NFL 2012 Week 2: AFC South & West (1st Quarter)

Our first week of the professional football has come and gone, and the coolness starts to fill our American air, and it is an election year, so we are fat with self-importance, and ready to plop down on our luxury furniture and make ourselves sick over the games we have no control of. And again, I hope to give you these weekly updates, cycling through two divisions a week, meaning we travel through all corners of the NFL four times over the course of the regular season. Just as an NFL game is broken into four quarters, most NFL coaches break the season down into four quarters, so essentially everything we know after that first week (and used as talking points on this list) is utterly useless in the overall scheme of things. Even the most shocking and devastating of victories or losses is nothing more than the season-length equivalent of an opening drive TD in a regular game. So take all that to heart, and realize that what you think learned last week may just be early season deception and trickery. Still though, my formula for power scoring these teams is in effect, and though there’s not quite enough body of work for the formula to be correct the first couple weeks, it is all I have to go by, so I use it to rank these teams of the AFC South and AFC West, two of the lowlier divisions of the professional footballs.

#1: DENVER BRONCOS (1-0, 5th overall) – Last week: beat Steelers, 31-19. This week: at Falcons (1-0). I for one do not believe the Peyton hype, and expect the Broncos to be as high mediocre as they were last year when that retarded blessing from Heaven Tim Tebow was their QB. That would be good enough to win the AFC West, with or without Manning. But I am also a lifelong Manning hater, so perhaps I am being cruel towards the gimp-necked corporate hick. They held tough with the Steelers and prevailed in the end, and though I think them not a true Super Bowl contender in the long run, if they can hang with the likes of the Steelers, that puts them head-and-shoulders-and-fused-neck above the likes of their horrible AFC Western compatriots.

#2: HOUSTON TEXANS (1-0, 7th overall) – Last week: beat Dolphins, 30-10. This week: at Jaguars (0-1). Mostly this season, the Texans have been known for giving dumbasses who think they are smart a joking point with Arian Foster being vegan. In this election year, chock full of social media, it has become painfully clear that we all are way fucking stupider than we think we are. This goes for you, and also me. Americans lack even the most basic ability to think critically, and yet we feel entitled to worship and respect and awe from the rest of the world. Even in regards to football – our version is a cruel and barbaric sport, and if our elite athletes realized they could make ten times the money playing world football, and at a far less significant rate of self-destruction, they’d all jump at the chance. But we are a nation of mongrels and retards and oversized dimwits. I am fine with that, but I do not appreciate the pretend notion we are something more noble. American football is brutal, and it should be. When the Houston franchise chose their sterile “Texans” moniker and their even more sterile color scheme, they chose their destiny as frauds in the eyes of the football gods. It only makes sense Arian Foster would be their star player, the prancing vegan. They should have chosen an ominous color scheme and an evil name, that could never be mistaken for nationalist or state pride. Think of how Earl Campbell played the game of football, perhaps Houston’s finest football athlete of all-time. It was brutal. He took years off of other people’s lives, and he is respected highly for doing so. That is America. Not this Houston Texans bullshit. They will crumble, even if they toy with success, although sometimes, with the recent shift in NFL philosophy under the black Lord Goodell, I am not sure if they now worship a new set of Football Gods, and have turned their collective backs on the old ones.

#3: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (1-0, 10th overall) – Last week: beat Raiders, 22-14. This week: hosting Titans (0-1). Dear San Diego Chargers fans, and the rest of the AFC West, and all football fans in general, I have two words for you in rebuttal for your excitement regarding the Chargers after one week of football: Norvell Turner. I rest my case. As good as you will ever get this season or next, it will be like all the ones before it, and never as good as it could have been. You are wasting one more year of Philip Rivers, as we speak.

#4: TENNESSEE TITANS (0-1, 21st overall) – Last week: lost to Patriots, 13-34. This week: at Chargers (1-0). I will be honest and tell you I’d like this Titans team offensively if Chris Johnson wasn’t disappearing in modern NFL star RB fashion. At this rate, in two years time he will have shriveled up into a Seahawk or something, and a good proof for the philosophy of always having at least two RBs, with one in the wings, because they fade fast nowadays. But Jake Locker has shown promise, and though knocked out the game last week, the Titans probably have the top back-up in the NFL in Matt Hasselbeck. They didn’t look so great against the Patriots at all, at home, and now travel across the country to go play the Chargers. But Mike Munchak seems one of those angry at the world, “Let’s go kill them all and rape their women!” type head coaches that players love so much. I expect the Titans to step up and pester the Texans in the AFC South this year.

#5: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (0-1, 28th overall) – Last week: lost to Bears, 21-41. This week: hosting Vikings (0-1). The Colts did not look so great, nor will they any time soon. This is a very much not good team, even with the Freaks & Geeks kid as their QB. What does that mean for the rest of us? Hopefully some good crazy Jim Irsay tweeting rants, but beyond that, not much.

#6: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (0-1, 29th overall) – Last week: lost to Falcons, 24-40. This week: at Bills (0-1). I think the Chiefs will show improvement facing a lower-tier team in the Bills. The verdict’s still out on Matt Cassel, and honestly after this much time it has to be considered a hung jury and he should be thrown out. But he’s shown some good chemistry with Dwayne Bowe and Tony Moeaki over his limited healthy action, so maybe they get it rolling on offense. The Chiefs are kind of the quiet trendsetter over the decades in the AFC West, where when they are good, the division is good, and when they are bad, the division is as well. They need to get it together, so that this division does not further become the Land of the Lost and Wasted and Misfit Fantasy Toys.

#7: OAKLAND RAIDERS (0-1, 31st overall) – Last week: lost to Chargers, 14-22. This week: at Dolphins (0-1). I honestly feel bad for Raiders fans. Al Davis was bad as a deteriorating old man, but he is worse as dead, because his offspring is not him. And once the ownership inevitably decides to sell the team so that someone can come in and restore Raiders greatness, the NFL would never ever in a thousand million years sell to a firebrand free spirit like Al Davis again. Ever. So ultimately as a Raiders fan, proud of the dark and ominous history, you get diminishing returns on what is left of this Raiders team, and have to wait for something to shift it into the next era. However, whatever that shift is, it will most likely be a corporate-acceptable and business-savvy shift, and not one that truly understands what being a Raider is all about. I feel sorry for Oakland, because this new football God being worshipped does not respect a place like Oakland, nor a fan base like Raider Nation. They will be starved by this new money-hungry God until what is left of Al Davis’ family abandons ship and leaves what is left to be picked through by venture capitalists.

#8: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (0-1, 32nd overall) – Last week: lost to Vikings, 23-26. This week: hosting Texans (1-0). The Jaguars will be mostly irrelevant this season, as there’s not much there. But rest easy, because Shahid Khan will soon make himself known as one of the craziest NFL owners out there, easily replacing the seat vacated by Al Davis, and these Jaguars – perhaps in a new city, perhaps in new uniforms – will become something amazingly loltastic. This terrible season of 2012 will be the previously planted garden withering and bearing no fruit, which will drive Khan into hysterical bursts of drastic change. That’s when they will be fun to watch. I predict that will start happening around the end of November.