Bernanke Bails out Browns, Says Country can "Go to Hell"

In a stunning reversal of government policy Fed chairman Ben Bernanake decided on Sunday to bailout the struggling Cleveland Browns. "As go the Browns go so goes the NFL. The NFL is too big to fail" said the Reserve head.

Relying on Harvard educated Ryan Fitzpatrick to come up with a winning bailout strategy was just what the doctor ordered according to the Fed chief.

"We needed to inject liquidity into the Browns offense while at the same time allowing their defense to recoup some gains allowed after a tough 1st quarter of the season."

Ok ok sorry about the lame Onion ripoff but still a wins a win and I will take it.

The bye week will see the Browns return Donte Stallworth, Joe Jurevicius, Willie McGinest, Ryan Tucker and Sean Jones back into action. Hopefully all will be in uniform to partcipate in the loss to the Giants. We are in this crisis together.

Nothing even matters

Oh, whatever. I just scrapped a paragraph haranguing the Bills' offensive line for playing a one-sided game of chicken (who can stand around listlessly longer? oh wait, those other guys are actually doing their jobs!) with the Rams' defense for half the game yesterday until they decided to show up late in the third. But who am I trying to kid? I don't care. The Bills are 4-0; I don't care about anything. I can barely remember my name. This space is going to be pretty insight-free as well as boring until the Bills start behaving like the Bills I know and losing in particularly heartwrenching and traumatic ways. See y'all then! (Also, I will probably write about the America's Game about the grand Buffalo tradition of losing the Super Bowl many times that airs Thursday. Darryl Talley is still profoundly funny-looking, it appears!)

1/4TH THE WAY THROUGH HELL

I seriously don't know what to say. Another 4th quarter meltdown. Another game that should've been won that they lost. Two JaMarcus Russell turnovers leading to two touchdowns. Another collapse by an overworked defense. The same stupid play calling on offense. Nothing changes. Failure to convert on 3rd down. Terrible offensive line play. There were people who thought this team could have been going into the bye week at 3-1, 2-2 at the WORST. And yet here we are at 1-3. Why? Because of the SAME. OLD. SHIT. Get a lead, play great defense for 3 quarters, then lay down. Kwame Harris is a fucking embarrassment. He has no business playing professional football, much less guarding the blindside of your young franchise QB. The two weeks Mario Henderson played left tackle you never so much as heard his name, which is a good sign that a lineman is doing his job. Harris comes back and all of sudden JaMarcus is getting blindside pressure every down. The Chargers have traditionally had a great d-line, so what does the offensive game plan consist of? RUNS UP THE MIDDLE. Even after it is proven that they can't run up the middle, they continue to attempt to do just that. I feel bad for JaMarcus. He didn't play that bad, and has actually done a decent job of being a care taker so far. The pick he threw really was McFadden's fault as it bounced off his hands into the waiting arms of a San Diego linebacker. The fumble can be entirely pinned on Kwame. This is a game JaMarcus should've won, yet the horrible play calling and winded defense took it away from him.

PS- Hey Uncle Al, that washed up injury prone head case you insisted on bringing in as your #1 receiver has a grand total of 4 catches 1/4 of the way through the schedule. Way to spend your $$$ there, you pompous old fuck.

No Further Comments

The game ended three hours ago, with the Eagles exposing just how valuable Brian Westbrook really is to this team by losing a snoozefest that somehow included somewhere between six and forty seven turnovers.

I just received this IM from a friend.

"im going to lynch myself around my 2 foot dick"

He immediately signed off, letting the statement speak for itself.

Impossibly, he somehow just described in nine words and one numeral exactly what the Eagles did tonight without knowing that he did so.

Dallas Week Bitches

It is Dallas week, motherfuckers. I know most everybody has already ordained them Super Bowl champs for the year, but they still have to go through the motions to get there, and that includes this weekend’s showing of the pre-eminent NFL rivalry - Cowboys vs. Redskins, a time when the road team looks off-balance in abnormal dark jerseys, being they both wear white at home, unlike most NFL teams. There are so many great memories for me associated with this game (and yeah, trust me, there were bad ones, but I suppress those with alcohol and stupidity)... Big Darryl Grant snagging a tipped interception and stumbling his big ass into the end zone in a playoff game against the Boys in the ‘80s. Santana Moss’s impossible two touchdown performance three years ago that brought back a lifeless Redskins team that should’ve been put out of its misery long before that point of the game, to win a Monday night affair, when Monday night games still meant something and weren’t relegated to the Mike & Mike treatment. Lavar Arrington, as ignorant and nice a guy as he was, will always be fondly remembered as a Redskin, for concussing Troy Aikman out of his career. And man, I’ll miss Sean Taylor more than ever when seeing T.O. line up agains them, because of the hilarious way T.O. would get alligator arms with Taylor roaming behind him. (Yeah, T.O. lit us up for 4 TDs second game last year, but Taylor was out with an injury that week.) Great times.
You know, we could fuck off this whole bailout bullshit and the entire American economic system could collapse completely, to where our entire lives were turned upside down and the NFL contracted down to a handful of American teams and then like 10 international relocations of the more marketable franchises (Berlin Raiders, for example, or Tokyo Dolphins), but I know that it will still be the Dallas Cowboys vs. the Washington Redskins, because these are the two most valuable professional sports commodities in North America. Hell, it’s an 11-point line against the Skins in this game, and I say rather than bailout bullshit, fuck the economy, drop that $700 bill on the Skins, they’ll cover no problem. And if they don’t, fuck it, we were going down anyways. Go big or go home.
Even beyond being a lifelong Redskins fan, it’s just so easy to hate the Cowboys. At times, it’s almost like they are a covert operation by the CIA to make sure closeted racists continue to think the phrase “that fuckin’ nigger”. How else to explain conceited, ignorant ass, shitbags like Deion Sanders and Michael Irvin making their mark as part of the same franchise? I mean, Hollywood Henderson, as an older dude telling wacky back-in-the-day tales is enjoyable, but I bet he was a first class KKK poster graphic in his prime. And they continue the tradition, with an unquestionable fruitcake like Terrell Owens and an unquestionable fuck-up like Pacman Jones on the roster. But even when Cowboy dudes weren’t obvious shitheads, like Emmitt Smith, it was easy for me to imagine them as secretive child molesting types. Actually, they did have a former kicker for Dallas end up being a child molester, I think Fuad Reveiz it was. My apologies to the Reveizes if I’m off-base. But I don’t remember any Redskins being child molesters. The worse we ever had was Dexter Manley, who was an illiterate cokehead. But like most dark-skinned bug-eyed illiterate cokeheads, he was great fun to listen to. He never videotaped himself and two other dudes fucking a prostitute like Michael Irvin.
Cowboys fans make it easy to hate the Cowboys too. They are always in places far away from Dallas, with no logical connection to the state, much less the city. I think Dallas has always been the natural football team of choice for the urban negro, because the star logo and team swagger fit the hip hop mentality before anybody even said stupid shit like “hip hop mentality” about things. And they also seem to represent the dreams of every illegal or legal Mexican-American-non-American dude who is trying to claw his way to success, because you can’t throw an empty quart bottle in most places without hitting some non-lingual landscaper in a Cowboys baseball hat.
And hey, I’ll be fair here... Redskins fans aren’t always that great either. Back in the NFL’s early radio days, the Redskins monopolized a giant chunk of the southeast for radio, so you have all sorts of old ass ignorant fuckers who are diehard Redskins fans in West Virginia and the Carolinas and east Tennessee and all, to this day. Honestly, I’d rather talk football with an ignorant ass urban negro Cowboy fan than an ignorant ass rural old white fucker, because the chances of blunt-sharing are higher with the former, and the chances of being told how Obama is gonna usher in an era of coons ruining the country, turning it into a ghetto shithole from coast to coast and Air Force One will be replaced by a bright yellow Cadillac with gold rims on and on and on, using terms archaic terms like “turkeys”.
And shit man, this is a rivalry game. When the Cowboys were going like 1-15 or 2-14, it seemed like the one game they’d win was against the Redskins. To this day, I still believe Norv Turner’s coaching stint in Washington was a long-term Cowboys plan to destroy us from the inside. It was Turner’s mediocrity that ruined hype for the franchise, causing ownership groups to dissolve and we ended up with Dan Snyder, a misguided little fanboy of an owner, holding the team like a toy car that he bashes against the hardwood floors, up and down, up and down, constantly, and then he cries to everybody around him when it won’t roll right anymore. Really, the fact Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder are the owners makes this an even more perfect rivalry, adding another chapter to it all, in this modern era of the football, two retarded-with-power fantasy football-minded owners meddling their hands into the coach’s pot all day long.
The rest of the NFL should pay attention, because this is a true rivalry, and from the NFC East, which is the best division in football, obviously. We only lose to each other. And I am set to help as best as I can, with my psychic energy and hope. I am confident we will win. Three years ago, when we were down 13-0, I held hope, making myself believe, even if Mark Brunell never had shown me any reason to believe before, and that little bit of psychic energy might’ve been the extra push the universe needed to drop them two TDs in Santana Moss’s hands. I will do the same this Sunday. Last game in Texas Stadium. It’s gonna be nice to piss all over that parade of champions, to derail the “Cowboys are NFL’s #1” bandwagon of thought, and hopefully, an angry Laron Landry or amped up Marcus Washington can give T.O. a nice shot and Theisman his leg. Because really, if T.O. goes down, so do the Cowboys. Which is why I will miss Sean Taylor this Sunday. But a couple of nice stiff questionable hits to that fag, and I’m sure he’ll refind his inner crocodile hands. I am ready motherfuckers.

