(Editor’s note: Mixed into a rambling narrative about the current state of affairs in the NFL loaded with historical and pop culture references, Mr. Brutal makes some football picks. Why does he call it the “War of 1812 Football Prognostication”? He likes history, he’s Canadian, and it probably has something to do with those two facts. That’s all we’ve got.)
Thursday, December 18, 2014
8:35 pm Eastern Standard Time
Tennessee @ JACKSONVILLE (-3) 41
Best Thursday Night game of the year. Wow! …. When this game was scheduled, did they think it would be an AFC South showdown for the title or another end of the year flop/dive/throw/fix between two contenders for draft position? ….
Of course not, the NFL has a deal where every team must appear in prime time each year & killing two birds with one stone, these two perennial flat liners get scheduled on the same usually low ratings Thursday night before Christmas.
Many of the viewers will be people whose television is stuck on one channel, fantasy footballers whose league includes all weekly games, devotees of the life and writings of Leopold von Sacher Masoch, drunken corner bar regulars & rejected, desperate, inebriated and willing male adulterers who were physically removed from the office Christmas party early after hitting on every XX chromosome & hermaphrodite in the company.
The Titans almost pulled off another “Music City Miracle” last week but came up short when final Titan ball carrier Delanie Walker decided to be bounced out of bounds by Jets’ safety Dawan Landry at the five yard line rather than perform a lateral of the ball back to quarterback Charlie Whitehurst who had a shot at scoring the winning touchdown.
Good thing too, because it appears many of the Titans’ back-up players on the special teams failed to get the memo and join the rest of the team in a late season Philadelphia 76r’s style “tank job” to obtain the first pick in the NFL draft.
The “Suck for the Duck” campaign is on to get Heisman Winner & Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariotta.
To ensure this type of accident doesn’t rear its ugly head in this game, Tennessee has hired ex boxer Bruce “The Mouse” Strauss as a training consultant & moral motivator in the art of losing with dignity.
Strauss had a long career as a boxer and admitted taking quasi dives countless times, but only to avoid injury & prolong his career.
“I always came out and gave the opponent my best shot in the first three rounds, if they didn’t flinch, I started looking for the most comfortable patch of canvas to lay down on later in the match.”
Strauss fought under several aliases to pass medicals & fool boxing commissions. He was knocked out over 150 times and on every continent but Antarctica. He was in it for the money so he fought as often as possible. One night he got knocked out in a preliminary fight and was sitting in the dressing room undressing and found out the headline match was in trouble because the opponent chickened out. So Strauss changed trunks, slicked his hair back and was introduced as his own twin brother. He was then knocked out for the second time in one night in two different fights.
He bragged that his losses never looked staged and he never really took a dive, just accepted his fate since he only kept himself in shape to fight three rounds. This was so he wasn’t tempted to try to go the distance and risk permanent damage by fighting too long and taking too many punches.
In the long term view, Titans’ coach Mike Munchak may need more than inspirational motivators like Strauss and the premier quarterback in the draft next year to turn the Nashville Oilers around.
Tennessee management are planning to take a page from the ethics and values of ex Vice President Dick Cheney. Since the Senate Committee on Torture was released last week, he has gone out of his way to argue nothing ever done by the CIA constitutes abuse & that it truly worked since it always resulted in obtaining useful intelligence.
If a method is legal, effective and properly motivates the subject to respond favorably, maybe it should be tried in sports. So next year, if it clears an NFL standards & practices revue and is found not to violate the collective bargaining agreement with the NFLPA, ….. or the Geneva Convention, …… the Titans plan to introduce new persuasive measures starting in training camp.
Next year the Titans will be the first North American professional sports team to utilize regular “Rectal Rehydration” sessions as a preventative medical procedure & motivational tool.
Jacksonville appears to have a starting quarterback who is learning and improving every week in Blake Bortles, but he may not play in this game due to a foot injury. However, Jags’ backup Chad Henne is still better than Titans’ third stringer & starter Charlie Whitehurst.
Charlie is filling in for Jake Locker who got hurt starting last week, … he himself was replacing Zach Mettenburger after he got hurt, …. he was replacing Saul, who begat Esau, who begat Jebediah …. who got the job replacing original starter & the soon to be released Locker.
The Jags appear to have no pressing need to deep six sabotage their games and seem to play hard each week. Last week they almost beat Baltimore and only lost because of special teams and not any great plays from Raven’s starter Joe “The Counting Machine” Flacco and his 120 million dollar arm against the tough Jacksonville defense.
{ Jesus, we know only about half of that contract is guaranteed, but every time you read it, you think you are hallucinating.}
Pick: JAGUARS (-3)
Bob: JAGUARS -3
Saturday, December 20, 2014
4:30 pm Eastern Standard Time
Philadelphia (-9) @ WASHINGTON 51
Word is in from the Philly doctors, Nick Foles is not yet ready to resume his quarterbacking duties with the Eagles.
That means that Mark Sanchez; “The Human Hand Grenade” will come in off two straight losses to try to lead the Official National Birds into the playoffs in a game they probably shouldn’t, couldn’t, can’t lose.
