Week Fuck You - FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU

AAARRRRGGGHHHFUCK

I could just briefly and concisely state how I felt about the last few games and the general state of Chicago Bears football right now, but there's only so much entertainment value that I could give you people by typing "GOD DAMMIT, GOD FUCKING DAMMIT" in all caps and hitting the "publish post" button. So instead, I'll go the long and nerdy route.

So anyway, there we were a few months back, me and my special lady friend, checking out the new releases on the Walmart DVD rack. One thing leads to another, and we head home with a grip of Transformers and X-Men cartoon DVDs, because that's how we roll. I got no shame in saying that - Shit, you all already know what a stunted man-boy I am. But anyway, on to the point of all this. On this one episode of the X-Men cartoon, some weird shit happens that causes Magneto (usually the bad guy) to get on the video phone thing and call up Professor X (the good guy) for help. But the thing is, it's not like he pops up on the screen and goes "Mayday! Mayday!" or "Charles, I need your assistance" or whatever. No, the screen pops up and it's all just a shot of Magneto's face with a background of nothing but fire filling the rest of the screen, and he just busts straight out with the words, "TERRIBLE VIOLENCE!"

...And that's how I feel about the Bears right now. Not any of this "we need to execute better" or "there's a lot of football left to play" or whatever crap Lovie Smith is saying these days. Just imagine a TV screen with a picture of whatever your mind's eye pictures me to be, (And by this point, I'm guessing that you all picture me as a big bloated guy with a bowl cut, a neckbeard/molester mustache, and a Green Lantern t-shirt. Fuck all y'all.) in front of a backdrop of nothing but but fiery death, shouting "TERRIBLE VIOLENCE" with a madman's gleam in my eye. This might seriously be the worst season I've had to endure. For real, I now know what sort of secret world of pain and horror must exist for Jay Cutler's face to always look the way it does.

Seriously, this might be the happiest-looking I've ever seen that guy.

The offensive line can't block, the quarterback overthrows anyone that's not on the wrong team, and the running game is so weak that they simply stopped calling run plays. The defense can't stop anyone but the Lions and the Browns, and with almost half of it injured right now, that can only get worse. The Bears had the ball for 18 minutes Sunday. EIGHT. TEEN. MINUTES. The defense can't get off the field, and the offense can't stay on it. This is a goddamn disaster of a broken football team. I mean, how can... Fucking... What the... Raaaaauuuuuurrrrgghhhh TERRIBLE VIOLENCE


There's nothing left to do now but wait out the last six weeks of the season, knowing that there won't be a high draft pick to look forward to as compensation for the death-spiral this team is on. All we can do is watch, wait, and hope that next year brings a new regime with someone in charge who can do more than stare in jaw-dropped disbelief like Lovie Smith or get all Wile E. Coyote like Jerry Angelo, busting out with whatever Division II scrub the ACME NFL Draft Manual tells him to pick in the third round. We can wait, and we can hope for someone like Mike Shanahan, Bill Cowher, or John Gruden to ride in on a white stallion (Or better yet, ride in on a FUCKING BEAR. One that sounds like Ian McKellen.) and save this team, while knowing deep in our hearts that George Halas's pissant descendants will just hire whatever semi-hotshot coordinator offers to do the job for the least money, just like last time. And somehow, this will end in tears, disappointment, and at least a couple 7-9 or 8-8 season, just like last time. Because this is Chicago Bears football, and the hurting never stops.

Strange Hope and Savage Despair

These are strange times.

Watching the Lions lose sucks. Watching the Lions lose on Thanksgiving is fucking terrible. All Lions fans are used to the team losing with stunning regularity, and while it sucks, there is a feeling of inevitability to it too. As much as we don't want them to lose, we usually expect it. But Thanksgiving is another matter entirely. It's the one day that we hype ourselves up and allow ourselves to believe deep down that we will win because it is our day and we will do something ridiculous or memorable or wear throwback uniforms and end up winning. It happens every year, no matter the circumstance. Even if, during the days leading up to the game, we behave like rational adults and understand that the Lions are unlikely to win - like this year - by the time the game rolls around, our heads are swimming with images of Barry Sanders dancing around and Jerry Ball eating whole turkeys and we throw all sense of reason out the window and we blindly believe. So it only makes it that much worse when the game ends and our dudes are stumbling off the field, beaten yet again.

The Lions lost to the Packers and they lost by a lot. There are those that will tell you that the game was much closer than the final score indicated, and in a sense, those people would be right. The game was competitive, at least according to the scoreboard, into the fourth quarter. There are those, however, who will tell you that the game was even less competitive than the final score indicated, and in a sense, those people would also be right. The Packers absolutely dominated the Lions on both sides of the ball for vast stretches of the game. The Lions couldn't move the ball at all offensively, and the Packers passing game moved the ball down the field with ease virtually the entire game.

So, how did the Lions manage to keep the score reasonably close? Well, this was kind of the definition of the bend but don't break game. The Lions continually allowed the Packers to march down the field, but stiffened just enough to keep them from scoring touchdown after touchdown. It was tough to watch and kind of inspiring at the same time. The Lions kept getting the shit knocked out of them, but they wouldn't quit. That's something that should bring at least a half smile to the face of even the most hardened Lions victim(I should probably say fan, but, well, you know . . .). On the other hand, it's no fun to watch your team hang on for the whole game by the tiniest of threads, knowing that it's only a matter of time before that thing slips completely away and they plummet once again to their doom.

It was an odd mixture of feelings, one that sums up both this season as a whole and the schizophrenic Lions fanbase. We are hopeful but we are sick of losing, proud of the way our dudes keep hanging in there, but we can't stand watching them hang on for dear life only to be cruelly kicked in the face and flung off the side of a cliff. The reactions of Lions fans after the game was also interesting. There was some of the LOL SAME OLD LIONS bullshit, which was swiftly met by a horde of people telling them to fuck off. That shit is old and played out, and most Lions fans are just as sick of that as they are the losing. We want to hope, want to believe that better days are ahead, and most of all we want to think that even though we are still losing right now, that it's different. And it is. It just feels different. I know that's ambiguous and kind of ridiculous and doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's also very, very true. It's hardy to quantify, and because of that there are people who will tell us all that we are fucking idiots, and yeah, maybe. I don't really care.

Conversely, there are people popping up now who would be entirely too comfortable hanging out with ol' Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid Kids. These are fans who flip out on anybody who dares to say a negative word about the team. This is just fucking dumb. Look, it's okay to hope. It's good to hope. I am with you on that, my dudes and lady dudes. But, it's maddening to have someone refuse to admit that the Lions are still a pretty fucking bad football team. They got whipped up on by the Packers and, hey, that's okay, you know? It wasn't entirely unexpected - Thanksgiving delusions aside - and we'll move on from this. But it still happened, and there's really no point in trying to argue that the Lions could have or should have won the game.

It's all a part of the strange schizophrenia that has sprung up in every area surrounding the Lions. I guarantee you that someone will read this and feel pissed off that I am being too negative. And I guarantee you that someone will read this and feel pissed off that I am being too positive. We are all over the map here, and if you go back and look at all the horseshit I've written over the course of this season - and really, from the moment Jim Schwartz was hired - I think you'll see that I have fallen victim to this weird nonsense as much as everyone else has. We can't help it. It's just a weird season.

Maybe we are all broken, finally shattered by 0-16. Maybe that season was just the culmination of years of too much pain. Maybe we are the weird ones, incapable anymore of handling what is an ordinary shitty Lions season. I don't know. Who really does? All I can say in our defense is that when we see Matthew Stafford playing with a separated shoulder suffered only four days before, or when we see Stafford throwing his fifth touchdown only moments after having his shoulder ground into hamburger, or when we see Stafford throwing for over 400 yards and keep coming back, game after game like the fucking Terminator, that it's all different. It just is. In this fucked up funhouse of a season, where nothing makes sense and everything is distorted, the only thing that truly feels real is Stafford. And for now, for the people who have been paying attention, and for the people who have suffered for so long with turds masquerading as quarterbacks, that's enough.

The numbers don't tell the story with Stafford, just like they don't with this season as a whole. He throws too many interceptions - way too many - and he can be wildly inconsistent, and yet, it's his team. Indisputably. He's 21 years old, and he's the man. There hasn't been a single quarterback in my lifetime who has been that for the Lions. Maybe Scott Mitchell, but even during his one dream season, no one really believed in Mitchell the way that we all seem to do in Stafford.

I kind of hate it when people start blathering on about intangibles, because it's a slippery slope from that to David Eckstein Super White Boy Scrappy-Doo Ol' Plucky Does It The Right Way Let's Throw a Parade For Grit And Wear Wranglers kind of bullshit. So I am trying not to run down that road, but it's hard, man. Right now, Stafford makes me want to do that, makes me want to devolve into a babbling idiot(yeah, okay, shut up), and makes me want to start talking about leadership and toughness and the ridiculous it factor. This is really the first time that a Lions player has made me want to do all that dumb bullshit, and I guess that's enough of an explanation right there for why I think things are different.

