The most recent data I can find, from right before Week 1 began, says that 93.5% of NFL players are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. I have to say, this is actually a bit of a surprise, given that the two major player demographics are African-American and God-Slobbering Bumblefuck Red State Morons who consider any deed that would benefit the greater good a catastrophic affront to the founding principles of self-reliance1 and the Great American Godhead of Christ, the NRA, and Oliver North. The majority of both groups have been deeply skeptical of the COVID vaccine, for generally very different reasons. The former, given the long, horrific history of medical abuse and malpractice toward black people in this country, are understandably wary of being injected en masse with anything a bunch of white people say is AOK. The latter, who believe Jesus rode a brontosaurus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Fauci runs a Satanic 5G-powered mutant pedophile ring, and would rather get a dozen Facemask Penalties than wear a mask inside a Walmart for even five minutes, have been so brain-melted by the Right Wing Propaganda Firehose (whose members are, across the board, vaccinated themselves) that they have all suddenly become devout Christian Scientists swearing off the likes of Tylenol, kidney dialysis, and life-saving heart surgery (everything but Viagra – that comes straight from God), and would happily spit the Bubonic Plague in their kids’ mouths just to stick it to Joe Biden.2
It turns out however, that despite widespread mixed feelings among players about the vaccine, the NFLPA came out early this year as very Pro, negotiating with the league for rigorous testing, incentives for getting the vaccine, and strict quarantine protocols for unvaccinated players who test positive or are exposed to the virus. Therefore, despite its waffling on the associated costs and hassle of such protocols, the NFL, motivated as ever by pure unadulterated greed, fell bass ackwards into doing something approximating the right thing. We all know they wouldn’t bat an eye if every single player melted into a puddle of bloody mucus and chicken bones in the locker room, as long as it didn’t cost them any money.
Directed by Kirk Cameron.
However, it turns out sick, virus-spewing players are bad for business. And the business end of the league, despite its carefully marketed brand of Loving the Troops and Ra Ra God Is Our Coach nonsense, believes in science (TB12-ish gobbledygook and its ilk the obvious exceptions). Because, when it comes to elite performance, health, analytics, and nearly everything that makes the NFL a successful multi-billion dollar product, science is the driving force. It doesn’t matter if you can’t spell “spaghetti” or are a braindead Q Anon devotee, you’re still going to use every bit of elite medicine, training, and research you can to optimize your performance and find the edge that can safeguard your multi-million dollar salary. For all of these athletes to willfully ignore this is madness.
Yet despite these rules being put forth by their own union, there have been several high-profile Anti-Vaxers of this type, from Kirk “Plexiglass” Cousins to Lamar Jackson to Nick Bosa — some more outspoken than others, some who, like Bosa, caved and got the vaccine because it was too much of a liability not to. But Cole Beasley, a proud member or the Even Daring to Talk Aloud About the Individual and Societal Benefits of the Vaccine Makes Thomas Jefferson Weep Red White and Blue Tears Society3, will absolutely not shut the fuck up about how unjust it all is, and we can expect him to blabber thusly until he either dies of asphyxiation in an ICU bed he is occupying in the place of a highway car crash victim, or the Bills once again get knocked out of the playoffs by the Mahomes Death Machine — whichever comes first. His newest Christo-Libertarian Death Cult gambit, in response to the Bills being one of four NFL teams to only allow vaxed fans to attend games at their home stadium, has promised to buy tickets for Bills fans attending away games who refuse to get vaccines (and who, one can only assume, have shrieked at at least one Cinnabon employee about the tyranny of their store’s Mask Up, Be Safe poster). Given all the despicable and egregious things the NFL has perpetrated, it’s good to see that requiring fans to not carelessly afflict others with a fatal disease is what has the Patrick Henry of the NFL all fired up.
Gimme COVID or Give Me Death!
Oh no, Great Warrior of the Virus Crusades, if you perish what will we do without your 9.8 fantasy points every week?
“Nobody wants to see a player taunting another player.”
–NY Giants owner John Mara, a member of the NFL’s Competition Committee, and apparently the man responsible for the rash of utterly hideous “taunting” penalties in Week 2.
Ok, what the fobbledy fuck is this paste-eating dweeboid talking about? Literally everyone who watches football wants to see that. At least what they have been calling taunting, which to me looks like a bit of well-earned showboating mixed with some run-of-the-mill shit-talk.
