#1: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (13-2, #2 overall) - It has sorta seemed like the Colts have been playing in preseason mode for most of the season, almost like the Lakers used to do when Shaq and Kobe were their two-headed monster winning rings at will. While the Patriots have been in Madden '08 mode, running up records and stats like that shit's on rookie mode, the Colts have just been kinda plugging along without real note, winning motherfucking games even though half the team in injured. Marvin Harrison is finally about to fire it up in real-time, and the Colts might just be ready to peak the same time as the Patriots have been struggling to maintain their high level of dominance. Even though I don't think Tony Dungy has anymore songs to sacrifice to the Molochian Gods of Football Success, I can still see them beating the Patriots to be the AFC's Super Bowl representative. In fact, I'd say that shit is almost a guarantee, as the Pats have become the fair weather juggernaut the Colts used to be accused of, and Belichick is mad conceited, which is how Bill Parcels got after he won two Super Bowls, and he never won another. Which leaves the silent mulatto scrunchface of Tony Dungy to unleash his mastermind-by-default gameplans in whatever commercial extravaganza homeland the Super Bowl is at this year. And THE FUTURE for the Colts is a Super Bowl appearance, and probably a loss. NFC4Life motherfuckers.
#2: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (11-4, #4 overall) - The Jaguars have quietly became the Reverse Chargers this year, in that they are the much-hyped #3 team of contention, but they do it with pure old school smashmouth mentality (you are required, when talking about football, to say "smashmouth" when talking about real ugly-assed teams coached by former linebackers; it's like Football Dipshittery 101 rule #27). They got no Pro Bowlers, which of course will be used for some nonsense "Nobody on Earth respects us like we deserve to be respected" motivational fodder, yet eventually half the starters in the NFL make the Pro Bowl once everybody starts pulling out. Jack Del Rio is a great goofy-assed dude to lead a football team, and it'd be perfect if the Jaguars moved to L.A. and changed their name to something ominous with black jerseys to sell in a second Raiders gangbanger renaissance. Man, I remember my boy McCarthy got the full length stuffed down Raiders jacket that went like down past your knees and shit, and that was the pimpest shit ever. Well, it was the first two weeks or so, and then it was just the same jacket that used to be the new hotness that he always wore. That's the thing with fresh ass ghetto fashions... you either have to move between localities to always seem fresh, or you have to hustle a ton of money to keep the freshest shit available. We used to know these two brothers (literal brothers, as well as semi-racist stereotypical "brothers") that dealt most of the crack in my hometown, and Timmy - the older one - he lived in the hotel and would wear shit like two or three times and then never again. Like he never washed clothes, because once the shit was dirty enough to wash, he'd never wear it again anyways. I remember we went by there one night to take him to get some whiteboy weed from some other dudes we knew, and there was a fucking sheepskin jacket in the trash. I asked him what was wrong with it and he said, "Nothing, I just done had it for the last month." He told me I could have it, but I was a goofy assed ponytail whiteboy, and there's no way wearing a fucking sheepskin jacket would've looked anything but ridiculously stupid on me. Plus, all my racist family members would've said shit like "you been hanging out with them niggers too much" like they did when I used to wear a pair of bright yellow parachute pants in 7th grade. Man, I wonder what those racist family members think of the day-glo anime print hoodies motherfuckers wear nowadays? I bet that's like space age hyperspeed negro ridiculousness to them. But THE FUTURE of the Jaguars is playoffs, first round road win, then ridiculous frustration in Indianapolis again.
#3: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (9-6, #10 overall) - Jon Gruden is again a genius, because his second string nobodies turned out to be better-than-expected once the higher profile starters got injured, and Jeff Garcia continued to show he's probably the best quarterback nobody cares to keep around. He and Brad Johnson should start a quarterback school together, and get their Tom Emansky hustle going. Seems to me Jon Gruden is destined to be the NFC's Brian Billick for the next ten years - a guy with overrated mental acumen who lives off a Super Bowl ring far past his usefulness to the franchise he won it with. THE FUTURE for the Buccaneers is co-starring in a wild card weekend game against the Giants in one of those games that's entertaining because it's the first week of the playoffs, but like two weeks later when the conference championships are being hyped, nobody remembers nor gives a fuck about it at all.