Matt Millen

Now that the news has sunk in I suppose I can go back and try to describe what it was like to live through the Matt Millen era. To be honest, this is probably an era that will be remembered with horror for years and years, the way our grandparents shudder when they remember the Great Depression. Fifty years from now some young Lions fan will be bitching and moaning until some old dude sits him down and tells him he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, that back in the day we had to suffer under the reign of Matt Millen. And then the old fart will proceed to horrify the young dude with tales of Joey Harrington, Charles Rogers, Mike Williams, Marty Mornhinweg and fans wearing paper bags on their heads and the numbers 31-84.

And it's those numbers which will stand the test of time, numbers which will be stuck in the record books long after memories of Millen's stunning incompetence begin to fade. That comes out to an average record of roughly 4-12. 4-12! That's not even a bad season in Detroit. That is an average season in the era of Millen. In almost every other football city in the country 4-12 is damn near reason for a riot. It is apocalyptic and it is always the forebearer of almost total change in both management and personnel. But for the Lions it was just the standard. 4-12 is mediocrity under Millen. 7-9 is the fucking apex. The more you stare at those numbers the more incredible it is that he both lasted as long as he did and that the fine people of Detroit didn't rush Ford Field and murder him in his office.

Look, the Lions were always pretty bad before Millen came along, but there was always the hope that they would get better, that even though Wayne Fontes might end up fucking up in the playoffs or that Barry Sanders would fold if he had to play outdoors that at least there was a chance that the Lions might, if everything broke right, win. I haven't mentioned this yet, but I happened to be in attendance in 1991 when the Lions had their lone playoff victory in the last fifty years. I was 12 and there was a feeling that the Lions were finally on the right track after years of mediocrity. We had Barry, we had an exciting offense, we had a team that fucking steamrolled the Dallas Cowboys, and there was the palpable sense that it was only the tip of the iceberg. That's what made the rest of the 90s so frustrating. The Lions always seemed like they were on the verge of recapturing that and finally even moving past it. But then Barry retired, Matt Millen came in and hope became a memory that faded more and more with every miserable season.

Look, at first it was kind of funny. Ha ha, can you believe how fucking bad these guys are? But we still thought that this Millen dude knew what he was doing. Sure he didn't have any front office experience but he was part of some great teams with both the Raiders and the Niners and the naive amongst us thought that he could have learned some of that through osmosis. I mean, once a winner, always a winner, right? Now, I know that has been disproved over and over again in a myriad of sports. Just look at Isiah Thomas. But, man, we wanted to believe. And we wanted to believe because we had been so close and we felt like we deserved it. But then one bad season turned into another and pretty soon it wasn't so funny anymore. This asshole was clearly a dunce of the lowest order.

And that brings us to the cold, harsh reality of today. Matt Millen is gone now, but his years of failure have removed any sense of that hope. Barry Sanders is approaching middle age, and there is nothing on the horizon like him. There is nothing about our team that inspires hope, nothing that makes us think that maybe next year things might turn around. Fanbases live and die based on hope, and we haven't had hope in a long, long time. And that, even more than the stupid and bizarre choices Millen made during his reign of incompetence, is what I will remember Matt Millen for. He took not only success but the dream of success away from Lions fans. People are happy today, and why shouldn't they be? The disease has finally been removed. But in a week and a half when the Lions take the field again, they'll remember the terrible toll that the disease took on its host. And they'll remember for the next several seasons as the Lions try to heal from that disease, and with each one of those seasons that pass, more distance will grow between the present and a past whose hope gets dimmer and dimmer. So, thanks Matt. You're gone now, but your stink remains.

FUCKING FINALLY

Good God they finally killed him.

Of course, this all had to come a day after I put up a post saying it wouldn't happen. Fuckers.

But really, this is a good thing, and while tomorrow cold, dark reality will likely settle in, and the Lions will still be shit and the Fords will still be sitting in their offices, having bought themselves another few years of peace by being able to say HEY GET OFF MY ASS I FIRED MILLEN WHADDYA WANT FROM ME? I will just be happy today and bask in the knowledge that the cretinous oaf known as Matt Millen will either be working for FOX or on that plane to Oakland to interview with Al Davis.

Hooray! My only regret is that it didn't happen at the hands of Lions fans finally storming Ford Field and dragging Matt Millen out and flinging his corpse into the Detroit River. Oh well, you take what you can get I guess.

The Continued Vince-Youngification of the Nation

Dear Plaxico Burress,

Skipping practice is one thing. You know, sometimes I call in sick to work when I am not actually sick, but rather just wanted to stay in bed and get laid and then couldn't come up with a good excuse for being late, so I e-mail feigning allergies or something. It's cool, everyone does this! What most people don't do is skip work without calling in and then refuse to take phone calls for an entire day, and then act all surprised when people are worried and angry with them. I mean, I have known one person who did that, but he was going to jail and flipped out during his 25th hour. So unless you were going to jail, which you weren't, this is not cool!

I have no idea what your excuses were, and quite honestly, with your injury history, I don't think the Giants should be running you down in practice and you should get some more time off than other players might, but goddamnit, your boss is Tom Coughlin, noted fascist disciplinarian. You seriously thought you were going to get away with this?

Thank god the Giants don't face a real opponent until sometime next year, or something. Because getting suspended for two weeks by the team might've actually fucked some things up for them in different circumstances!

Sincerely yours,
Ally

2005: The End of an Era

I paid FIVE DOLLARS for this damned thing.

It was only a little over three years ago that the NFL draft came to a close, and after the sheer mind-fucking torture of the 2004 season, (You know, the one that featured Chad Hutchinson, Craig Krenzel, Jonathan Quinn, and damn near Jeff George serving as injury replacements for Rex Grossman?) and I had one of those brief moments of hope that I should have learned not to have anymore, by that point in time. I mean, we had drafted Cedric Benson, a by-god marquee talent who was more NFL-ready than any of the others in a top-heavy running back class, and on top of all that, he was drafted fourth overall. You know who else the Bears drafted at number four? Walter Fucking Payton, that's who. And we got Mark Bradley! Sure, he was a bit of a project player who had mostly returned kicks, but god damn, he had the size, he had the hands, and oh boy, how he could run. And in the fourth round, a steal in Kyle Orton, a quarterback that I had heard of before the draft, which if you know my non-following of college football, was a pretty big deal. Not to mention wide receiver Airese Currie, a man as fast as greased lightning, strapped to lasers which had also been greased, and then fired through one of those fancy rail guns that they're supposedly actually making in real life soon. And the rail gun was greased, too. Greased with SPEED. All the parts were falling into place. My god, it was going to be beautiful.

But then, reality set in.

Today, (or yesterday, depending on how long it takes to type this) the bell tolled, and Mark Bradley did not send to know for whom it tolled, for it tolled for him. He had twice sat on the brink of being "something special," first in a rookie-year game against the Lions, where he helped spark a victory by hauling in five passes for 88 yards, including a 50-yarder, but which also included an ACL tear. The next year, he was a starting wide receiver destined for greatness with Rex Grossman - who was still thought to be an actual NFL quarterback at the time - at the helm. Alas, he fucked up his ankle early on, which opened the door for Bernard Berrian to step in and own the job, which somehow convinced the dumbasses in Minnesota that he was worth like 7 million a year. After that, he was in the doghouse with the coaching staff for reasons which never became clear, but were rumored to include his dead-on-balls accurate, yet completely unflattering, impression of coach Lovie Smith. He was basically never heard from again, even when healthy and otherwise playing well, and today, he got the axe so that the Bears could sign a cornerback, which is a position they've already got like eight guys at. And with Bradley gone, this leaves Kyle Orton as the last remaining member of the 2005 draft class to still be employed with the Chicago football Bears. And with him on a one-year deal and not exactly emerging as a superstar, the book has all but closed on what was originally thought to be a pretty decent draft. In the meantime, let's take a look back at the others who have fallen along the way:

Cedric Benson ended up being the Bears' biggest draft bust I can remember, and I can remember shit heels like Stan Thomas and John Thierry. He was a completely unnecessary choice, coming hot on the heels of Thomas Jones damn near running for a thousand yards without any passing game to take pressure off the running game, in addition to being the Bears' biggest threat in the damn passing game, as well. But he didn't fit Ron Turner's system, which shunned quickness, speed, versatility, blocking, hands, and leadership from the running back position in favor of... Cedric Benson. He was slow, couldn't block, couldn't catch, had severe attitude problems, was hated by his teammates, and was probably an alcoholic. His only redeeming qualities might have been bitchin' dreads and a love of Sun Chips. But by god, he was Turner's boy, and as soon as he was done spending the next two seasons racking up another 2,500 rushing yards and 15 touchdowns, Jones was traded for a song to the Jets, and Benson - who never even came close to supplanting Jones in a fair fight - became the starter. And we all know how that turned out. I'm willing to guess that when he got busted for being black on a boat and later for being shitfaced in a car, the front office types had to be more relieved than disappointed, freed from the albatross around their neck, a 220 pound albatross that cried in public about being compared to Ricky Williams (With Williams being the exact opposite: Instead of being a drunk who sucked at football, he was a pothead who excelled at it) and could be arm-tackled by a crippled child. Somewhere, Ron Turner clutches an old #32 jersey and weeps.

