2011 All ACLB Team Kickers & Punters

RAVEN: SEBASTIAN JANIKOWSKI & SAV ROCCA
If I have to pick a favorite kicker in the NFL, it will always be the mouthy drunk, of which there are a few still left at any time in the league. Kicker is such a cerebral position, more like a baseball player than a football player, and seems fairly well-designed to create drunkardism. And when you have to break the ties between drunks, well, being a chubby, date-raping Polock is going to put you over the top every time. It only makes sense that Janikowski has played his entire career in Oakland. It wouldn't have made sense anywhere else. And with the way NFL kickers have become this gay little club of 40 dudes who shift between teams and get swapped back and forth like wives at The Lifestyle convention, usually somewhere in Colorado, to keep out the riffraff, and allow easy access from both coasts, having one pudgy drunkard kicker who does fairly well, I mean no worse than anybody else really, that's a commendable thing. Although I imagine he gets mocked for his weight more now that Jamarcus Russell is gone.
As for a punter, I will never see the point of not having an Australian Rules Football punter on your team. Like seriously, those dudes basically play special teams gunner positions as a career, and learn how to punt like a motherfucker while doing it. Why every team does not invite two or three of these guys to America to try and make a million bucks not getting concussed anymore is beyond me.
Special teams mentality is a strange mentality, especially in today's sports concussion aware world, because the basic premise of special teams is to go head-first into a wall of humanity, attempt to pierce that wall, and then have enough of yourself left in control to knock one dude down, all of it done as quickly as possible. So when the overall mentality of a group of 11 dudes is that of a collective penetrating ballistic, having an Aussie football punter only makes sense. The only potential drawback is those down under dudes are probably all first-class degenerates, being from a continent descended from cast-offs and prison colonists, and coming from a fairly rough-and-tumble sports world themselves. I would imagine there has to be extra orientation training for Aussie rules guys when they come to America, how not to get accused of sexual assault, American intoxication laws, American battery laws, all of that.
Which is why Sav Rocca in Philadelphia makes perfect sense, even more perfect than simply having an Aussie dude on an NFL team. There is no more degenerate fanbase than what the Philadelphia Eagles have. I mean, they are a disgusting lot, and I've run with some pretty wretched of the earth types in my time. So Sav Rocca is basically one of them already, except he kicks the ball. I imagine he can drink with them and talk shit about how great rude titties are with them and generally be a societal miscreant with them. And yet he still can punt the ball well. That's probably the biggest drawback to being an Aussie rules dude coming over to punt, is holding yourself to your tough standard now that you're wearing all this pussy-assed personal protective equipment and don't have to run at motherfuckers anymore since that's not really asked of a punter except to be the save guy if the returner busts through everybody else. The life of an NFL punter is as cush as it gets to these guys probably, which may be why more of them aren't here.
They show Australian Football League games of the week on one of my local PBS stations, so I watch that shit every Monday night. It's a nice sport. I finally understand how they score, and even had a limey dude explain to me one night how all that compares to rugby, and the differences and similarities. And as the NFL lockout meanders along (we take forever to write this because you know how they have the little board you write your pick on in the actual NFL draft? me and Neil are making each other mail postcards to each other with each pick we make for this team, but the postcards have to come from different post offices each time or the pick is disqualified), and player health is of such concern now that Dave Duerson was proven retarded when he committed suicide, it's important to remember that beyond making money and being alive, the basic essence of being a Man is to lock up with other Men who are on your side, and through sheer primal brutality, physically overpower other men and make them do what the fuck you want them to do, or simply remove them as an obstacle to what you are trying to do. It's in our DNA. So as the NFL tries to modernize itself, and even talked about eliminating kickoffs altogether (what the fuck?), they need to remember that what is great about football is it speaks to our base DNA. If it gets regulated into some upper-crust cerebral bullshit, it'll lose it's greatness; and if they want to narrow down their demographic to the dorky, number-obsessed stats nerd, man, they'll lose that battle to baseball all day every day.



NEIL: JASON HANSON & ZOLTAN MESKO
Oh man, I didn’t know all that shit about Ed Reed. Actually, I think I might have. Once. But time does strange things to a man’s brain, strange and terrible things, and, well . . . yeah. I just thought that I was putting Ed Reed on the team because he was awesome, and it turns out that he is, but for reasons of which I was unaware. Naturally, I will take this as an opportunity to both apologize for not giving him the proper words of respect that he so deserved (although Raven made up for it) and to note that this obviously means that my instincts are impeccable. I knew that Ed Reed was awesome, I just wasn’t sure why, beyond being an awesome football player anyway. So, if you’re taking anything away from this, it’s that you should always listen to everything that I say and trust me no matter what, even when I can’t produce an iota of evidence backing up whatever horseshit thing I am going on about. Do this and you will know the secrets of the universe. Do it not, and remain lost in the shadows while me and my brethren dance in the light.
Anyway . . . where the fuck are we in this thing? Oh yeah, kickers and punters. Shamefully, it has been almost a month since I have written anything for this All-Pro team, but I have my excuses. Sure, some of them may include butchering Eskimos for their pelts and selling them to seedy Russians while we drink vodka standing atop the world, straddling the North Pole like degenerate gods, and some of them may involve Raven and me stranded in the Baja Peninsula with only a thimbleful of water between us, heads full of peyote, naked and in crude handcuffs or maybe I just forgot? Who’s to say in this fucked up world of ours? Who indeed?
Okay. So . . . Jason Hanson. Could there be any doubt that this was the dude who I was going to choose for this team? After all, I have written more posts about just him than any other Lion (with the possible exception of Drew Stanton, but those posts were written for vastly, vastly different reasons.), which may sound strange but it should start to make sense when you realize that he is the one dude who has been here through it all, through the bright promising morning of the Barry years to the sunless midnight of hell which ruined us for a decade, its mutant werewolves and savage vampire apes abusing us in the cold, cold night while the Failure Demons cackled and whipped us with chains made of fire and tears. Jason Hanson was there for all of it, and during those dark days, he was the lone prince, the lone knight, sitting atop a green and beautiful hill, untouched by the chaos down below, pristine and beautiful, his heart unconquerable by anything other than the creeping doom of time.
But I have written about all this before, and if you really want to know why he’s on this team, do some searching around the site. It will be fun. Actually, it will be a terrifying exercise in madness, but you will leave wiser than you did when you first entered these strange yet hallowed halls. There are a lot of words about Jason Hanson hidden within, some proud, some tragic, all heartfelt and they leave no doubt that there could be no other man I could pick to be the kicker on this transcendent team, which will stand for a thousand years and which will be forever remembered for conquering the squidmen and eating their heathen babies.
As for Zoltan Mesko, well . . . the man is a legend amongst a certain sect of the Michigan fanbase. He is known as Zoltan the Inconceivable, the Space Emperor, and one glance from his bejeweled eyes will turn the sinner to stone and will ignite the hearts of the righteous with primal joy. Sure, he may be a Patriot of New England, but he belonged to me first and it makes my heart happy to see him do so well in the NFL. Plus, his name is Zoltan, which sounds like the name of an escapee from Krypton or like some Zoroastrian mystic who spends his days taming the elements, wielding fire like a paintbrush, shaping it like a master sculptor, and his nights cavorting with his own personal harem, lost in a sea of opium and flesh, fucking his way towards enlightenment. If you need more reason than that, well . . . I’m afraid you are lost in a bewildering sea of self-loathing and dumb, ugly brutish ignorance and I have no time for you or your derelict ways.

LATER TODAY: Kick Returners