RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Wednesday, September 19

NFL WK 3: West division teams

We move to the western divisions this week. In case you were wondering how I choose that bullshit, basically after week one, I looked at the four directions of divisions, and the one with the worst record (East) I did first. This one is the worst of the other three after two weeks, so in each four week cycle of this bullshit (haha, that's assuming I do this that long; frankly, I'm stoked I made it two weeks in a row; it's not like I'm fucking Bill Simmons with stoner fratboys checking my column before they ride around pretending they're doing sales calls all day long or some shit), I will build up to the best divisions as a whole. Then at the end, I'll figure out some bullshit for the playoffs probably. Maybe not. Just enjoy it while it lasts, if it's enjoyable.

#1: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (1-1; #6 overall) - I've got some sad news for you if a Chargers fan, but you're doomed. Last year was as close as you'll get to sniffing a Super Bowl, regardless of how great L.T., Merriman the Destructor, and All-Pro Power Forward Antonio Gates end up being. You are now cursed with Norv Turner, seriously who will go down as the worst coach to ever coach so many games. Like, I don't even understand why the fuck they thought this was a good idea. At least Martyball gets you deep into the playoffs before it crumbles, giving the greedy owners an extra home game or two if they're lucky, to cash in on alternate color Tomlinson jersey sales. Norv Turner, for as great an offensive coordinator as he may be, sucks as a head coach. I am a Redskins fan, so I saw it firsthand. I don't know what it is - his poor childhood or whatever water heater accident that caused him to have Mask Lite facial complexions, but he is too damned complacent, and a football team is gonna take on their coach's personality. Again, in comparison to Schottenheimer, with ol' Marty, you knew you were good, knew you could smash motherfuckers in the face for the whole regular season, but once it turned January, you would have doubts. With Norv, there is no smashface attitude, no go for the kill mentality - straight pussyfooting around the field for sixteen weeks, which will usually leave them one game out of the playoffs. I think the Chargers probably have enough raw talent to actually make the playoffs, but this is a sinking ship, no doubt about it. By the end of the year, they might only be like #3 or #4 in the western divisions, L.T. will be regarded as Shaun Alexander's AFC partner as pussy running back with no heart, Shawne Merriman will be questioned as propped up by anabolics since he'll start to suck more, and Philip Rivers will be Ryan Leaf to Eli Manning's role as Peyton... well, he'll be Ryan Leaf too probably. But Philip Rivers seems to have that deer in the headlights look a little too much. Before the season, motherfuckers were like, "Yo, Chargers in the Super Bowl, dude, for real," but let me tell you, Norv Turner's unhungered desire runs deep, and I guarantee you the Chargers lose a game or two to even the shitty Raiders and Chiefs this year, not to mention sucking it up far worse in bigger marquee match-ups than anyone would've expected. I'm interested in seeing what happens, since basically you gave Norv Turner the keys to a Lamborghini, and he was pretty adept at fucking up a Thunderbird and Pinto in Washington and Oakland before, so once he leaves this Lamborghini wrapped around a yield sign by the end of the year, what're you gonna do? Fire him and try to sucker some other chump in after you fired two coaches in two years? Hope you can throw enough money under Bill Cowher's scowl to slap a smile across his Sgt. Slaughter-assed face? They should've made a reality TV show about the Chargers.

#2: SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS (2-0; #7 overall) - The 49ers are back! Haha, yeah, whatever. The NFC West is four mediocre teams battling each other to trick the rest of the league into thinking they're good. Early on, it looks like the 49ers have the inside track to that role, with Frank Gore playing the role as UNHERALDED SUPERSTAR OVERLOOKED BECAUSE OF MEDIA EAST COAST BIAS, until the 49ers lose a home playoff game to whatever wild card team travels to the NFC West 2007 Divisional Champion's stadium in January. Then again, it's the NFC, in the era of free agency mediocrity, so the 49ers could conceivably rampage into the Super Bowl, to get crushed. The coach wearing a suit is some dope shit though. I'm sure the NFL is already working on team color ties so they can encapsulate Mike Nolan's traditional fashion sense into their merchandising coffers as well.

#3: DENVER BRONCOS (2-0; #10 overall) - John Elway is an all-time huge fucking shithead, for being a homo and refusing to play for the Colts until they traded his rights to the stupid Broncos, where he horsefaced his way into the Hall of Fame in Euro soccerfag uniforms. He is All-Time Broncos Hero. Mike Shanahan is the ugliest coaching man in the NFL, and when you see that weird blank worried angry look on his face, you just know he's probably molested his grandkids or someone's grandkids, and that's how he got that ugly worried look on his face. Shit, he might've been involved in whatever govt. cult used to sex up Jon-Benet Ramsey then killed her because her Project Monarch training was taking well enough. And Shanahan is the All-Time Great Broncos Brain. What this all means is the Denver Broncos private team flights can't wreck into enough snow-capped Rocky Mountain crevices to satisfy my cynical soul.

