“Quarterback.”
-Ron Rivera, coach of the Washington C-Words, when asked why the other teams in the NFC East were further ahead in terms of successful development, rebuilding, and… well, winning.
LO fucking L. Rivera went on to say some sort of nice things about his QB, I guess, but not really. The other three teams are a combined 13-2 while the C-Words are 1-4 and he just looked that motherfucker dead in the eye and said:
“Yeah, so basically Bob, as far as I am concerned, Cooper Rush and Daniel Jones are ten times better than the Number 2 overall pick that this godforsaken team has stuck me with (whose only locker room nickname I can say out loud on network TV is “The Ginger Trainwreck” – the rest all contain some really, just creatively awful synonyms for ‘fecal matter’ – but alas, I digress). Maybe he should go back to North Dakota and hunt some fuckin’ marmots or something because I can assure you that numb-brained ‘neck doesn’t listen to a goddamn word I say. You may have also noticed he’s determined to murder my entire receiving corps. Just throwing fuckin’ cloud balls to the middle of the field so this poor kid Dotson and Logan and toothpick man Curtis who can’t take another direct hit without all his bones exploding, are just floatin’ up there in the middle of a warzone like balloons, so some beast like Micah Parsons can just run along and yank those poor fuckers down and pop ’em right under his cleats. It’s sickening. I might as well kneecap each wideout with a crowbar and then dump him in with the lions at the zoo during feeding time. He’d have a better chance of surviving. Send this scarlet-domed pox of a QB back Wentz he came, I say. How’s that for a fuckin’ quote? Shit, I’d take Alex Smith with one gangrenous leg if I never had to look at this bastard’s puffy pink face again, I swear to God above. What’s that? Oh, I’m being rude? You try having a receiver corps so talented that Terry McLaurin is an afterthought and yet you find yourself miles behind Daniel fucking Jones, who is throwing to whom exactly? A couple of New York sanitation workers and a defiled headless mannequin he found on the subway? Years I’ve watched that wide-eyed Jones runt play so scared you could spook him with one of the latter Harry Potter books. You know when Voldemort is really rippin and runnin’? What? I don’t fuckin’ know. I’m a grown adult, I don’t read that garbage. I’m riffing here, pig giblets. All I’m saying is I’ve been in the same division as this Weenie Jones out there looking like the kid from The fuckin’ Sixth Sense for sixty regulation minutes every Sunday, seeing dead people everywhere, openly weeping under center, and now he just hops on a plane and flies over to London and beats Aaron fucking Rodgers?!! Meanwhile Buckshot here is sad because I don’t talk in fuckin’ Bible verses like his bubby wubby wooby best buddy Reich? I swear to you, I come up to this walking sunburn last Sunday on the sideline to ask why he just threw the ball directly to the safety… like directly… the shit was so accurate it had touch, like he was delivering it special, just for him. And I say ‘Why the hell did you do that?!! That dude was clearly wearing a completely different jersey and meanwhile Samuel was standing ten feet away wide open!!’ And l kid you not, this little bitch just dead ass looks right at me, smiles, and says ‘John: 13:19.’ I kid you the fuck not! Like that is all there is to say! And then he just walks away! I’m telling you, every single day I’ve been calling Snyder’s 800 “Red[acted]” phone ( I swear to you, he still uses that slur like it was his alone) which goes straight to his mega-super-duper yacht in Serbia or wherever the hell that frothing psychopath was until recently, and screaming until the message hits its limit, begging him to send his assassins after either the QB1 or me. One of us is going to end up dead before the end of Week 8, I am sure of it. But anyway, yeah, we’ve got some areas to improve on. We’re working on them with Carson, and he’s putting in the work, and he’s taking things in a positive direction. The team is behind him. Next question.”***
***PS – Four days after the initial quote above, and inspired by questions related to the Snyder story referenced below, Rivera had a fuckin’ meltdown after the Thursday Night.. ahem… “win” over the Bears, shouting at the press for asking about the part in the report that implies Wentz was chosen entirely by Snyder, without Rivera’s input. The man is hanging on by a very thin thread.
“I could have walked in.”
Broncos receiver KJ Hamler, who is clearly missing Drew Lock something fierce, in the aftermath of the final play of the Thursday night loss to the Colts, a game I’m dubbing an “Instant Classic of Ass.” Danger Bus’s final pass to Courtland Sutton was swatted away by Stephen Gillmore, in an admittedly baller play, but as you can see in the link Hamler was wide open for the entirety of his route.
