SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK: WEEK ONE
Sorry for the delay in getting this out but as usual I am late with this one. It doesn’t help that it’s review season at Microsoft and I have to spend an inordinate amount of time writing my review so it looks impressive at the end of the year without any real responsibilities assigned to me. You don’t want your review being dependent on actual, tangible work. That doesn’t get you anywhere. At any rate, this one is slapped together at the last minute in spirit of some of my writing recently so apologies if some games don’t have a lot of content (also I didn’t get a chance to watch much football as being miserable took precedence).
But seriously, what the FUCK is back. Because if there’s one fucking thing that the NFL is good for is having a bunch of completely random shit come in and surprise everyone. And by “surprise” what I mean is “fuck up your carefully-thought-out fantasy team”.
DAL 24 @ NYG 17 - Well, the Giants are currently in Super-Bowl-contending form with this blowout. In a news article that I now cannot find some of the Giants’ linemen accuse the Cowboys of holding for the entire game; this originally sounds like sour grapes but I actually believe it. I didn’t think the Cowboys linemen could hold off Jean Pierre-Paul if they had time to dig a moat before each snap.
Jerry Jones was gracious after the win:
“YEEEHHAAAWWW FUCK THOSE BIG CITY FAGGOTS WITH THEIR HIGH-FALOOTIN’ LITERACY RATES AND FILM STUDY! MY FUCKING BOYS CAME IN AND EXPLODED RIGHT IN THEIR LUSCIOUS ASSES! Wait, that didn’t come out quite right. WELL FUCK IT! WE BEAT THE SUPERBOWL CHAMPS AND ROMO DIDN’T CRY THIS TIME BECAUSE HE IS A FUCKING STAR! WE’RE GOING STRAIGHT TO THE SUPER GLORY HOLE THIS YEAR FUCKERS! THE FUCKING DALLAS COWBOYS WILL BE THE MOST ANONYMOUSLY FUCKED TEAM IN NFL HISTORY AND I AM FUCKING CRAZY!”
IND 21 @ CHI 41 - This was actually a tale of two games; the Bears went absolutely nowhere in the first drive and the second drive ended in a pick-six from a swing pass of all fucking things. The official Jay Cutler explanation for the interception was “shifting tectonic plates”. However, after Dwight Freeney got injured Cutler was 9-of-10 with a touchdown after. It’s a big difference with Freeney not breathing down Cutler’s neck, but the offensive line is just as terrible as it was last year and the defensive personnel are still getting older. The Colts personnel is built on speed and undersized; after Forte got started the game was decided from there. Additionally, Cutler is apparently the fourth all-time on the Bears touchdown list with 65. This is Not A Good Thing. But hey, there’s always this:
Can we extrapolate the entire Bears season based off the random failure of an inebriated female fan? The answer is WE MUST.
PHI 17 @ CLE 16 - Yeah, I think this sums everything up.
STL 23 @ DET 27 - Jesus, really? The Detroit Lions were supposed to be the team that curb-stomps easy opponents and only chokes on people who can competently play football, so this changes everything. Matt Stafford only threw seven incomplete passes, but three of those were intercepted as they were forced balls (heh heh) to covered receivers running out routes – one for a touchdown. Near the end of the game Bradford slid inbounds but the line judge didn’t indicate this to the clock operator. There is a more complicated writeup of this on Deadspin (they have the long wordy thingies), but to make a long story short this clock mismanagement by the officials turned the game to the Lions favor as they were able to get the ball back without having to use a timeout – which proved critical when Kevin Smith was brought down between the hashmarks that would have forced a field goal attempt. But hey, no problem with the backup refs! Kind of funny that the NFL has had problems with scabs AFTER Al Davis died:
NE 34 @ TEN 13 - OMG Like Tom Brady’s nose got broken and SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS THIS IS A NATIONAL TRAVESTY OMG:
Where were the refs? WHERE??!! The last time Tom Brady went on injured reserve was 2008, and then the global financial crisis occurred. TOM BRADY IS OUR MOST PRECIOUS NATIONAL RESOURCE. Oh yeah, additionally Jake Locker got hurt on an incomplete pass that was incorrectly ruled as a fumble on the field. So that shouldn’t have happened. It probably would have helped if offensive lineman Leroy Harris actually blocked the rusher. It mostly looked like he waved at him.