In the fifth round came the aforementioned speed demon wide receiver, former track star Airese Currie. Currie was perhaps the ultimate speed-merchant; a man gifted with the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury, who subsequently decided that he really, REALLY dug the hell out of the "speed of Mercury" part and traded the wisdom, strength, stamina, power, and courage in for even greater amounts of speed. As Jerry Clower might have put it, he was forevermore fast. But there were problems. Well, for starters, there was the fact that he couldn't catch, run routes, or do much of anything else involving football very well. Well, okay, you could just coach him up, right? Nope, that would involve a receivers coach more competent than Darryl Drake, a man who could make Jerry Rice start dropping Nerf balls with only three coaching sessions. But okay, why not just send him down the field and hope he snags a deep one or two, or at the very least, draws some coverage off a real wide receiver? No dice, the man was not only faster than a speeding bullet; he was also faster than his own damn tendons and ligaments. In two years, Currie stayed off injured reserve long enough to play in exactly one football game, before being cut and heading for the Canadian League, which is something we refer to in America as "making the decision to leave professional football." But boyyyyy, was he fast!

The last two throwaway rounds gave the Bears linebacker Rodriques Wilson and safety Chris Harris. Wilson never amounted to much, but that's okay, because seventh-round linebackers are never supposed to amount to much. He hung around for a couple of years as second-string middle linebacker behind Brian Urlacher, which is to say that whenever Urlacher got hurt, Wilson would stay his ass on the bench while Hunter Hillenmeyer moved from the strong side to the middle and someone like Jamar Williams served as the actual backup. Sixth-rounder Harris was a nice surprise, starting 15 games at strong safety his rookie year and seven more in an injury-shortened 2006. He seemed to be this close to having a breakout year, but ended up getting traded to the Panthers in 2007, mainly because the Bears had signed Adam Archuleta and just had to have back a fifth round pick they had traded away the year before. In the end, Archuleta sucked just as bad as he had sucked the previous year in Washington and just as bad as everyone on Earth knew he was going to suck, Harris become a ball-hawking turnover machine who led the league in forced fumbles, and that fifth round draft pick became half-crippled cornerback Zackary Bowman, a reach who ended up on the practice squad.

Such is the legacy of the Chicago Bears 2005 draft class. A quarterback who's just keeping the spot warm for whatever future failures the team has in mind for the position that's been damn near vacant since 1948, a pretty good player for a different team, and a handful of headcases and cripples, all of whom are more or less done as far as the National Football League is concerned, save possibly Bradley.

The hurting really never does stop.

Drowned in Horseshit

So, the big news this week is that Bill Ford Jr. decided to throw Matt Millen under the bus. He says that if it were up to him Millen would be gone but he doesn't have the authority, which is clearly bullshit. The saddest part about all this nonsense is that poor dumb Lions fans everywhere will think that the future of the team is bright under Ford the junior, but this is such a transparent attempt to save his own ass from the angry mob that it is laughable. And by laughable I mean despicable. And by despicable I mean fucking odious. And by fucking odious I mean fuck all these dudes.

Matt Millen isn't going anywhere whether it is Old Man Ford or Ford the junior running things. Why fucking bother? They've got enough problems just trying to make sure their eponymous company doesn't go bankrupt under their watch. You think either one of them gives a shit that Matt Millen is probably hiding in his office as we speak playing with toy trains or talking about Transformers with Calvin Johnson? Fuck no. They're just glad there's someone else there to take the heat, someone even more inept. If Ford the junior really gave a flying fuck he would have already put Millen on a plane to Oakland so that he could take up the reins of the Raiders franchise. That is his destiny, you know.('Sup Harpo)

Look, the simple truth is that this was just some lame ass attempt by Ford to cover his own ass for a little while longer. Soon enough his daddy will shuffle off this mortal coil and there will be no one else to blame, no one to point to as the reason for the Lions perpetual failure. There will just be Ford Jr., sitting in the same office his dad slurps his applesauce in now, and there will be Millen sitting in his office, watching the team embarrass themselves every Sunday and no matter how much Lions fans bitch and moan this will not change. Ford knows this day is coming so he is trying to build himself a little goodwill while he can. But fuck that.

In other news, Jon Kitna has a sprained knee, which is devastating because frankly I was hoping it would be a career ender. Sad. Then again, his replacement, Dan Orlovsky entered the game and threw an interception on a fucking screen pass. A SCREEN PASS. Jesus. Someone get me the number for a suicide hotline. Oh well, at least we have the era of Drew Stanton to look forward to. And by look forward to I mean dread. And by dread I mean tolerate by getting pants shittingly drunk in order to dull the pain.

Meanwhile, it appears that Rudi Johnson may have stolen the starting running back job from Kevin Smith. Maybe he got his panties back. I don't know, but whatever the reason, Rudi actually was the only Lion that looked half competent on Sunday. Then again, that probably means that when the Lions come back from the bye week he will run for 9 yards on 12 carries and the team will resign Tatum Bell. Fuck, just resign him anyway and make the two of them live together for the rest of the season. Hide some cameras and sell the shit to the NFL Network.

I am saddened to also report that my man Lennie Small appears to have permanently lost his job to Gosder Cherilus. Some will say that poor Lennie was simply not up for the job but I believe that the Lions are just anti-retard. Then again, Matty Millen continues to patrol the hallways of Ford Field, so...I dunno. Perhaps they are just anti-lovable retard. I hope Lennie has the ACLU on speed dial and he takes these fuckers to the cleaners for their obvious bias against his kind.

Fuck, it's already been a long season and it's only going to get longer. I just hope it doesn't reach the point where I am pining for Wayne Fontes and begging for the days of Scott Mitchell. If it comes to that know that there is a good chance that I am wandering pantsless in the middle of traffic with a fifth of Jack in my hand. Either that or Harpo and I will join up and drive shitfaced across the country, killing everyone who reminds us of Al Davis and Matt Millen along the way. Until then, my misery will be yours. You're welcome.

The Death Of A Dynasty

Six direct snaps. Four rushing touchdowns and one throwing touchdown for Ronnie Brown. Belichick was outcoached and the defense and offense didn't sshow up for the game at all. The Miami Dolphins have a knack for beating the Patriots even when they can't seem to beat anyone else. This team is aging like that baby on that episode of Fringe or for the less nerdy readers, Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid: Guns Of The Patriots. The offense is anemic since Cassell can't throw the ball deeper than 12 yards and there is NO chnce that Randy Moss is going to get to catch the ball this season.

This was the last shot for the New England Patriots to win it all. When Tom Brady went down, the season was, in effect, over. I said that but too many fans thought that maybe ligtning would strike twice with Cassell. Fuck all that. This team is done as far as winning shit goes. If I were the opposing team I'd run up the score on the Pats every fuckin' chance I got. I'd run on them mercilessly. If those fans were in shock then they're stupid because it's not 2007 anymore. The window is closed. Be grateful if you make the playoffs and make it to 9-7 this season.

For God's sake, the Denver Broncos are considered the class of the AFC. I repeat, the Broncos! The Indianapolis Colts are on their last legs as well and now the Buffalo Bills are considered contenders. If Matt Cassell can't transform from a quarterback that doesn't lose you the game and turns into one that can (and will) WIN you the game then no one should be shocked when the Patriots lose to a "lesser" opponent again.

Oh, and this is the last winning streak New England fans are gonna see for a while pending a miracle and the unlikely possibility that the Patriot organization actually spend some real money.

One.

Quick Hits and a Bellyflop

Jim Johnson's return

ML- A couple years before I was hired as a ballboy, I was with my family visiting my brother at training camp. We got field passes from his boss, and were waiting for him at the players entrance. The team was rolling up as we stood there, and they all walked right by us without even noticing we were there, except for Jim Johnson. He limped up to the doorway, and sneered in our direction. You got the feeling that he was a crotchety old man, because he was a crotchety old man. The Pittsburgh game had him running blitz schemes that we haven't seen from him in years. The lack of defense in the Dallas game must have really fired him up, because you could see how badly everyone wanted to get off the line by all the offsides calls, which were minuscule compared to the pressure he put on Roethlisberger. If he was mic'ed up for the game, at some point we would have heard him scream, "GET OFF MY LAWN!" after another gang-sack.