The Lions lost again and they will lose for most of the rest of the season. They will have a high draft pick and everyone will laugh and say SAME OLD LIONS SEE WHAT DID I TELL YOU, and, well, ha ha, good one Bob Hope, maybe you can take that one on tour. I, for one, choose to believe in the future, even if that means you all laugh at me and tell me that I am a stupid dickhead. It is important to be realistic, and that will often come with some ugly bullshit, but it's important to have hope too. After all, we are complicated dudes and lady dudes in complicated times, and while simple hope or simple cynicism may be easier, it is also hollow and utterly without merit. The only way to get through this strange wilderness in these strange times is to recognize the bad and embrace the good. We are all weary, we are all beaten and half-mad, but to hell with all that, we are going somewhere. Finally.

Thanks for nothing, shit heads

At this point does it really matter who is taking the snaps? Jamarcus? Gradkowski? 68 year old Darryl Lamonica? No, it really doesn't matter simply because this offense is absolutely putrid in all aspects. They have fallen ass backwards into wins against the Eagles and Bengals only to remember who they really are and play horribly the following week. All I hear about from this franchise is how their young receivers are developing and how the future is going to be great and blah blah blah. Here's the reality of the present: The young receivers aren't so shit hot after all. Chaz Schillens was supposed to establish himself as a their #1 guy this year, and because of injuries, poor QB play and drops, that ain't happening. Darrius Heyward-Bey finally managed to disprove my long standing theory that he is allergic to the endzone and FINALLY scored a TD. So now his season totals are 9 catches for 124 yards and 1 TD, or basically an average game for Randy Moss or Reggie Wayne or a good game for any competent receiver. DHB continues to drop pass after pass that hits him in the hands and chest with no end in sight. He has shown zero improvement and doesn't seem all that concerned about it. And why should he? He's one of Uncle Al's handpicked guys. He's playing on scholarship. He's bulletproof. What makes DHB's short comings so much more glaring and infuriating is the fact that 4th rounder Louis Murphy is LIGHT YEARS better than him. Murphy has made some big catches and is also a pretty damned good blocker. He has outplayed DHB to the point that even Al in his state of advanced dementia has to see it. Even then, Murphy has 1-2 drops each week as well and I don't see him ever being more than an OK #2. Johnnie Lee Higgins has apparently decided to go back to playing like he did his rookie season. That is to say, horribly. Dropped passes, running bad routes, all of that can be excused if he was still great returning punts. Now all of a sudden he's trying to return punts from his own 3 yard line, running out of bounds at the 8, running backwards and side to side looking for holes that aren't there and just being dumb. Todd Watkins and Nick Miller are practice squaders at best, and Javon Walker is still on the roster for some reason. When this is what you are working with it doesn't matter who your QB is. You won't move the ball. You won't score. You won't win. And neither will the Raiders.

Thanksgiving With The Lions

Little did those poor Indians know, but their table cloth was a smallpox blanket. It's okay though, the pilgrims all died of dysentery. Happy Thanksgiving!

It's a short week because of Thanksgiving and that means that I have to skip all the usual midweek bullshit and just dive straight into the preview. The good news is that I am still in a good mood because of Sunday's game against the Browns. The bad news is that Matthew Stafford probably won't play against the Packers and apparently, Calvin Johnson's status is also up in the air.

Thankfully, this game is fairly anonymous, so it's not like anyone will see how bad the Lions are without . . . oh, wait . . . what? Oh. I see. Well, it turns out that everyone will get a chance to see how terrible the Lions are without Stafford and maybe St. Calvin, which is frustrating as all hell because the amount of hackneyed jokes that will be made about the Lions in the next few days increases from a lot to OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST SHUT UP ALREADY.

Yes, it's Thanksgiving and that of course means that the Lions will be playing the early game while everyone is still waiting to eat their Turkeys or Tofurkeys or Turduckens or Turd Chickens or whatever the fuck all that bullshit is. And, like always, everyone will probably groan and bitch and moan and wonder why the Lions get to play on Thanksgiving every year. And, just like last year, I would like to take this opportunity to tell those people to fuck off. Thanksgiving football is our tradition. It's the one thing that we as Lions fans have to feel proud about. It's the only thing that keeps us from being the fucking Cardinals or some shitty franchise like that. Perhaps that is a bad comparison coming off of the Cardinals' Super Bowl appearance, but really, that just slams home the importance of Thanksgiving for us. Even shitty franchises occasionally get to make it all the way to the Super Bowl. But not us. No. This is all we have, one miserable Thursday every year.

So, when you heartless barbarians and heathen savages start railing against the Lions playing on Thanksgiving another year, just remember all that. Afterwards, when you sit down to eat, and you are all blathering on about what you are thankful for, remember to be thankful that you don't have to put up with all this bullshit every year. It's not fun to have your team be a perennial national joke. It sucks. And Thanksgiving just happens to be the day when all these Henny Youngman dickheads blow the dust off of their shitty old joke books and laugh their fat faces off. Jay Leno will do his annual Lions suck joke, the retirees and retards in his audience will laugh and won't you all feel so much better? If the Indians and Pilgrims knew this shit would go down every year they would have just dispensed with the pleasantries and gotten on with the genocide.

Okay, enough bitterness, there is a game to be played. Unfortunately, like I said earlier, that game is likely to be played without Matthew Stafford. That means that Daunte Culpepper will get the start, and, well . . . yeah, by now you all should know how I feel about Culpepper. Somehow, I don't see a 5 touchdown performance on the horizon for him. Culpepper is so synonymous with failure that a part of me would rather see Drew Stanton out there instead. And you all know how I feel about Ol' Plucky.

Obviously, the Lions passing attack will suffer without Stafford. This sucks because the Lions can't really run the football right now either. It's become increasingly apparent that Kevin Smith isn't very good right now. I'm not sure whether it's because he's hurt or because the Lions offensive line is just that terrible or because he's simply not that good. Regardless of the reason, he is struggling and without Matthew Stafford there to keep defenses from keying on the run, Smith is likely to struggle yet again.

It's not all bad news, I suppose. I mean, the Packers are without Aaron Kampman and Al Harris, both out for the year. I think the Kampman loss looks a little worse than it is for the Packers. They switched to a 3-4 this year, and Kampman hasn't been as effective as an outside linebacker than as a defensive end. He's kind of an ill fit for their new defense, and while he has still been able to get to the quarterback on occasion, he is not the every down pass rushing terror that he was at end. Rookie Brad Jones played for Kampman when Kampman missed the game against the Cowboys a couple of weeks ago and he did well. It wouldn't be shocking to me if the Packers defense was actually better with Jones in the lineup. That's not to disparage Kampman in any way, who is a far better player than Jones. It's just that Jones might fit the new scheme better. Of course, it's also possible - hell, incredibly likely - that I am just talking out of my ass here. It wouldn't be the first time, but what the hell, we are all gentlemen and lady gentlemen here and we can overlook such things from time to time.

The Al Harris loss is probably a tad more significant. This will probably only be the case if St. Calvin plays. If he doesn't, then it probably won't matter who the Packers have in the secondary because Daunte Culpepper and the rest of Detroit's shitty receivers will likely die in a firestorm of incompetence anyway.

Defensively, you know the drill by now. Even though the win against the Browns was awesome and magical and infused with the blood of a million fairies and the sperm of a leprechaun and all that goofy shit, the defense was still terrible. They couldn't stop the Browns, and the Browns are considered one of the worst offensive teams of ALL TIME. Yeah. That about sums it up.

Meanwhile, every time that Aaron Rodgers has played the Lions, he has rained down death from above, and with the members of Detroit's defense dropping like they were on the last leg of The Trail of Tears(I normally would have said Bataan Death March here, but it is Thanksgiving and I believe in remembering the trials and tribulations of our Indian brothers), it is exceedingly likely that Rodgers will have another career game.

I do expect the Lions front seven to fairly effectively shut down the Green Bay rushing attack but that means little when Greg Jennings, Donald Driver, Jermichael Finley, James Lofton, Sterling Sharpe, some fat guy with a cheese head on, and Robin Yount are running free down the field while Aaron Bart Favre Starr Rodgers drops passes gently into their hands all day long.

Yeah, it's probably going to be a long game, terrible and ugly, and when it is done, millions of people around the country will turn off the TV, shake their heads and think "same old Lions." That is immensely frustrating given the situation, but what the hell, to everyone else the Lions will always be a joke, an easy punchline fired off by lazy assholes and stupid degenerates, and really, we cannot concern ourselves with such nonsense. It is not easy being a Lions fan, and sometimes Thanksgiving makes it that much harder. But it's also awesome, a point of pride for all Lions fans, and what little we have to be proud of we must grab and squeeze tight. I love watching the Lions on Thanksgiving. That may be because I am a glutton for punishment and quite possibly mildly insane, but to hell with all that, it is a strange world and to survive sometimes you must be a strange man.

FIVE PREDICTIONS

1. Daunte Culpepper starts and throws for 205 yards on 18-37 passing. He throws one touchdown, does his stupid dance and then throws three interceptions. Charles Woodson takes one back for a touchdown and Daunte is donated by the state of Michigan to the people of Minnesota who have him bronzed and then dumped into one of their billions of lakes.

2. Kevin Smith gets plenty of work but is largely ineffective, rushing for 80 yards on 25 carries. Throughout the game, the announcers will talk about how the Lions think he is something special.

3. Calvin Johnson plays but doesn't find a rhythm with Culpepper. He catches just 3 passes for 32 yards and then has flashbacks to his days at Georgia Tech with Reggie Ball, which causes him to break down in tears on the sideline. He may be the model for Superman and Dr. Manhattan, but deep down, he is also just a man, and he has feelings too you jackals.