Look, the officiating over the weekend was garbage across the board, from the Julio Jones TD being pulled for no good reason whatsoever (the toe-tapping master’s foot was clearly in, but Henry made up for it in the long run), to Herbert getting called for a sack that was so erroneous it had Romo and Nance shouting “Noooo!” on live television, to the usual ghost PI calls and the Lebron treatment for guys like Brady and Mahomes.4
sharpens pencils in his butthole.
But every fuckin’ year the NFL pulls out its Holly Hobby tool set and starts wrenching and whacking on shit that nobody wants or has even asked to be fixed (except apparently the owner whose afternoon snack is a dish of Fancy Feast cut with buttermilk and whose butthole is widely known to be an electric pencil sharpener) until it’s so horrendously broken beyond what it ever was or could have been that they completely reverse everything they did and start in the next year fucking with something else until it’s lying in a pile of glass shards, covered in blood and sulphuric acid burns, and moaning “I told you I don’t know anything, please stop!”
Last year, so many pissant little holding calls it took three hours just to get through a half. Making P.I. calls reviewable and then refusing to reverse a single one all season, like they were the 2021 SCOTUS, a complete farce of an institution illegally stacked by piss-gargling fascists, silently averting their eyes as increasingly monstrous and unlawful attacks on Voting Rights, women’s bodily autonomy, and our democratic institutions parade before them — the court offering nothing but silent, tacit approval of the most vile aspects of our society (okay, maybe the stupid refs weren’t quite that bad, but it reminded me of that just a little). Defining a catch and “surviving the ground” in such abstract and ill-defined terms that Stephen Hawking would have been stumped by it, and he could explain everything cool about a black hole in 90 seconds. The utterly maddening goal post fumble. The “You even look at me cross, boy Ima fetch you a 15 yard penalty” roughing the passer rule they fucked around with and found out about, which basically meant the only way you could sack the QB was by throwing down a silk blanket and politely asking if he would lie down on the ground next to you.
Why. The. Fuck. Do. They. Do. This. Every. Year? There are already enough reasons to not watch this stupid league ever again, why do you have to annually invent more out of whole cloth? The Competition Committee, at the urging of Mara, has made the referees’ priority to call any tiny little thing that could resemble a player being happy about what he did “taunting” and jack the fucking team for a 15 YARD PENALTY. For like mocking Zeke’s stupid “Feed Me” motion when you stuff him for five yards on third down. Of course we want to see that shit! They know we do, that’s why they do it! We want Jalen Ramsey’s motor mouth to get in people’s heads. We want Lamar to flip into the end zone on the winning TD (actually they didn’t call that one, a blatant “Fuck y’all. I’m the shit. You lose.” Hmmmm.)
Obviously the rule is there to prevent fights from breaking out. There is a line and it gets crossed. All the time. So be a professional. Don’t go running to the sideline after Edwards-Helaire, laughing and shouting “You just lost the game, fumble boy!” if you don’t want him to turn around and give you the ol’ Myles Garrett you with his helmet (provided it doesn’t fall out of his hands at the last second, that is). To stay with the SCOTUS theme, this is a Justice Stewart describing pornography (“I know it when I see it”) situation. Obviously the refs don’t in this case. Know it when they see it, that is. They’re calling every chaste little smooch a step-sibling gangbang tentacle bukkake with fisting thrown in. Justice Stewart would be disappointed (and more than a little titillated, I’m guessing – homeslice’s first time ever on the internet – dude would just get destroyed by pop-ups in like five minutes).
But they used to pretty much know. And they could easily know again. Call a dildo a dildo. And let Jalen Ramsey talk shit right in Chris Godwin’s face right after he swats away a pass in the end zone. It’s so much more fun that way.
Everybody in the NFL world and their Nicki Minaj’s cousin is queefing over Harbaugh walking onto the field and asking LJ if he wanted to go for it on 4th and 1 at the Ravens’ own 43, with 1:05 left and the game on the line against the Chiefs. And yeah sure, it was cool. These are the kinds of great NFL moments we live for, right? And speaking of Le Cousin Minaj, everybody is nutting over what gigantic, swollen balls Harbaugh must have had to make that call, and well okay I guess. We all know Mike McCarthy would have punted that shit on second down. Jason Garrett woulda asked for the ball to be moved even further back and kicked an 87 yard field goal. This is a very common NFL mindset.
