What We Learned From the NFL Divisional Round and What It Means For the Conference Championships

By J-Dub and Meehan

It’s no secret the NFL is king in America, and nothing proves it quite like Conference Championship Sunday.  It’s like this:  If you live in the Eastern Time Zone like J-Dub, the games are on at 3 and 6:30 p.m.  If you live in the Central Time Zone like Meehan, they air at 2 and 5:30.  What that means is that the NFL basically doesn’t give a fuck about you eating dinner.  They know no matter what your usual schedule is, you’re going to break it, and you’re going to do so with a bigger smile on your face than a lonely guy who just got mailed a Viagra sample and a free weekend of Cinemax.

Not pictured: The people in this family who matter

Kommissar Goodell and the rest of the NFL Politburo know that, and that’s why they schedule these games making sure that 80% of the U.S. population has to choose between football and feeding themselves. Do you think it is a coincidence that one of the league’s biggest stars spends his time hawking those tomato-sauce herpes discs Papa John’s flings?  Face it, the people who think that shit is good pizza are…well…the people who think that shit is good pizza.

What We Learned From Week 15 of the 2013 NFL Season: Truth or Lie Edition, Part III

By J-Dub and Meehan

As we have been doing all season, we are breaking down things that you need to know as we head into the play-offs. As we get closer, that means that issues with team get more magnified. That also means that a lot of assumptions that have been held about the teams who are still play-off contenders become true or get exposed as just another pack of lies. So, without any further adieu, here are this week’s questions…

1) Truth or Lie: The Philadelphia Eagles Defense is a joke.

We Say: Truth

They allowed 29 First downs and almost 50 points against a Minnesota Vikings team with no Adrian Peterson and they made Matt Cassel look like the second coming of Fran Tarkenton. As brilliant as Nick Foles and the offense have been, the defense has been the exact inverse.

Meehan’s Thoughts for the Day 11/22/13

In the sports world there are certain things that as writers that call for us to voice our opinions, yet don’t warrant an entire column in their honor. So from this point forward, I’ll be popping in from time to time to let you know what I think about some of the recent happenings in sports. Let’s get started…

What We Learned From Week 11 of the 2013 NFL Season

By J-Dub and Meehan

Up until now, we’ve been consulting our medical expert Dr. Kelly Brackett for his prognoses on NFL teams. But now that we are clearly in the homestretch, it’s time to shift our focus from the survivors and the casualties to an analysis of the survival of the fittest. That means we change our expert as well; rather than looking for overall health, this becomes an exercise in actuarials…or to make it sound less insurance-like..it’s time to look at the odds of each possible contender making the play-offs.  For that, we have invited legendary movie odds-maker Sam “Ace” Rothstein for his thoughts.

AFC:

1) Indianapolis Colts (7-3)

Remaining Games:

• @Arizona
• Tennessee
• @Cincinnati
• Houston
• @Kansas City
• Jacksonville

Odds of Making Play-offs:

Metaphysical certainty. Steal as much money as you can get your hands on, then bet twice that much that Indianapolis will be in the play-offs.

Key Facts:

With six games to go, the Colts have a three-game lead in the AFC South over their closest competitor, and they just beat them on the road with a dramatic comeback victory.The Colts will make the playoffs because no one else in the AFC South will step up and challenge them.  The Titans are in second place, and the other two teams might as well be Terri Schiavo two days after they yanked her feeding tube.  They’ve already beaten Seattle, San Francisco, and the Broncos, and by the time they get to the Kansas City Chiefs, both teams could be just resting up for January.

What We Learned From Week 8 of the 2013 NFL Season

By J-Dub and Meehan

Yet another week has passed in the sportsgasm that is the NFL season, and that means it is time for us to tell you some things you need to know without the self-serving spin those assbags at ESPN will never give you. We know this because if you think you can get real football information from concussion poster children like Merrill Hoge, you probably also didn’t know that tetherball originated as  ninth-century Tatar war ritual that involved chopping off the head of your dead enemy, tying it to a pole, and beating the shit out of it.

Think about that the next time you drive by an elementary school. Now let’s learn something about this week in the NFL. 

