Let’s cut right to the chase.  It’s been a week since our last post and three weeks since my last post.  That’s lazy blogging.  Fucking lazy blogging.  And believe me, it’s not easy to be considered lazy by blogger standards.  That’s like being considered an alcoholic by Kyle Orton standards.  Once you get to that point, you know you’ve got a problem.  The only explanation I can offer is that now I’m in school as opposed to working, which means that rather than wasting company time (paid company time at that) while blogging, I am now wasting my own, unpaid time.  It’s significantly less gratifying, I’ll tell you that.  However, given that 99.99999% of the comments on this site come from the three writers, I don’t even know if anyone really cares that we take weeks off between posts.  So, if you do want to see more posts around here, leave some comments.  That way, we know people give a fuck about what we’re writing, and it will motivate us to write more.

And while we’re on the topic of motivation, allow me to execute an absolutely textbook segue and say a few words about Rex Ryan.

I’m trying to hate the Jets.  I really am.  They have so many elements of teams that I always, always hate.  They hail from New York/New Jersey.  They get a disproportionate amount of media attention.  They have an overhyped, pretty boy QB.  They employed Brett Favre at one point.  They don’t have their own stadium.  Just a whole bunch of shit that I have no time for.

But I can’t hate them.  I just can’t do it.  Because Rex Ryan is way too fucking awesome.

After the Jets D performed poorly against Miami on Monday night, Rex apparently ripped into them very harshly.  When questioned as to whether that criticism may negatively impact the psyche of his players, he responded “No, it’s blunt force trauma…We always say, ‘You’ve got to have skin like an armadillo.’  We all know that’s not skin, but so what?  We all know what it means.”

So, here we have a man that, over the course of one response, referred to his own comments as “blunt force trauma”, and then went on to exhibit a shocking knowledge of the anatomy of an armadillo.  According to Wikipedia, Rex is absolutely correct.  The armadillo does not have skin, it has armor that “is formed by plates of dermal bone covered in relatively small, overlapping epidermal scales called ‘scutes’, composed of bone with a covering of horn.”  How many other coaches do you know that compare their criticisms to traumatic beatdowns and then accurately acknowledge the shortcomings of their own analogies?  (Of course, there is Tom Cable, who actually inflicts blunt force trauma on members of his own organization.  I would say that’s a little to intense to be considered awesome though.)

So yeah, Rex Ryan is about as bad ass as it gets on an NFL sideline these days.  As long as he’s on the sidelines (and as long as Big Daddy Drew continues the absolutely epic Rex Ryan character on KSK) I won’t be able to hate the Jets, no matter how many times the poise of The Sanchise is shoved down my throat.

To the games!

St. Louis at Jacksonville - Lots of talk this week about Rush Limbaugh being part of a group that may attempt to purchase the St. Louis Rams.  Most of the talk follows the thread of “Oooooh…he’s a racist Republican, and many of the players are black and presumably favor the Democrats!  How will this ever work out?”  Now look, I think Rush Limbaugh sucks just as much as you do, but do we realize how ridiculous it is to criticize a potential NFL owner for being right wing and kinda racist?  We’re talking about NFL owners for fucks sake!  The vast majority of them are old, rich white men.  You think that group is filled with a bunch of progressive thinkers as far as race and politics go?  You think Al Davis and Jerry Jones are big crusaders for equality and civil rights?  Not likely.  Those two guys probably hated Remember The Titans.  Rush Limbaugh, no matter how stupid and racist he may be, is not going to field an all white team, he is not going to staff his front office with exclusively white people, and he is not going to have segregated seating in his stadium.  Jacksonville wins the game.  God help you if this game is on in your region.

Kansas City at Washington - Hey, two absolutely horseshit games to kick it off on Sunday!  All right!  Continuing with the topic of ownership, Dan Snyder has got to be the biggest sack of shit in an NFL front office right now.  To quote Drew at Deadspin, “At least Al Davis is fucking old…The reality is, that old man is gonna croak WAY before Dan Snyder does.”  The Redskins are moving into LA Clipper territory at this point.  Their owner is batshit insane, insists on total control over everything, and refuses to acknowledge his own mistakes.  Even Redskins corner Carlos Rogers agrees, saying “It starts with the ownership.” But hey, at least that Haynesworth contract was well worth it right?  If he continues at his current pace of 2 tackles and 0.2 sacks per game, the Skins ought to be in great shape!  I’m picking the Skins in this one, because I’m really hoping Kansas City stays winless longer than the Titans do.

