (In fact, in choosing what two 4-8 teams to leave off this week's listing of crappy teams, I specifically ignored the Eagles - due to their underachievement - and the Dolphins - because they've been winning a ton lately.)
And I am going to also do something I've never done in analyzing these teams for what is the last time in this year's (sporadic) NFLuminati Index - I am going to do a mock draft, since all of these teams stand a good chance of having a top 10 overall pick. But instead of actually pretending to waste your time with next April's picks, I'm just gonna look at their top 10 overall picks from the past decade, and we'll mock them for how stupid they are (or give them props if that's proper).
So here are the Wretched of the Turf, as we move into the final quarter of this NFL season - the teams that are already done for all intents and purposes...
#1: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (4-8, 25th overall, -1.0 rating) - The Bucs were a huge disappointment this year, as last year Josh Freeman was positioning himself to be the next big breakout QB of the NFL, perhaps on par with other up-and-comers like Matty Ryan and Joey Flacco. Four months later, he's just another shitty QB on a mediocre team without any real identity. That's how the NFL works. On my fantasy team where I got to keep one keeper from last year, I actually chose Freeman over Peyton Manning, and though that has made sense purely from a statistical standpoint for me, due to Peyton's injury, it's hardly been a boon to my team. I think I actually start fucking Alex Smith now. But I digress...
The Buccaneers last year were led by a young hip hop coach and had a mobile player who protected the ball, and now they are 4-8 and staring at another classic Tampa Bay shitty season (of which there's been many), and leaving the team floating towards whatever. Unfortunately, due to last year's near success, this is not a team that will blow anything up, because next year will either have to prove that this year was an anomaly or that it was a sign of reality.
But let's look back at their Top 10 overall picks of the past decade... In 2009, they drafted DT Gerald McCoy with the 3rd overall pick. He has mostly torn his biceps in his two seasons, and spent more months on IR than he has sacks. In 2007, they drafted DE Gaines Adams with the 4th overall pick. He is dead. And in 2005, with the 5th overall pick, they took RB Cadillac Williams. He had some decent years but suffered injuries, and was eventually made expendable by LeGarrette Blount, and now plays an injury-plagued back-up role for the Rams. So judging from their history, they will probably draft a defensive player who doesn't really amount to shit with their big pick next year.
#2: WASHINGTON REDSKINS (4-8, 26th overall, -1.4 rating) - I am not even sure what to say about my Redskins. The fact they finish 2nd on any sort of list other than things that cause me to contemplate hanging myself from the oak tree in my pigpen is a shock. I know all too well their recent draft history, so I jump into previous top 10 overall picks from the past decade with a pre-bias. Last year, with the 4th overall pick, they took OT Trent Williams, who has not been necessarily something I'd be impressed with, and is currently suspended for the rest of the season because even after getting a free pass, like 10 other players, for failing a drug test after the lockout, still somehow managed to fail a drug test since the lockout was over, which results in a four-game suspension. Had the lockout failure counted, he'd be gone for a year. He is a proven dumbfuck, already. In 2007, with the 6th overall pick, they took S LaRon Landry, who looks good in a muscle shirt, but has mostly been injured, and is overrated because he flexes a lot after knocking people down in a vicious manner that pays little regard for the actual nuances of field position or football. He'd make a good professional wrestler, but is not much of a presence on a football team, although maybe his Achilles heel has stifled his career more than publicly known. He also used to have a lime green Lamborghini. With the 9th overall pick in 2005, the Redskins took CB Carlos Rogers, who ended up being mocked by Redskins fans, made to feel unwanted by ownership, and is now having the best season of his career in San Francisco, where he's got like 4 or 5 interceptions, and is part of an actual good defense. With the 5th overall pick in 2004, the Redskins took S Sean Taylor. He is dead, and probably still our best player on defense. So judging by that recent history, I assume we will draft someone for our secondary, who will not live up to the lofty expectations of Redskins fans, unless he is murdered before we can hate him.