1) Your Official Dr. Kelly Brackett NFL Death Watch:

Philadelphia Eagles

• Cause of Death: Vick-Barkley Syndrome
• Autopsy Report with Bonus Comment:  For the record, Meehan accurately projected how the Eagles would start this game.  Ah yes…here it is…

“But after all that, really – it’s a 60% capacity Michael Vick versus Eli.  And after Vick leaves the game because he aggravates that hamstring yet again, it’ll be Matt Barkley in his place.”

What We Learned From Week 7 of the 2013 NFL Season

By J-Dub and Meehan

Yet another week has passed in the sportsgasm that is the NFL season, and that means it is time for us to tell you some things you need to know without the self-serving spin those assbags at ESPN will never give you. We know this because if you think you can get real football information from whichever fat-bag ex-player they’ve trotted out who makes a $1,500 suit look like a bursting sausage casing with buttons, you probably also didn’t know that kit-flying is a professional sport in Thailand.

Think about that the next time you want to tell us how much soccer sucks.

1) Your Official Dr. Kelly Brackett NFL Death Watch:

We started this bit a few weeks ago, and in addition to the death certificates we mailed out last week, there’s another autopsy report to share with you.

Minnesota Vikings:

• Cause of Death: Multiple Organ Failure
• Autopsy Report: This  death didn’t exactly have an obscure pathology. Taking a guy who got run out of town by the most dysfunctional franchise in the NFL (holy living fuck, for the first time this century that phrase is not being used in reference to the Oakland Raiders) and making him your starting quarterback is like taking a needle from the arm of an Ebola patient and using it to shoot 30 cc’s of battery acid into your eyeball. Make no mistake, this team is dead. If it wasn’t the fact that you saw the Giants spreading Josh Freeman all over the turf like he was 250 pounds of Jif Extra Creamy Peanut Butter, if it wasn’t the fact that Adrian Peterson couldn’t get anywhere with the ball, then the sight of Christian Ponder sitting on the sidelines knowing full well he will never see the field again had to tell Viking fans everywhere this team is done.  The part that is hard for us to understand is that Ponder was HUGE in the Vikes’ playoff run last season, so what happened? He suddenly didn’t get any more mediocre; he’s been amazingly consistent in his level of meh. The simple fact is the entire team got worse.

What We Learned From Week Six of the 2013 NFL Season

by J-Dub and Meehan

Yet another week has passed in the sportsgasm that is the NFL season, and that means it is time for us to tell you some things you need to know without the self-serving spin those assbags at ESPN will never give you. We know this because if you think you can get real football information from guys like Mike Greemberg and Mike Golic, you probably also don’t know that Alfred Kinsey, author of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), had a collection of 5 million wasps and could insert a toothbrush into his penis, bristle-end first.

You know that bit of knowledge just changed your life. Now, here’s some football facts that will do the same.

1) Your Official Dr. Kelly Brackett NFL Death Watch:

We started this bit last week, and it’s already time to mail out some death certificates.

New York Giants:

• Cause of Death: Chronic Turnover Syndrome
• Autopsy Report:  After eight interceptions in the fourth quarters of the first six games, Eli Manning is once again reduced to being the one in the family who’s going through a rough stretch.  This has caused Eli and the Giants to let their injuries absolutely destroy their chances of being successful.  The 2012-2013 New York Giants season has become the longest tip drill in history.

Jacksonville Jaguars:

• Cause of Death:  Self-inflicted gunshot wound to genital area
• Autopsy Report:  Even when it appeared that they were hanging with a good team, the Jaguars proved that they have no real firepower, except when it comes to shooting themselves.

Atlanta Falcons:

• Cause of Death:  Burst rectum from repeated anal rape with a sharp object
• Autopsy Report: The Falcons training center is starting to look like Jonestown 15 minutes after they made the Kool-Aid.  With the popularity of companies using temp services to provide labor for their short-term needs combined with the fact the Falcons are blowing out their knees putting on their shoes, the Atlanta Falcons medical staff now employs 15% of the U.S. population.