Let’s Ride… this buckin’, sloppy bitch right off a 200-ft cliff into a sea of battery acid!
I’ll tell you one thing, at least Rivera doesn’t have to deal with Senor Mallet Finger. Oy vey, Yippie ki-yay, you poor poor Horsies. What a shitshow. Biblical, even. Right out of Revelation 16:9, as Wentz would happily tell you. A $245 million migraine for everyone involved, and while I don’t know the exact medical science behind it, I’m fairly sure that migraines are even worse at high elevation. Nobody knows exactly what to make of this situation in Denver, and what happened to a QB that only two years ago began the season as the clear MVP favorite. Watching these guys in the Red Zone is like watching a pack of toddlers try to juggle flaming torches. It is beyond painful. Obviously Nate Hackett, P.I. (credit: BS) is a big part of the problem here, but it doesn’t explain why Russ suddenly looks like the highest paid practice squad QB of all time. And despite what would appear to be clear evidence, I think it’s also way too simple to look at the Seahawks killing it with Geno Smith and then at the Broncos stabbing themselves in the nuts 20 times a game and say well, clearly Russ was the problem the whole time.
But he’s clearly a fucking problem. Is this sudden downward spiral related to his shoulder injury? Undoubtedly, that is part of the equation, but does a torn labrum turn you into an idiot? The guy is out there making Zach look like the far superior Wilson with some of his decision-making under center. All he needed to do on that final play was make a basic NFL read beyond Sutton to see Hamler streaking wide open, a read he has supposedly made thousands of times before, and they go home with a win that should have been well within their grasp. Now, you might mention Hamler is technically the third read on that play, but Pusboy had plenty of time in the pocket to look around, and besides, it’s not like he was going to throw it to Jeudy anyway. Those two have clearly not been smashing subs down at Jimmie John’s together during lunch, but then again who is going to take up any invitation to hang out with Mr. Ciara more than they have to?
Has ol’ Russ cooked himself? Talent-wise, I’m going to say no. It is just too precipitous a decline in too short a time (something I can only say if I completely ignore what happened to Cam Newton). Is it something personal fucking with his head? Is Ciara withholding the yab-yum because he bought her a house with a way too high bathroom to bedroom ratio? Is he only getting four hours of shut-eye because he’s doing da Vinci sleep all night so he can treat his bum shoulder with electro-shock therapy? Are DK and Lockett just that much better than Sutton and Jeudy? Is Danger Pus actually only good when he’s scrambling for his life and chucking deep balls to a guy he has years of rapport with?
This all remains to be seen, but one thing we can say for sure is that the partnership between Hackett and Wilson is a complete disaster. It seems that the plan in Denver was to bring in a coach that would “let Russ cook,” which could really mean any number of things at this point – most of them bad. I think what that meant in Seattle was stop trying to grind out 20-14 wins with bend-don’t-break defense and Chris Carson smashing into people 25 times a game and let Russ huck the ball 60 yards to Tyler Lockett on every play so the games can be more like 35-21. That seemed fine and good for awhile in 2020, but then it all started to fall apart and Petey Cakes had to reign it back in to his little grindy comfort zone. Russ, dialed in as he once so frequently was, was still an efficiency monster, going 22 of 25 passing with 3 TDs on a regular basis. No longer, sadly, because I think what “Let Russ Cook” was supposed to mean here was Russ designs his ideal offense and Hackett, little more than a surrogate, calls what the QB wants on every play. If that is the case, then either whatever grand vision the Pus Bus has been seeing in his head that his old coach forever held him back from manifesting is a complete fucking mess, or Hackett is so inept that he is unable to make it work. I’m going to go with both here. Because Wilson might think he’s Curly Lambeau, but if he’s any kind of player-coach I’m going to say it’s more the Charlie Brown type. I’m not sure who Hackett might think he is, but I bet he wishes it was still the guy who gets screamed at by a perpetual woke-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-ayahuasca-party Aaron Rodgers, rather than have to watch Russ Don’t Cuss looking like a declawed cat trying to hunt as he whips a series of incompletions at the first object he sees in the end zone that appears vaguely orange.