4. Aaron Rodgers throws for 1,485 yards and 5 touchdowns. He then calls his senator and tries to get legislation passed that would allow him to play the Lions every week. It passes the house but is filibustered in the Senate by Carl Levin, who is always looking out for us.

5. Jay Leno makes a joke about the Lions being a bunch of turkeys and is showered with granny panties and dentures. Still trying to compete with David Letterman, he allows a sex tape of him with his harem of 70 year old Iowa housewives to be leaked. When asked what this has to do with football, I shrug and say fuck if I know.

PREDICTED FINAL SCORE: Packers 31, Lions 17

What Is This Strange Emotion?

Indeed.

My mood swings over the course of this season have been like that of a pregnant woman. I said it would be like this in the season preview and I was right. It has been ridiculous. One week I am blathering on about hope and the next week I am beating the war drums again and warning people to stay away from werewolves.

This week, I find myself at the hope end of the spectrum. This is especially odd considering that a week ago I found myself covered in war paint, speaking in tongues and ranting and raving about how none of you should judge me for being a dickhead. But fuck all that weird noise, that was before I watched Matthew Stafford throw his fifth touchdown of the game with no time left on the clock and a shoulder that had been made into ground hamburger.

There are very few moments over the course of my fandom that I can instantly recall with a smile. Most of these moments - hell, almost all of them - involve Barry Sanders. Most of my other memories are terrible and have Yakety Sax playing in the background. It is an absurd world, and it makes me both laugh and cry. Many of those unfortunate moments involve Lions quarterbacks.

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, one of those happy sunshine moments was made by a quarterback. It has been a long, long, LONG time since there have been any at all, and when it arrived and when it was over, it was like an ugly gray film had been lifted away and everything exploded into color for the first time. Oh Lord, I can see again. The colors, they are so bright and beautiful.

That is a bunch of weird gibberish, but that is what joy does to a man, it makes him spout stupid and vaguely embarrassing bullshit that makes little sense to anyone with a functioning brain stem, but again, fuck all that. I am happy and I will revel like an idiot.

Matthew Stafford planted his flag in the ground and screamed I'M HERE MOTHERFUCKERS for all the world to hear yesterday. It was a defining moment in his career and for the Detroit Lions. That may be ridiculous hyperbole. So be it. I don't really care. I have descended into disgusting sentimentality here. I realize that, but sometimes you just want to act the fool because moments like that are so fun, so enjoyable, that they make you remember why it's awesome to be a sports fan in the first place.

I pumped my fist like a jackass when Stafford threw that final touchdown and I rambled like a lunatic to anyone who would listen about how awesome it was. I scoured all the other Lions blogs for reactions, and for the first time that I can really remember, I just wanted to soak it all in. I wanted to remember how I felt in that moment for as long as I could. It was ridiculous and it was awesome and it was embarrassing and it was painfully naive and earnest and dumb and it was great.


This season is a strange one, and it has toyed with my fan emotions in weird and ridiculous ways. That is because we are lost in that hazy world between the horrors of the past and the promise of the future. We can see what will be, but we still feel what has been. It is a strange place to be, and it will cause ridiculous overreactions to both the good and to the bad. I recognize, and not to a small degree, that this whole post is emblematic of that. Something good happened, and I am grabbing it like a greedy Gollumsesque crackhead and running with it to a safe place where I can hold it and cradle it like my baby.

Okay, that is kind of disturbing, but what the hell, I am in a strange place and I cannot help it. I am not used to being this happy when it comes to the Lions. This whole thing felt different. I'll echo a sentiment by my man Ty over at The Lions in Winter. The win over the Redskins felt like the end of the Millen era, the final step on a brutal death march that claimed thousands of lives and left countless others insane and gibbering at the sun and the moon. But this win over the Browns felt like the beginning of something, like we had finally taken our first steps into a valley of the sun, where everything is happy and warm and there are candy and blowjobs for everyone.

Okay, okay, again, this is all vaguely ridiculous and hyperbolic. I mean, it was only the Browns for fuck's sake, and our defense looked like dogshit, we couldn't really run the ball and Matthew the Great still made some horrible decisions - particularly that throw into triple coverage which resulted in an interception late in the fourth that appeared to have doomed us. But fuck all that, cautious cynicism is for the cowardly and the insipid and I hope they all choke on their own black hearts.

Okay, wow. That kind of came out of nowhere, and I am raving and carrying on like a fool. I'm fairly certain the dudes with the butterfly nets are going to come calling any time now, but fuck it, these are strange times and we are living in a strange world, and these things happen.

Moments like these tend to reveal my embarrassingly sentimental side, and I would apologize for it all, but I am a complex beast and I must acknowledge that it is there if I am to have any joy as a sports fan. I mean, I can't always wallow in the muck. Sometimes, I have to smile and hang out with my happy sunshine friends and celebrate. These moments come along so rarely for me as a Lions fan that they are like Halley's Comet. All I can do is just stop and look at them with awe and wonder in my heart because they will probably be gone soon and then it will just be back to business as usual. But for now anyway, that fucker is still exploding across the sky, and it is marvelous and when I think of the Detroit Lions for the next couple of days, I will smile and I will remember that moment when Matthew Stafford made me happy as a Lions fan for the first time in a very, very long time.

I could - and I probably should - apologize for this post. It is rambling, dumb, sentimental, ridiculous, and for the most part pretty cringe worthy. It is also a portrait of a sports fan in the bubble of irrational exuberance. Soon, I will be torn out of that bubble and brought back to reality, but for now, here I am, and fuck it, I'm happy.

Just End Their Season: The Revenge Of The Patriots

The New England Patriots suffered a heartbreaking loss to the Indianapolis Colts in what was being billed as "The Game Of The Year" 35-34 last week. The only way to rebound from an embarrassing loss is by dominating your next opponent and beating them like they wrote "Transformers 2: The Revenge Of The Fallen" (I'm still mad about Skids & Mudflap, sue me!). Had the Celtics lost in Madison Square Garden the Patriots would've been required to win this game by 50 then impregnate all the the Jets wives, girlfriends, siblings of legal consenting age as well as their cheerleaders. Luckily, Kevin Garnett made that unnecessary by hitting a last second jumper in OT *Whew!*.

The Patriots jumped out to a big lead and continued to run the ball down the Jets throats with the underwhelming running of Laurence Maroney (22 rushes for 77 yards & 2 TD's) and the reliable receiving threat Wes Welker (15 catches for 192 yards). The lead was up to 24-0 before a fumble & a blocked punt lead to a 24-7 halftime lead. Stephen "Goldentoe" Gostkowski became the NFL leader in scoring but he also managed to miss a 40 yard FG before the half. This shit needs to stop as every point counts as we near the playoffs.

The Patriots completely dominated the game although they just took the 3rd quarter off. The Jets narrowed the lead to 24-14 before the Patriots went right back to work. They threw the ball effectively and managed to eek out 27 1st downs to the Jets' 12. The Patriots held the ball for 40 of the game's 60 minutes and Dirty Sanchez lived up to his name by going 8-21 for 136 yards 1 TD & 4 INT's...his leading receiver on the night was Leigh Bodden (this is bad because Leigh Bodden plays for the Patriots). The Patriots won 31-14 to go to 7-3 on the season and retain a 2 game lead in the AFC East division.

Tom Brady set another Patriots record for consecutive 300 yard games (somewhere Drew Bledsoe is extremely pissed off) as he went 28-41 for 310 yards & 1 TD to Randy Moss (5 catches for 34 yards & 1 TD). Kevin Faulk continued to be a workhorse with 4 catches for 53 yards & a couple of carries of the night. Julian Edelman also came up big as they'll be receiving Sammy Morris back next week when they face the undefeated New Orleans Saints in New Orleans November 30th on Monday Night Football. If the Patriots can manage to win this game then it will become the new "Game Of The Year"...that is unless they can get to the Super Bowl.

One.

An Open Letter To Jason Elam

Sportsgasm

Things like that don't happen to the Detroit Lions. They don't get those kinds of breaks. They don't win on last second miracles. They don't have the kind of leadership, the kind of quarterback, to keep clawing away long after they have been beaten and left for dead, their shoulders ripped apart and their hopes shattered. They don't get their Hail Mary's answered and they don't get to celebrate wildly at the ends of games while their fans jump up and down, high five complete strangers and scream idiot gibberish at the television, speaking in some wild tongue born out of both shock and joy. These things do not happen. Not to the Lions, not to us.

They did today. No matter what happened yesterday and no matter what happens tomorrow, they did today.

I might post something else later. I might not. For right now, I just want to smile like a retard.

FINAL SHOWDOWN: JAMARCUS VS THE UFL

And now, the final act. Sure, I could try comparing Jamarcus Russell to high school or college QBs, but then I would be guilty of beating a dead horse. Instead the Jamarcus vs The World bus ride of doom ends tonight against the merest of opponent in the form of the 4 team United Football League. The UFL is basically the Arena League if the Arena League played on a full sized field and was boring. The death of the Arena League left a void for many fringe NFLers who were able to count on earning a paycheck while sharpening their skills in hopes of getting another crack at the big time. Quite a few players got to the Arena League and liked it so much that they made a career of it and simply stayed there. Then a bunch of idiots decided to Thelma and Louise the economy off a cliff and the AFL went bye bye. The UFL doesn't seem to take itself too seriously, which is good because their product is kinda shitty to watch. The real question is this: Is it shittier than Jamarcus Russell? Let's find out...