BWT- I don't have the personal jock sniffing stories that Matty does but I feel for Jim Johnson. If only he were 54 and not 84 he would have his pick of NFL gigs and the Peter Kings of the world would gush over him. Instead when he dies he's going to be one of those blurbs on the bottom line you wished went by faster while your trying to look up the score of some meaningless baseball game you bet on. I was kinda fed up with the whole Jim Johnson send everyone on every play blitz thingy and I thought it was ready for him to move on after last season but maybe I was wrong. I dunno maybe Jim Johnson has 'WIN SUPERBOWL' on his bucket list.


The Dawkins Play

ML- Sheldon Brown blitzes from the blindside, and Roethlisberger barely escapes, he steps up into the pocket and Dawkins, also blitzing, breaks free from his block. Instead of just sacking Ben, he decides to launch himself up in the air, and bellyflop down on the ball, knocking it loose, and then recover it himself. This wasn't a play that only Dawkins could make, but it is a play that only Dawkins would make. Brian is one of the quietest dudes on the team, but Weapon X is fucking insane. I don't mean insane in that cutesy tutesy, look how hard he's trying, type way. I mean that he is a fucking psychopath. I've seen him threaten a ballboys life just by glaring at him over a game of Halo. Weapon X doesn't fuck around.

BWT- You could really make a case for Brian Dawkins being the best Eagle ever. Fuck Concrete Charlie and his mangled bitter old ass, Randall never won shit, the same goes for McNabb. I'm going with B-Dawk. Dude has given it his all his whole career and is like Matty said, insane. Last week there was a lot of talk in Philly that Dawkins was done since he got burned on a few plays on Monday. After the game Brian was limping towards the players entrance holding his back walking like an old man and then he just screamed "FUCK THAT SHIT!" and ran into the locker room all pumped up. Yeah I think he still has something in him.

Hank Baskett

ML - Every time I see Hank make a big catch over the middle, which he does a lot surprisingly, I'm always curious as to where his gameday balls are coming from. This is the guy who would repeatedly call me "sir" as an unsigned rookie free agent. The answer to my question came from deadspin this week. There's rumors going around that Hank Baskett is dating, or even engaged to, that one football fan playboy ho from The Girls Next Door. Even the jobberest of jobber athletes get access to top notch pussy. Hank Baskett's own parents have to wait for the announcers to tell them who made the catch everytime he touches the ball, yet he's possibly engaged to one of Hef's girls.

BWT- I once carded Hank Basket and he was kinda shook over the whole thing. I didn't even realize it was him until I looked at the name on the New Mexico ID. Hank was a humble dude who bullshitted with my friend Drewball about college football and was pretty impressed with the shitty sports bar I work at. Now he's catching balls over the middle and fucking Hugh Heff's sloppy seconds. You know you made it to the big time when Perez Hilton blogs about you. Things are looking up for the Eagles this season.

Final notes

ML - Staggering offense in the Dallas game, no D. Staggering D in the Pitts game, no O. Westbrook goes down, but is probably fine, which is good because he is our entire offense.

There's an odd quality about this team. It only has three, name, stars on it. Mcnabb, Westbrook, and Asante Samuel. Lito doesn't count, and Sheldon is only well known in the Reggie Bush household. Dawk is old and way past his prime. The linebackers are all unknowns, to the point that I barely know each from the other. The d-line is young and untested, and our biggest star at wide reciever is a rookie. Yet we're still one of the top 2-4 teams in the league. There's a chemistry and swagger this year, that was unearned until they came out in Dallas and proved they belonged. And now it's here to stay. Pittsburgh is a very good team, and we made them look like the Raiders.

BWT - Yeah there's this feeling about this team that hasn't been around since Garcia saved that one season and we all thought it was going to be a storybook ending. There's a theme of redemption with this bunch. People in town are already penciling in a W for next week but I still have nightmares from last years game vs the Bears. I think it's going to be a tight game but at least Brian Griese is on the Bucs now.

A new low

It's bad enough being the joke of the NFL. It's bad enough being run by a feeble old fart who shits his pants. It's bad enough having a head coach who can't sneeze without fear of losing his job. Why IN GOD'S NAME would anyone in the Raiders organization think that holding a press conference to say that Lane Kiffin hadn't been fired yet was a good idea. Clearly a Raiders exec leaked the news on Sunday. Clearly Al Davis woke up on Monday completely unaware that he had decided to fire Kiffin, which is understandable what with him being senile and all. Holding the press conference was a bad, bad idea. Having an executive get into a confrontation with a respected member of the local media was an even worse idea. 

Seriously. What in the fuck.

A Jail for Two Cities

by Owen Tre

Sunday unfolded like a napkin of despair that was placed in the lap of degradation to catch the drippings of loathing that fell from chicken wings of ineptitude. Not even the bleu cheese of hope could dowse the spiciness of failure that gathered on lips of any given Sunday optimism.

I went to my home state of Michigan over the weekend to visit family and ended up at a sports bar with my nephew on Sunday to watch the Browns and Lions. They were on TV side by side. Laurel & Hardy. Braylon Edwards and Calvin Johnson. Crennel and some coach whose name begins with an "M". Martz? Mariucci? Millen? I can't keep the names straight anymore in Detroit. Who are these people? Why am I calling out Tommy Hudspeths name after four beers? Time to watch Cleveland on the other TV.

The Browns called their usual one screen pass to Jerome Harrison. You know the one, the one that is always successful and on Sunday resulted in a touchdown. And just like every Sunday, Harrison was benched and never to be seen again. Why would you call another screen pass to a quick scatback against a blitzing defense? Put the ball in uber playmaker Andersons hands and let it fly! Why give the ball to Jamal Lewis or Jason Wright or Jerome Harrison? No swing passes, no draws, no more screens. Just stupid stupid passes to double covered receivers.

Cleveland got the ball on the second half kickoff with a 10-7 lead and decided to throw three straight passes, one was intercepted. 14-10.

After one of the worst passes since Joey H. strapped it on for the Lions it was 21-10.

Time to watch Detroit on the other TV. Ugh.

Time to merge the two teams and exile them to Alcatrazz.

"We are having a going away party for Matt Millen!" yelled one patron to another who he called "Coach". Later in the 4th quarter Coach held up a Lions schedule high in the air, let it fall to the ground and proceeded to wipe his feet on it. Like a door Matt.

What do you mean, we have to work on Sunday?!

After a Giants game, I all too often feel like I’ve just gotten that report card from my non-existent kid’s first-grade teacher lambasting him for having ADHD. “Very talented, but easily distracted.” “Only puts in enough effort to get by.” Coughlin’s Giants are an inconsistent mess; a trait I thought was behind them post-Super Bowl victory. Despite the shaky first half against the Rams. Surely, they’ve stopped playing down to the level of inferior opponents. They can’t possibly actually be this lazy – they fucking won the Super Bowl!

Yeah, whatever, that would be way too easy on me and my fingernails and my cigarette-stifled lungs. Overtime? Against the Bengals? Really?

At least we didn’t lose to the Dolphins. That’s about all I have to say about the (admittedly exciting!) ordeal on Sunday.

A win is a win is a win, no matter how ugly or lazy or ridiculous the team looks in getting it, and, in fairness, Eli’s played exceedingly well all three games of the season, Justin Tuck has stepped up big-time, and Cincy did a legitimate number on the running game. But still, their habit of doing just enough to get by is vaguely terrifying, even when they’re 3-0. They spend half of every game looking like they’re on the brink of an epic fuck-up, only to straighten up and look amazing when necessary. But as anyone who was that ADHD kid in school knows, it’s all well and good to sneak out for smoke breaks when no one is looking and blowing off homework because you got the major shit, you can get by just fine that way. But when the teacher decides to throw some ludicrous pop-quiz curveball, you get stupid tripped up and of course those quizzes are inevitably weighted about 30 percent in the syllabus and then you get a C- in the course and your mom gets super angry. Ahem. Anyway.

The Giants’ first quiz is on November 2. I hope they haven’t spent the interim two months slumming so badly that they can’t even remember where they put their pencils, because the Cowboys? They’re gonna be prepared. So how’s about treating teams like the Rams or the Niners or the Browns as worthy opponents and actually play to win the game against them, guys? You’re better than this. Stop being distracted already. School started weeks ago — wake the hell up!

(Totally unrelated aside: Brian Dawkins’s amazing flying tackle sack of Roethlisberger, coupled with a strip and a recovery? Priceless. Dawkins never ceases to amaze me, and he is my secret rival team boyfriend. The other thing that amazed me was Roethlisberger disappearing off the field in some kind of a tantrum. I hope the doctors checked his vagina for sand while they were looking into his “hand injury.”)

These are the games we lose.