#4: TENNESSEE TITANS (9-6, #11 overall) - Win on Sunday night against the Colts' B-teamers and the Titans get to go to the playoffs. Not only do I think this is a ridiculous notion, as the Titans are bound to lose, but let's not forget Vince Young is the coverboy of Madden '08 and has yet to feel the curse. He's probably gonna get his inferior crucible ligament all sorts of fucked up. Right now, Young is the Tennessee media darling, but let's not forget that dude scored like the lowest score ever for a QB on the jock nerd test they give potential NFLees in pre-draft poking and prodding. If Michael Vick ended up being stupid enough to handle gambling money himself in a multi-state dogfighting ring, I can only imagine Vince Young will end up being involved in either child slavery ring or he'll be addicted to hydrocodone by the time he's 27. It is also interesting to me how Albert Haynesworth, who used to be to football analysts the scummy dude who stomped at that fat Cowboys dude's bare forehead with his cleats, is now the dominant honorable awesome interior lineman of unbeatitude on defense. It sucks seeing that dude in interview clips, because I just expect a guy named Albert Haynesworth to talk like Lennox Lewis, but he doesn't at all. THE FUTURE for the Titans is the reality that a predominantly running quarterback will never win shit. I love how this is somehow considered racist old line thinking by some people, as if you are underestimating the intelligence of black people by suggesting having a third running back under center is not a recipe for pro football success. My man Mavpa Van Cleef, who used to fuck around online but has disappeared, has had this two-quarterback offense bullshit he designed that he actually convinced his semi-pro football team to run some last year, and I've been thinking about it lately, as it concerns Michael Vick coming back in a few years. I think the two-quarterback thing could work if you had like a primary QB and secondary QB, so that a younger, less experienced guy like Young could take the secondary spot, maybe taking a quarter of the snaps during a game, but always on hand to run, and a more experienced guy like Vick could be the primary guy who takes more snaps and runs less, as ideally he would have figured out how to read defenses better by that stage of his career. And the younger guy gets all that time right back there to read the defense as well even when he's not taking the physical snap. With college football pumping up dudes like Dennis Dixon and Tim Tebow, this could be an easy reality, but just the same, the NFL has bullshit rules protecting the QB too much, which inevitably hurts the possibility of a two-quarterback system, because it creates the crazy grey area in what a QB is supposed to do, whereas the whole in-the-grasp, roughing-the-passer, NFL rulebook bullshit is geared towards thinking of the QB as a pocket presence to not be damaged so that the game can be intelligently executed on the field. To be honest, I'd prefer a more intuitive running QB offense, so long as it didn't just revert to bullshit wishbone offenses that didn't do shit but run the ball like it was still the days of Red Grange and Jim Thorpe.
#5: HOUSTON TEXANS (7-8, #18 overall) - Have the Texans turned a corner this year, or are they just doomed to eternal mediocrity? It is hard to say. Seems like they can't all be healthy all the time, as just as Andre Johnson is good to go, Matt Schaub is all fucked up. Mario Winans seems like a better #1 choice this year than he did last, but shit, with as much as number one picks get paid today, I don't think you can be economically successful with anyone unless they like Jim Brown everybody from their position for seven straight years. It sucks even more for the Texans because regardless of who they draft or how much of a cult of personality they have, they ain't gonna move shit in merchandise with those ugly assed uniforms. Even their alternate red jerseys are like something an NFL Europe team exec wiped his ass with during meetings with the ad agency coming up with logos and colors packages. THE FUTURE for the Texans is they will be the least prominent team in their own division forever, and the only people in their home state that will care for them over the Cowboys are ultra-disagreeable types who probably are from out-of-state anyways, thus not helping grow a solid fanbase. It's weird because whereas a team like Jacksonville or Seattle is mired in a low-level pro sports town that just won't possibly ever care enough to make a sizeable rabid fanbase, the Texans are in a great market but have the stupidest fucking team name and the stupidest fucking colors the NFL has ever doled out.