Las Vegas Locomotives (or LOCOS, if you will)
JP Losman: Kind of a dickhead, Losman found himself with no suitors after his career in Buffalo fizzled out. He rubs teammates, coaches, fans, waterboys and the media the wrong way due to his unfounded cockiness. Now he's in the UFL, making the best of a bad situation and looking to get back into the NFL after his season is over. For the season he's got 9 TDs and 2 picks, which is downright Godlike when compared to J. Reezey. Even his NFL #s were superior. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS

Russ Michna: Football vagabond who has been a practice player for the Rams, an AFLer and a CFLer. Has no stats, and has no apparent strengths or weaknesses. Still, I've always thought the old "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know" mode of thinking is a load of shit. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS

Tim Rattay: Briefly was the starting QB for the 49ers before he bounced around the NFL. While in the NFL he threw more TDs than picks and completed 60% of his passes. Down side is he went 5-13 as a starter. The numbers don't lie. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

California Redwoods
Shane Boyd: Running back posing as a QB. Not very accurate. Not very good. SAME AS JAMARCUS

Mike McMahon: A man our own Neil is more than familiar with. NFL career competion % of 44.5. 15 TDs vs 21 picks. Career rating of 55.1. His UFL #s are remarkably similar to his NFL #s. The word "gutsy" has been used to describe Mike, which all of us know is really code speak for "white guy who tries really hard but sucks". Still, I prefer that to Jamarcus, which is code speak for "fat ass black dude who sucks and doesn't give a fuck and gets paid a shit ton of money". MARGINALLY BETTER THAN JAMARCUS

Liam O'Hagan: Sounds more like a WWF villain from the 80's than a Harvard grad playing 3rd string in an obscure football league. Still, dude went to an Ivy League school which means he can read a playbook. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS

Florida Tuskers
Brooks Bollinger: I never trust anyone who has either a last name for a first name or a first name for a last name. It's gotten me this far in life and I'll be damned if I'm going to change course now. Showed some flashes with the Jets but ultimately ended up being a clipboard jockey. Is putting up monster stats in the UFL and seems to understand the whole "COMPLETE A FORWARD PASS" thing that Jamarcus can't grasp. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS

Chris Greisen: NFL washout who spent a lot of time in the AFL and NFL Europe back when there was still such a thing. Put up decent #s in relief. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS

And lastly, the New York Sentinels
CJ Bacher: Has no bio or jersey number. Jamarcus wins this one by default. WORSE THAN JAMARCUS

Quinn Gray: Former Jaguar who has bounced around. I remember him having a 300 yard game against the Raiders when Garrard was hurt. Not doing too well in the UFL, but he's still more efficient than Jamarcus. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Ingle Martin: Huh. The Denver Broncos have him listed on their roster too. Well, if he's better than Jamarcus in the NFL he's better than him in the UFL. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.


BREAKING NEWS: BRIAN BROHM ADDED TO THE BUFFALO BILLS ROSTER
Brohm was Green Bay's second rounder last year. After failing to beat out 7th rounder Matt Flynn for the backup job he was waived at the end of preseason this year and ended up on the Packers practice squad. That's a long way to fall for a guy thought to be the next coming of Drew Brees by many draft idiots. So now he's going to be holding a clipboard for the horrible Bills. Well, at least Green Bay saw that they made a mistake and actually DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT by cutting his ass. He has yet to throw an NFL pass, and if he did he couldn't be any worse than Jamarcus. SAME AS JAMARCUS.

So there it is. It takes a rare, special form of idiot to out-suck Jamarcus Russell. Pray that none of the handful of people worse than Jamarcus end up running your offense.

They'll Win. They Have To . . . Right?

I am a hypercompetitive son of a bitch. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, I want to win. I would probably bean a six year old in a family softball game if I thought it gave my side the best chance to win. It is terrible but it is just the way it is. So you can imagine what being a fan of the Lions is like.

This week, the Lions play the Browns and I am excited because the Browns are fucking terrible. Now, a lot of people would get all high and mighty here and start yammering on about how it doesn't mean anything to beat a terrible team, blah blah blah, but fuck all that dumb noise. I would cheer and celebrate like a jackass if the Lions wailed on a team of legless half-retarded midgets. It wouldn't be pretty and you would find the whole ordeal reprehensible, but these are savage times and we cannot afford to be merciful to the weak and the stupid.

Of course, no one has been weaker or more stupid than the Lions have been for the last decade, so no one really has any reason to complain if we bash those waterbrained skulls in on Sunday. If the Browns are a team of legless half-retarded midgets, then the Lions are a team of armless, legless, fully retarded midgets. There is no honor here, no glory, just a bunch of shameful slap fighting that will end probably being embarrassing for both sides. But to hell with all that, somebody must win and we cannot afford to revel in the world of the prideful, because we are shorn of pride and bereft of dignity. We are in the muck, and we must drown everyone else stuck down here with us. It is horrible, it is vaguely obscene, but who cares? These are the things that we must do to slowly crawl out onto dry land.

We had one opportunity already, against the shittastic Rams, and we completely fucked that up, so this game isn't exactly a gimme. There will be all sorts of jokes about this being the Shitbowl or whatever, but this is what we are left with and we must drown our opponent in the toilet and suffocate him in the shit water or else he will do the same to us. It is ugly and it is wrong and it smells but we must be ruthless and terrible and without mercy.

The Lions have to win this game. There is no point in beating around that particular bush. If they lose, then it's 1-15 and a river of blood and tears. If they win, well . . . it's still pretty bad, but at least we won't be the shittiest team in the league. Progress! Furthermore, the Lions should win this game. I have only had one other opportunity to utter that sentence and the Lions fucked that game up, so who knows? Still, I would like to think that the word favored means something here.

The Browns are an atrocious team, just an abomination of a franchise with the stink of the circus all over them. They are this year's Lions, a franchise on the verge of utter collapse, with a fanbase that has degenerated into a bunch of feral werewolves, howling for blood, and a coach who seems completely overwhelmed by the whole debacle. It's a terrible scene, one that's impossible to escape from. It's a cyclone of failure that just sucks everyone inside and doesn't let them out until they are a thousand miles away from where they started and everyone's homes and cars are destroyed, their cows are mutilated and impaled on fence posts and there are gibbering lunatics crawling through the streets, naked and afraid, bleeding and bleating. The only humane, merciful thing you can do is put your boot on their already fractured skulls and stomp down as hard as you can. It is terrible and it is haunting, but, man, that is just not a place you want to be.

Who knows when that moment will come for the Browns? Some stranger will come along and put the final bullet or boot in their brain and then everyone can start to rebuild. It's probably a ways off still. Right now, they are still stuck somewhere in the middle of that horrible cyclone, and they don't know when they will be violently deposited into the street to be mercy killed. The only thing the Lions can do is to put their head down, dive into the cyclone, slap the Browns around a bit and get the fuck out.

The Lions have been there before. They know. They get it. There are some people in this world who would think that would inspire mercy and understanding. That is all bullshit. If anything, it should inspire righteous anger. Fuck the Browns for being there to remind us all of what went on last year. No one needs to remember that shit so vividly. The Lions should be enraged by having to confront the circus one more time. I hope they have it in them to burn all the tents down and lynch all the clowns. Shoot the ringmaster and pistol whip the elephants. This is not the time for mercy. This is the time to strike back at the fear and the terror that we all remember from last season. And after you're done, steal the clown car and speed the fuck out of there.

Things are so bad in Cleveland right now that Eric Mangini, the genius behind all this madness, has openly appealed for LeBron James to join the team. How fucking ridiculous is that? Why not get Shaquille O'Neal to play left tackle while you're at it? He's 900 pounds. He'll protect the shit out of your quarterback. And hell, you need a quarterback too. Call the Indians, see if they have a pitcher available. At least they'll have a good arm.

Good Lord. The only thing the Browns have going for them offensively is Joshua Cribbs and his neck is all fucked up and he hasn't been able to practice this week. Well, so much for that, I suppose. They are also struggling with injury along the offensive line, as tackle John St. Clair is questionable with a bum shoulder. That wouldn't be a huge issue if it wasn't for the fact that the Browns HAVE NO BACKUP TACKLES. I mean, holy shit, really? How do you get yourself in that position? Shit, maybe they will call Shaq after all.

Of course, they still have the golden arm of Brady Quinn to lean on. Wait, that's not gold, his arm is just covered in piss. My mistake. Quinn is just awful but it's not like they can replace him. They tried that shit already and it led to Derek Anderson being somehow EVEN WORSE. GOOD LORD! What a shit storm. Things are so bad that Eric Steinbach was forced to bust out the I'M NOT WORRIED AFTER ALL WE'RE ALL PROFESSIONALS sound bite, which is code for THIS THING IS FUCKED AND NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING. Remember, Lions fans have extreme experience with these sorts of things. We are professional losers, after all.

Defensively, the Browns aren't quite as hapless, but they could give up 45 points a game and that would still be the case. They've only held opponents to under 20 points twice all season. The first time was against Buffalo, whose offense is the only one on the planet almost as bad as Cleveland's. The second time was against Baltimore just this past Monday night. They only gave up 16 points, but it was enough to make them lose by 16 points. Not good.