I can't quite wrap my head around today's game against the Raiders. Because the Bills are the Raiders. In recent years, the Bills have been the team who gives the favorite a run for their money all game long, capitalizing on the "better" team's sloppy play and threatening to upset, only to come up shorthanded in the final minutes. It's part of what lends such an "I must be taking crazy pills" air to Bills fandom--you know the team is kind of scrappy and surprising and good, but fucked if they aren't 6-10 again and no one outside of Buffalo seems to know the names of even the marquee players. Inasmuch as football games are kind of inexplicable, irreducible to the quantifiable strengths of the players on the field, or even to how well they've played, the magical, unnameable force that seems to help some teams win wants nothing to do with the Buffalo Bills. It's an article of faith for Bills fans. I am sort of silly and superstitious about football, in part because I am that way about things I love, but in part because when I was a little girl, the Bills were second-best four years in a row. You can't tell me that what goes into being a winning football team isn't a little uncanny.

Today's game was actively unpleasant to watch a lot of the time. Any time the Bills seemed to get it together for a second, we'd fumble or get intercepted or Johnnie Lee Higgins would beat the fuck out of the Bills secondary to the tune of an 84 yard touchdown. After that last play, my heart broke a little. I thought, my team is not the team that successfully scores twice with only 6 minutes left. I had already been constructing a narrative for the game in my head, which was that Bills fans like me were being punished for the hubris of thinking 2-0 meant anything at all, for thinking that the Raiders would be an easy mark, and Lane Kiffin's players were rallying behind him because they love him and they know Al Davis is a crazy. When Higgins's TD re-widened the gap between the Raiders and the Bills, I thought it was over. The Bills had looked shook all afternoon--how were they going to get their morale back after that disheartening play? I had already teared up at halftime when Bruce Smith's number was unveiled in Ralph Wilson Stadium; clearly tears were where the game was destined to end.

And yet. In the back of my mind, the part that is still a crazy 13-year-old who thought, hey, why can't the Bills come back in the second half of Superbowl XXVII (that's the one we lost to the Cowboys by 35 points, btw), I reasoned. We'd come back from poor play last week to beat the Jags. The defense could certainly hold the Raiders from scoring further points. All that needed to happen was for the offense to step up like I'd seen it do earlier this season. And then it did. I thought, if they just score a TD before the 4-minute mark, we're still in it. And Trent Edwards threw his most accurate series of passes of the afternoon and hit Parrish in the end zone with 4:02 left in the fourth quarter. (In passing, thanks, Dan Fouts, for the brilliant suggestion that the Bills should have made do with a field goal on that drive. WTF?) I thought, it might be too much to hope for but the Raiders don't seem to trust Russell to throw and the Bills are certainly capable of holding the Raiders run game to a 3-and-out. And then we did. The next thing I chose to freak out about is that Dick Jauron hasn't always been noted for clock management at the end of a game--what if the Bills scored on their next drive, but scored too quickly? But no, right before the field goal attempt, Jauron let the clock run down. And of course the Bills haven't always had luck with field goals, lol Norwood, but that went like a dream, too. It was more than a little unsettling. If the perpetual skid team you've loved all your life actually gets it together, are they still your team?

I don't mean to overstate things. The NFL season is long; who even knows anything about the AFC anymore; the Bills' schedule so far may prove to have been kind of a cinch compared to the mighty Miami Dolphins, who we face in week 14. But also, the last time the Bills went 3-0, they ended up in the Super Bowl. Let's not speak about what happened after that.

Rams Opponents- 116 Rams- 29

St. Louis is a proud city, but an even prouder sports city. Yesterday, they got to watch the Cubs clinch the NL Central in a game against the Cardinals. Today, they got to watch the Rams get eviscerated by the Seahawks, a team most likely headed for a 5-12 season.

If it wasn't for the Chiefs, the Rams would be inarguably the worst team in the NFL. The thing about the Rams is that, on  paper, it makes basically no sense. Unlike the Chiefs, who could also be historically awful, the Rams aren't starting a second-year quarterback from Coastal Carolina. And unlike last year's Dolphins, the Rams didn't lose their starting quarterback in Week 3, and most likely won't lose their starting running back for the year in Week 7. The Rams have a proven, capable quarterback, a Hall of Fame receiver who went for 1,200 yards last year and a running back who just two years ago looked like Marshall Faulk if Faulk was built like a Lincoln Navigator. Sure, their defense makes victory nearly impossible, but their offense has scored less points in their three games combined than any of their opponents in one. Last week, a dude in my fantasy league from St. Louis changed his team name to The Greatest Shit on Turf. 

The problem is easily diagnosable: The Rams have the worst coach in the NFL. Not only is Scott Linehan completely in over his head, but the players literally don't care. The Rams are a team so imperfectly put together that it's almost sad. Linehan took his first NFL head coaching job with the Rams, and was immediately charged with gaining the respect of Torry Holt and Marc Bulger, the faces of the franchise and two guys who've been around since the glory days. This, quite simply, hasn't happened, and when you watch the Rams on offense looking like a pre-Icebox Little Giants, you start to feel bad for Linehan, who seems like a pretty okay guy.

Today, the Rams looked like they were making strides on offense, but those strides inevitably ended with them shooting themselves in the foot, sawing off the foot with a pocketknife, and then dying of blood loss. Most notably, it seems as if Linehan and OC Al Saunders (probable head coach by Week 5) made a concerted effort to utilize Steven Jackson, that dude they have who totaled 2,300 total yards two seasons ago. Though this seemed to resemble a part of a game plan, it's also possible that they just decided to play Madden 07 last week. The Rams longest play of the year came in the third quarter when they threw a bubble screen to Jackson, who had lined up as a slot receiver. It didn't necessarily fool the Seahawks, but it got Jackson out in space and away from the Rams' awful offensive line. It took him breaking three of four tackles to bust the play open for a gain of 50, but it was still a designed play that didn't end in Marc Bulger throwing behind a double-covered Dane Looker. Two plays later, coming from a timeout, Linehan called for Bulger to fake a hitch before handing off to Jackson. It was kind of like a draw, and Jackson fumbled. They recovered, and on the next play scored their second touchdown of the season, but that's missing the point. 

The Rams, in the near future, have no hope. They are a team with a bad, young defense and a capable, but aging, offense. They'll be lucky to pull off three wins this year, and even luckier if they can manage to click on both offense and defense in the same game. Linehan's such a lame duck that he's basically foie gras, and whoever is coaching by the 2009 off-season will have to rebuild a team that's a mess in a way that a plane crash is a mess. This once well-oiled machine is now just a heap of smoking rubble, but you can't even really blame the pilot. 

No Escape

How do you go back and analyze a game that was so thoroughly one sided that the final score could have been 70-13 instead of 31-13? How do you look for signs of life from a team who, with every play, look more and more like they have already checked out, like at any moment they might just wander off the field and roam aimlessly in traffic until they are hit by a bus? How do you continue as a fan when it is blindingly obvious that there is absolutely no chance that not only will your team not come anywhere close to the playoffs but that they will likely not be competitive against even the worst teams in the league?

Well, the answer to the first two questions is simple. You don't. You can't go back and pick apart what was essentially legalized rape and murder. You just have to accept that it happened and try to move on without looking back. The horror of the flaming wreckage of today's game is just too great, too ridiculous, to ponder seriously. It happened, lives were ruined, bodies were mutilated, war crimes occurred, and that's that.

But the answer to the last question is not so simple. It's one that I've had to ask myself year after year after agonizing year. Why in the hell do I even give the tiniest of shits about this godforsaken team? And the truth is I can't give you a reason. There is nothing logical about it, nothing I can point to and say "There, that's why I follow this team." There are no players, no coaches, no proud history to look back on, nothing but utter failure and a stink that never quite washes off. And, as a Lions fan, you are always marked with that stink. Tell someone you are a Lions fans and they will either offer their condolences or they will laugh. In the hierarchy of football fandom, to be a Lions fan is to be the village idiot or a bum on the street wallowing in his own piss and shit. It is embarrassing. So why put myself through that? Because it's always been there, that's why.

There was never a time that I sat down, watched a game and thought "You know what? I kinda like this team. I think I'm going to cheer for them from now on." No. Instead, the Lions are in my blood. They are like some degenerate diseased relative. You can pretend all you want that they don't exist, you can laugh about them, bitch about them, get angry with them, and in the end hate yourself for still loving them. But you can't ever leave them, can't just cast them aside and wash your hands of them, because in the end they're still your family. They'll still be there when you show up for Christmas. They'll still talk to you at weddings and at funerals. They're always there because they're in your blood. You love them and you hate them. You hope that they will somehow get better one moment and in the next you curse them. They are a complete fucking bane to your very existence but you know that you can't give them up. You just can't, because they've always been there, and one way or another, when someone mentions their name or you see them on the street you feel something, maybe sometimes it's love, maybe sometimes it's hate, but you still always feel something. Indifference is the only way to break free of them, but indifference is not something that you can try to attain. It's either there or it isn't.

To be a Lions fan is to be cursed. To be a Lions fan is to be miserable. But I am a Lions fan and so be it. I hate these horrible fuckers, but put them up against your team and I will hope every time that they kill your boys. My name is Neil and I am a Lions fan.