Oakland Raiders:

• Cause of Death: Hit by a semi loaded with flaming double-edged razor blades
• Autopsy Report: The fact that their two “best” receivers are Denarius Moore and Rod Streater means the offense ranks 27th in passing.  That translates to  gets you 7 fucking points a game if they are lucky.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers:

• Cause Of Death: Acute Schiano-itis
• Autopsy Report: Forget about the fact this team has more problems with MRSA than John Holmes had with AIDS.  Do we really need to do an autopsy on a team that has gone 0-3 at home and probably couldn’t beat the Jaguars right now.

Pittsburgh Steelers:

• Cause of Death: Old Age
• Autopsy Report:  Most likely available on the entire server Drunkathlete.com has allocated to Ben Roethlisberger. Sure, that’s not new stuff, but losing means all your foibles get rehashed by bloggers who do little more than eat Hot Pockets and masturbate to pictures of Linda Cohn. This death is even stranger from a franchise that both has no sense of urgency and usually doesn’t put up with this kind of shit.

2) Teams that Dropped to the Critical List:

Houston Texans:

We know, we know…There’s still ten games left in the season, and a lot can happen in that time, but let’s not kid anybody here.  This team is one re-run of Grey’s Anatomy away from a dirt nap.  There is no conceivable way that the Houston Texans play past December.  Really, getting the Rams at home should have been a fucking gift; instead, the Texans turned it into the Christmas tree that burns the house down.  Not only did the Texans lick more taint than Andy Dick in a Turkish bath house, they did so in a stadium and in front of a crowd meant to scare the shit out of opposing teams.   The  Texans looked uninspired, uncaring, and unworthy of January football.  Right now, we are calling the Texans will not make playoffs; you have to remember that it only took us both six weeks to bail on the team we had in the Super Bowl from the AFC. The only question really left in Houston is this the year finally the one which ends with the “Koob” getting fired.

Minnesota Vikings:

The horror that is the Vikings’ season really could be all 856 of those Friday the 13th movies. Just when you think it’s over, just when the sheriff shows up at the lakeside cabin and empties his 12-gauge through the face mask of the slasher, the killer pops back up, rips the sheriff’s face off and the horror continues. Put hockey masks on whichever heap the Vikings are trotting out as a quarterback and the concept becomes as clear as used Neutrogena.

Not only was getting slam-fucked by the Panthers the worst showing of this ghastly Vikings’ season so far, but let’s talk about the really scary question we won’t dare mention. Suffice it to say that we know Christian Ponder was not the answer. Matt Cassel is not the answer, and if anybody thinks Josh Freeman is the answer, this unmentionable question will keep coming back to life like the horror movie slasher.

There’s actually a simple reason for this.  Instead of putting the slasher through a wood-chipper and setting the bits on fire, the Vikings continually think they can solve the problem by giving the killer a shaving nick, then going back into the cabin to the naked, horny teen-agers who get machetes through their eyeballs. Josh Freeman is just another in a long line of shaving nicks that have finally bled the Vikings out.

3) Week Six proved to be the Bye Week for Offenses

Just look at all the teams who had offensive performances like watching a blind seal work a Rubik’s Cube…

Houston Texans: The progression from Matt Schaub to T.J. Yates is like going from HIV to full-blown AIDS (Yes, that’s the second AIDS joke we’ve made. Go dig up Ryan White and cry to him if you don’t like it).

Oakland Raiders: To make our “blind seal” analogy work for the Raiders, the seal is not only blind, but is wearing boxing gloves and it’s flipper’s are loaded with pharmacuetical-grade cocaine.

Minnesota Vikings: Time for this week’s “Fun with Homophones” moment.  The Vikings are describing their offensive situation as being “week to week,” largely because that’s really what their quarterback situation is all about. But, it really could also be called “weak to weak.”

Tennessee Titans: One of several teams with exactly zero offensive touchdowns.  Their only touchdown came from the Seahawks’ decision to have a “Garo Yepremien” moment.  Only touchdown was a result of a single play that was botched from the get go.

