2011 All ACLB Team Offensive Guards

NEIL: LOGAN MANKINS & STEVE HUTCHINSON
Logan Mankins ate a lot of shit this year because he had the audacity to hold out for half the season, which most fans see as a sort of betrayal, but fuck all that. So often in this world, dudes and lady dudes are forced to eat shit, to do whatever they are told, regardless of whether they think it’s right or not. You see this all the time in the NFL. I know, I know, no one should have any sympathy ever for these dudes because they are millionaires, but fuck, I don’t blame them for trying to get as much as they can since they will be in a wheelchair by the time they’re 45 and dead by the time they’re 55 and then they’ll have the ignominy of having their brains dissected like they are some sort of mutant alien by scientists greedy to get their hands on anything that will allow them to understand just how a brain gets all mushy and fucked up from getting beat on too many times. If I had the opportunity to squeeze a few more dollars out of the billion dollar money printing machine known as the NFL, I would too. Fuck it.
But too often, these dudes crumble because at their very heart, they are just simple men raised to do behave like honorable men. They are ordinary and they believe in buzzwords like honor and pride and work ethic because that’s all a lot of people have. But the rich cocksuckers who cut the checks in the NFL don’t care about any of that shit. After all, they have money. But they understand that you can use those buzzwords to shame the hell out of the simple man and so they do, all the damn time. And fans lap that shit right up because they want their heroes to symbolize all of those simple man things that they hold dear. They want them to reject money and play for pride and honor and they want them to work like dogs because that is the measure of a man. And the owners whisper this shit into the ears of sportswriters and then the sportswriters write about what a spoiled, lazy pussy the player is and then the fans spit with disgust because they feel betrayed. It is sickening, the way that the simple man is forced to devour his own brother while the billionaire flies around on his private jet and wipes his ass with twenty dollar bills.
And so the player always comes crawling back, and the billionaire owner sits smugly and watches while the simple man is forced to beg forgiveness from his fellow simple men and then he has to sit and nod his head shamefully while sportswriters tut tut him for daring to fly too close to the sun and then the billionaire shows up and wipes his ass with the melted wings which are the proof that the simple man fucked up.
Usually this all happens before the season. But Logan Mankins wouldn’t give. He held firm for almost half the season, refusing to be caught up in the illusions and traps which keep the simple man simple and the rich man rich. He knew what he wanted, he knew what he felt like his sacrifice – and make no mistake, these dudes are sacrificing themselves since they will all be dead or retarded by the time they hit middle age – was worth and he endured the slings and the arrows. He stood there, unwavering, even while the rich man pissed on him and inflamed the anger of the simple man, who turned on him and decried him as a traitor.
Eventually, though, Mankins broke and he came back. Not because he was shamed but because he was now losing money. He took a stand and held firm even though there was little chance that he was going to get his way. And then he came back after his contract was essentially chopped in half because he missed half the season. He didn’t win but he didn’t lose either. That may sound strange because he lost money and he lost the respect of his fellow simple man, which would cause most people to say that he lost twice over. But fuck that. He said that he felt he was worth more and he stuck to that until he had no choice but to come back. To go beyond that, to allow them to take all of his money off the table, would have just been stubborn and foolish. And more than that, he knew what he was worth as a man and he didn’t let those buzzwords trap him. He didn’t get tangled up in the rich man’s game. He knows himself and he is good with that. Everything else is just so much dumb bullshit.
After all that, Mankins came back and when he did the Patriots offense started to steamroll motherfuckers. I know most of you probably don’t agree with this shit and his fellow simple men out there think he is a selfish pussy and the rich man hates him for daring to challenge him but I bet that Logan Mankins can look at his reflection in the mirror every day when he wakes up and really, that’s all that matters. Besides, he has a kick ass Grizzly Adams beard so fuck everyone else.
For the other guard, I chose Steve Hutchinson. I have always liked Hutchinson because he is a Michigan dude and I was born into Michigan fandom just like I was born into Lions fandom and I was raised to have love for dudes like him in my heart. And even though he is now a filthy Viking, I don’t hold that against him. After all, a dude’s gotta do what he’s gotta do, you know? But aside from that, he has also been awesome for a long, long time. Once, only a few years ago he was the best guard in the league, opening holes for Shaun Alexander to walk through in Seattle. Alexander was setting records and getting slobbered over by fans and stat worshippers but the real star there was Hutchinson.
Now, he’s still considered pretty good but no one really considers him the best anymore. He’s considered an old man even though he’s 33 – the same age as Jesus when the people turned on him – and you get the sense that the world is through with him. But he’s still there, and he’s still fighting and even though he is diminished in the world’s eye, he is still great in mine. He is, to me, the best offensive lineman to play at Michigan during my lifetime, and that’s a hell of a list. Better than Jake Long, better than Backus, than Maurice Williams, than Jon Jansen and Jumbo Elliott. To the rest of the world he was nobody until he was somebody and soon enough he will be nobody again. He is transitory, like everyone and everything else. It all happens too soon and then it is over. But I’ll remember him, even after he’s gone and all he is is a faded memory to the people of Seattle and an echo of greatness to the people of Minnesota. I saw him when he was young and the world was laid out before him and the sun was on his back. I saw him rise and now I watch him fade while the sun sets on the far horizon, in front of him now, dying, dying, dying and he knows as well as I do that soon that sun will be gone and so will he. But that sun will never set in my heart, and because of that, to me Steve Hutchinson is an All-Pro now just as he was yesterday and just like will be tomorrow and just like he will be forever.



