NECESSARY ROUGHNESS: THE JETS GET WHOOPED, THE LIONS KEEP ROLLING AND MORE IN WEEK 4 NFL ACTION
Week four in the NFL saw some of the most amazing play from a QB ever recorded, and some of the most inept officiating I have ever seen. There were amazing comebacks and burly beat-downs. All in all, as we closed out Week 4 the NFL was the same chaotic, colorful, and crazed place it always has been, as some teams began to separate themselves from the pack and others continued to wallow in mediocrity… and I was once again left with the task of somehow writing about it. Not the easiest thing to when you really don’t care about most of the teams and are bound to offend many by your caustic observations concerning why their teams suck. But I beg forgiveness in advance! I’m no sportswriter; I’m the guy behind Oderus and I sing for GWAR. My personal agenda is strongly linked to my professional persona, so if you are looking for a fair and objective viewpoint, where I reward good performances with positive ink, read no further! That will happen, but I am WAY more into making crass remarks, laying-down weed-addled observations, and making my way through this entire season without missing a deadline. In fact, that’s probably the hardest thing about writing this thing. On Sunday I am drinking beer and watching football ALL DAY (and I am already using this column as an excuse to subtract myself from reality any time ANYTHING to do with the NFL is happening), so I am not about to get any writing done. Dragging my hungover ass out of bed early enough to make my Monday at noon deadline is by far the toughest challenge I face, and for that I am happy! I used to shovel shit for a living. Hmmmm… I guess things haven’t changed that much.
But before I break down the top few games, I would like to remind the younger NFL fans how fucking lucky they are that we live in a world of cable and internet. I always hated it when I was a kid and an adult would say “I remember when I was a boy…”, because it meant I was about to get a syrup-drenched anecdote about how things were so much tougher back in the day, like the one my father told me about how he had to walk to school every day twelve miles in the snow next to a fence hung with dead rabbit-carcasses (well, he was from Scotland). Well, I suppose it is a rite of passage (or an indication of my encroaching decrepitude) that now it is my time to bitch about my bitter youth. About how I remember hanging the rabbit-ears out of the window, desperately trying to coax in a signal, only to find the game was being “blacked-out”. How if you happened to be out-of-town or even just outside the broadcast area, your chances of seeing your team were practically nil. In one famous incident, the folks at NBC decided the movie “Heidi” was more important than the end of a Jets/Raiders game (one in which the Raiders came back to win with two touchdowns in the last minute). But today we have every single game on cable, and even a channel where you can watch them all at once. If you are unlucky enough to be travelling on the weekend, fear not! The net is awash with pirate streaming sites, and you can even watch the games on your smart phone. Spent Sunday sleeping or even worse in a medically-induced coma? No worries! Every conceivable play is available on youtube, NFL.com or the team’s home pages. Ahhh, our modern world. If only they could feed, clothe, and educate everyone!
But the NFL has its public works. Yesterday you might have noticed the teams decked out in pink ribbons, pink beanies, and probably pink-jock straps. That’s because it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month… or at least I think it is. I watched three games yesterday and never heard anybody mention anything about why all the players looked like they were wearing Mardi-Gras costumes! All I know is that I wish they would come up with a better color for their campaign. Because when I saw all that pink set against the field, the Ravens purple, and the Jets air-freshener green, I almost vomited. But they have done a lot for old “rotten-tit disease” awareness… hell, I didn’t even know that NFL players HAD tits, much less rotten ones!