Oh sweet fucking Christ

I knew this game was going to end this way. As soon as they came out after the half and Kiffin decided to start playing some prevent offense, I just knew this was going to happen. Some people would say that there were some positives to take away from this game. Some people would focus on the defense kicking ass for three quarters. Some people would take solace in the ongoing development of Johnnie Lee Higgins. Those people are fucking losers who comfort themselves with fairy tales like moral victories. I am a fan of a football team that fucking sucks. I am a fan of a franchise that is being run into the ground. I am a fan of a team who each week goes out and finds new and creative ways to rip my heart out and moonwalk all over it. There are no moral victories, only actual ones. Now I get to look forward to yet another week of people calling local sports shows and asking why Kiffin decided to run the ball up the middle for no gain the entire second half. Now the FIRE KIFFIN bandwagon is going to be running at full speed, and at this point who even gives a shit? There is no coach in the world with an ounce of self respect who would touch this team right now. I just watched my team play inspired ball for three quarters only to yet again fall apart at the worst possible moment. They didn't give the game away, they let the Bills rip it freely from them. Fuck these guys. 

Another week, another meltdown

When you've been a Bears fan for as long as I have, you get so used to the feeling of impending doom that it's no longer a scary thing anymore. Whether they're completely sputtering or firing on all cylinders, deep down, you just know deep down in your heart what the eventual result will be. Every now and then, you're wrong, like the way I was at halftime of the NFC Championship a while back, when they actually increased a lead for a change. But most of the time - like this week - the end is never a surprise. And that's how it was this week. When the Bucs kicked a field goal to bring the game within a touchdown, instead of thinking "oh well, we've still got the lead, just hold on and we've got them," I was thinking "well crap, that's it; wonder how the fantasy team's doing." It almost makes me envious of fans of the truly no-hope shittiest teams out there, because at least they have no room for faint glimmers of hope. If being a Lions fan is like being trapped in a concentration camp, being a Bears fan is like being trapped in a concentration camp, having the guards run up to you all excited-like, telling you they're about to let you go home, then yanking you back three feet from the exit and going, "ha ha ha, sike," and repeating this process about once every other week or so. It's psychological torture taken to the utmost degree. Anyway, speaking of bi-weekly psychological torture, here are some observations:

- I think Brandon Lloyd playing like an actual NFL receiver for a change threw the space-time continuum out of whack, and the Bears loss was necessary to right the natural order and keep us from being sucked into some sort of black vortex of death. When Peanut got that late unnecessary roughness penalty, he did it to save us all.

- I think Rashied Davis sucked so bad today because God heard me talk him up in a blog post a couple weeks ago, and everyone knows God hates me.

- Mike Brown: STILL not out for the year. Holy shit.

- I'm starting to wonder if the reason Mark Anderson didn't do anything last year wasn't so much because he needed to be a third-down situational pass-rusher instead of a starter, but because 2006 was a fluke, and he just isn't very good.

- Watching the way the Bears defense blew the hell up after the offense actually won the time-of-possession battle for once makes me almost morbidly curious to see how things get once the offense melts down and the D has to stay out there for 49 minutes a game. They'll have to find some way to fit oxygen masks to their helmets, which might actually be kinda cool since they'd look like a football version of the dude from all those Sodom album covers.

- The post-game interviews on WBBM were surreal as fuck. The radio guy kept asking all these questions in this somber "Owen Hart has fallen from the rafters, folks" voice, Nathan Vasher was sounding pretty upset and Tommie Harris seemed to be on the brink of either tears or violence, and after each interview, he cheerfully announced all the free gifts these players are getting from their sponsors as a reward for getting interviewed or some shit. Which begs the question of what Tommie Harris and his damn $40 million contract needs with a $200 gift certificate to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. Also, he might have done okay in the second half, but if Kyle Orton throws a pick-six in a game they lose by less than a touchdown, you shouldn't give the motherfucker a certificate for a free Movado watch.

- Matt Forte looks like he could be in the running for Rookie of the Year, which is going to make it that much more heart breaking in a few weeks, when his ligaments give out after running or catching the ball 76 times in a single game.

- I think I'm gonna get a parrot and teach him to just say, "three and out, three and out, three and out," over and over, and I'm gonna name him Ron Turner. Then, I'm gonna feed him to the cat.

A Special Team Post

I have to admit, I am far more gacked up for the Arizona Cardinals/Washington Redskins game that would normally make sense. I think it's because I've been tricked into pretending it's the start of the season. That opening night Thursday night game, the Redskins looked like a limp dick the whole night, depressing me and causing me to throw in the towel on any hope for the Jim Zorn era. Of course, I had to work like a 12 hour day the next day, so I wasn't exactly in normal hyped up pro football fan mode.
Then, last week's game, we were coming home 8 hours from the beach with 3 kids in a rental car (which is what people who can't afford to buy good cars drive on vacation), me desperately hoping weak AM signals hold tight in rural North Carolina. And all I really got was the first half, which was more of the same, with the Redskins sucking a fat dick and settling for field goals if they could manage to actually make them. We stopped to eat right at halftime, and there were like 100 bikers in the shitty diner, so the game was done by the time we got back in the car. (By the way, if you are travelling to the Outer Banks through Virginia via 460 and you see all those signs about eating at the Virginia Diner, don't bother. I've seen those signs my whole life and finally ate there for the first time last weekend and though the service was friendly and sweet and all, the food tasted like a retirement home Tuesday afternoon buffet.) Somehow, the Redskins had won, and I was confused. How could that have happened?
Well, I have yet to see it with my own eyes, so I'm am amped to watch the game against the Cardinals, which of course means stupid fucking Godboy Kurt Warner will probably pick apart a hodgepodge secondary for like 13 touchdown passes. And as much as I am re-convincing myself that the Redskins are a legitimate playoff threat, certain things happen beneath the national surface that so easily remind how fucking stupid this team is. The example this week has been special teams in general, but more specifically punt returnage.
The Redskins number one punt returner is Antwan Randle-El, who is old by punt returner standards, averaging like 4 yards a return this year, and on top of all this, he is the #2 wide receiver. This, on a team with only five wide receivers, two of which are rookies who slipped to the Skins in the second round of the draft because most everybody else thought they were damaged goods, plus a gimpy old "journeyman" receiver, which is the standard sports-speak word for a dude never really good enough to stay on one team. Well, the weak wide receiving corps and weak punt return average concerned the Redskins, so their solution is to spell Randle-El, if necessary, with their number one receiver, Santana Moss. Because that's really fucking smart.
Seriously, don't most NFL teams usually blow a sixth or seventh round pick at least every other year on any number of really fast ass college WRs/RBs/DBs who have a couple seasons to try to be good at their actual position while they earn their keep blazing back kicks on special teams. And if they become a bonafide top-tier WR or CB or something, you usually don't have them returning punts all the time anymore. (This is not to say Randle-El is a top-tier WR, although the amount of 0s on his paychecks would beg to differ.) Not the Redskins though. Vinny Cerrato is too brilliant a personnel mastermind to address actual concerns on the roster. Of course, he's also the man who drafted a punter in the sixth round of the draft, the same punter who won the starting job, even though he didn't seem that much better, causing the exiting veteran to take shots at Cerrato for trying to make it look like his picks were better than they really were on his way out the door to Green Bay, where he got a job immediately. And, the rookie punter is basically on thin enough ice that he expects to get dumped this week if he doesn't do better. So yeah, they can waste a draft pick on him but not some I-AA cornerback who can snatch punts and bust a 40-yard-dash? What the fuck? Shit, anybody who's played two seasons of franchise mode in Madden knows this.
So yeah, on top of Kurt Warner's 13 touchdown passes, I fully expect Antwan Randle-El to be crippled on a punt, causing us to lose our second receiver, who should probably be a third receiver, but is about all we have I guess. Only Chris Cooley can save us now.
On a positive note, dreadlocked rookie Chris Horton got to start last week because our deaf white starting safety had the stomach flus, and Horton got two interceptions and a fumble return, getting him NFC Defensive Player of the Week award. That, in itself, means nothing at all to me. But apparently last Sunday, guard Randy Thomas, a known lunatic (he dabbles in competitive eating during the offseason), had convinced Horton that there was $100,000 bonuses for guys who get player of the week awards. So the kid got hyped up after his game, thinking he might clock quite an extra paycheck, considering he was just a lowly sixth round draft pick. Once the league announced he won the award, I guess instead of coming clean, Thomas switched it up on Horton and said rookies weren't eligible for the award because of lack of league service, and instead had to pick a charity to receive the $100,000. I would imagine at that point, somebody finally laughed out loud and told the kid the real deal. But you watch the TVs and see some young, confident dreadlocked DB making plays, and you assume his swagger is bone deep. But then behind the locker room doors he's got some big goofy offensive lineman fucking with him completely, and you know that Horton kid had gotten hyped up about an extra $100,000, probably already looking at rims magazines, and then it was nothing. I bet he felt hurt, and bummed, but he has to pretend it was all lols and it's all good. That shit's funny to me. Any time people have this outward image and circumstances beyond their control cause them to completely compromise the image they proudly project, I always love that shit. I think it's because I grew up a broke ass and have class issues or something.