Houston at Cincinnati - The Bengals are 4-1.  They’ve beaten Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Green Bay, all legitimately solid football teams.  Their only loss came on a fluke play. They haven’t been 4-1 since 2005, when they last made the playoffs.  If you’re a Bengals fan, you’re really fucking jazzed right now, aren’t you?  Well, apparently not.  For the first time since 2003, a Bengals game appears as though it won’t sell out.  They’re 4-1 and playing against one of the more exciting teams in the league (Schaub to Johnson is about as deadly as it gets right now), and they apparently are “nowhere close” to selling out.  This despite the fact that they managed to get 64,000 people out to a totally meaningless Fitzpatrick/Thigpin Week 17 showdown last year, where “Some of the loudest cheers came for a halftime scrimmage between a youth football team and mascots for local sports teams” and “The crowd got so bored that it did the wave in the fourth quarter.”  What the fuck is going on in Cincinnati?  I’ll take the Bengals, because they’ve been absolutely phenomenal against the pass so far this year.  (Real football analysis!  How’d you like that?  Oh…OK then…I’ll stop)

Baltimore at Minnesota - From here on out, I’m going to satisfy the lowest common denominator by turning every Minnesota preview into FAVRE WATCH ‘09.  He’s the only player on that team anyway, right?  Anyway, here we go…FAVRE WATCH ‘09:  After the W against St. Louis, Favre got into a bit of hot water, saying “”I think physically and from a talent level, this is the best team I’ve ever been on”  But then, in a move that is totally out of the ordinary for Favre, he changed his mind, saying “I’m not saying that this team is better than ’96, the team that I played on.”  Hmmmmm.  So this [the Vikings] is the best team he’s ever played for, but that doesn’t mean that they’re better than the ‘96 Packers, who Favre also played for.  Makes perfect sense!  Who says years of beer guzzling and prescription drug abuse has negative effects on your intelligence?  I’ll take Minnesota in this one, as I think Favre will Favre the ball down the Favre in a Favre-like manner.  Baltimore simply isn’t Favrian enough to win this one.  

BONUS FAVRE WATCH ‘09:  In a recent SI Players poll, Favre was voted as the most overrated player in the league.  Do you understand how hard it is for a man that holds every passing record to be overrated?  The man is one of, if not the best QB to ever step on the field, and he’s considered overrated.  Favre is the only player in the world in any sport receiving enough verbal and printed fellatio for that to happen.

Detroit at Green Bay - There may be no more depressing headline in all of football than “Stafford, Johnson not practicing for Lions” It’s the Culpepper and Northcutt show this weekend in Green Bay!  Lions fans, clear your schedules!  Or, you know, just don’t bother even waking up on Sunday.  Green Bay takes this one in a walk.

Cleveland at Pittsburgh - If you were unlucky enough to catch the abortion of a football game that was Cleveland/Buffalo last weekend, you saw Derek Anderson go 2/17 for 23 yards and an interception.  That is, bar none, the worst statistical performance I can remember from an NFL Quarterback.  Those are RM Franks numbers.  But it’s OK!  Roscoe Parrish fumbled in his own red zone late in the fourth quarter, allowing the Browns to kick the winning field goal without having to deal with all of that pesky “positive yardage on offense” bullshit.  But despite it being their first win, Cleveland realizes how poorly they played, and is keeping an ugly win like this in perspective right?  Wrong.  When questioned about the dubious way he achieved his first win in Cleveland, Eric Mangini said “It is fantastic. I couldn’t be happier.”  There’s no such thing as an ugly win in the Browns organization, I suppose.  Pittsburgh will stomp the living shit out of them this weekend.  I don’t know what the spread on this game is, but I guarantee Pittsburgh will cover it.

Carolina at Tampa Bay - What in the fuck is with this Josh Johnson bullshit?  You just drafted a QB in the first round and your team is horseshit, yet you stick with Josh Johnson and his 57 QB rating?  At least the rest of winless teams in the league can point at last year’s first round pick and say, “Look!  He’s contributing!  We’re building for the future!”  What the fuck are you pointing to, Raheem Morris?  Aqib Talib’s existence?  Seriously, if I was the Bucs GM and I asked Raheem Morris to give me any silver lining to this 0-5 start, ANY one thing that has gone even sort of well for the Bucs, I honestly have no clue what he would say.  This might be the most hopeless team in the NFL right now.  Carolina will take this one.  By the way, I don’t think I put it in writing anywhere, but I TOTALLY predicted Deangelo Williams’ fantasy fall off.  Consider this a hearty chuckle in the face of anyone who took him in the 2-7 range.

Giants at Saints - Oh FUCK yes!  This is a game and a half right here.  Fox is showing this game, STL/JAX, DET/GB, and CAR/TB in the one o clock time slot.  Three tremendously shit games, and the best game of the year.  If I do not get Saints/Giants, there is going to be a fucking PROBLEM.  And that problem will come in the form of a VERY harshly worded letter to Fox’s head office.  OK, so that’s probably not going to happen.  But I will consider it!  Oh, how I will consider it.  Regardless, this game is everything you want out of a football match.  Top notch QB duel, two solid defenses, both teams undefeated…just phenomenal.  Oh, and I’d like to use this space to extend a hearty fuck you to my first round fantasy pick, Brandon Jacobs, who is the 26th ranked running back in the league through 5 weeks!  Your fucking sweet 8 points per game average puts you right up there with other first round picks draft afterthoughts Donald Brown, Corell Buckhalter, and Tashard Choice, all of whom aren’t even the starting running back on their own team.  Great.

That’s all for the one o clock games.  It’s highly unlikely that most of you even made it through all of this, so I’ll save the late games for tomorrow.  Gives you guys something to look forward to.