But the Ravens had already gotten one lucky break, when the Chiefs were in their inevitable Mahomesian game-icing mode — grinding out the clock, trying to get into closer field goal range — when poor CEH fumbled the ball away to the Ravens. What was Harbaugh going to do, give it to Mahomes again with a minute left on the clock? That would actually have been the thing so dangerous that it took humongo vax balls to make the call.
So the show he put on asking Lamar if he wanted to go for it was just that. A show. Besides, what NFL quarterback is going to say No to that? (I guess I could see Roethlisberger shaking his head at the sideline, meat grease glistening on his lips, because he hadn’t finished his fourth quarter turkey leg yet. But fuck, even Zach Wilson is going to take that once in a lifetime 4th and 1 opportunity to GO FOR IT and chuck a life-sucking interception to the defensive lineman five feet in front of him.)
Turkey Boy, 10 Yard Penalty, 1st Down!”
Still, it was well-executed prime-time theater.
That Collinsworth and Michaels talked right through, without even noticing.
I love this game.
Or do I?
We all knew some regression was coming from A-Rodg’s 48 TD MVP season, particularly after the animus-filled drama of the off-season, but by picking him in the 6th round5 I figured that a solid 26 or so FP per game for the HOF QB was not out of the question in 2021. Well, he regressed all right, losing 38-3 to Jameis Winston for fiddle’s sake. Drama-ass, Jeopardy-hostin’ motherfucker netted me -0.68 points in Week 1, losing me a match I all but had in the bag and plunging me straight into last place.
Certainly Week 2 would be a righting of the ship, no? Well, yes… and no. Rodgers scored 34.8 points for my team and threw 4 TD passes, a massive improvement over Week 1. Unfortunately, he threw 3 of those TD passes to Aaron Jones, who was on my opponent (Raul, my father, gleefully thrashing his own firstborn son)’s team. Which was somehow still working out okay until the fourth quarter, when I was down by less than a point, and the Packers had 1st and 20 at the Detroit 21, a perfect “toss it to Davante Adams in the back corner” scenario — which would have iced the game for my team, redeeming our Week 1 fiasco. Instead, a Defensive PI call on a pass to the aforementioned Adams in the end zone, and the Packers got the ball on the 1 yard line. Pretty obvious what was gonna happen next: Jones punched in his FOURTH TD of the night and the game was all but over for yours truly.
But wait… maybe not? Jones got pulled for Dillon, who was getting nowhere, and even though Goff was trying his damnedest to give the entire game away, it was starting to become clear the Packers couldn’t just grind down the clock with their backup RB. So, I was down 6 points, but it wasn’t 100% lost. In fact, what’s this? Third down and Rodgers is chucking it way downfield to MVS, who is at the 5 yard line and hauling ass toward the goal line?!!! OMG!!! It’s a bomb TD pass to someone who isn’t Aaron Jones for once!!! … it’s… it’s…
…a yard over his head into the grass.
Fourth down. Punt the ball away with 3 minutes on the clock and the Packers up 35-17. My win percentage dribbles into miniscule decimals.
And in that fashion, after my second nailbiter Monday night loss in two weeks, I begin my Astral Geeks season 0-2 and in second to last, lurking in the Jeffrey Dahmer’s dirty socks basement with Lovejoy, who jostled with me last year all season for first place. And so it goes. The circle of life.
I told everyone that getting the only A grade from Yahoo in the draft was a bad sign, saying I would finish dead last. I would just like the fantasy gods to know that IT WAS A FUCKING JOKE.
“If you don’t drop the charges, Zach will never coach again. He’s never hit you before. He was drinking. He’ll probably never do it again. You should think about giving him a second chance.”
-Hiram DeFries, special assistant to Urban Meyer when he was at Ohio State, in 2009 to Courtney Smith, wife of Zach Smith, Ohio State Wide Receivers Coach and recruiter, and all around worthless, vile piece of shit
This is just one horrendous quote among dozens of horrendous quotes, from one dirtbag among an army of dirtbags, in a story that will fill you with rage five hundred words into it. You may know that Urban Meyer was suspended for 3 games in 2018 from Ohio State when all but undeniable evidence came to light that Meyer had known about his protege’s violent abuse against his wife since at least 2015 (again, his assistant knew about it in 2009) and had participated in covering it up to protect Zach and the “reputation” of the Buckeye organization, which had just brought back to back National Championships to Columbus.
