NFL 2011: Week 18 – Wild Card Round (OT)

So I have not exactly been keeping up my NFLuminati duties here at the ArmChair LineBacker, but life has been a motherfucker, which ultimately is the point of the normal Illuminaut, and translates into the NFLuminaut as well – to deplete the warriors of right, in the name of profit and gold to be held out in honor of Moloch the Luciferian Owl God. Of course, I’m not helping my cause coming out the gates with conspiratorial jibber-jabber, but it applies now, more than ever during the playoffs, because the way my system is weighted, you really see the powerful and unpowerful teams, beyond record, and beyond the normal “oh they lost so I’ll move them down automatically, which is how Buffalo was a top ten team at one point even though they weren’t.” I base my rankings on science, math, and the metaphysical realities of these franchises. The metaphysical is the hardest of all to overcome, and perhaps part of the reason I have disappeared is I realize deep down inside that my beloved Redskins are not a prominent NFL franchise, in the psychic sense, and we have been pilfered down to the level of the have-nots. Not just bad for a spell but bad for an ever.
Allow me the tangent of just outright proclaiming we are doing the Lord’s work here at ACLB. Maybe not the Lord of Christian Spending or the type of Lord politicians pretend to be in service for. But we are doing the work of the Lords of Lounge, the Lords of Righteousness, and the Lords of Football in the name of the fans aka the Football Gods, who recognize the awesomeness of Keisel’s beard, of Ickey’s celebratory footwork, of Riggins’ brutishness, of Barry Sanders’ immaculate shiftiness, of Kenny Stabler being the real man’s Joe Namath, of it all man. All the things that make football something you are like FUCK YEAH about, which is not the same as the things that make you buy a new football pullover or like Drew Brees but not the Saints because of your fantasy team. We are real as fuck, and doing the real work here.
Some dude sent us $50 through the Paypal donation button on the sidebar there the other week, and from his message it seemed that it was in honor of Neil’s amazingness, which is understandable. Neil’s visions have carried the site as myself and Harpo and The Baron struggle for motivation. It has carried the site while new voices like Whiouxsie and that Jets dude that showed up briefly find their place. But we are all the same voice though.
And I was gonna pass that money along to Neil, but keep $12 to renew the site’s domain name for another year, and then I used it for gas because I had no money, and felt terrible, even though I shouldn’t, and promised Neil when I got paid today I would Paypal him $40, so he should get good and drunk for the Lions on some random dude with an email like whitetiger420 at hotmail.com or something sent us money. Which I will right after I finish channeling all this that I’ve been taking notes on scraps of medical record files at my temp job when no one is looking. I am doing my work, both for the money that the fake Gods of football and god and politics and Moloch the Owl God and all them worship, that helps me continue to sharecrop for credit systems and keep the lights on in my actual house. But I am also doing the real work of knowing, and of knowing that I don’t know, so always looking to understand things in the proper light, whether that be football or the pistons on an engine or how peyote makes you feel in 20 degree weather. We are all doing that at ACLB – the real work. On one hand, I want to condescend to you and say something like, “I hope you fucking appreciate it,” but you are already here, so you are with us, and instead I tell you I fucking appreciate you.
So let’s get to it, with these wild cards for this weekend…
#1: NEW ORLEANS SAINTS (13-3, 3rd overall, 7.6 out of 10.0 rating) – The Saints are the one team playing this weekend that should have gotten a bye. I understand the NFL’s system, and a team always fall, but this team is on a separate level than a majority of the teams playing this weekend. Drew Brees is one of the main figureheads of the new school NFL that is more like a game of Madden that the old school smashmouth style. The problem with that mode of football is, much like Madden when the game’s artificial intelligence gets all shitty on you because the 1s and 0s line up just so, it can fail you. See last year when the Saints lost, on the road granted, in the wild card round against a 7-9 Seattle Seahawks team that saw Marshawn Lynch shift into the Beast Mode that he has so adoringly ran with ever since. I do not think that will happen this weekend, as the Saints are in New Orleans, and the NFL – after Hurricane Katrina – loves nothing more than to be able to have a party in New Orleans. The NFL Gods that love merchandising and money and shit like that love Hurricane Katrina because it got all the negroes out of NO, gave the league reason to allow the Saints to win a Super Bowl to exorcise themselves of the Failure Demons on a psychic level, and run endless commercials of dogs wearing expensive Drew Brees gear wobbling down Bourbon Street. The money comes in, and the Saints help bring that money. They should win, as their offense is full of quality skill players, and if there’s one weakness to the Lions, it’s that secondary, as seen last weekend.