The only thing worse is watching Chris Johnson standing behind his offensive line waiting to be tackled so he can count the guaranteed money he got from his recent contract extension again.
ATL 40 @ KC 24 - I don’t get to watch all of the games and this is one of the ones that I didn’t watch. So if you were expecting a lot out of this one then you’ve got another thing coming. How can I fight with my wife AND watch football? That completely fucking ridicul…oh wait, we were fighting because I watch too much football. So never mind.
Anyway, this game was pretty close while Matt Cassel was doing well, which would be his patented move, “Not Looking Like Matt Cassel”. Later in the game he did his other move, “Looking Like Matt Cassel”, and…yeesh. Not so good with that one.
JAC 23 @ MIN 26 - This was the ONLY FUCKING GAME you could have won Jacksonville. And you FUCKED THIS UP BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THE NEW OVERTIME RULES YOU FUCKING IDIOT oh wait I didn’t know there were new overtime rules. Apparently the new overtime rules were implemented for the regular season as well; the new rule is that if you score a field goal in overtime you have to turn the ball over one more time to the other team. This was known as the Brett Favre Memorial rule that was implemented after the Saints beat the Vikings in the overtime of the 2010 NFC championship; this rule was solely implemented so Peter King would stop calling the head office and demanding a retroactive win for the Vikings.
It doesn’t matter. I refuse to believe Gabbert can be a quality quarterback because of this picture:
Well, that and his entire 2011 season. It’s really funny to read the Jacksonville message boards and have homers insist that every quarterback looks like this in the pocket. Everytime I see Peyton Manning on TV throwing a football his eyes appear to be open to me. As well as Eli Manning, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers…well, ok the last one was a bad example.
WAS 40 @ NO 32 - Robert Griffin was pretty good in this game but people are making a little much of his performance in this game. For starters, he got most of his stats on 397 swing passes. Additionally, the Saints actually won this game 48-30 but Roger Goodell retroactively suspended eight players on defense and changed the score so Washington won. Goodell heard an appeal from the interim head coach of the Saints later today and, moved by his impassioned plea, also suspended the interm head coach for another four weeks as well as upholding all of his other suspensions. Currently the equipment manager is doing the defensive play calling.
Oh, and on one play Washington was able to get a new set of downs after getting nine yards.
BUF 28 @ NYJ 48 - I don’t understand this at all. The Jets were not supposed to be any good offensively! And the Bills were supposed to be marginally improved defensively! They paid good money to Mario Williams to eat people like Mark Sanchez. And this score makes no sense. Furthermore, this was on the cover of the NY Post last weekend:
See? Sanchez is a sad clown. Sad clowns lose football games. That’s obvious. Otherwise, they become happy clowns like Tony Romo. I think it was a wise move that Rex Ryan chose a car that didn’t have a passenger seat as neither can be trusted in the shotgun. The best thing about this game is that it kept a bored Tebow on the sideline, not that the camera crews would stop cutting to him every fifteen fucking minutes or so.
MIA 10 @ HOU 30 - Ryan Tannehill threw three interceptions in the first fifteen minutes or something like that. After a circus sideshow that got in the way of nearly everything at Miami and mostly frustrated fans, this week Houston defensive end J. J. Watts said that he picked up the Miami snap count from watching the Hard Knocks television show that was in Miami this year. From ProFootballTalk:
“[Hard Knocks] did nothing to help the team win. It routinely televised embarrassing and sensitive moments involving players, driving a wedge between the organization and its most important employees and potentially making it harder (and costlier) to attract free agents to South Florida.”