#3: CAROLINA PANTHERS (4-8, 27th overall, -1.5 rating) - The Panthers have done better than expected under Cam Newton, but still though, a running QB has a short shelf-life of awesomeness in the NFL. People adjust, and 22-year-old legs grow older (and slower). And though they've been competitive, it's not like the Panthers are on the cusp of greatness or anything. Really all they're on the cusp of is trying to prove drafting Cam Newton first overall wasn't stupid. By the way, to tie it back into my mock draft theme, of course Cam Newton was the first overall pick this past spring, and he's performed better than critics expected, but he's no Randall Cunningham. He's not even Tim Tebow. Oddly enough that was their first top 10 pick since 2003, when they took OT Jordan Gross with the 8th overall pick. That was a pretty solid pick, as he's been a key figure in that O-line ever since, and they've had a pretty successful running game over the years. In fact, as I was perusing nerd data this afternoon, I saw the Panthers actually have three guys with over 500 yds rushing. Not sure how often that happens in the NFL. In 2002, they got DE Julius Peppers with the 2nd overall pick, and although he's in Chicago now, that was a solid pick as well, as he gave their defense an identity for a while, and went away to richer pastures the Panthers didn't want to foot the bill for. So judging by their history, as well as the fact they don't show up at the top of the draft all the time, I have to assume the Panthers will make a sensible pick next spring. In fact, by judging all that, I have to think they might have known more than me when I was all laughing about them taking Cam Newton. Go figure.
#4: CLEVELAND BROWNS (4-8, 28th overall, -1.8 rating) - The Browns are in a state of flux, because the QB that was supposed to be the answer (Colt McCoy) doesn't look to be the answer. And he's the second or third wrong answer in a row they've had there. Not to mention a couple of wrong answers at coach as well. Fat walrus Mike Holmgren is in charge still (I think), and probably needs to do something quick-like to prove he's not a fucking fool who never did shit without an Ol' Gunslinger slinging the ball around for him to look good with. With the 7th pick overall in 2010, they took CB Joe Haden, who has been a pretty good presence in their defensive backfield. Their 3rd overall pick in 2007 was OT Joe Thomas. He's been pretty good too, though you'd hope by now there'd be more around him to get a running game going or have some consistency on offense. But I don't think anybody would blame Joe Thomas for this problem. Before that was the weaker years, with the 3rd overall pick in 2005, taking WR Braylon Edwards, and with the 6th overall pick in 2004, taking TE Kellen Winslow Jr. Both ended up being headaches, doing stupid shit, and both are elsewhere now, where they can be appreciated as kinda good being their current teams didn't waste a top draft pick on them. So recent history suggests the Browns might make a good move, so maybe Mike Holmgren isn't as stupid as I like to think he is because of how he looks (meaning stupid).
#5: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (3-9, 29th overall, -2.2 rating) - The Jaguars are the one team on this list who have already shit-canned their head coach. And good lord man, they have a long parade of top ten overall picks, which really suggests something is terribly wrong with this franchise. But they now have some crazy Pakistani owner who looks like some sort of bizarre warlord, and has a blonde American wife, so I imagine they'll be an upwardly mobile franchise from here on out. With the 10th pick this past April, they took QB Blaine Gabbert, who is already immersed into their starting line-up, and hasn't exactly been gangbusters, but hasn't looked terrible either. He's good enough to live with and see what happens. Last year, with the 10th overall pick, they took DE Tyson Alualu, who has been good but anonymous (perhaps owing to the Jacksonville address) and certainly not as awesome as a Samoan named Tyson should be. But it's only his second year, and he's not been a Gerald McCoy thus far. With the 8th pick in 2009, they took OT Eugene Monroe, who comes from UVA, a local college, and I was pretty shocked he went that high, as I didn't see him being that good. Not sure how he's done in Jacksonville, but I would imagine he's more of a Robert Gallery force of disappointment than an overwhelming presence on their line, though I guess Maurice Jones-Drew does lead the league in rushing, so maybe I'm wrong. In 2008, with the 8th pick they took DE Derrick Harvey, who sucked, and was cut this past preseason. Now he's in Denver. In 2004, with the 9th overall pick they took WR Reggie Williams, who was okay but never great, got dropped from the team, and in 2009 got in a fight with cops while being arrested for cocaine possession. With the 7th overall pick in 2003, they took QB Byron Leftwich, who was their starter for a while, then got supplanted by David Garrard, and now is a back-up in Pittsburgh (though on IR). He looks good in that uniform too, and being from Marshall, what with the western Pennsylvania football pride mentality, I bet he's got a lot of "friends" in that strange blue collar part of the country. Before that, in 2002, with the 9th overall pick they took DT John Henderson. I don't even know who the fuck that is. That's seven Top 10 overall picks in the past decade, with not much to show for it in terms of building something. Thus, expect a big fat "whatever" with what they do this coming draft, unless their new owner lights a fire of American Dreaming into the franchise.