I am a Fantasy Whore

For some reason the Cleveland Browns are the mighty Pittsburgh Steelers' archrival. It makes no sense, like if the Mighty Thor found himself constantly in conflict with the Beetle or the Whizzer or some equally lame villain. The Steelers are the NFL's all-time best franchise. Super Bowl rings (or replicas) can fill an entire hand. We fill an entire wing in the Hall of Fame.  They haven't had a relevant player since the afroed Jewish quarterback Bernie Kosar.   

It's hard to work up the requisite hate for the Browns.  They are just kind of sad, fat and obnoxious losers with dog masks and XXXXL Brian Sipe replica jerseys.  When the team finally achieved their greatest success, it was as the Baltimore Ravens.  Just sad.

The game did leave me, and my beloved two-time defending champion fantasy team, with a tough decision.  Big Ben Roethlisberger has a gimpy right arm, leaving us likely to see the Steelers of old.  Ben will make 15 strategic throws a game and Willie and Mendenthal will run 40 times a game.  So it was Big Ben to the bench.  Emerging as the starter:  Donovan McNabb.

It's a decision that is almost insane for a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.  Starting McNabb?  The week that the Eagles challenge us for the state title?  Is this wrong?  Can you, in good conscious, start a player when they are taking on your favorite team?  Is it wrong to hope for a shootout, with McNabb leading the Eagles to 35 points on the way to a 42-35 loss.  

You can justify it however you want.  I've sold out my team, my city, my fellow fans, and the spirit of Mr. Art Rooney.  All for the highly unlikely possibility that Donovan McNabb will be the one black quarterback not be benched, crippled, or prison raped this season.  What kind of man have I become?   

The Philosophy of Failure

Is there any hope? I mean, any at all? Well, in the bigger picture, I think we've already established that no, there is no hope. But, in the shorter term, as in this week and this week only, maybe there's a sliver of hope. Maybe the Lions can beat a 49ers team that really isn't that good either. Maybe Rod Marinelli can successfully stifle the offensive game plan of Mike Martz. If anybody knows what Martz is going to do, it's Marinelli. On the other hand, everyone else knows what Martz is going to do every week too and still, he's reasonably successful and I see no reason why Rod Marinelli should somehow be able to effectively game plan better than anyone else. And maybe the 49ers aren't that good, but neither were the Falcons, and look how that turned out.

There seems to be a strain of thought going around that if the Lions can simply avoid a bad start like in their first two games then they might be okay. I have a problem with this line of thinking for a couple of reasons. First, these starts were not just bad. They were horrendous, nigh apocalyptic really, so to suggest that the Lions can simply avoid their occurrence is the most ridiculous of foolhardy wishes. Why not just hope for a million dollars delivered by a truck full of supermodels who will blow you over and over again, sprinkling pixie dust all over your dong so that it stays perpetually hard? Look, the Lions have struggled to start games because they aren't any good. There are no mystical reasons for their struggles, no weird fuckups or strange bounces that have led to deceiving scores. No, the Lions just suck.

Another reason why I have a problem with this line of thinking is because what on earth would possibly make someone think, given this team's long and tortured history of utter failure, that they could just make a few tweaks here and there and then rise up and kick ass? I mean, come on, this is not a team that has been beating everyone's ass for years and is just off to a shaky start this season. No, this is a team that is perpetually putrid. This is the football team I have followed virtually my entire life. They have always sucked, they suck now, and they will suck until the end of time.

And so, sadly, I don't really see this game being any different. The Lions were annihilated by Michael Turner in Week 1 and Frank Gore is probably a better back than Michael Turner. Not only can he run the ball, but he can catch it coming out of the backfield. Basically, he can operate as sort of a poor man's Marshall Faulk for Mike Martz and that's kind of scary. Meanwhile, the Lions have, in successive weeks, made Matt Ryan look like Joe Montana, and Aaron Rodgers look like John Elway. Now granted, JT O'Sullivan isn't as talented as either one of those two guys, but it's not like either one of them have a long track record of dominant NFL performances either. I expect that O'Sullivan, with his quick release, will look like Dan Marino against the Lions overmatched defense. And yes, I know it's sad that the Lions defense is overmatched by the 49ers of all teams, but let's face it, the Lions D would be overmatched by a pee-wee football team.

Offensively, who knows what will happen? The Lions might be able to find some success if they recognize that the only way they are going to consistently move the ball is by throwing it to Calvin Johnson and Roy Williams. Johnson looks like a phenom, and even though Williams has gotten off to a slow start and doesn't look like he even gives a shit at times, some of the blame for that can be put on the offensive game plan, which has given Williams shockingly little opportunity to make plays. Sadly, he has been sacrificed thus far to the god of running the football, who has apparently deemed that the sacrifice isn't enough since the Lions running game is somewhere between utter shit and complete disaster. A competent football coach would recognize this and adjust accordingly, but the Lions coaching staff is anything but competent. Rod Marinelli is the very definition of an immovable stubborn old prick, and if he says he wants to run the ball then BY GOD THE LIONS ARE GONNA RUN THAT FUCKING BALL. Once more into the breach, and once more the Lions will be picked apart by enemy machine guns, mere cannon fodder misused by befuddled and obsolete generals too fucking scared to try anything different because they are old and pathetic.

Which brings us to the sad conclusion that the Lions are unlikely to snap out of their perpetual funk this week. The defense goes up against a coach in Mike Martz who knows everything that it is going to do. If anyone can find even bigger holes than were already there, it is Martz. And he has a quarterback who was with him in Detroit last year in JT O'Sullivan. This does not bode well for a team that is petrified of anything the least bit dynamic. But there's more. With this team there always is. Marinelli and Martz hate each other. I mean, if they could charge across the field and slit each other's throats without the threat of a fifteen yard penalty and I suppose imprisonment, then I am positive that they would. They are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Marinelli is safe, conservative, boring to a fault. And Martz is wild, dynamic, always looking for the next big play, someone who forgets the little things that Marinelli obsesses over. And again, it is to his own detriment. And so what we have here is a battle of philosophies. Neither man is going to change his game plan to beat the other, because to them that would defeat the purpose. They have to win their way because that's the only way to humiliate the other man and win an argument that no one else really gives a shit about anymore. Both coaches are flawed, but Marinelli is more flawed. It's that simple really, and when he tries to prove that the Lions can win through a carefully controlled ground game, Mike Martz's offense will have blazed out to a monster lead on them and that will be the ballgame.

Look, I can scream all I want about how bad the Lions always are. I can fuss and I can cry and I can rant and I can rave about Matt Millen, but right now, this year, the team's biggest and most fatal flaw is a complete and utter lack of inertia. There is no forward progress. Rod Marinelli is a dead coach, a shitty caretaker who wants everything done his way. He is a petty drill sergeant who cares more about making sure that his players walk and talk the right way, wear their colors properly and spin their rifles when they are supposed to than he does about actually storming the field and defeating the enemy. He is woefully miscast as a general. That might be alright if he had dynamic advisors around him developing strategies that could allow the team to swoop in and, despite its lack of talent, somehow win the battle. But he doesn't. Instead, all he has are people just like him around him, people who care more about the proper way to look and act than about winning, people who are married to a philosophy more than they are to the naked greed for winning that is necessary to be a big time football coach. Real coaches go with what works. Real coaches do what it takes to win. They aren't out there trying to make some bullshit point about the proper way to do things, about winning with class or any of that horseshit. They just win. And sadly, as long as the Lions continue to care more about philosophies, the only philosophy they will be able to claim an expertise in is the philosophy of failure.

Predicted Final Score: 49ers 31, Lions 21

Chris Cooley Appreciate Post

Being Chris Cooley's penis has been a big story inside the retarded internets this week, I figured I'd give you a little Redskin fan insight into this guy, who is easily one of the best holdover characters from the team full of wacky fuckers that Joe Gibbs put together. In fact, that's been one of my biggest worries of the new Zen Corporate Jim Zorn era, is will they run off all the wackjobs that Gibbs seemed to love so much? You look back to the '80s when Gibbs was winning rings, he always had a John Riggins or Dexter Manley - drunken, illiterate fuckers that most teams wouldn't bother with. But Gibbs welcomed those types, because he knew they'd be loyal. You look at this Redskins team, with Cooley and Clinton Portis and Fred Smoot and some lesser known freaks like Mike Sellers and Randy Thomas, and he definitely embraced the oddballs, even if he was a born again Christian.
But anyways, back to Chris Cooley, whose penis picture on his blog has been a heavily circulated story. When Cooley was drafted, I had no idea who the fuck he was, some obscure tight end from Utah State, which made me assume he wasn't Mormon enough to play at BYU, nor Mormon Lite enough to play at Utah, so he ended up at Utah State. He came in when Gibbs was instituting his H-back offense, which is some sort of RB/TE hybrid, like a fullback but with better receiver's hands. So Cooley was assigned #47, although he was basically a tight end. That automatically made him stand out. The Redskins franchise has not been known for wacky numbering things, never even having a player in the 90s until the decade of the '90s, if my remembory is correct.