Pittsburgh Steelers: See above, with the difference being Pittsburgh’s only touchdown came from a play that came off the chalkboard broken. Sure, the Steelers won, but beating the Geno Smith-led Jets is really just getting a ribbon at the Special Olympics.  Honestly, the only time the Steelers looked good in the air was on a single play where the Jets’ coverage was worse than CNN’s quadrennial election special.  What we’re saying is even Wolf Blitzer could play man coverage against the Steelers and he wouldn’t even need to change his Fruit of the Looms. 

New York Jets: Geno Smith is just a fetal Josh Freeman. Next…

Washington Redskins: We said this last week, and we’ll say it again. The “read-option” concept without the threat of a running game is about as dangerous as a girl scout with rubber numchucks.  A while ago, J-Dub did a piece chronicling the connection between the Washington Redskins and Andre the Giant.  If the Redskins don’t figure out their lack of offensive prowess soon, Robert Griffin III might start looking more like Andre Ware. 

4) Joe Flacco Is Being Reduced to $120 million Plankton

Everybody is just eating Joe Flacco up, especially large marine filter-feeders. The man who rolled through the play-offs last year like an apex-predator shark has now been reduced to microscopic plankton the the seas of the NFL. sure, he showed a flash of the Flacco of old yesterday with that two-touchdown comeback in the 4th quarter quarter against the Packers, but the fact he and the Ravens came up short has been a microcosm of the Baltimore season, especially since Flacco started doing those god-awful McDonald’s commercials.

The Ravens offense, led by Flacco, has been as impotent as Wilford Brimley chuffing anti-Viagra; we all saw it Sunday against the Clay Matthews-less Packers.  Baltimore didn’t get a first rushing first down until the end of the third quarter, and they still should have won this game because the defense was handing out more knee damage than the baseball-bat scene at the end of Casino.  The failings of the Ravens so far this season is all about Flacco.

5) The whole “Tom Brady/Peyton Manning” conversation is ridiculous, because Brady can win when it matters.

As a “big game” quarterback, Tom Brady is now, and will always be better than Peyton Manning.  Sunday was just the latest example why. And Sunday we saw exactly why. When 98% of guys who’ve started at quarterback in the NFL  since the mid-1980s would have hung their head and declared the moment a loss, especially after that bizarre Bill Belichick 4th-down call that should have lost the game for  New England, and after the Patriots’ most experienced wide receiver got hurt, Brady gutted up and led the shell of the Patriots’ on a game-winning drive over a legitimate Super Bowl contender in the New Orleans Saints.

Meanwhile, Peyton Manning went out and stumbled through an ugly win against an even uglier team in Jacksonville. It was obvious during large stretches during that Bronco-Jaguar game that Manning was mailing this one in, particularly when he gift-wrapped that pick-six to Jacksonville linebacker Paul Pozlusny. While we could, we won’t bore you with yet another rundown of Peyton Manning’s “big-game” failures. Instead, let’s just look at the moments of truth we saw on Sunday.

Peyton Manning looked pretty mediocre against a team of NFL rejects, all while he has an offense stocked with weapons suited to his liking; meanwhile Brady has an offense made from a slightly-better class of NFL rejects whom are 5-1 largely for no other fucking reason than Tom Brady. But the biggest moment came in the 4th quarter in New England, when not only did Brady pull out the most-improbable of victories, he did so after throwing one of the most hair-brained and confusing picks you’ll ever see leave his fingertips.  Brady is headed to the Hall of Fame based on his ability to be a big man in big situations, even if his team has done a wonderful job of failing him in the past few years.

Now, having said that, it is important to point out the Patriots may easily be the worst 5-1 team we’ve ever seen, and we sure as shit understand there are a ton of haters out who want to jump all over the Patriots, and to many of you, we have this to say…

6) There are far too many Patriots’ fans who are stupid Yuppie fuckwads who prematurely bailed on this team.

Gillette Stadium in the 4th quarter.

What happened yesterday in Gillette Stadium proves what J-Dub said about a lot of Patriot fans a long time ago.  The fact the tens of thousands of “Patriots Fans” heard Brady’s comeback drive on their car radios is an absolute fucking disgrace.  The “wine and cheese” crowd in Foxboro decided “beating traffic” was more important that hanging around for the outcome of a game that could prove pivotal in New England’s entire season.  Yeah, we get they may be the worst 5-1 team ever, but the fact remains they are still 5-1.  Considering the fact the Patriots were within a score of winning against a Super Bowl contender, and that the Broncos are going to lose eventually means many so-called “Patriot Fans” bailed on a moment which looks to have HUGE play-off implications.

