NEIL: BRANDON PETTIGREWYeah, I know, I know, a Lions dude, what a shock. But to hell with all that, this is the first one that I picked so far and besides, you shouldn’t begrudge me this. After all, isn’t it a good thing that I finally have a collection of dudes I can be proud of? I mean, what are you, an asshole? You should be happy for me.
Anyway, yeah, Brandon Pettigrew. There are others with better stats and sure, Pettigrew dropped a frustratingly huge number of passes this past season, but he also caught a whole shitload of them too. 71 to be exact. There were times when he seemed almost unstoppable – too quick to be covered by a linebacker and too big and strong to be covered by a defensive back.
Believe it or not there are still a lot of Lions fans who don’t like Pettigrew, both because he drops so many passes and because they refuse to forgive him for not being named Michael Oher who the Lions passed over when they picked Pettigrew in the first round of the draft a couple of years ago. But fuck Michael Oher and fuck Sandra Bullock. Okay, I don’t really mean that. After all, Sandra has been through a lot what with dragging around black photo op orphans and watching her fake biker husband fuck tattooed leathery strippers while wearing a Hitler costume, his orgasms coming complete with a soundtrack of unintelligible German gibberish, but I will be damned if I’m going to fetishize some Mitch Albomesque sob story at the expense of one of my proud, noble warrior Lions. Michael Oher is a Baltimore Raven and is therefore a potential enemy. He is not one of us but Brandon Pettigrew is and therefore we should stand side by side with him and slit the throats of the evil hordes standing against us and then gnaw on their wicked bones before the gates of hell and then we should all drink heavenly elixirs out of the hollowed out skulls of our enemies and laugh together as warriors of the Detroit Lions and as warriors of the light which is at the heart of our noble franchise and then embrace him as our brother, both in blood and in spirit. Maybe that is taking things a little too far. Or maybe – MAYBE – that is not taking things far enough. Look into your hearts for the answer.
But the one thing that is curiously always overlooked about Pettigrew is that he broke out this past season despite playing on a reconstructed ACL which he injured towards the end of last season. That means that he almost definitely wasn’t 100% all season long. After all, it takes more than a year for a player to truly recover a lot of his explosiveness after an ACL tear. They say that you’re 100% and good to go but you’re not really 100%, you know? It takes a while before you can truly say you are close to being the player you were before the injury. In fact, none ever truly make it back to 100%. There’s just a little part of you that will always be missing. Some never even get close to getting it back. They just fade away before they are resurrected a decade later by some columnist in search of a sob story. But Brandon Pettigrew is not that sob story. He is a proud warrior and he is a damn fine football player and even though he was nowhere near 100%, he still caught 71 passes and probably should have caught at least a dozen more. That’s damn good news, you know? Give him time and who knows what he’ll be capable of? With St. Calvin sucking up double and triple teams, Pettigrew could run wild over the middle and down the seam for a long, long time. That has me excited as hell (which is pretty damn exciting because if Heavy Metal album covers have taught me anything it is that Hell is really fucking exciting) and you better believe that is enough to make Brandon Pettigrew an Armchair Linebacker All-Pro.
RAVEN: JEREMY SHOCKEYSure, I could go the easy route and pick Chris Cooley, who is one of the few bright spots on the dismal condition that is the Washington Redskins. But you know what? Fuck the Redskins. And fuck Chris Cooley. Is he awesome enough to survive the suck, or shall the suck pull him down to average underachiever who thinks more highly of himself than he displays on the foozball turfs? I would suggest the latter, but I can wait until fall to see. Hopefully.
Anyways, in my picking of one Jeremy Shockey, let me make it terribly clear that I hated this dude at the U... in fact, I hate most The U dudes because just because. And when the played for the Giants? Rock solid classic douchebag. I mean, you put a guy like that in the stank cultural confines of Jersey, and what you have is a sociological petri dish for pathological douchebag.