#2: DETROIT LIONS (10-6, 6th overall, 4.7 rating) – And yet, note the overall ranking – the Lions are the 6th best team in the NFL, according to the NFLuminati Index. That is no mistake, and is not tinkered in Neil’s favor. That is science. However, at this point in the season, science falls back to only 50% of a game’s influence when compared to psychic factors (during the season it’s usually 67% science/33% psychic factor). The Lions psychic factor is shit, and it’s an egg and chicken type situation. Are the Lions such a suffering franchise because they are held down by the NFL, or are held down by the NFL because they have always sucked? I know this much though – their ascension to more-than-respectable started last season. Remember Calvin Johnson’s non-TD catch last season? Remember the officiating during the Thanksgiving game this year? Remember how Sheriff Goodell was calling out Ndonkykong Suh before he even did anything, and helped create this “dirty player” reputation? Why was Matt Millen allowed to remain GM for so long? Were factors higher than the Lions involved? And go beyond that…Why is Detroit so neglected? Did the auto industry really get too big to fail, or did it squeeze profits from machines and leave men abandoned behind? Once the Detroit of men was replaced by machines elsewhere, did the auto industry really give a fuck about Detroit the city?
Look, I am listening to The Grapes of Wrath on book on CD in my daily commute lately, and I think that is the truest fucking American novel of forever, and applies just as much to our 2011 world, where – like I said – most of us are sharecropping for credit cards and loan payments that balance out more than what they are for, and where we, as people, may never get back on that footing we once thought was our birthright at Americans because we drank the wonderful Kool-Aid of public school political science training.
I have always been a Lions fan, even before I felt this psychic bond with Neil at this site. There are two embroidered fancy pants NFL jerseys of actual players I have – Sean Taylor and Barry Sanders. I dig this team, and dig them even more now that they are good. I liked Calvin Johnson before he was a pro, so was stoked he went to Detroit and not some godforsaken scumtown like Philadelphia or Seattle or Denver or something. And Detroit is a lost place, but that is the type of place that could spark a rebirth of a new America, where men don’t give a fuck about sharecropping for Moloch anymore, and start doing the real work that is still left to be done on this Earth. And the Lions – with what they have on their roster right fucking now – could be the perfect team to symbolize that, much like the Oakland Raiders of the 1970s. It makes me sad there’s no Al Davis type to own the team, and embrace this reality. But it won’t happen. The NFL has shown they are against them. Detroit and the Lions are not profitable, they are not able to bring money to the evil Learned Elders of Capital that the new NFL is in allegiance to. Sure, the real football Gods, they’d love this Detroit team. But it didn’t come together in an age of football as battle; it came together in the age of football as sports entertainment. It’s a fucking shame too, because I’d like to see some real fucking football and not just some QB standing back there tossing TD passes like an arena game. But I imagine that’s what we’ll be seeing, along with those dog-in-Brees commercials, and probably the Chrysler car things that act like Detroit has resurrected the auto industry, when really Chrysler is just oiling more machines with the blood of the masses, and the real men of Detroit are fighting off wolves and psychic chupacabras for the scraps of survival. I am right there with you, bros. And just like you, I will be watching free TV and praying to my Real Gods that Ndonkeykong Suh paralyzes fucking Drew Brees at some point before halftime, so that we can have a real fucking football game.