Our old friend Shaun Rogers should be able to clog the middle and keep Kevin Smith from running wild - if he gives a fuck anyway. That's not always the case with Rogers as we all know and not so fondly remember. Meanwhile, Matthew Stafford should be able to throw the ball on Cleveland's defense, and Calvin Johnson has a definite advantage over cornerback Eric Wright.

This game will be ugly as fuck and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves. But someone has to win, and it might as well be the Lions. Then again, the Lions were routed in the preseason by the Browns. Thankfully, as we have come to know and resent, the preseason is absolutely fucking meaningless. The Lions should win. Fuck it, I am saying they will win. If they lose, then MY GOD. It will be howling in the streets and Drano smoothies for everyone.

FIVE PREDICTIONS

1. Matthew Stafford will have a big game, throwing the ball 40 times, completing 28 passes for 300 yards and 3 touchdowns. He won't throw an interception for the second game in a row. After the game, Brady Quinn will charge him in a jealous rage, only to trip over his own feet. He will lay sobbing on the field while his own teammates ignore him.

2. Kevin Smith will have a middling day, rushing for 70 yards on 20 carries. His backups will have a slightly better day in terms of yards per carry and I will once again fret and moan about Smith as the feature back.

3. Calvin Johnson will have a huge game, catching 12 passes for 155 yards and two touchdowns. Bold? Crazy? Maybe both? Who cares? Who are any of you mere mortals to doubt St. Calvin? The dude can travel through time.

4. Brady Quinn will throw for 75 yards even against the terrible Lions secondary and after picking himself up off the field following his sobfest, he will be dumped into Lake Erie, causing the Browns to be fined for improperly disposing of toxic waste.

5. After the game, Eric Mangini will try desperately to convince Jim Brown to come out of retirement. Brown will slap Mangini around and Mangini will be forced to sign Maurice Clarett instead.

PREDICTED FINAL SCORE: Lions 31, Browns 10

5 Keys to Redskins Ultimate Victory

Let me just clarify right now I hate every fucking thing. My escape from reality is momentary at best and I don't even have change left in the fucking wine jar in the corner of the living room by the 80 pound piece of white quartzite, so when the Redskins suck, it takes away one of my few escapes. And when the owner is a dumbass yet wildly rich, and I'm climbing into dumpsters behind multiple grocery stores to feed my fucking pigs and chickens with, and picking out the proper shit for my own goddamned family because it is now almost winter so even if something was in the dumpster for a few hours, it probably didn't go bad because it's too cold outside, and I feel like I'm smart enough to not be so stupid, then it makes me hate Dan Snyder even more. My bad bro. Not your fault I was born poor cursed with bad genetics. But when you buy a professional football team, this type of senseless hatred from far below you on the socio-economic ladder comes with the territory. But I digress.
Let's pretend I fucking won the super lottery where I was made dude-and-a-half of the free world and had alien arab money where I could buy a quarter of Africa plus that cold part of Chile at the bottom tip where penguins chill in the jungle. Well, here are the 5 things I would change about the Redskins, big picture sense, because quibbling over the minutiae is too internetty and white, and though I am a white dude inside the internets, I am also a doomed hopeless broken broke ass piece of white trash, thus I'm going to pretend to not be all that, which means I have to pretend to not be all internetty and white dudey as well. So here is what I would do.

#1: EMBRACE REDSKIN HERITAGE! If you're gonna have a mildly racist team name, educate motherfuckers about it. I saw a western once (or it might've been Billy Jack actually) where they buried the dead on a stilted platform for the buzzards to eat to recycle the spirit of the dead indian. I would, on a fun level, put such platforms in the mezzanines of the stadium and put dummies of famous team members of your upcoming opponents or hated rivals on those platforms, all dead looking and shit, to rile up the fanbase, and learn them redskin customs. On a more serious level, I would build four of those platforms up top of the stadium, like where the lights are, and put dummy carcasses up there as well, symbolic from the team you're playing, but with real meat all over it and inside, so that for-real vultures fly in and chew at the fake corpses and hang out at the top of the stadium and shit. You think the Redskins defense is good now? Have fucking vultures hanging out. Shit, if real live vultures were picking through effigies of John Elway and that light-skinned black guy who was WR for Denver for like 37 years last weekend, Kyle Orton would've "sprained" his ankle a lot sooner.

#2: MORE UNIFORMS! I know the NFL has rules on how much you can wear your extra bullshit, but they also have rules where they want you to sell as much shit to your dumbass fans as possible. Skins never wear burgundy jerseys with white pants at home games, until last weekend, and they won like a miracle. I would just straight up be like 3 strikes you're out when it came to uniform combos, and switch it regularly. That way, you have a run to the Super Bowl or win 9 straight with your burgundy jersey/yellow pants/translucent helmet with a spear on the side, you save it for an important occasion. Those yellow helmets with the R in a circle and the yellow pants and white jerseys with the thick red stripes on the sleeve are the pimpest shit they wore in my lifetime, and they lost an important game against the Giants in them and refuse to wear them again. I can dig it. Turn the yellow black and brick it back. Do something. Like the NFL gives a fuck if somebody has 39 different variations of a Chris Cooley jersey to want to buy.

#3: RICH DUDE SIDE BETS! NFL ownership is made to be such a business move, which unfortunately attracts business-minded cocksuckers like Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder. I would straight up mandate that every game, the owners have to wager at least $500,000 between each other, and they share a luxury box with like three seconds (or a second, a third, and a fourth would be more appropriate I guess), and there's a camera on them the whole time. Playoff games or division games, bet at least a million, plus one player each, of agreeable value, with an arbitrator on-call to handle bad player bets (for Al Davis types).

#4: BURY THE LOMBARDI TROPHIES! No shit, I know the Redskins won three Super Bowls, because I see the trophies every time you fucking sign another free agent or make a draft pick or bring in a new coach or change the naming rights of the stadium or announce a retirement or anything really. I'm not sure they even have an actual trophy case for the Redskins Lombardi trophies or they just keep them on a gurney in a protective case and wheel them around to wherever Dan Snyder wants them to be seen at. Well, in this pretend world where I have the riches to achieve my dreams, and I buy this team, first thing I do in the off-season is have John Riggins drive a back-hoe into the middle of the field with all the Hogs standing around, and dig a whole right at the 50 yard line, deep as the bucket will go, and drop all three of the trophies into the ground, unprotected, cover them up, that's it. We re-sod the field and say we ain't pulling them back out until there's another one to make a balanced set of four. We paint the Redskins logo back on the middle of the field and for every decade we don't get another trophy (about four years away from a second decade of no Super Bowl), we paint a black teardrop under the Indian's eye, like that '70s trash commercial, but also to attract back the urban thug demographic who could understand and see something different in that tattoo teardrop. Old Redskins owner George Marshall was a notorious racist who refused to integrate the team, and because of that, many area negroes root for the Cowboys out of spite. With the dead effigies of our enemies and circling vultures combined with a heavy thug negro presence, Redskins home field advantage could be immense.

#5: THERE IS NO FIFTH THING! I am going to go masturbate outside under the stars even though there are no stars or meteor showers tonight because there's for-real rain drizzle, but I'm gonna go out there and lay in the grass and masturbate towards the heavens, and I will feel good to my soul because fuck it, my life is doomed, I suck and will never be shit, and my kids, as great as they seem, are stuck with at least 50% my genetics. But if the Redskins beat the Cowboys this weekend, it's all good. Shit, they don't even have to beat them. Lavar Arrington is a lifelong Redskin, not because he won Super Bowls or was a smart dude or anything, but because he concussed Troy Aikman out of football. Albert Haynesworth stomped on that one Cowboy dude's face years ago. Bring that beat back. Fucking beat the shit out of them, rape Tony Romo's boyfriend, and dip your dicks in Jerry Jones bottle of Botox when he's not looking. If their practice facility falls in again and crushed the whole team to death, I pray to god that the NFL doesn't cancel the game so that we can beat their practice squad fill-ins 42 to 13. Yeah, we could score fucking 42 points against a second team of Cowboys hastily put together after a devastating tragedy that will be the subject of self-important ESPN documentaries in a few years, without a fucking problem. Fuck you Cowboys.

Inane Observations and Stupid Gibberish

WAIT . . . HE MISSED IT?

I don't think most Lions fans realize how ridiculously spoiled they are to have someone like Jason Hanson as the kicker. He has been absurdly good throughout his career and even at the age of 168, he managed to have an all-time great season last year when the rest of the world was burning. Seriously, he was 8-8 on field goals longer than 50 yards, an NFL record, and he only missed one field goal all year, and that one was blocked. So, every kick he managed to get off was good. That's remarkable for a man whose primary meal staples are probably apple sauce and Metamucil.

Hanson hasn't been quite as good this year, missing three kicks, and every time he has missed it has produced the same reaction, from the fans to Hanson himself: "What the fuck?" That shit just isn't supposed to happen. The worst part is when they show Jim Schwartz immediately after and he is standing on the sideline with that cliched "Fucking kickers" look that every coach has. Normally, everyone would agree and be all "Yeah, fuck that bum," but this is Jason Hanson, man. Everyone loves Hanson. He is the village elder who has been through all the plagues and all the wars. He has seen things. If anything, he should look at the rest of the team with that disgusted grimace and scream FUCKING LIONS. He is beyond criticism.