And that sends us into our first game. I’ll say it right now. I don’t like Rex Ryan. I don’t like Mark Sanchez. In this ridiculous world, it’s just completely absurd that I would form personal opinions about these people, but I have! There is too much arrogance about them, and this applies generally to most of the New York sports teams and players. Just because you are on a football team from New York doesn’t mean you are fucking Joe Namath. Complicating the matter is the fact that my manager, Jack Flanagan (one of the best guys you will ever meet), is a HUGE Jets fan… but despite my respect for him and his NY bias, it was great to see the Jets get kicked down a flight of stairs by the Ravens in Baltimore last night. Face it, we are jealous of New York sports, and why not? They have like ten teams in every league, and collect championships like most fans do parking tickets. It’s good to see them get the snot kicked out of them every now and then, and once again the Baltimore Ravens have a clear claim as the holders of the belt proclaiming them as the number-one snot kickers in the league. The Ravens simply mauled (or perhaps pecked?) their way to a 34-17 win, where five returns went for TD’s (a NFL record). I turned it on just in time to see the first of those, which came off a Mark Sanchez fumble. NO team swarms to the ball like the Ravens, to the point where it seemed their defense transmogrified themselves into some multi-limbed, leaping golem. It went on like that all night as THREE Mark Sanchez turnovers led to Ravens scores. Sanchez looked like he was happy just to get out of Baltimore alive, and once again the Ravens have their pateneted dominant D/ adequate offense combo cooking well enough to get them to 3-1. But that doesn’t mean I am cool with teams named after birds… I’m not! Cardinals? Seahawks? That is so gay! It’s OK if it’s for baseball, that’s already gay… at least the Ravens are named after a nasty bird that a laudanum-crazed Edgar Allen Poe felt a peculiar affinity to, and also they don’t suck.
I wrote about the Lions last week, but hell, it’s such a good story that I have to go back there. The Lions, on the road against a tough opponent, overcame a 24-point 3rd quarter deficit to eventually beat the Cowboys 30-24. If you hate the Cowboys like I hate the Cowboys, then it was nothing less than manna from the gods. No team lives or dies with their quarterback more than the Cowboys, and Tony Romo was seemingly on an upswing after his gutsy performance last week, as he rolled the Cowboys to a 24 point lead. But then, inexplicably, the momentum completely reversed, and everything went south for Romo and the ‘Boys. The wheels started falling off in the third quarter as the Lions picked off not one but TWO Romo passes, and returned both for touchdowns. The Tony Romo Show had suddenly taken an un-wanted plot twist, though the scenes were familiar — first Cowboys owner Jerry Jones came down to the sideline, where his attempt to corral his errant gunslinger ended in a blatant snubbing. Then the Cowboys finished the game with a singularly blatant display of idiocy, as Romo hit Felix Jones, who forgot it was a 4th down play and ran out of bounds before he picked up the first down! That’s on your quarterback — Romo didn’t know what down it was. That’s embarrassing, but indicative of the kind of player Romo is: hot and cold in equal measures, yet always presented as the man. But he isn’t, and that’s the biggest problem with the Cowboys… HIM. Time and time again he has proven that he is NOT the guy you want holding the game in his hands when the chips are down. And while it’s true that I enjoyed the Cowboys loss more than the Lions victory, all props to the Detroit Lions, who are born again hard, and at 4-0 are tied with the only other unbeaten team (The Green Bay Packers) for first place atop the NFC North.
They must be feeding the north divison whatever they gave Romo last week because not only did the Lions triumph but Green Bay retained their unbeaten status behind an incredible performance from QB Aaron Rodgers. The weird thing about Rodgers is that he really made it look easy as the Packers crushed the so-sad Denver Broncos 49-23. The Bears are fighting to get back on track and did so with a 34-29 victory over Carolina. The only exception in this strong division is sadly enough the Minnesota Vikings, who are one of my favorite teams. [My choices were made as a child and based entirely on how the uniform looked. Growing up right outside of D.C., naturally the Redskins were my team, but I liked the Chiefs, because their uniforms looked sorta like the Redskins, the Raiders (black and silver rules), and the Vikings (because they had horns).] So when Donavan McNabb went there in the off-season, I knew it was going to be a tough season. Quite simply, he SUCKS. There was a reason they ran him out of Philly. He blew last year in D.C., and he blows now. The Vikings have one chance, and you don’t have to PONDER too hard to figure out what it is. Just do it NOW!
The Giants squeaked out a 31-27 win on the merit of one of the worst calls in NFL history. You would not believe how complicated these rules can get, and I understand the idea behind it, but they still blew the call, and as a result the Cardinals went down again. But what can you say, people don’t respect teams named after birds!
The Bills came back to earth, as they lost to the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20. The Houston Texans had a huge win over the visiting Steelers, 17-10, as Pittsburgh’s season now hangs in the balance depending on whether Big Ben’s foot is broken. The Pats righted the ship with a 31-19 win over the Oakland Raiders, and Atlanta beat the Seahawks, 30-28, in the Battle-of-the-Teams-Named-After-Birds-Bowl. There were other games, but alas, it’s time for lunch. See you next week!
– Dave Brockie