#6: MINNESOTA VIKINGS (2-10, 30th overall, -2.4 rating) - The Vikings seem to be pointed in the right direction, you'd think. Offensively, Christian Ponder hasn't looked bad, and they have Adrian Peterson, and a good line. Defensively, they're pretty good in the front seven. I mean, you sprinkle in some good skill position players, and this might be a good team pretty quickly. But it might not, as they are also old on defense and the O-line. Last top ten pick they had was in 2007, when they took Peterson with the 7th pick. That obviously has worked out well. In 2005, they took WR Troy Williamson with the 7th pick. That obviously did not work out so well. He was traded to the Jaguars in 2007, and dropped from the NFL in 2010. However, before that, in 2003 the Vikings took DT Kevin Williams with the 9th overall pick, and in 2002 took OT Bryant McKinnie with the 7th overall pick. Both were long-term presences, Williams still playing, and McKinnie finally succumbing to injuries (though he still plays with the Ravens I think?). But they didn't do bad with either of those picks. So expect them to draft a top-flight speedster for WR or DB, or get a lineman. Or whatever really. I don't give a fuck about predicting the future.
#7: ST. LOUIS RAMS (2-10, 31st overall, -3.0 rating) - The Rams have not done very well this year, which is even worse considering they play in the NFC West, where doing good should be easy. Sam Bradford was the top overall pick in 2010, and I think the jury's still out on this dude. He might be as good as Matthew Stafford, but I ain't ready to say that yet, because he also looks like he's 12 years old and might suck as much as a Chris Simms if given more of a chance. Their 2009 2nd overall pick was OT Jason Smith, who has been solid, but is not Orlando Pace, so he will not be loved. In 2008, they took DE Chris Long with the 2nd overall pick, and I love that dude being from UVA and having actually single-handedly won some games for them, which I've never really seen ever before from a defensive lineman, but he's been a disappointment in the NFL, considering his draft position. Expect them to mire some college superstar in obscurity with next year's 2nd or 3rd overall draft pick.
#8: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (0-12, 32nd overall, -7.3 rating) - The Colts are quietly making a run towards 0-16 (haha, Dan Orlovsky shall live in infamy), and really the talk amongst them is whether they draft Andrew Luck or not, whether they keep Peyton Manning or not, and whether they'll be good again or not. In the past decade, they've not ever had a top ten overall pick, so there's no history there to look at. But it does seem silly to expect Andrew Luck would replace Manning, although getting what you can for what might be permanently damaged goods in Manning might not be a bad move either, as there are always sucker franchises like the Browns or Redskins that might make such a stupid move. I don't really care, as I hate the Colts, and Andrew Luck looks too much like an athletic version of that one kid from Freaks & Geeks, so I can't really hate Andrew Luck, therefore it would be better for me philosophically if he didn't play for the Colts, unless Peyton Manning stayed on too and took on a surly Brett Favre role where he didn't really want the new kid to ever start a game, ever. Then it would fit my personal biases perfectly.