Despite that, they turned their back on a guy that has led them to three Super Bowls; a guy who got the ball back two separate times with a solid chance to win after the “fans” headed for the parking lot.  All you had to do was wait for the obligatory “crowd” shots during that game to see that least half the “crowd” left in the middle of the 4th quarter.  People like this make us here at SBM want to force feed them their own methane gas.

The “I want to beat traffic” people are all useless pieces of shit who shouldn’t even be at sporting events in the first fucking place.  They should all be at home looking up what Cat Stevens changed his name to after he converted to Islam. These are the same assholes who wanted to get out of that parking lot because despite their “hardcore big city mentality” there is a hole in their soul that would widen substantially if somebody were to scratch their Prius. Worse yet, their Dave Matthews Band CD might skip and they might spill some Samuel Adams “Autumn Northeastern Liberal Prick” all over their cargo shorts.

These people are not real fans. These people couldn’t name position players, they’re there because their cousin (who follows the remaining members of Grateful Dead around the country) got tickets. They figured since the dank from Vermont wasn’t coming in until later that night, they might as well go a football game because it would increase the number of times they said “Hell yeah, dude” without getting punched in the throat.

What We Learned From Week Five of the 2013 NFL Season

by J-Dub and Meehan

Yet another week has passed in the sportsgasm that is the NFL season, and that means it is time for us to tell you some things you need to know without the self-serving spin those assbags at ESPN will never give you. We know this because if you think you can get real football information from guys like Ron Jaworski and Chris Berman, you probably also don’t know that testing NFL players for human  growth hormone is a waste of time because they’ve already got a substance made in a lab somewhere in Eastern Europe that will turn punters into Rambo, it’s made from aborted Guatemalan fetuses, and there’s no test for it.

1) The Cleveland Browns May Have Been The Inspiration For The Movie “Major League.”

Remember the scene in that movie when the manager calls the team together and tells them the owner is trying to tank the season? Remember the moment when Jake Taylor says “there’s only one thing left to do…win the whole fucking thing.” We really get that vibe off the Browns.  Picture them sitting in the locker room reading a local paper which has them dead and buried, when Brian Hoyer stands up and does his best Jake Taylor impression. They’ve ripped off three straight wins since that trade.

This is what we think happened.  At some point, Trent Richardson just started acting like too much of a bitch, demanded a trade, and then every media outlet in the country claimed that the Browns had sold their season. We mentioned that as well, but we said it in the sense that flushing the toilet is a GOOD thing.  Well, just look at what is going on in Cleveland.

Those very same guys in that very same locker who got pissed at Trent Richardson were unified by the fact that everyone thought they were a bunch of nobodies and have done nothing since but to take that fact, wrap it barbed wire, and shove it up the collective ass of all those who had them dead and buried. If you doubt that, then ask yourself if it is a coincidence that the Browns have won every game since that the Richardson trade. While asking that, remind yourself that winning streak includes a brute-force win over a Bengals team that made the playoffs last year and who just took down the Patriots.

If you still don’t want to buy this, consider the fact Brian Hoyer (who has clearly seemed to be the leader in this resurgence) got injured at the beginning of this game and Brandon Wheeden stepped right in like he’d been getting first team reps all week. Face it, we’ve been telling you for week the Browns aren’t as bad as people think, and a big reason for that is they have a chip on their shoulder, an axe to grind, something to prove, or whatever other bullshit hack cliché you want.  This team is going to be a real test for whoever lines up against them for the erst of this season.

Too bad that just like in Major League, this all ends after this season. Like we said in our Week 3 piece, the Browns are auditioning guys for draft day trades, because this team is obviously going to rebuild using the draft.