From the first training camp and the Washington Post hype articles about the team, I could tell this dude was gonna be great. You could see from the beginning he had the potential to blossom into a John Riggins for the internet age. He played it cool at first, doing what a rookie was supposed to do, but once he had made the team and you could see he was better than what you'd expect for a third round draft pick, he started to let himself shine. First there was the white man's afro he grew out. Then he wore grey sweatpants cut off with heavy metal band logos scribbled all over them in sharpie. This wasn't the behavior of a normal football player - this was a stunted mentality hair metal jock recreational pot smoker.

Then came the short shorts. In the alpha male world of professional football, I cannot even begin to imagine why someone would want to step out in training camp in those. But Cooley did, proudly. About the same time, Santana Moss and Clinton Portis were trying to convince him to wear his long white man's afro in cornrows, which I think he seriously considered until he realized how long it would take to do. He also started dabbling in dating Redskins cheerleaders at this time. Apparently, it is team rule, probably league-wide, for cheerleaders not to date players. You can't really control the players, so it's put into the field of responsibility of the cheerleaders to stop such relationships. However, not only did Cooley date one of the Redskin cheerleaders, he met a second cheerleader while dating the first one, dumped the first, started seeing the second, and now they're married. Both cheerleaders were fired, of course, and Cooley was moving more #47 jerseys than ever.
And then came his blog. It's not really that great a blog by blogosphere standards, but by the boring professional athlete official website standard, it's great. He doesn't even have it on an official site; it's at a blogspot address just like the rest of us internet-entrapped schmucks. Washington DC is setting a high bar for retarded athlete blogs, first with Gilbert Arenas at the NBA site, and now with Cooley's. But his has been odder than your standard sports dude site from the beginning. He ran a beard-growing contest during the preseason, giving away tickets to winners, and a grand prize of meeting him to whoever had the best before and after pic from that one month.

And before the stupid penis picture went up on the internet, along with a team quiz, that was supposed to be some giant abomination against team playbook secrecy, he did the franchise more good than Vinny Cerrato ever did with the help of his blog. Earlier this year, during preseason, the tomahawk of Chief Zee (that old black dude dressed up like an Indian who's been at every Redskins game my whole life and during the late '80s would often have end zone fake fights with the Cowboys fan mascot, who recently died of the cancers I think) was stolen from Chief Zee somehow. Chief Zee was devastated, but really had nowhere to turn. The police don't give a fuck about a black man dressed up like The Village People having his prop stolen, and how do you find a fake tomahawk anyways? Well Chris Cooley took it to his blog, saying no questions asked, if anyone could come forward with the whereabouts of the tomahawk and return it, no one would be charged or bothered with anything more. The next day, an email comes in from a guy saying he didn't take it but he knows where it is and he'll get it from the guy. Two days after that, fake Redskin Chief Zee has his fake tomahawk back, and all is right again in the psychic energy fields of Redskinland.
You probably know the whole story behind the accidental posting of the nudie pic on the blog, but more concerning to me is Zorn calling a team meeting, showing the pic in front of the whole team, to embarrass Cooley, and to make a point about the way players conduct themselves online. I understand the playbook aspects, although all that was shown in the pic (which I haven't actually looked at to be honest, because the short shorts were as close to seeing Chris Cooley nude as I want to get) was a team quiz with no specifics of game plan or anything. Zorn is kind of a weird dude, with anime hair, and a strong desire to prove he's not a fucking retarded move by Dan Snyder to hire as head coach. As a Redskins fan, I want them to win more than anything. But I look at the closeted homosexuals like Matt Hasselbeck and Shaun Alexander that the Seattle Seahawks got good with, where Zorn was previously employed at as a two-bit offensive coach, and I don't think I want to see quality fuck-ups like Chris Cooley be sacrificed for a more sterile team that might be two or three games better in the short-term. A guy like Cooley is one of those fucking loveable retards you can be proud represents your team. In this era of free agency and salary cap cuts where your entire roster rolls over every five years, Cooley is a throwback, and a guy I'd like to see wearing a white and burgundy #47 for a long ass time.

Every Kid Hates Hochuli

I think just about every fan has had a moment when it became obvious that they would forever hate one particular referee, umpire, official, team scorer, guy-who-holds-the-orange-arrow-thing, etc., and I have thought more about Ed Hochuli in the last two days than anyone should ever.

When he isn't botching an obvious but crucial call in an important game between two of the best teams in the AFC, Ed Hochuli is a lawyer and workout enthusiast. He is clearly a man with a passion for adjudication, and also for gym sweat.

I'm sure that he has blown his fair share of calls over the years — and which ref hasn't — but he has a strong reputation as a fair and honest guy, and one who takes great pains to explain his decisions in great detail. You might not understand the nuances of some obscure NFL rule, but he will at the very least let you know that a rule is being followed, and may even hint at its rationale.

This is precisely what Ed Hochuli did soon after he made one of the biggest ref boners of all time ... he carefully explained that his original call was wrong, but there was nothing he could do to fix it. And earlier in the game, when Invesco's replay system malfunction cost the Chargers the opportunity to replay a suspect turnover call, Hochuli followed the rules to the letter, and carefully explained what had happened: God himself had decided to fuck the Chargers painfully and with some malice, and there wasn't really much that could be done about it.

So I don't really hate Ed Hochuli, and I guess that separates me from the scores of Chargers fans who have sent hate mail to Hochuli's law firm, or those who screech in the Union-Tribune forums. I admire Ed Hochuli for admitting that he was wrong (though I would like to suggest a good LASIK guy).

I also don't think that the answer to this scenario is to change the rule at hand. I've seen it applied with some variation a number of times, and it almost always is fair and useful. If the whistle has already blown, that means that the play is dead, and that signals that the play is over, and that tells the folks on the field that they can stop playing football for a few moments. Who knows what events might have occurred if the whistle hadn't tooted, and the players had continued to play on?

That wasn't the case here, though. Chargers linebacker Tim Dobbins was the only guy in the area, and he fell on the ball cleanly, and possessed the ball immediately. This would have happened either way, as Dobbins reacted as if no whistle had been blown. And clearly, if there happened to be a rule in place allowing Hochuli to give the ball to Dobbins, he would have done so. As soon as he watched the replay, he knew that he blew the call.

So I have a suggestion for the rule committee. It's a new rule that I think will revolutionize sports forever, and even make them a little more fun to watch. Here it is:

1. If a referee knows that a call is unjust, even if the rules have been applied correctly, the referee may use his (or her) power to rule in whatever manner he (or she) thinks is most fair.
2. If it is later determined that the referee was incorrect, he (or she) is immediately dismissed from his (or her) position, and may not serve in that position until the next season.

Let's call this rule the Greater Good rule, at least until someone comes up with a good title that somehow ties into those wrestling matches wherein the loser is barred from wrestling ever again. A strong punitive element eliminates most of the possibility for impropriety, and it is bound to be great fodder for blogs, talking heads, and so forth. "Why didn't the ref opt to enact the Greater Good rule? Does he lack the courage of his convictions?", Deion Sanders might say.

Beyond that, every time an official chooses to use this rule, it is bound to be very interesting, and courageous even if applied incorrectly. I believe that if the Greater Good rule existed today, we'd be calling Ed Hochuli a hero, a model for referees everywhere. Here is a guy who risked his avocation simply to get it right. It's enough to make a guy tear up a little bit.

---

But I digress. Let me talk for a few moments in closing about my beloved San Diego Chargers. Did you know that they have both an offensive unit AND a defensive unit? You'd never know after the first two games of this season. I don't think they had a pass rush at any time during the Broncos game, and based on the recap I read of the Carolina game, it doesn't seem like they scared the Steve Smith-less Carolina Panthers much either. Normally you'd have to question Mike Shanahan's sanity for going for the two-point conversion instead of tying the game up and heading to overtime, but not this time.

And while it would have been nice to win this game, I don't think it would've been much fun to win because Jay Cutler lost the grip on a slick new ball after absolutely torching the Chargers all day. Shanahan gave the Chargers a chance to stop them, and the Chargers couldn't. It was the last play of Chargers v. Steelers in the 1995 AFC Championship all over again, but Dennis Gibson was nowhere to be found. The only surprise was that Brandon Marshall wasn't the guy on the receiving end.

And let's also not forget that if Chris Chambers had managed to scrape his second foot in bounds, Nate Kaeding would've had a chance to win the game with a kick at the edge of his range, even after Dick Enberg informed us all that the game was "over."

I hope I can look back on this game as a blip in a crazy season that resulted in another Chargers playoff berth ... that its only impact was on seeding, and didn't result in calamity and riots. I hope that sometime in the future, maybe Ed Hochuli and I can look back on this game and just sigh a little at the one that got away. We'll see.