Whatever is happening, it’s clear Wilson has earned about as much respect from his new teammates as the beleaguered Peanut Captain in the yellow ziz-zag shirt garners from Lucy. As Peter King pointed out, you don’t have unproven third receivers chucking helmets on national TV and talking shit to the press unless it’s a case of full-blown mutiny. I’d like to think the QB has plenty of good years left, and under more stable and dynamic coaching he can return to his old self (that is, everybody in the locker room resenting the hell out of him but putting up with it because he wins football games {and more importantly, fantasy matchups}). I mean he’s only 33. As ol’ Buckshot will tell you, that was Jesus’ peak year. Maybe he’s due for a Russ-urrection! (Don’t hit me.) I’m holding onto him for now in Astral Geeks, if only because Cousins has his own track record of extracting tears and resentments from everybody around him, and the wire is a collection of asbestos flakes, loose tumors, and fiberglass lint. But if he doesn’t put up at least two or three TDs in each of his next two games he is absolutely the first motherfucker getting dropped from Milkshake Drunk when the bye-nado comes. Hope he realizes that, and uses it as motivation to get his shit together.
“The NFL is a mafia. All the owners hate each other.”
World Class Piece of Shit, Dan Snyder, in just an all-time quote from this bombshell piece over at ESPN, that will stand with some of the previous classic Wickersham pieces that probe the NFL’s very special brand of toxicity, such as his insider exposes on the Seahawks’ locker room wars post-Malcolm Jenkins, and Haslam’s monumental ineptitude with the Browns. The response to Snyder’s clim from an unnamed rival owner is even better: “That’s not true. All the owners hate Dan.”
There is so much nasty, poisonous sludge in this one, it won’t really do for me to summarize. You just gotta read it for yourself, if you haven’t already. But I will say, the gist of it is that Snyder’s pitiful Trumpist grip on power is finally losing steam, and the walls are closing in on his tenure with the Washington Co–[cksuck]–ers. The vote to force him out of his ownership position is imminent, as are the very real criminal charges stemming from several investigations into his self-proclaimed “mafia” operation. And like the trapped little scumrat that he is, he is threatening to take down half the ownership with him by using all of the dirt he has gathered on them through PIs (not Nate Hackett – apparently these are very competent professionals) and his various law firms.
Which, I just have to say, is fucking awesome. Light the kerosene, you evil little bitch, and take down as many Varicose Villains as you can manage before they bury you alive beneath the soil of your own plantation, right next to the bones of Washington’s slaves, who will haunt you eternally like the rotted out, pathetic husk of a man you are and always will be. I welcome the massacre. Burn It All Down! Filth Flays Filth!
(And for fuck’s sake, when you are done, give Irsay’s horde of priceless musical items to someone who deserves that shit.)
MILKSHAKE DRUNK’S HISTORY CORNER
So, maybe you know this, maybe you don’t – but I am somehow even more obsessed with history than I am with fantasy football or the NFL. I went to UC Santa Cruz in the early 90s with thoughts of being a creative writing major, but when I got there I discovered that it was not exactly a top (or even medium) tier program (this may have changed in the last 30 years). So I drifted for a year or so, until I looked at all my courses and realized I had already taken enough history units with some really brilliant professors to be well on my way to a degree. So that’s what I did, and as a result it soaked deep into my bones and now I am doomed to be the guy who makes you read some shit about the history of (as you will see) an insanely violent sport during my little bitchy blog session.
Why do the ghosts of the past have such a hold on my imagination? I cannot say I know, precisely. I currently sit on my front porch, looking out at my front lawn and the street beyond, and can only begin to imagine what has transpired here over the last 10, 000 years of human history. Who were the people that crossed this patch of land in the before times? What was in their heads? What did they want out of life? How did they build the world we live in now? Because who they were is directly responsible for who I am, and who we all are. They ground and fought and invented and died of measles and vapors so that I could sit here tapping on this keyboard, as leisurely and healthful as can be. For everything we have gained, there is something essential lost to history. The way we navigated entire oceans, built cathedrals, and created a variation of rugby at once so simple and so ridiculously, needlessly, gloriously complicated.
What do you know about the history of gridiron football? I must say, until my recent excursions through its early development, I knew of little before the Super Bowl era. (Full nerd disclosure: I started to look through it so I could find trivia questions for the Ringer Fantasy Football Show). There’s a lot to it, so I won’t bore you with too much, but I wanted to tell you some of the cool shit I learned!