IT HELPS TO CATCH THE BALL

Matthew Stafford is a rookie. Matthew Stafford also has a ridiculously strong arm. Matthew Stafford needs his receivers to help him out by catching the ball. His receivers can't catch the ball because they A.) Don't have a decent sense of timing developed with Stafford yet. B.)Can't handle a ball thrown a billion miles per hour. C.)They suck. D.)All of the above.

It is endlessly frustrating to see Matthew Stafford try to get into a rhythm, make the right reads, and then watch time and time again as his receivers fuck everything up. There was one play against the Vikings, when the Lions were driving for a touchdown, when Stafford came under heavy pressure, managed to scramble away and then threw an absolute rocket to a spot where only his receiver could catch the ball. The receiver dropped it. It was a brilliant play and a brilliant pass by Stafford. Sure, the ball was tailing out of bounds and it would have required a decent catch, but that was literally the only place where he could throw it that would give the receiver a chance. It was a perfect throw. Some people don't understand this and think that it was inaccurate, but that was a clear cut example of Stafford making a play that most other dudes can't make. From the presence in the pocket to avoid a sack, to the athleticism needed to scramble out of the pocket, to the absolute strike to a tiny, tiny target while throwing on the run, the play amply demonstrated why Stafford was the number one overall pick.

Unfortunately, the pass was dropped. Stafford is a lot like, wait for it . . . yes, Brett Favre, in that his passes will break fingers and take dudes by surprise. That, along with the timing issue, should resolve itself once Stafford and his receivers get used to one another. And as the talent level aside from St. Calvin increases at the receiver position, you'll see those sorts of passes being completed with regularity.

YOU SHOULD, UH, PROBABLY GO FOR IT THERE

A lot of people probably won't agree with me, but what the hell, these are savage times and we can't always be friends. Anyway, there was a point early in the fourth quarter when the Lions were down 24-10 and had a 4th and 6 near their own 40. They lined up to punt, and yeah, good call, but then a Viking jumped offsides(yeah, it was an actual Viking, he had an axe and everything . . . I . . . I'm sorry, that was awful). That made it 4th and 1. Hmmm. Sure, there was quite a bit of time left, but the Lions were down by two scores in the 4th quarter, the ball was basically at midfield, and they really needed to score to stay in a game that they really didn't have any right to be in. They should have gone for it, but Jim Schwartz elected to punt, the Vikings kicked a field goal and the game was effectively over.

It seems fairly obvious to me that Jim Schwartz is the type of coach who wants to have an ass-kicking defense and an offense that can make enough plays to get the job done. After all, he was weaned under Jeff Fisher, so you can understand that his end-goal is to get the Lions looking like the most successful of those Titans teams. It's not a bad vision to have. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a good, or even mildly decent, defense, and he can't really afford to play it so conservatively. This has bugged me on several occasions this season already. I have not been a fan of how the Lions have managed the clock on drives near the end of the first half a couple of times, and their lack of aggressiveness in general has been a disappointment.

The Lions don't have the talent that other teams do. They just don't, and when that's the case, you need to take advantage of every opportunity that you get to get something done. You need to push for the endzone instead of settling for a field goal at the end of a half, you need to go for it on 4th and 1 a little more than you normally would, you need to take advantage of the little opportunities that you get throughout the game. It's really the only way to subvert the talent deficiency the Lions face every week.

Okay, yeah, I understand that Jim Schwartz is who he is and he's going to coach this team the same way whether they are talentless or talent-rich. In a sense, that is commendable. It shows that he has faith in what he does, and hooray for that. But, remember, it's a slippery slope from that to "But he's a good man," Marinelli. And no one wants that shit again. At some point, a good coach has to recognize what he has and adjust accordingly. Otherwise, you just look stubborn and foolish.

I am mildly disappointed in Schwartz in general. I still think he's a good coach, but there have been a lot of frustrating little things like what I detailed above that have kind of taken the bloom off the rose a little bit. Perhaps this is because my expectations for Schwartz were a little too high - I mean, come on, of course they were. I along with everyone else was basically composing sonnets to the dude before he even coached a game. But, the thing is, is the reason why I was so excited was not because I thought he was a good solid football coach who believed in fundamentals, but because he seemed like the sort of dude who understood the mathematics of football - chess master, Georgetown, blah blah blah - and would be the sort of dude who would understand that it's in your best interests to go for it on 4th and 1 from your own 40 down two scores in the fourth quarter. It's not so much that I am disappointed that Schwartz is too rigid in his philosophy but that this isn't his philosophy to begin with if that makes any sense. This is where I figured his other mentor, Bill Belichick, would have hopefully influenced him. And yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone is all over Belichick's ass for the call against the Colts, but really, the percentages actually say that it was the right call. And the thing is, is that the Lions were already down by two touchdowns. What did they really have to lose by going for it there?

WELL THIS IS AWKWARD

Anyone who has followed my gibberish at all here knows that I am a fan of Ernie Sims. Along with St. Calvin, he is the dude about whom I have written the most ridiculous and weird bullshit. Hell, I think I talk about his monkey more than I do just about any other player. That is why this is so awkward.

You see, Sims tore up his hamstring and is out for most of the rest of the season. This sucks because, well, because it's Ernie Sims and he is my dude. The thing is, is that his replacement, DeAndre Levy, is probably better than he is right now. It pains me to say that, but Sims just hasn't gotten his shit together. He's still an unguided missile that runs himself out of plays and out of position way too often. Meanwhile, Levy has arguably been the Lions best linebacker when he's been on the field. I am so conflicted. I mean, on the one hand, of course I am happy that the Lions finally found a steal in the middle of the draft. On the other hand, this is all coming at the expense of The Lizard King, Cinnabon Sims, and that shit makes me sad.

I mean, I lean on Sims a lot around here. I need his menagerie of wild beasts. I need his monkey. I don't know what I will do if I lose them. Perhaps my posts will get a little less weird, but that would be a sad day. When Ernie comes back, hopefully the team will do the right thing and keep him around. I don't know, move him to the other outside linebacker spot and make Julian Peterson a rush end. Hell, I am desperate here. Make him the fucking punter, I don't care. I NEED ERNIE SIMS AND I NEED HIS MONKEY. If Sims has to go, hire his monkey as a janitor. I don't give a fuck, these are desperate times and this is a loss we cannot afford. I go through a lot of shit as a fan of this team, at least give me this. I may be a robot, but I am an advanced model with feelings and I dream of electric monkeys. Please?

The Falcons are in trouble

We need this guy healthy

The Falcons have lost 3 of their last 4 games. They have fallen at Dallas, at New Orleans and at Carolina. Suddenly the Falcons cannot win a game on the road. We can’t kick a FG, we can’t make a big defensive stop and we can’t complete the critical passes that we need to complete. The sky is falling.

Major Issues:

Quarterback Play- Matty Ice has gone cold over the last several weeks. He’s playing with happy feet and is not taking his time in the pocket. He is thrown 10 picks in his last 5 games. He has to settle down, let the game come to him and make the throws that he knows he can make.

Injuries- The injuries are mounting for the Falcons. First it was Harry Douglas going down in the pre-season. Then first round pick DT Peria Jerry was lost for the year. Starting CB Brian Williams followed. Jerious Norwood has been banged up all year and hasn’t made an impact. OL Sam Baker has been out for a couple of games. Now Michael Turner has a high ankle sprain just as he was coming on strong. There is a chance that both Michael Turner and Jerious Norwood will miss this week’s game.

Road Woes- the Falcons can’t seem to catch a break away from home. We’ve had a couple of winnable games on the road that didn’t go our way (Carolina, New Orleans) and we’ve had some that got away from us (Dallas, New England). The good news is that only 3 road games remain on the schedule.

Jason Elam- Elam has really hit the wall this year. He’s missed 4 FGs under 50 yards. He’s 3/6 from 30-39 yards. 3 of 6! That’s awful. I feel that his missed FG in the Carolina game lost us the game. We still could have made plays that would have won us the game but that was the turning point that led directly to the loss.

Defense- The defense has stopped making big plays and big stops. At the beginning of the year guys like Mike Peterson, Kroy Biermann and Brian Williams were making big plays and getting turnovers. Williams is out with an injury and it just seems like the defense isn’t making the plays when they need to. We don’t have a ton of talent on the defensive side of the ball and we have weak corners but we need guys like John Abraham, Mike Peterson and Eric Coleman to step up and get some turnovers/big plays in the coming weeks.

That’s a lot of issues that we have right now. The silver lining is that if the season ended today we would actually be in the playoffs. Atlanta has the same record as Green Bay and the NY Giants but currently own the tie breakers against those two teams. The Falcons play at New York this week. I don’t think I have to say how big that game is for both teams.

Jamarcus vs The World: Canadian Edition

The other night I established that nearly every backup QB in the NFL is better than Jamarcus Russell. Today I decided to broaden my horizons and look north to our Canadian brothers and their wacky, 3 down style of football to see how Mr. Russell fares against guys the NFL didn't want. My expectations for this endeavor are minimal, much like my expectations for Jamarcus himself. Yet the continual shittiness of the scatter brain with the scatter arm has sent me into a spiraling depression, the likes of which few have witnessed, much less survived. In fact, at this point the only thing I'm able to take solace in is the fact that I'm not the lady who got mangled by that crazy chimpanzee. Never heard of her? Google that shit ASAP. There's an interview with her and Oprah on YouTube that is some freaky shit. So yeah, I'm glad I'm not her. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, so let's get started.