#6: NEW ORLEANS SAINTS (7-8, #20 overall) - The post-Katrina dream looks to be dead after last week's loss to the Eagles. Reggie Bush has been exposed as essentially a third down back, and Sean Payton exposed as just as much lucky as brilliant with his trick play-happy ass. Certainly starting 0-4, and having lost Deuce McAllister for most of the season, they showed well in the long run, but still coming into 2007, the one-two punch of a Saints Super Bowl run and multi-platinum success of Tha Carter 3 was going to resurrect New Orleans from its murky ashes. Instead, the former flamed out as even a wild card contender, and the latter ended up being a mixtape that pop cultural jackasses had a secret meeting somewhere I didn't know about to pretend like it was the best shit since Elvis Presley put on leather pants. Thus, outside of the drunk slut street level tit show in February, New Orleans is doomed. THE FUTURE of the Saints, if my franchise mode game I'm currently embroiled in on my late model Madden '07 set-up, is to trade away Eli Manning, who would always either throw an interception or just stand around and wait to get sacked 17 times a game, for the Browns #1 draft pick, where they get a promising young scrambling Big Ten quarterback with a big arm, who automatically leads them to four Super Bowls in a row, and counting. Also, Mike Singletary will become their coach, and he will create a new hyper-speed turnover-happy defense that basically starts only ends, linebackers, and cornerbacks, plus one hard hitting headhunter strong safety. Once I finish designing my own half-assed two-quarterback playbook, to be coached by Brett Favre once he moves into coordinator mode, to complement Singletary's imaginary defense, I figure the Saints will win every Super Bowl ever until real life's computer runs out of memory for more success.
#7: CAROLINA PANTHERS (6-9, #24 overall) - The Panthers have mostly been my number two favorite team ever since they started because, honestly, growing up in southside Virginia - which is basically the unwiped ass of Virginia - I identified far more with North Carolina than D.C. I'd go to the drag races in Roxboro with my uncle Ricky to run his Vega, and we'd go camping at Buggs Island along the Virginia/Carolina border. Meanwhile, D.C. was either sketchy and drug-ridden, or evil and authoritarian. And as I grew older, northern Virginia grew more cluttered and became the epitome of suburban sludgish stalling sprawl that stifles a country boy's soul like my own. Shit, I'd rather live amongst crackheads in the city than try to weasel my way through that eternal cul-de-sac purgatory. So if they had existed back in the day, I probably would've been down with them instead of the Skins. (You know, back in the early days of the NFL, the Redskins radio network covered most of the south as well as West Virginia, as there were no other teams until you got to Miami, which is why the Redskins have so many fans amongst old asses in that part of the country.) But even as a casual fan of Carolina, I can see that beyond the obvious injuries, they've been stuck in the same mode the past few seasons, with no real building of the next shit, which sucks, because Steve Smith is about as loveable an NFL player as you're gonna find. I don't know what the fuck happened to Julius Peppers, and their most recent Kevin Greene-style retarded whiteboy linebacker has been lost too concussions most of the time the past couple seasons, and fucking Jake Delhomme has profited long enough off that one good run he had to the Super Bowl a few years back. But fucking Vinny Testaverde? Come on man, I'm not gonna be the same dumb shit NFL dork dude who's like, "That spunky guy just won't quit, and his field generalmanship will only blah blah blah..." Fuck John Fox. Give him another year to fuck things up, and then the Panthers ought to be throwing money and private jets Bill Cowher's way, since he wants to stay settled in Carolina anyways, but you know them football coaching fuckers who retire of their own accord never actually retired and have to be run off by stun gun-wielding security guards after being fired by an irate owner to actually leave football behind. THE FUTURE of the Panthers is to waste a couple more years of Steve Smith's career.
#8: ATLANTA FALCONS (3-12, #27 overall) - I would feel bad for Arthur Blank for this past year, with Michael Vick lying to him then getting sent to federal prison, and with Bobby Petrino lying to him then quitting to go to fucking Arkansas, and with Bill Parcels lying to him and then basically taking the exact same gig with the Dolphins, except for the fact my stupid Home Depot credit card just kicked in ultra-interest right before Christmas on the riding mower I bought last year, so my fake non-money wasn't straight enough to get my kids more useless shit they didn't really need but coveted because they had seen it in glossy catalogs in celebration of the birth of a jew magician. So fuck Arthur Blank. THE FUTURE for the Falcons is fucking terrible. I mean, I don't know if any one team has become so fucked up in one year's time in any major sport ever. If the NFL had soccerfag style relegation, the Falcons would be a leading candidate to get pre-eminently dropped to the second-tier.
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