The death of fun. This show did have really good ratings, however, and I suppose at some point Goodell will just force teams to have Hard Knocks film everything or he’ll suspend everybody.
SF 30 @ GB 22 - Here is David Akers, tying the NFL for the longest field goal ever:
And here is Vernon Davis celebrating after a touchdown:
This is Mr. Akers field goal crossbar. Only Mr. Akers is allowed to put the football over this crossbar. Please do not attempt to put the football over Mr. Akers crossbar. You are not Mr. Akers.
CAR 10 @ TB 16 - Why hello there DeAngelo Williams. YOU PIECE OF SHIT. I fucking started Williams in one of my fantasy leagues this week because Stewart was out and last year most running backs run on the Tampa Bay defense like a treadmill. But fuckface Williams couldn’t fall his way forward, treadmill or no. Tampa Bay’s defense appears to be something else entirely with Gerald Hayes as defender, but fucking still. Williams managed a total of -1 rushing yards. That’s a fucking negative number. Jonathan Stewart (inactive) had a better rushing total. Peyton Manning had a better rushing total. Peyton Manning’s stuffed bear in his living room had a better rushing total. I had a better rushing total. I would be a better fantasy football asset than fucking DeAngelo Williams. Fuck my life.
SEA 16 @ ARI 20 - How many fucking tries does it fucking take for Russell Wilson to get a football in the end zone! We even got a defensive pass interference penalty late in the fourth quarter (down by four, the total you see above you) to get us within fifteen yards of the goal line with a fresh set of downs! Randall Gay caused the interference, with the announcers stating that “Gay’s reacharound is going to cost Arizona.” We got a gay reacharound to help our team! What other city would benefit from a gay reacharound other than Seattle?! Well, maybe San Francisco. Shortly afterwards the announcers were impressed with the way that “Gay plays both ends of the field”. Of course he does.
And then we rush Marshawn Lynch! And we get a free time out from the officials that have a hard time counting to three! AND WE STILL DON’T SCORE! FUCK! You had like 400 opportunities to get a fucking score and your best idea was to have Braylon Edwards run a slant route. You fail at ideas. All passengers on the Russell Wilson hype train, please depart to your dilapidated hovels and drink yourself to sleep with your rotgut whiskey as you now formally have no reason to exist.
PIT 19 @ DEN 31 - Pittsburgh should stop running on every first and second down. You are bad at the running now. Ben Roethlisberger is really good at conning the refs to give him the yardage he needs but that was the worst quarterback sneak I have ever seen. Roethlisberger just kind of rolled on top of everyone, like a trained seal rolling over a bunch of retread offensive lineman because a fish was tossed over the top. And then there’s:
Tracy Porter has exactly one marketable skill, the ability to jump routes of top-shelf quarterbacks and pick off the ball and return for a touchdown. Does he still have the game ball from the Superbowl in Denver? I hope he does. That would be fantastic.
CIN 13 @ BAL 44 - There are some games that you watch the whole thing through, come back to write about it and realize that you don’t really remember a whole lot about it. This is one of those games. The most notable thing that happened for Cincinnati was Benjarvus Green-Ellis finding decent running space against the Baltimore Ravens defense. After that it was just amusing to see the Bengals players have to shell out cash on the sideline when they wanted some Gatorade. It appeared to be only a slight price drop from the concession prices.
SD 20 @ OAK 14 - I pretty much fell asleep during this game WOOO WEEK ONE FOOTBALL. There’s little of significance here so I’ll just end with these pictures of a fan fight in the stand.
Huh, I had no idea that Bruce Willis’ character from Unbreakable was a Chargers fan. I have to admit that I’m more than a little disappointed with the Raiders, you would think that fighting would be the one thing that they could do remotely competently. Nope. One guy got his face fistfucked and some girl tried to beat up a police officer with his own handcuffs. Sad. It’s like competence took the first Greyhound bus out of Oakland a long, long time ago.