Necessary Roughness, Divisional Playoff Weekend: I Hate Every Team That is Still Playing

Greetings, NFL fans! The column is a day late because of the regular reasons: reasons like blow, and bitches, and babes, and staying up all night eating sausages, just daring my heart to explode, much like RGIII’s knee did. As a fan this season ended for me a week ago in an ugly smear of events that in my memory will forever suck. It really hurt to see RG III go out in such a blaze of ugly idiocy. As soon as he was hurt in the first half he should have been benched, and it shouldn’t take hindsight to tell us that. When I wrote last week’s column I was still in shock, still hopeful that the injury wasn’t that severe. I couldn’t have been more wrong. RG’s injury was so severe that it required immediate surgery, so as to optimize the length of the recovery, which will be going on well into next season. Why? Because, in what should go down in sports history as one of the most colossal bonehead maneuvers ever, Skins coach Mike Shanahan chose to continue to play a QB who was obviously in agony — and who could not run without displaying his entire set of gums — and had the planting accuracy of a tumbleweed farmer. The damage is immense, for so many reasons. Let me opine…

Shanahan proved he is either a completely gutless idiot or incredibly stupid when he let his QB’s opinion override not only his own doctors but especially HIS OWN opinion. This in part was due to the pity party RG III threw himself when this happened earlier in the season. When he should have been giving mad props to back-up QB Kirk Cousins for saving the day, he bitched loudly (actually acted more like a petulant child) about not being let back in the game. And we let him get away with it, so enamored were we with this wondrous player who had guided the Skins to their first NFC East title since 1999. So rather than have a pair, Shanahan buckled to his QB’s disastrous decision to play on a leg the only possible use of which could have been cooking it and feeding it to the team at halftime in hopes that they would somehow gain his super powers. Then the leftovers could be sold as extra toppings on those suck-ass Subway sandwiches that RG III has been relentlessly schilling all year that I bet he never fucking eats. Let’s not even mention that the Skins were up 14-0 and the Skins defense was tough all fucking day. But they played him anyway, used him like a horse, and if he was one they probably would have had to shoot him.

But then it just gets worse… seems that the subject of the Skins returning to RFK and D.C. has come up, and Mayor Vincent Gray, the same Mayor who has been pimping the Skins brief renaissance with such vigor, piles on the agony by declaring that he would not allow the Skins to play in D.C. unless they changed their name. This is a subject I have avoided all year in a truly gutless manner. What better time to trumpet this unpopular crusade than when the Skins are enjoying their first successful season in years? I just didn’t have the heart to do it, but I never forgot about it either. I have said it before and I will say it again: the name is a racist in every sense of the word, and is undoubtedly offensive to many. It is a complete insult to the indigenous people of this country and any other forward-thinking person who has empathy for their grievances. I personally see the name as a curse and the Skins will continue to suffer until they change it.

That’s enough bitching about my team. The Skins went down hard and ugly, but there were other teams that still had games to play.

And damn it if there wasn’t some damn good football played in the second week of the playoffs. Things got off to a great start with the Ravens vs. the Broncos. Sure, we had to endure the Ray Lewis show for another week but at least we got an awesome game as the Broncos completely caved at home. Up until then I had Peyton as my MVP, so awed was I with his comeback. But then I saw him on a fucking Papa John’s commercial and I knew the Broncos were headed for trouble. No one can even begin to understand what it is like to have your neck operated on FOUR times in the space of less than a year and a half, then come back and play QB for an NFL team, much less lead them to the top-seed in the AFC. Just unreal. So after the Skins crappy capitulation my hopes had fallen on Peyton, and then to watch the Broncos fail so utterly… I mean how does a D as good as Denver’s give up such a huge TD while in the prevent? And then Manning throws that pick in double OT, rolling to the right and throwing to the left? His arm was obviously shot by then, and the Broncos season was over. To see vets like Champ Bailey and Manning play so ineptly in such a clutch situation was as much a shock as it was a disappointment. But it still was as good a game as you will ever see in the playoffs, and was definitely the stand out game of the weekend…

… Because pretty much after the Packers lost to the 49ers I was done with the whole ugly mess. I don’t really care about any of the teams left in the playoffs, and for some reason I am really starting to hate Colin Kaepernick and his impersonation of Rodin’s “The Thinker.” Plus I can’t back any team from California except the Raiders. California is where homeless people go to shit. I can’t back the Seahawks after I heard reports of their players deliberately targeting RGIII’s injured leg, though I am sure most teams would do the same thing. That and the fact that they have busted the Skins’ asses out of the playoffs like three fucking times now. But I still tried to get into the game, even though both of the teams are named after birds, which is racist towards birds. And even if the Falcons did scratch out a semi-exciting victory, it was tempered with the feeling that these notorious chokers will continue to be the Washington Capitols of the NFL. As for the Patriots… well, what can you say? They are like Vulcans or something, a relentless football-playing machine, always competitive and frequently phenomenal. They certainly were so this weekend as they piled it on the Texans, 41-28. Yay. I couldn’t care less! Please, let someone else win for once, just go fuck your super-model babe wife and spend money. I’m sick of them winning all the time, and I am sick to death of Ray Lewis telling me all about God. My only hope is that both teams just destroy themselves in the game next week… actually, I would be happy if Ray Lewis and Tom Brady just ran into each other and exploded.

So what have we got left, besides that completely horrific report about Junior Seau? Just two games left before the big one. Just because I can’t take it anymore, I am gonna take the Pats over the Ravens. The fact that I may have to witness not one but TWO Ray Lewis entrances makes my soul weep. Please, please lose!

As far as Atlanta, hell, I’m going with Matty Ice. Maybe the birds ain’t that bad. But they better get this job done or they are in danger of becoming the Buffalo Bills of the N.F.C., only worse!

So it’s the Falcons vs. the Patriots in the Super Bowl and the dirty birds are gonna win! I could live with that…