What We Learned From Week Four of the 2013 NFL Season

by J-Dub and Meehan

Yet another week has passed in the sportsgasm that is the NFL season, and that means it is time for us to tell you some things you need to know without the self-serving spin those assbags at ESPN will never give you. We know this because if you think you can get real football information from guys like Chris Mortenson and Adam Schefter, you probably also don’t know that every menu item at Denny’s is 40% Soylent Green.

Mmmmmmmmm…Denny’s!

1) The reports of the demise of the San Francisco 49ers might have been a bit premature.

For the entire week leading up to Thursday night, all we heard about was how Colin Kaepernick is not really a good quarterback and how the 49er defense can’t stop anybody with out Aldon Smith.  Yeah, about that…funny, but somehow we stopped hearing that shit come Friday morning.

Clearly, they didn’t need Aldon Smith to beat the sorry-ass Rams, and it’s even more clearly a good thing that Smith’s liver is getting a little “me” time anyway.

As far as the offense was concerned, the lesson learned here was that Colin Kaepernick is not the entire 49er offense. Anquan Boldin rolled through the Ram secondary like a Vicodin through Amy Winehouse, but the real difference was Kaepernick’s ability to rely on Frank Gore, who racked up a rushing average of 7.65 yards per carry.  See, the dirty little secret nobody who keeps talking about “read-option quarterbacks” wants to admit is is that the entire “read-option” concept only works when there’s a running back that keeps defenses worried about the threat of the run. Russell Wilson has Marshawn Lynch, Michael Vick has LeSean McCoy, and Colin Kaepernick has Frank Gore.

What We Learned From Week Three of the 2013 NFL Season

by J-Dub and Meehan

Yet another week has passed in the sportsgasm that is the NFL season, and that means it is time for us to tell you some things you need to know without the self-serving spin those assbags at ESPN will never give you. We know this because if you think you can get real football information from guys like Chris Mortenson and Adam Schefter, you probably also don’t know that everything at Taco Bell is made of the same five elemental ingredients and that they all end up in the same place.  Speaking of which…

1) The Cleveland Browns have already flushed the 2013 season.

Calcutta – The Cleveland of India.

This is just the Browns way of saying they have flushed on 2013 and are stocking up on picks for 2014. But that’s not always a bad thing.  If you never flush your toilet, your house will become Calcutta in about a week. Cleveland has already had it’s river catch fire more than once; the last thing they need is cattle running loose in the streets trampling children with flies on their faces.

Don’t pay attention to the fact they beat the Vikings after trading their best offensive player and started a third-string quarterback who couldn’t make the roster with the Arizona Cardinals.  Never mind the fact that how they ripped the guts out of Viking fans may be a hate crime in at least 23 states. What this all comes down to is the Browns are auditioning guys for draft day trades in 2014.  Believe it or not, the Browns have some depth almost everywhere except the offensive “skill” positions. This team is young, and with the right number of draft picks and the right decisions using them, they could end up with more positional talent than a copy of the Kama Sutra.

For old guys like J-Dub, well…those guys long for the Sam Rutigliano-led Cleveland “Cardiac Kids” of the 1970’s, and curse the Browns inability to recover from Earnest Byner’s notorious fumble in the 1987 AFC Championship Game.

For the younger guys like Meehan, the good news is that by this time next year, half of the current Cleveland Browns will be working at the Quad Cities Mall with them, and you just know those guys will have some pretty cool stories to tell about the Hooters in Akron. Face it, when you live in Bettendorf, Iowa, Akron is the fucking “City of Lights.” However, the bad news is that there is every chance that this new management approach in Cleveland may be (to quote Roger Daltrey)  just an exercise in “meet the new boss…same as the old boss.”

This is the part where we have to join in an ESPN-style speculation-fest as to what are the Browns planning to do with two first-round draft picks, one of which is as guaranteed to end up in the top three as it was that one of the “Saved by the Bell” girls was going to end up on a stripper pole. We don’t mean in the movies, either. Lark Voorhies, if you are reading this, please drop us a line…we’re concerned about you…really. In any event, it seems the pointy-heads at the World Wide Bottom Feeder seem to think this makes it metaphysical certainty that Johnny Football will be getting his mail in northeastern Ohio about ten months from now.