#3: PITTSBURGH STEELERS (12-4, 7th overall, 4.5 rating) – When you think of psychically powerful teams, none have more aura than the Steelers. I know NFL television heads have tried to encourage this belief that somehow the Broncos will find a way to beat the Steelers, because of Tebow and because the Steelers are injured and all. But come the fuck on… are you kidding me? This is ridiculous to even think about. And sure, someone will say, “But what of the Saints at Seahawks you spoke of last year? Is this not the same thing, with the same potential?” No, it’s not. Even in their newfound elevated state, the Saints are nowhere near the NFLuminati factor of the Steelers, though the Broncos and Seahawks are comparable. I just think the NFL would rather feed the beast of the Steelers, to appease people like me who know what football should be, because the Steelers are really the last successful example left, and they can say, “The Steelers – old school football!” and show some fat dude with no shirt on in the crowd who is drunk and obviously one of us wrestling with the same Failure Demons of Regular Real Life that we all wrestle with. The Tebow glamour sold enough jerseys and magazine covers this year, and the NFL won’t continue to push that, because the ramifications are too high. After all, why would they want to create a second-rate Kurt Warner? They already have to keep Kurt Warner on-staff at the NFL Network to keep him placated.
#4: ATLANTA FALCONS (10-6 8th overall, 3.8 rating) – The Falcons are the perfect example of the type of team that is great this weekend, but in over their heads next weekend. It’s hard to understand how you transition beyond being a playoff-potential team to being a playoff-successful team. But the Falcons don’t seem to have made that transition. Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco are both dudes who have not sold the World on their alleged awesomeness, beyond the greater metropolitan areas of where they throw footballs professionally. Same thing with Mike Smith as a head coach. And the Giants are always a psychic heavyweight, especially in January.
#5: NEW YORK GIANTS (9-7, 9th overall, 2.9 rating) – Tom Coughlin is an old cockroach of a head coach, whose teams continually barely perform up to snuff, rarely to their potential, but somehow they won the NFC Least, which makes it so the old man probably won’t get fired. And if they win the only home game that the new Whatever It’s Called Stadium in New Jersey, then they’ll never get rid of that old dude. Relatedly, you know what sucks? Michael Strahan on Fox. Also Justin Tuck is a very strangely shaped dude.
#6: HOUSTON TEXANS (10-6, 11th overall, 2.0 rating) – Someone will win this early game tomorrow afternoon, and that team will be able to pretend, “We made it to the final 8 teams of the NFL season of 2012, and therefore we are a team that is to be considered great.” But that won’t be true. The Texans very well could be that team, though their psychic factor is at 0%, and they are starting their 3rd string rookie QB. Honestly, I think this game is established for a Bengals upset, to justify Andy Dalton, and give us all a great time tripping out on the Double Beast Mode that is essentially the Bengals backfield. The Texans are a collection of great players who do great things, but aren’t really a notable team. They are NBA-mentality, but in football. Ultimately even the greedy money-hungry sports entertainment barons that now control the NFL do not respect that come January, when the cold weather sets in.
#7: DENVER BRONCOS (8-8, 17th overall, 0.6 rating) – Have you ever been to Colorado? There is not a more perfect place for a do-good Jesus freak QB to become a star. And there is not a more perfect place to have a late Sunday afternoon football game, combining the Football Gods with the Christian God, in the Rocky Mountains. The last few years of his life, most of his writing was complete crap, including his ESPN columns, but at times like this I wish Hunter S. Thompson was still alive, and I could do mushrooms with him and watch the game. Actually fuck that, I wish Oscar Zeta Acosta was still alive and I could do peyote with him somewhere in the Pacific ocean, watching the game with drunkard Samoans who all love Troy Polamalu but wonder if he ain’t a gay.
#8: CINCINNATI BENGALS (9-7, 19th overall, 0.6 rating) – The Bengals always seem to make themselves relevant every couple of years, but just barely. But look at the overall rating according to my system – 19th overall. This team has never been higher than like 13th all year long, and is the worst playoff team on a real scale. But yet they have that strong second-tier psychic factor, that goes back to Boomer Esiason and Ickey Woods and even that one run with Carson Palmer where his ligaments were sacrificed to a higher power as some sort of public penance for the Brown family to contemplate. Finally, the Brown family is back in line though, and they have been rewarded with a playoff position, and Andy Dalton and A.J. Green and that Samoan Swat Team defense, plus the aforementioned Double Beast Mode at RB, will help the Bengals play another weekend, because in the eyes of both the Football Gods as well as the Sports Entertainment Gods, the Texans are not actually a real team yet.