B.C. Lions
Casey Printers: Spent a season with the Chiefs. Had a season in Canada where he threw for over 5,000 yards and 35 TDs which looks to be a fluke because he's been a bench warmer ever since. I think with the current exchange rate his 5,000 yard season is currently worth about 3,200 American yards, and that blows away anything Jamarcus will ever do. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Jarious Jackson: Former Notre Dame QB who is basically a scrambling caretaker and is enjoying modest success. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Zac Champion: Awesome name aside, he had a passer rating of -23.2 in '09. Wow, I didn't even know that was possible. WORSE THAN JAMARCUS.

Travis Lulay: Ginger dude who looks slightly retarded but has completed over 60% of his passes with a QB rating in the mid 80's. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Buck Pierce: Man, this team must have a shitty O-line because this is the 5th QB on their roster. Career rating of 93.7 and has a good porn star name. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Edmonton Eskimos
Jared Zabransky: You might remember him from that bowl game where he was the QB for Boise State and they made Oklahoma look like a bunch of choads by burning them with every trick play in the book. Hasn't thrown a CFL pass, but I'm going to give him the nod here for winning the game on that awesome sell on the Statue of Liberty play. BETTER THAN
JAMARCUS.

Jason Maas: I think he was the guy Akili Smith took over for at Oregon. Spot starter who had a 5,000 yard season. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Ricky Ray: Sac State product who was always in training camp with the 49ers. Current starter and puts up huge numbers. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Calgary Stampeders
Henry Burris: Made his name in Canada before signing with the Chicago Bears in 2001. Hightailed it back to Canada in '03. Successful QB. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Drew Tate: First season in Canada. Completed 9 of 11 passes, something Jamarcus can't even do on Madden. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Barrick Nealy: Career completion % of 41 and rating of 74.2. I think we found the CFL Jamarcus. SAME AS JAMARCUS.

Saskatchewan Roughriders
Darian Durant: Short QB who can throw and run. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Steven Jyles: Backup who throws a lot of picks, which is what Jamarcus would be if God didn't hate the Raiders so much. SAME AS JAMARCUS.

Dalton Bell: Hasn't thrown a pass, thus he hasn't made an ass out of himself. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Graham Harrell: Put up Tecmo Super Bowl-level numbers at Texas Tech. Sort of the anti-Jamarcus. Highly accurate with a noodle arm. On injured reserve, but I'd still trust him with my offense over Jamarcus. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Cole Burgquist: I know nothing of this guy other than the fact that he is on the practice squad of a CFL team. WORSE THAN JAMARCUS.

Winnipeg Blue Bombers
Ricky Santos: Backup who hasn't thrown a pass but has a Hispanic name. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Casey Bramlet: Pretty sure he's a former Bengal. Has two completions and two picks. SAME AS JAMARCUS.

Michael Bishop: He was King of Shit Mountain at K-State and sat on the bench for the Pats for a while. Throws a lot of picks and completes roughly half of his passes. SAME AS JAMARCUS.

Stefan LeFors: More picks than TDs and has a career rating of 66.8. SAME AS JAMARCUS.

Adam DiMichele: Practice squader with the pussiest last name imaginable. WORSE THAN JAMARCUS.

Hamilton Tiger-Cats
Kevin Glenn: Short dude who has more TDs than picks and a decent rating. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Quinton Porter: I think he was Boston College's QB pre-Matt Ryan. 14 fumbles in 83 career carries, but has completed over 65% of his passes. Dare I say it? BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Adam Tafralis: Passer rating of 94.2 in limited duty. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Jason Boltus: Injured rookie who set all sorts of D-III records in college. POSSIBLY BETTER THAN JAMARCUS?

Toronto Argonauts
Cody Pickett: Former 49er who the fans wanted to see over Alex Smith. Throws picks and TDs at the same rate and has a passer rating in the 70's. SAME AS JAMARCUS.

Kerry Joseph: Up and down career, but he had a season where he threw for 4,500 yards and rushed for 1,000. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Stephen Reaves: One TD and 6 picks for his career but has a higher completion percentage than JamarcASS. SAME AS JAMARCUS.

Montreal Alouettes
Adrian McPherson: Kicked off the team at Florida State, then went on to put up crazy #'s in the Arena League (rest in peace). Tooled around with the Saints for a while. 6 tds, no picks and 351 rushing yards. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Chris Leak: National champ at Florida. Highly athletic with great accuracy and weak arm. BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Anthony Cavillo: Mexican dude from East LA who has played in Canada since I was in high school. Has over 60,000 career passing yards and 354 TDs. If the CFL has a Hall of Fame he'll probably be in it. MUCH, MUCH BETTER THAN JAMARCUS.

Tyler Palko: Former Saint who is a practice squader. WORSE THAN JAMARCUS.

So basically all but a handful of QBs in North America are better than Jamarcus Russell. Fuck my life.

ITS RAINING SHIT

Hey fuckers. So I know I just posted yesterday and that's all fine and good, but I will let you in on a secret. In fact this whole entry will be about some secrets, but first, the main secret is that I get paid to write for this website. As I stated in a previous post, my contract states that I am expected to write at least one (1) post per Chicago Bears football game. Ok right?

Well, my checks usually come on Mondays, and I didn't get shit today. So I call up Raven and I'm like "Where the fuck is my check? I am literally eating beans out of a can like a hobo over here, and I need this money to go buy bacon bits to make my can of beans more lively". He then drops the bombshell on me that some jew marketing group bought out this entire bullshit blog like two years ago while I wasn't paying attention and they are the people signing my checks, and the reason I didn't get my check is because I'm several posts behind and they don't give a crap about my problems because they are too busy sneezing gold coins out of their giant noses and wiping the remnants up with million dollar bills, so now I have to write like 3 posts to make up for the 3 I missed or else I NEVER GET PAID.

So yeah, you will have to deal with this for a little bit until I get caught up and I can start seeing some cash flow. I apologize, but the Lions guy writes like 14 posts a day and no one seems to give a shit. The Bears suck and all, but I cannot imagine writing more than like FUCK MY LIFE MY FAVORITE TEAM IS THE LIONS if my job were to write about the Lions.

Ok, so with this first supplemental post, I figured I'd debunk some myths. By now, you may have guessed I tend to exaggerate a bit in my hard hitting sports journalism. I am sick of sifting through all of the fan mail I get and answering each one separately so here you go. The real truth:

*I am really a Bears fan. This is true. I just suck at writing about them because I like pussy, and you don't get pussy being a faggot on the internet and writing about your favorite gay football team. This is actually a solid way to not get pussy. I can only assume most of the other people who write here are either virgins or robots (99% sure Neil is a robot. Raven is not a virgin but possibly bi-curious).

*The Jennifer Love Hewitt story is 100% true so please stop asking, but I did lie about the part where she sent me a picture of her in her underpants. It was just like a normal picture of her hanging out at some stupid bar, and it was blurry.

*I really did have an assistant (until I lost my job) but he didn't dictate my blog posts for me. He mainly helped me with math because I suck at math like you wouldn't believe.

*I never stopped eating fried chicken. Not even for a day. I did stop drinking beer though, but that almost instantly led to doing 500% more drugs.

*I didn't OD in the ladies bathroom in Suspenders. I OD'd on the side of the dumpster in the alley behind Suspenders. This sounds much less glamorous so I flubbed the truth.

*I did lose my job from the Suspenders incident, BUT I'm not in danger of living in a cardboard box. I can admit this now that I know I won't be getting paid until I catch up on my blogging.

*I don't like, and I NEVER will like Jay Cutler as much as Jim Mcmahon. This is a dumb fucking question. I walk around with Jim Mcmahon's rookie card in my inside breast pocket at all times. Jay Cutler is a dude I'd smoke weed with, but I'm not about to carry around his rookie card.

Ok that's it for now. Feel free to keep sending me your bonehead questions. Perhaps tomorrow I will write about what the Bears gameplan should be against the mighty Eagles this week but more likely I will look at the Bears roster and write separate fan fictions about all of their players.

Fun Fun Fun!!!

I am in a bad mood.

I lived through 0-16, and as terrible as that fiasco was, there was an air of unreality around the whole damn thing. Every week, I would write some freaked out gibberish about how the Lions were never going to win and there was no hope. The whole thing was like some sort of ghoulish circus, with fucked up clowns and freaks, dudes with hands for legs and asses for heads, bearded ladies and bearded clowns with asses for heads. It was awful, just a terrible thing, but it was also strangely surreal, and because of that it was at least interesting.

This season though feels very much like it does every time I look out the window. It's bleak, gray and cold, and some poor son of a bitch is going to freeze to death in a building again in downtown Detroit and a nation will shake its head and think what next? What next, indeed. I keep gibbering on about hope on the horizon and about how the pieces are starting to be put in place, but after a while all that noise just starts to sound like a parody of true belief. Every week that goes by, and with every new loss, it seems like I scream louder about hope and start banging some mythical drum of redemption in order to justify my fandom, but fuck all that, I am sick of doing it. The Lions are my team, and I will continue to hope for the best, and I truly believe that there is hope somewhere on the horizon, but it just feels like I am groping blindly for meaning in a season that really has none.