#4: ARIZONA CARDINALS (1-1; #15 overall) - For the seventh year in a row, the Cardinals are going to have their break-out year. This has been proven because last week they recovered an uncharacteristic fumble by whichever Hasselbeck QBs Seattle, then kicked a field goal to barely win at home in front of 149 people, plus four drunks on the mountainside who didn't feel like actually paying to see the game. And maybe this is their year for a playoff appearance, which I think the NFL's powers that be guarantee them one every fifteen years or so. But that's it, so if they make it this year, just plan on waiting till like 2020 to see it again, regardless of how many much-hyped college personalities they add to their team. Bill Bidwell has loser written all over his team, and he plays that role for the NFL happily. The truth of the matter is, they will never be good. The Arizona Cardinals could have conceivably started a human cloning research facility in underground bunkers in the desert right after it was certain the 1980s Robot Neil Lomax project was a failure, and they could have a 19-year-old Jim Brown, a 17-year-old Joe Montana, plus an 18-year-old Lawrence Taylor and a 16-year-old Lawrence Taylor genetically tweaked out to hype up as if Gatorade was cocaine, so that he'd be in "top form" for every minute of every game, calling timeouts in underground secret field workout against practice teams composed of unemployed NFL Europa all-stars, so that he can slug big cups of Gatorade then jump completely over the offensive line to break the quarterback like Joe Theismann on every play; and they could have all these guys hidden to uncover all at once when they're sure clones pass NFL standards, and they've trained these guys to be loyal Cardinals so that there's no sketchy free agency testing to muddy up the situation, and field this super team and STILL lose, because they are the Bill Bidwell brand of football Cardinals.

#5: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (1-1; #19 overall) - The Seahawks' uniforms are too dreary for them to ever be actually good. Plus, Shaun Alexander is probably the most obviously closeted gay dude the NFL has ever had since Emmitt Smith retired. And when I say gay, I don't just mean likes other men, but I mean soft, weak, and a fucking pussy who crumbles when physical conflict tests him. I can easily say that because in all my life, I've never gotten my ass kicked by a homosexual (although, I have gotten my ass kicked over ten times, and statistically that would mean at least one of those guys was gay, but realistically, none of those guys were gay; I mean, let's be realistic here). And one day, I may get my ass kicked by a homosexual, which won't really make me feel bad at all, because I don't hate gays; I just stereotype them. On that day a gay dude kicks my ass, I'll be all like, "Damn, I guess all gays aren't pussies," and I'll get up, dust myself off, wipe my bloody nose on my bootleg cloned Jim Brown #32 Cardinals alternate night home game black jersey, and go buy that gay dude a beer, saying, "I'm sorry bro, let me buy you a beer." And we'll drink and it'll all be over because if the dude who gets his ass kicked can put it aside, then why shouldn't everybody else, and I'll tell other people at the bar, "That gay dude over there, he's one of the good ones, and anyone who's got a problem with him has got to talk to me."

#6: ST. LOUIS RAMS (0-2; #29 overall) - I've got one of those really stupid fantasy football teams that ruin football for you, and Steven Jackson was my highest drafted running back. He's sucked it up this year, as the Rams came out flat and look even flatter with no more Orlando Pace. I'm not sure out of the drunk driver dude they even have a defense anymore, and come on, who the fuck thought a guy named Marc Bulger was gonna pan out? He sounds like a metalhead delinquent who does acid at his job as the overnight shelf stocker in the grocery store. Dudes with names like that can't win big games - they either have to have fake '80s movies skater kid nemesis names like Peyton Manning or Brad Johnson, or they have to fake porn star names like Joe Montana or Trent Dilfer. A dude named Marc Bulger is not one to put your offense behind, especially after you used up a lifetime's worth of stupid-name QB good luck with Kurt Warner. I suggest they draft one of those dudes named Colt and start rebuilding.

#7: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (0-2; #30 overall) - I really enjoy Herm Edwards weird skull shape and his odd player-friendly enthusiasm. He reminds me of the high school basketball coach who has to coach health/P.E. since coach's are supposed to be teachers, so basically he just talks in this weird friendly monotone shocked talk, plays films for every day of health class, and might make you play softball one day but usually just gives you free reign to do whatever during phys ed, and letting you do it outside on the baseball field when it's warm out. It's sad that the Chiefs are so deeply shitty that this'll be the end of Herm's NFL run most likely.

#8: OAKLAND RAIDERS (0-2; #32 overall) - Whenever I get down because I'm a Redskins fan and the worst player on my team is the owner, I make myself remember Al Davis. I actually caught the end of that game last week and I think it was pretty obvious to everybody on earth that Janikowski was gonna blow that one. I like the swerve of the late timeout allowing him to feel he didn't blow out to increase the crushing psyche blow of actually blowing out for real. That's pretty much the Raiders. I think Raider Nation would be better served spending some of that time they spend cultivating their stadium costumes to trying to spike Davis' food with arsenic. The best thing that could ever happen for the Raiders would be for Davis to die, a collective fronted by Too Short buys the team, who hires Ted Hendricks to be GM and Bill Romanowski to be coach, and in his last week of his first preseason, he takes all players on the bubble and fights them and whoever doesn't get in a good fight is who gets cut. Actually, they should have hired Bill Romanowski. I'm also not even sure if Ted Hendricks is alive or he's killed himself from too many brain concussions already, but I bought the Kenny Stabler autobiography one time for a quarter at a Goodwill store, and I read up to when he stopped being a pussymongering alcoholic s superstar quarterback, and the story of Ted Hendricks signing with the Raiders as a free agent, everybody wondering if he would fit in, and then Hendricks riding into the first practice that year on a horse in his Raiders uniform with a spiked berserker helmet, that's the greatest shit ever. The NFL needs more linebackers like that and less guys that make masochistic homos masturbate when the linebacker is interviewed postgame stripped down to his Under Armour tank top.

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