But then he got exiled off to New Orleans, and down there, he's not even their only TE. Just part of the crew. And he still has that trashy long hair, the scummy tattoos which I'm sure prominently honor America in some half-witted ignoramus way multiple times over. And he still goes helmet first into opposing LBs to get an extra two yards by taking four months off the existence of normal brain patterns inside his skull. And I know modern political correct concern would have us be like, "Oh man, that's terrible. We must think of the players long-term health." But seriously, how many players from your favorite team from 20 years ago are you hanging out with, cooking up food on the grill, throwing some horseshoes, ogling the teenagers coming up in the neighborhood, et cetera? None. Those dudes aren't part of our lives, and we sure as fuck ain't part of their's. So let them get chronic traumatic entittilitus.
The thing that I find beautiful about one Jeremiah Hovercraft Shockey is that man, he's made some money. And you know he's blown it on stupid shit, most likely one part of that is one of those new-fangled half-assed pseudo muscle cars they've been making the past decade. I would peg Shockey to have one of the Hemi muscle cars - an orange Dodge Charger most likely. And those new muscle cars are nothing like real muscle cars, simply extended gas-guzzling penis extensions for little-dicked retired state troopers. Except some dudes like Shockey have more money than they know what to do with, so they end up with an '07 Dodge Charger as well, with all the options, and custom interior.
Thing is, dude is gonna wash out like all NFL players who don't do broadcasting. (Did you know they take wonderlic tests for that too? It's like their post-concussion career test to see if they still have any sense enough to be on the TVs.) And twenty years from now, as he's spiraling into madness from too many brain crushings, most of his life will be in shambles. He'll ruin a few good women, probably have children that hate his guts, and will have traded the McMansion in New Orleans and Miami for a brick rancher about a four-minute walk from the west coast gulfside of Florida somewhere. But he'll still have that Dodge Charger. And he'll change the spark plugs more often than necessary, and measure the oil level, and pump some Metallica long enough that he'll have to hook up a battery charger from his riding mower shed to recharge the Charger. And most likely it'll be that orange Dodge Charger he was driving when he went to the liquor store beside the Publix that one time and loaded up Southern Comfort after filling an ill-begotten oxycodone prescription. And he'll get all wilded out and end up running from the cops over a minor DUI or beating up a stripper that was living out of his house kind of, but not really. And the police won't understand how Shockey's brain is working, but it'll make sense to him. And he might end up swallowing the danger end of a phallic pistol for one final headfirst fall two yards sideways. Or he may just flame out in a tragic accident, like all good heroes do. But he is Jeremy Shockey, and he is an NFL tight end, and when he is 47 years old, half-drunk, shitty American eagle tattoos faded from the Florida sun, twisting at his goddamned spark plugs again even though there's not a touch of crud to any of the old ones' tips, he is motherfucking perfect.
(Of course, then the Saints up and cut him, but hopefully this just means he finishes his career somewhere even more Shockey-ready like Tennessee or Jacksonville or Tampa Bay.)
TOMORROW: Tackles of the offensive variety
3 comments:
I, as a Lions fan love the Pettigrew pick. His toughness and obvious strong will do not get talked about enough even by the so-called "experts". I like that he doesn't pander for coverage or airtime and seems to want to focus on football.
People, even our own fans, seem to hate him for where he was drafted. Average fan has it beaten into his head that any first-round TE has to be an athletic freak or fantasy stud. Wrong. He just has to have an impact on the opposing D and have to be accounted for. 71 grabs is plenty for me. I am sick of arguing with friends who think they know football about not picking Oher..who if they "knew" the game would have read the reports that Oher actually regressed in his 2nd year when moved to LT by the Ravens who seemed to bolster under pressure from his fame into moving him there prematurely. He will be a good player in this league, no doubt, but when the dust settles 8-10 years from now you will be glad we took Pettigrew unless you are just a sad, pathetic shell of a human being who's to stubborn/pussy to admit we done good.
Yeah, Pettigrew was the best tight end in that draft and should be a dangerous weapon for years. Oher is a good - not great, but good player - who is somewhat limited and whose ideal position is as a right tackle, which ... yeah, we have one of those already.
We're a better team for having Brandon Pettigrew than we would be if we had Michael Oher. That's all it comes down to.
"Thing is, dude is gonna wash out like all NFL players who don't do broadcasting. (Did you know they take wonderlic tests for that too? It's like their post-concussion career test to see if they still have any sense enough to be on the TVs.)"
Dude, Raven, if that were true, Dan Dierdorf and Phil Simms wouldn't have careers.
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