The oldest known form of the game was an ancient Greek sport called Espiskyros, which a badass name. The sport was exceedingly violent, at least the way the Spartans played it, and if you have seen 300 maybe you can picture the vibe. Two teams of 12 to 14 naked men, women, and children would pass around an inflated pig’s bladder, trying to get it across the enemy’s scrimmage line, all while savagely attacking the opposing players. The rules of the sport were apparently: You can do whatever you need to to stop another player, as long as it does not lead to that player’s death. Knowing this, I feel like their concussion protocol was pretty lax.
Other cultures had similar sports, such as the Vikings and Native Americans. Football for modern Americans began when somebody at a Harvard rugby game in 1823 picked up the ball and started carrying and tossing it rather than kicking it, which seemed to necessitate ever more violent means of stopping the player with the ball. Over time, early forms of gridiron football surpassed rugby in popularity on the Ivy League campuses, evolving slowly until a dude named Walter Camp came along and invented the modern version that eventually gave birth to the sport we know today.
Camp, who played halfback at Yale and was a mere 156 lbs, somehow managed to not get killed by the much larger players on the field. Later he was Yale’s coach. But it was as a member of the Intercollegiate Football Association, established in 1873, that he made his biggest mark on the sport. Camp looked at the game from the sideline and decided it was no better than two mobs going at each other in waves of barely controlled chaos. He envisioned a much more streamlined, strategic contest. Thusly, he began by reducing the players on each side from 15 to 11. He then created the downs/scrimmage system, which originally required three downs to go 5 yards. He added the snap from center, blocking, extra point conversions, and most importantly, the forward pass. These rules made it so that possession could not be dominated as in soccer, and spawned much more exciting, back and forth contests.
The scoring in 1883 was TD: 2 FG: 5 Extra: 4, but that was soon reversed to 4-5-2, respectively, to make TDs more the focus. It wasn’t until 1912 that the 6-3-1 scoring arrived, which was clearly the right balance for rapidly growing sport, as it has remained so ever since. Baseball was far and away the most popular professional American sport until the latter third of the 20th century, but football dominated collegiate sports, an association that remains as bound together today as it ever was.
The appeal of the game, for both players and fans, has always been the combination of strategy, athletic prowess, and extreme violence. It is a not very subtle approximation of war, a phenomenon that human beings appear to be ever drawn to in as many forms as can be imagined, from Civil War reenactments to Call of Duty to Capture the Flag. Well, that violence has always made decent people feel dubious. In the 1894 Yale-Harvard game, known as the “Hampden Park Bloodbath,” 4 players incurred crippling injuries, which was enough to cancel the annual event for three years. (The Fin de Siecle Woke Mob was the worst). Theodore Roosevelt, then New York City Police Commissioner and a huge fan of the sport (of course) was a major force in reestablishing the “Blood Bath” game in 1897.
It only got more dangerous. In 1904-1905, there were a combined 37 football- related fatalities nationwide. Yes, fatalities. With bare heads being used as battering rams, (illegal) punches routinely thrown, and gang tackles that buried players under a half ton of humanity, young bodies were being mutilated every which way. Spinal cords ripped, skulls crushed, broken ribs puncturing aortas, and of course severe brain damage, including hemorrhages that killed a poor bastard before he could even reach the nearest hospital. Newspaper editorials were aghast at the savagery of the game, inciting the public to call for the sport to be permanently banned. Once again the old Bull Moose, Teddy, now President of the United States, was called upon to act. Roosevelt had once said “I believe in rough, manly sports. I do not feel much sympathy for a man who gets battered about so long as it is not fatal.” Well, it was fatal, and as his sons were now playing for the Harvard team and right in the middle of the most violent nexus of the sport (move over Alabama, you pussies, it was Harvard where they straight up tried to kill your ass), he had personal reasons as well as the moral ones to force some kind of change. Roosevelt, who refused to “emasculate” the game, and have it played on too “ladylike a basis” (lol), nevertheless met with various colleges and spurred the creation of the NCAA, which immediately created a series of rules to increase the safety of the game.
I’m not sure we will ever be able to reconcile the extreme violence of the sport, especially as athletes continue to get faster and stronger, with our moral objections to what it does to young bodies and minds, the great majority of whom are not being compensated with millions of dollars and state of the art training and medical care. Still, there is definitely a part of me that wishes I could go back and watch some of those old games. In fact, think I may start up an intramural Espiskyros. Co-ed. Fully nude. (no kids though, cuz, well, yeah – we’re not ancient Greeks). Gimme a holler if yer interested.
