The calm before the storm

Professional Football: Serious Business.

I have to apologize to you, the apparently 98 people who read Armchair Linebacker, for my blog laziness as of late. There's really no good explanation for why I keep waiting for the Saturday before the next game to talk about the previous game; shit just happens sometimes. And since it was a week ago and pretty much irrelevant to the interests of people who LIVE IN THE NOW~, I'm not going to bother with a full nerd recap of the Lions game. The Bears came to town, the Lions showed up to play, the Bears survived the trap game, and somewhere along the line, another screwed-up penalty happened. And since people still haven't shut up about that thing there, I suppose I should say something.

PICTURED: Special behind-closed-doors look at the Bears' halftime adjustments.

So yeah, Detroit's rookie defensive tackle and new contender for World's Most Terrifying Human, Ndamakong Suh, scored a 15 yard unnecessary roughness penalty - plus a thousand dollar fine for every yard penalized - for a hit on Jay Cutler in the fourth quarter. And the whole thing seems to be centered on the ideas that he hit Cutler in the head and/or hit him with a forearm. Thing is, if you watch the footage all slowed down the way a referee isn't seeing it out on the field, he hit him with the palms of his hands in the upper back. Roughness? Yeah. Unnecessary? Maybe. Unnecessarily Rough? Doubt it. It's football, dudes hit other dudes with their hands, and if you're a 300-plus pound beast, you hit people with your hands really hard. BUT, here's the thing: The hit happened on first down, after a pretty decent gain, with nine minutes left. Had there not been a penalty, the Bears would have had a second-and-two from about the fifteen yard line during a pretty healthy drive. Chances are, that penalty had no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the game, except to maybe give the Lions a little more time on their next drive. So the NFL needs to take back their bulshit fine, and the radio and newspaper types with nothing better to talk about need to ease the fuck up with acting like the refs handed the Bears another Lions game. Just let it go, and let the healing begin. Whew.

PICTURED: Happier times.

Which brings us to tomorrow. The goddamn Patriots come to Chicago as pretty much the best team in the NFL right now. Whatever you could have said about them losing to the Browns or "oh, but that was the Lions" or whatever was laid the hell smooth to rest when they played the 9-2 Jets a week ago and fucking smeared them. Destroyed them. Humiliated them. Dragged the Jets to the center of the field, put them in the Camel Clutch, broke their backs, and then bent them over and humbled them the old country way, right there in the middle of Gillette Stadium. Bill Belichik is at his embodiment-of-pure-evil cheating finest, and Tom Brady is who everyone's going to vote for the in the League MVP race, probably right after they get done talking on ESPN about how Michael Vick is the likely MVP. Whatever momentum the Bears have right now, the Patriots have times a thousand. The Bears still have The Doom of 2010 block for Cutler and Forte, and the Tampa Two defense is pretty much optimized to face the Death of a Thousand Cuts from the kind of "throw it short to the white dude" offense that the Patriots run.
Not to mention that you just KNOW Belichik already probably has video footage of anything that the Bears would rather have kept secret until Sunday. Which, along with bullshit fines on players like Suh and the impending 2011 lockout is yet another reason why Roger Gooddell might be the worst commissioner in the history of sports to not have the first name "Bud" or the last name "Selig." A thousand Russian gymnasts could train from the age of six years old, and not a single one of them could ever bend backwards as far as Roger did in letting Belichik and the Patriots off the hook for the whole Spygate thing. A small fine and that was it, as they scramble to literally burn all the tapes before anyone could find out how truly bad it was? Jesus, man. If Pete Rozelle were still around, the only way Bill Belichik would be getting into an NFL game now was if he was buying a ticket, and even the crooked-ass NCAA would have just left blank spaces and asterisks next to 2004 and 2005 on their list of champions.
But oh dang, I just went off on a tangent there. Wow. Back on track. The Patriots come into this game with a better record, a better coaching staff, better players, and a complete lack of ethics. Speaking logically, the Bears have about as much of a chance of winning this game as I have standing flat-footed and jumping to the moon.


But you know what? You know what, fuckers? Fuck logic. I am a MAN, dammit, so I leave the logic to the Vulcans. Because I am still riding this wave of uncharacteristic positivity, and I'm not giving it up until either the balloon pops or the Bears prove themselves to truly be the team of Retarded Destiny that I believe them to be. So goddammit, LET'S GO TO THE MOON. We defeated the Dark Lord, we took Dog Hitler down a notch, and we didn't fuck up too bad against Ol' Plucky. So why not Tom Brady? I mean, the pass rush is there, the defensive backfield is the best it's been in years, and the Patriots rarely even bother to hand the ball off. Let's take Golden Boy down. Destroy him, break him, crush him, sack him until there's nothing left of him hut memories and a pair of Ugg boots with steam coming out of them, Star-Trek style. Put an end to his stupid hair, his stupid teeth, and those stupid, fake "fiery" sideline pep talks he does to create the illusion that he's not just a pussywhipped metro-douche who's probably one puppy-dog look from Gisele away from signing ten-year endorsement deals with Tampax and Bratz Dolls.


It's time to remind those Boston fuckers what it was like in 1986, when the Bears humiliated them in the Super Bowl, because it's not like any of their fans now were watching any of their games prior to 2003 or so. Fuck them; they've never known Hard Times, because when Hard Times arose, they quit paying attention and turned their backs while Vincent Brown and Bruce Armstrong were playing their guts out to half-empty stadiums. Fuck them. Fuck them right in their stupid, spoiled, fair-weather fake-fan mouths and asses. Make the bullshit "Patriots Nation" lose the faith and stop pretending to like football and go back to pretending to like the one white dude on the basketball team until it's time for Red Sox season to start and they can leave the real sports alone for a while.

Listen. As a football fan on the internet, I'm monumentally stupid enough to act like the players and coaching staff are actually reading everything some piss ant says, so long as it's addressed directly to them. So listen, dudes. I believe in you. I believe in this team, and the Retarded Destiny that fate has laid out before you. Now, put your hand against the screen. I don't care if it'll smudge it up, now, just do it. Look, I'm gonna reach out right now. My hand is touching your hand. Feel the love. Feel the POWER. This game means everything, dudes. Lose, and you can still make the playoffs. Yeah, you can do that. But if you win this game tomorrow, you will show the world and the rest of the universe that you can beat anyone, on any day, at any time, and that this isn't a team that's just going to lie down and die peacefully once the playoffs start, like what happened in 2001 and 2005. As far as you're concerned, this is the great battle of our time; a mini-Super Bowl for 2010. It's time to either put up or shut up. It's time to leave nothing on the field but the glorious dead. And goddammit, you have it in you to make certain that more of the dead belong to them than to you.

PREDICTION: Bears 37, Patriots 35.

RIDE TO RUIN