Well before the story became public, every member of the coaching staff and their wives knew that Zach Smith was choking, beating, and terrorizing Courtney in front of their children, often because she had confronted him about spending away all of their money on drugs, hookers, and gambling, or she had discovered yet more poorly concealed evidence of him cheating on her. Once she finally found the courage (without any real finances or the support of any of the people who knew firsthand what was happening to her) to move out of their shared house and seek a divorce, he stalked and hounded her wherever she went. He routinely kidnapped her kids during her court-mandated custody time and made credible threats of murdering her and making her disappear, acting with impunity because he considered himself untouchable as part of the coaching staff that were enshrined locally as legends. And he pretty much was. Until his repeated 2019 violations of a long-awaited state-issued protection order, despite countless run-ins with police, he did not spend a single night in jail.
aHe was an abominable employee, his vicious and irresponsible behavior carrying over to work, where he was always late, often hungover, befogged, and mean-spirited; and on recruiting trips spending the majority of his time and per diem carousing and getting wasted. Yet like all manipulative abusers, he was always sorry, always promising to do better, and somehow charming his enablers into going along with it, if not always believing it. And like all narcissistic monsters, he pulled all the focus. Nobody ever thought about Courtney or her kids, a single mother putting herself through nursing school under a constant cloud of terror. It was all about Zach, what’s to be done with Zach, how do we help fix Zach?
Fuck Zach. There are no words disgusting and hateful enough to describe what a fucking miserable, evil, unrepentant shitstain he is. You know what happened when finally, after years upon years of being beaten and terrorized by this bloody pus puddle, when she finally caved and applied for a protection order (stupidly difficult to get in Ohio for some reason)? Thousands upon thousands of Ohio State fans stalked and threatened her, doxxed her, called her a liar and a whore online and on call-in talk shows. She had to keep moving to get away from it, and for a long time never even left her house, not even to go shopping.
That restraining order put into motion the media cycle that exposed the internal coverup at Ohio State, got Zach Smith fired, Urban Meyer suspended, and then eventually led Meyer to retire after the 2018 season. Zach Smith was eventually arrested multiple times for violating the protection order, but altogether spent a mere 19 days in jail.
You know the real consequences these dickweeds got for their crimes?
Zach Smith has a popular college football/men’s rights podcast and 54k followers on Twitter, where he spends his time slandering his ex-wife, loudly proclaiming his innocence, and using the word “feminazi” as much as possible.
Urban Meyer followed up his retirement from Ohio State with a well-paid analyst job for Fox, and then took the head coaching job with Jason Mendoza’s favorite team (which, as a major perk, also had the first pick of Trevor Lawrence in the 2021 draft), asking for $12 million.
As if we needed another reason to root against the fucking Jaguars.
Only a small percentage of abusers ever get exposed, as too many women, given the commonality of all of the many terrible circumstances above, are too afraid to bring their story to light in a world that is too often willing to call her a liar and take the side of the abuser. The few stories that do emerge, often tell the story from the abuser’s perspective, all that he stands to lose, and putting forth the possibility of him finding redemption and forgiveness. Not from his victims. But from a society that is already inclined to grant him these things.
Courtney’s story was like this for the most part. Diana Moskowitz’s feature in Defector tells the whole story from the perspective that matters most — that of the victim. This might be behind a paywall, but I promise it is worth it to use any free articles they may give you. Or even drop the 8 bucks or whatever for the month. Lots of great stuff there, all the Why Your Team Sucks from Drew Magary, for starters,. Treat yoself.
And fuck fucking Ohio State forever.
That is one of my favorite music videos ever. Just an all out bonkers horde of wasted hippies crammed together on stage, with Leon Russell as this wacky Alice in Wonderland comic book vampire on lead guitar, sweaty, rail thin Joe Cocker stumbling around in a zonked out haze (quaaludes, booze, amphetamines, all the above?), and the angelically beautiful members of the chorus giving it their all. I used to dream of doing this very same wasted white boy Otis Redding routine with a hundred people on stage playing along with me, but the closest I ever got was bringing down the house at Encore Karaoke, an absolutely spectacular underground dive on California Street in San Francisco, with “Feelin All Right” somewhere around 2007. That was the best I’d ever done at karaoke, getting everyone to hoot and holler and sing along, and the girl I was with seemed to be impressed, so I was feeling pretty good about myself. Little did I know until much later, that that was the exact song karaoke hustler (yes, the film purports that this is a real thing) Huey Lewis blows everybody away with in the 2000 film Duets. Undoubtedly, more than a few people in that audience thought I was doing an homage to Huey Lewis and that silly flick, which made it all retroactively way less cool.