Oh sure, it's giving Matthew Stafford precious experience, but even that feels like something of a debacle. His injury threw everything off, and with everyone else taking a visit to the medical tent and having their broken limbs hacksawed off by weary and cynical doctors, no sense of rhythm or flow can be established and all we're left with are a series of games that cause us to throw up our hands and say shit like "Well that one didn't really mean anything because it wasn't a true representation of what this team can be or will be in the future." Well, that's just great. Hope is awesome. Hooray for hope. The thing is, is that in the end, all we're left with is a string of games that no one really gives a fuck about. They are just exercises in the macabre. Our dudes run out onto the field, half of them get hurt, they lose and then we all moan and tear our hair out and viciously turn on one another. It's a miserable cycle of stupid misery.

I want my team to win. That's it. Hope is awesome and good and I believe in the future and all that nonsense, but right now, I am just tired and I am sick of watching my favorite team lose every fucking week. I've watched it happen every week but one for the last two seasons, and really, I have watched it almost every week for the last decade. It's an awful thing, and maybe I have finally just hit my breaking point. We are all tired, we are all beaten and we are all sick of the utter misery which just never ends. Being a Lions fan can be tough, and some days are tougher than others. Today is one of those days.

But fuck all that. There is still football being played, and there is still something to root for each week. It's just getting harder and harder to find a point in any of it for this season, that's all. So, I think from now on, for the rest of the season, I am going to put the future on hold. It will play out however it plays out. I'm hopeful that it will play out in a good way. But this season is this season and like I said, I am sick of the losing. I may turn into an epic dick at times. Just know that beneath it all, I am hopeful and believe that something better lies on the horizon. I am just sick of talking about it is all.

Anyway, the Lions lost against the Vikings. Again. If this is surprising to you, then you are likely a great fool, and I apologize for your unfortunate condition. I'm not criticizing anyone or anything. I mean, I picked the Lions to win in my post before the game after all. It was stupid and utterly without reason or merit. It was, I suppose, my last gasp of hope for this season. It was a defiant fuck you to the realities of the situation, which are dreadful. I knew the Lions were going to lose, but I just shrugged my shoulders, said fuck it and laughed in the face of the failure demon while he ran me through with a sword made of cobras and razor blades. I said these are the things you must do from time to time to survive as a Lions fan and I meant it.

Unfortunately, sometimes you also must throw in the towel and turn savage. This is when my fandom turns feral and ugly and I start yammering on about escaped vampire apes and knuckle dragging werewolves on PCP. Do not judge me, for I have seen the belly of this beast and he is awful and utterly without mercy. Oh, the horror, the horror.

I'm not sure exactly when this season broke me. There was no real defining moment in the game against the Vikings that did it, or anything. I mean, there were ample opportunities - Adrian Peterson breaking yet another tackle, Brett Favre raining down fire to the waiting hands of Sidney Rice, any Lions receiver dropping a pass, etc. - but I think it was something that has been building with creeping dread for a while now. Maybe it started in the game against the Packers or maybe it wasn't until the Rams game. I don't know, but it has been coming on and I have been valiantly and stupidly trying to fight it. Hell, it might have never really gone away. This could still be carry over from last year, which was just a carry over from the rest of this ridiculous decade spent lost in the wilderness. Who knows? Trying to figure this shit out is a fool's game and will leave you delirious and staring down a terrifying rabbit hole filled with ghouls and flesh eating robots and clowns with asses for faces and oh Lord, it has been so long.

Even the strongest of us get broken sometimes, and it will lead to wild gibberish and idiot ranting. These things happen and we cannot look away for they are our terrible reality. This season is in flames, and although someone, somewhere probably has a fire extinguisher, he is a long way off, and for now, all we can do is dance in the flames and hope that we don't get burned too badly. We are all fools for staying, but our fandom is like a prison and it will not let us leave. This is the way of things and we must swallow that fire and spit it back out if we are to survive. We have suffered much, and now we must suffer some more. It's okay, we are tough, we are stupid, and we can take it.

Let the D.C. Lame Duck Session Begin!

(my dad did meth into his 40s, no shit, that's for real; and he didn't live to his 50s)
A lame duck session in D.C. politics is when the President pardons all his homeboys or signs executive orders for crazy William B. Cooper Behold a Pale Horse type shit, and Congress passes laws that have actual meat in them instead of watered down bullshit with fancy titles like they're "hammering" out for health care or whatever the fuck is their cause celebre of this week. Well, honestly, regardless of what happens, Jim Zorn and Jason Campbell are done in D.C. (and it looks like the wagons are circling for the same to be said of Clinton Portis too). On one hand, as a guy who roots for the Redskins with complete emotional investment even though I have zero control over the outcome of games, I am not bothered by this too much. But as a regular dude with a good heart who likes solid humans instead of the normal assholes you usually encounter, I am a little cry. As corny as Jim Zorn is, Zorny is a likeable guy. And shit, when Snyderratto had him over for a mansion sleepover where they played Madden all night to see how Zorny would coach up situations, and then offered him the head coaching job, why wouldn't he take it? I'm trying to talk myself into a neurobiological related job right now, so I can relate. Jump in, sink or swim, and cash checks while you find out. As for Jason Campbell, he is a genuinely nice guy, probably best suited for a Trent Dilfer type role as QB. If the Redskins had used the past two years to keep him chill in a smashmouth offense and ride the defense's coattails, maybe having kept Greggg Williams as head coach to ride out what Gibbs had built, maybe we'd actually be a wild card contending team. Or something.
As it stands, this team sucked, and looked to be doomed to a 2-14 or 3-13 year. But somehow, the planets aligned themselves the day before a November new moon, and they pulled off a win against the hapless Denver Broncos. ("Hapless" is a word fuckheads like myself use for teams that were awesome potentially but seem to be on a downward spiral but are not yet politically acceptable in a sports sense to completely mock as a tire fire of a team. I give the Broncos two more weeks to achieve that status, or a blowout loss against San Diego next week, whichever comes first.) And I will not lie, my bro-in-law bought us a giant 40-inch HDTV two weeks ago, and last weekend was youth soccer closing ceremonies on Sunday, so this was my first time to watch the Redskins in a newfound clarity. And they christened the situation with 27 points. 27 POINTS! We haven't scored that much in like two years, sadly enough. They looked like an actual offense for a couple of drives, with our piecemeal offensive line putting it together for Ladell Betts to smash his way forward five or six yards at a time. And even though the defense initially looked like they started Sean Taylor in the first quarter even though he was dead again, they got their shit together good enough to make Chris Simms look a lot like Chris Simms. I was happier than fuck. I would run into the kitchen during commercials to stir the crockpot full of venison, potatoes, carrots, and turnip roots, and jig walk like Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin back into the living room to see if they could maybe pull it off. And they did, which gives me hope that they can do it to Dallas too. An old guy coming out the hardware store today was wearing a Redskins hat and I chatted him up and we both laughed at the Cowboys and were excited for a minute in the indian summer Monday sunshine, feeling a hope that we hadn't felt in a long ass minute.
But let's not fool ourselves, this team is doomed. But to maybe have Zorny and Campbell unite, as well as other overlooked guys like Ladell Betts and Reed Doughty, to stick it up Dan Snyder's ass with some essentially meaningless wins, since he's gonna do something drastic, like always, in the offseason, it's great. It also screws him out of his higher draft pick next year, where he can waste it on Heath Shuler 2010, whoever that may be come next April.
My hatred for Dan Snyder has been sweltering hot the past few weeks while I've been gone from this blog. Honestly, my life is crash mode, with two years of financial struggle starting to fall apart around me, to the point I sometimes envision swallowing a bottle full of hydrocodone pills, putting on my favorite Hawkwind album, and drifting off to eternity. Of course, I would never do this (though I might take one or two hydrocodone, put on my favorite Hawkwind album, and drift off for the evening), but all I've wanted is for the Redskins to maybe give me a few hours away from my worries, a few hours of quality football to pretend the rest of my fucking shit ass world is not so shit ass. But nothing.
Then, during the off week, in something that didn't look staged even slightly, Dan Snyder holds a press conference in northern Virginia to announce how he's helping local high schools with tight budgets fix up their football fields. And while everybody's standing around, he makes a rare in-season statement to the press about how embarrassed he is by this season, and apologizes to the fans. Whatever, shitsoul. Why couldn't you do that somewhere other than a staged charitable photo-op? Weren't there any starving immigrant kids in D.C. you could've gave turkeys to to make this statement?
Anyways, people are delusional, and certain unnamed Redskins players in the local paper have talked about making an amazing run to 10-6. That is impossible. But my main man London Fletcher put it best when he said (roughly... I'm working from memory), that this game was like Joe Gibbs football, punch them in the fucking face and see what happens. Football as boxing match and not this tinkerbell pseudo-west coast offense.
The rest of the season is a tough draw for the Redskins, nothing like those first six weeks where no one had even won a game. But with the next two weeks on the road in Dallas and Philadelphia, the lame ducks in D.C. could salvage some personal respect, and stick it to the shithead whose signature signs their paychecks all at the same time. It fills my heart with a hope to enjoy football, even in slight slivers of actual game time, beyond the beginning of December, which was not something I thought possible a couple of weeks ago.