RAVEN: LOGAN MANKINS & JOSH SITTON
Hey, we finally have a match. We didn't really plan on always picking differently from each other; there was no rule to do so, but we kind of have. But in engineering my offensive line with intelligent negroids at the tackle positions, I thought it really important to balance this with viking white people at guard spots. The insane white man is an oft-overlooked yet undeniably valuable tool of mayhem on this earth. Sure, we all know how rich white fuckers make us all hate each other and step on our throats with invisible electro-magnetic frequency machines that cause us to think it important and wonderful to spend 7% of our monthly income on a fucking cell phone device that purposely concentrates cancer radiation into our brains. We all already know about this type of white man.
But the dirtbag, with greasy hair and unshaven facial pelts, stained with tobacco juice, vaginal fluids, and the blood of undercooked animals, these are men who first crossed the Atlantic in boats made from trees by eating speed-like herbs and gnawing at the old wood growth with their bare teeth until it looked like something that might float over the fucking horizon. And they had no idea what happened at the horizon. It might go on forever, or they might fall off the edge and land in the middle of a 1978 gay bar or something. But they still jumped in their goddamned boats and floated off into the wilderness. You know why? Because fuck it, that's why.
This viking mentality is very necessary as you get towards the middle of the offensive line. It is in these pits of 300-plus pound men crushing together every play where the NFL's dirtiest work is done, terrible, unspeakable things that would be considered rape even in the most sexually liberal of countries. And it is important to do these things, because your will must be imposed on the other team, very much like rape. Abuse them into submission. Sometimes in life this gets us treasure, or a second wife, or ass sex with Filipino "teenagers" while on vacation. In football, this gets you more rushing yards, and then more time for you QB to stand back there and go into Madden mode, instead of running for his life because the defensive monsters are stronger than your offensive vikings.
So for me, an obvious choice is Logan Mankins. I mean, google image search the dude and it's obvious. He is a viking. And Neil covered his long holdout pretty well, not much more I can add. But why is it the losers of us who have nothing and are just watching it all happen always agree with the owners and management in these cases? Bill Belichick is considered a coaching genius because he is adept at applying cold-hearted management practices that will take last year's Patriots darling and toss him into a scrap heap pile of cast-off car parts to be crushed for beer money. It's cold-hearted as fuck, and yet everyone applauds Belichick for this. Isn't this what caused the housing bubble, and all the Wall Street bullshit? Haven't we learned anything?
So Logan Mankins has always been the man. He played college ball at Fresno State, which means he probably was slightly dirtbag back then as well. I imagine he's the type of guy who watches Sons of Anarchy and complains about how "This shit ain't even close to how it is" and "These dudes would get raped in a real MC" and shit like that. Even his name is dirtbaggy.
But really, you look at that guy, and you know he's in the middle of those 300-plus pound clusterfucks of allegedly athletic humanity, just punching people in the kidneys and fish-hooking motherfuckers out of their helmets. We've all known guys like that. They are great dudes to drink with and know on your periphery. In fact, it's ultimately better to befriend them from a distance than to ignore them completely, because invariably they are going to want to destroy other humans, and if you are out of their allegiances, good and bad, then you will run the chance of becoming what they destroy. As a distant ally, you protect yourself. But if you get too close, you can get drawn too far into their world, and next thing you know, it's 3 am at a suburban apartment building and Logan Mankins is yelling at you to go grab the girl in nothing but panties that just climbed out the bedroom window who is the girlfriend to the guy Mankins is bashing the face in on the kitchen linoleum over a $250 tattoo-related debt. You have to go get the girl and drag her back in, against her will. You don't want that man turning on you. This is when you've gotten too far in.
But yeah, that's the type of dude I want on my offensive line.
His companion is Josh Sitton of the Green Bay Packers. I figured they won the Super Bowl, so they should get some love, because they really are a throwback style of team, and not some new-fangled bullshit finesse offense. And when I look at that offense, I see the guy who almost killed my youngest sister in Aaron Rodgers. So obviously I can't give that guy daps. But what gave Rodgers the chance to shine this year was the offensive line coming together. And rookie Bryan Bulaga certainly has a more offensive line-tastic name and style, and is more of a blue chipper coming out of college as a first round pick. But to put it simply, Sitton is a long haired dude who does not look pretty like his counterpart on Green Bay's defense in Clay Matthews. Josh Sitton looks like a scumbag dude with long hair who will sit around for four days straight, doing lines of crank on the homemade deck made from old shipping pallets around his aboveground pool, and then get mad when you try to leave on Monday morning, yelling after you, "I THOUGHT YOU CAME TO PARTY! GODDAMN! YOU FUCKING PUSSY! YOU BETTER NOT BE GOING TO THE COPS! OR BLAINE! IF YOU GO RUNNING YOUR MOUTH TO BLAINE ABOUT WHAT I TOLD YOU, I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU BOTH!" And you don't even know Blaine. That's Josh Sitton. That's good offensive linery.


TOMORROW: Center