The Washington football team continues to collapse. With starter Colt McCoy hurt, RG III came into the game early last week against the Giants and played his best football in a long while, which isn’t saying that much. He appeared to score a touchdown at the end of the first half that would have put the Evidence of Individual Aboriginals’ Slaughter ahead 17-7. However, “Lawyer Ball” reared its ugly head once again and Washington turned the ball over, after replay officials ruled that Bob Griffin’s dive into the end zone showed he briefly lost control of the ball as he was airborne.
So Washington turned the ball over on a replay ruled touch-back. The Washington “Scarlet largest organ in the human body ( plural )” players went ballistic in rage & accosted the referees on the field. The worst display was from WR Santana Moss, who went Joan Crawford with a metal hangar insane. Moss was tossed, but at least the incident appeared to show some team spirit & solidarity on the side from the District of Columbia.
Then that brief Kumbaya moment became permanently vanquished from our thoughts after the game. Moss told the press that he wasn’t particularly angry about that touchdown overrule or that he was sticking up for his quarterback. He said his cranial meltdown was just the frustration of 10 years of playing for bad teams coming to an irreversible boil.
It was a tough call, probably correct, but a sad sign of the times since a minuscule variation/violation/letter of the law ruling like this never would have affected a game in the past. The deluge of small thinking that has infected televised games since the various introductions of instant replay, video game football, fantasy football impaired fans, High Definition replays & a modern culture that demands instantaneous black or white evaluations on everything does not always serve the game well.
The rhythm of the game is constantly disrupted, there are fewer judgement calls & as a result the officials make less definitive calls on close plays. If they make no call, as is more common than ever today, they rely on Big Brother to address the issue. Sometimes they do the reverse and make a careless ruling, assuming replay can reverse that too if they are wrong.
However, replay still isn’t definitive on all plays and never will be, so the refs who could have made the right call, or the “most correct” ruling make no call at all. As a result of no replay overturn { lack of evidence, nobody threw the flag, teams out of timeouts, teams with mentally impaired spotters in the booth } the wrong call ends up being made a lot of the time.
Too bad the epidemic of three & four flag “Got your back Bro!” penalties doesn’t go away. Whenever a pass interference, unnecessary roughness or down-field holding infraction draws a flag from an official, invariably the closest other official joins in the festivities late and throws his flag to back up his comrade. This could be followed by more officials and their two cents worth of tossing their hanky in as well. The more controversial the call may appear on initial observation, the more likely this phenomena occurs.
This never used to happen. It is obvious that in most cases the second, third & beyond officials who throw their flags either didn’t see the play or never would have thrown a flag or had a decisive judgement on that particular play one way or the other. It is pathetic “me too” mob think to cover the ass of their brother and thus reduce the perceived legitimacy of any opposition to the penalty by “piling on” with multiple flags. ….
Then we can be treated to some sycophantic shill broadcaster like Phil Simms say:
“There can’t be much doubt about that one, several different referees saw the same infraction!”
Right Phil!
It’s just like a major urban inner-city fire. If it is a “five alarm” fire, five firehouses come to the scene, so if five officials throw their laundry on any single play, …. well, an incident of St. Valentine’s Day 1929 Chicago proportions must have occurred, ….. so it must be really egregious and by extension a totally legitimate and unassailable call.
On the other hand, in an era where unions are being systematically dismantled, neutered, ignored & generally driven towards extinction by big money influence and propaganda, …… it is at least nice to see some on-the-job solidarity by a legal union at work. …..
[ Since the NFL Referees Union has almost zero power, unanimity or guts when sitting at the bargaining table with Goodell and his “Commission.” ]
Pick: Eagles (-9)
Bob: Philly-9
8:25 pm Eastern Standard Time
San Diego @ SAN FRANCISCO (-3) 41.5
Both teams lost last week. The Chargers are mathematically still alive for the playoffs & the Forty Niners are eliminated and are playing to finish the year above .500. One thing is for sure, the Forty Niners will have a long off-season and 2015 will see a lot of changes in Santa Clara.
1.) No longer will we have the pleasure of witnessing Colin Kaepernick dodging reporters’ questions about his deteriorating play while hiding behind his over engineered headphones & listening to over-produced, downloaded minimal dynamic range over-sampled glorified nursery rhyme hip hop rap-crap sorry excuse for music.
Colin can spend the off season getting new contact lenses & re-tattooing the Forty Niner playbook on his forearms in higher definition ink so he has less confusion when determining his pre-snap reads next year.
2.) Head Coach Jim Harbaugh can contemplate a trade/buyout/extortion threat deal with Forty Niner management. If his wife has her way he can start working for the Raiders and not have to move out of the same house they have lived in since he coached at Stanford a decade ago.
3.) The rest of the Forty Niners can go back to committing various misdemeanors, felonies, domestic abuse crimes and verbal terrorist threats in airports. The police detectives kept on permanent retainer by the Niners as fixers will probably really earn their money this off season.
The Chargers have more to play for and are due for a decent offensive performance.
Pick: Chargers (+3)
Bob: Chargers +3