Just another way an apparent win gets turned into a loss right before your eyes. The first two weeks of the season, as per tradition, have been full of surprises – overachievers, underachievers, defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Everybody knew Lockett and Kupp would be the runaway WR leaders and Metcalf and Woods would be afterthoughts, right? We all knew Derek Carr would be a giant-killer, knocking off the Ravens and the Steelers in spectacular fashion to start the season 2-0, and that Aaron Rodgers would follow up his MVP season with an absolute garbage fire, throw up your hands loss. Of course, we know not to buy too heavily into such a small sample size. Carr (eye-liner Jesse Pinkman) has killed Goliaths before, and then usually followed it with something along the lines of a head-smacking 17 for 33 and 2 INT game, so I think we know not to hold our breath. Rodgers followed his dud with a 4 TD game. Everybody has a mean, and it is difficult not to eventually regress to it in either direction.
Of course, plenty is just as we imagined: The SB favorite Bucs look exactly like the SB favorite Bucs so far. So what if Antonio Brown has COVID this week, they have three other unstoppable dynamos to throw it to. Christian McCaffrey and Kyler Murray and Derrick Henry are just who you drafted them to be so far. But there is even a mean for that, and from it very few are safe.
In Astral Geeks, Beggars Shadow is in first, riding a couple monster games to start the season, with Lamar, Tyreek, Ekeler, Lockett, Deebo, and Gronk powering the wins. Both dads crushed their sons in Week 2, Vadering off their fighting hands and kicking them into the bottomless space hole, doomed to fall endlessly into the dark. Except there’s no Leia to hear the Jedi MSM, we’ll just be tumbling indefinitely. That put Superhero Origin Story in second. Dog Altogether put together a couple lucky wins (facing the smallest Points Against at 187.61) but they have a strong team, and we’re supposing their wins will be more definitive in the future (though I see they are starting Daniel Jones over Tannehill this week, which is not a particularly fun situation to be putting oneself through).
The middle of the pack is 6 teams sitting at 1-1, led by Team 14 who rode Henry, Brady, Godwin, Waller, Mike Williams, Cooks, and the Tampa Bay DST to a 200 point game in week 2. Finally, you have basement dwellers Lovejoy FC, Le Chat Noir, and yours truly, the latter two who will duke it out this week to be king of the stinkhole.
Another fantasy season well on its way. It may look like The Norm Van Brocklins are in for their first season missing the playoffs, but there are 12 weeks left in the regular season. Plenty of time to make up ground. Or dig a bigger stinkhole. We’ll just have to see.
I’ve plenty more to rant about, but I’ve already worn out my welcome, so I’ll have to catch you on the next one and tell you about Norm Van Brocklin and the Dirty Birds. You’ll dig it, I promise.
I swore I would write shorter posts this year and spend less time on them, but even I have a mean – that of blathering on well beyond even the most patient reader’s attention span – I just appear to have regressed to it on day one.
So until next time,
Chicks Dig Contemporaries, Glory is Scars, Pain is Forever
and
Deer Guys, School Farts, Cantilevered Loos
1 Utter and monstrous selfishness that has fatal consequences in numerous aspects of our society
2 Ironically, it turns out they are very pro-ventilator and clogging up every ICU in the country
3 Believe it or not, they settled on this after very little brainstorming
4 I know you want me to mention the overturned “safety” on Wilson, who may have been getting a bit of the Lebron treatment himself, but I was convinced enough by the ambivalence of people who understand the rules way better than me that there was sufficient evidence to support the reversal
5 Far earlier than I am used to taking a QB (got him last year in the 10th), but in all my mocks I was missing on late-round stalwarts like Stafford and ending up with skidmarks like Tannehill and Burrow. I wasn’t going to take the risk.
GO DOLPHINS!!!
ASTRAL GEEKS FFL 