STATE OF THE GEEKS
As we enter Sunday and the remainder of the Week 6 games, here is how the league is going. Last year’s regular league winner and Second place finisher, Bear Spray Junkies, is at it all over again. They’re holding onto first place with with an iron fucking grip, and a whopping 750 points for (a ridiculous average of 150 points per fucking game). They are doling out these horrendous beatings with the help of Mahomes, Kupp, Deebo, CEH, Josh Jacobs, and the ass-whupping Niners D. In Astral Geeks, we have a premium scoring system for QBs and DSTs, in an effort to make those pieces more valuable than they are in most leagues. The Junkies had a helluva draft, and if their players stay healthy, it may be tough to knock them off. Yet, I see this week with the byes, they are running out Eno Benjamin and Darrel Henderson as their RBs, which may at least put a dent in that 150 point average.
Waffle Party and Lovejoy FC are right behind with the same 4-1 record as Bear Spray, and though they are averaging a good deal less per game (130-135 per game), they still have monster rosters, featuring guys like Josh Allen, Nick Chubb, Dalvin Cook, Gabe Davis, and such. They have also reaped the luck of drawing the weakest points against. In fact, all five of the top teams in the standings have the lowest Points Against, which means all of them are vulnerable to the teams that can capitalize on bye weeks and finally start outscoring them. Billy 420 and Tree Frogs are holding down those 4 and 5 spots. Coming in 6th, in what would be the final playoff spot were it Week 15, is Como Chingas, who is looking alive despite having the most Points Against (and despite homer-rostering so many Raiders not named Davante).
The leader of the losers happens to be yours truly, the Milkshake Drunk (formerly the Milkshake Drinker — though we never were that). Given that we are the best of the worst currently, it feels rather appropriate that Cousins is our QB, doesn’t it? Feels like old times. I’m ready for like a grueling, infuriating game tomorrow which somehow still results in 22 points. Not horrid, but somehow not enough either, and getting there makes me claw my eyes out, so was it really worth it in the end? The projections say I should win against Tree Frogs this week, as they are without Derrick Henry, but if you think I buy for a second that tomorrow is not going to be a living fucking hell just trying to get each measly little point of my underachieving bucket of scrubs, you don’t know me very well. It’s going to be damn close, and if it comes down to a coin flip, I’m fucking Josh Allen watching helplessly from the sideline as the Ketchup Kid lights my dreams on fire. I’m basically sending you early congratulations, Tree Frogs.
The next three teams, Raul’s Rhinos, the Hamburglars, and JHerbosVictory Brisket are all decent teams that have had a bad shake, but could turn it on as we enter the bye weeks. The defending champ, Lady Balls, has had to deal with some crappy injuries, but their team has enough balance to it that they could rise up, depending on whether they find a serviceable QB sooner rather later. I’m not sure Wentz is making another championship run for the Balls. Teams 6-11 are all 2-3, so depending on who wins and loses this weekend, things could change drastically by Tuesday morning. Keep your eyes peeled. Gonna get interesting.
And then we have the Jack Sparks conundrum. This team is a winless 0-5 despite having Mixon, Barkley, and Montgomery, as well as not terrible (nor great, obviously) receivers like Diontae and Garret Wilson. They suffer from having Garoppolo and Stafford as their underperforming NFC West QBs, as well as monumental bust Kyle Pitts in the TE spot. Of course, to be fair, literally every TE besides Andrews and Kelce is a bust this year. I’m not entirely sure how they have managed to score so few points, but if they were to do some wheeling and dealing, I could see them crawling out of it. No one is down for the count, not even your self-flagellating commish. Once Ekeler kicked in, we ceased to suck quite so badly. But we’re not making it over than finish line unless we are able to beef thus roster somehow. We are working on some deals. Reach out if you need RBs. I got ’em. Let’s make some shit happen. We’ll divide the league between us and then fight for the whole enchilada come Geek Bowl time!!
PLAYER, FANTASY OR OTHERWISE, THAT DESERVES TO BE THROWN INTO A LIVE VOLCANO
Well, I didn’t play him, thankfully, though I considered it more than briefly. In fact, I almost did put him in, because I thought it might be a bounce back game for the whole team. Friends, it was not. We’re talking about Curtis Samuel here, who began the season on a tear, racking up double digit points in his first two games. Lately, however, the kid has been feeling the sting of his QB turning back into a Camo Pumpkin. Yet this last Thursday night, Samuel was a huge part of the problem. Motherfucker dropped three of his five targets, including a wide fucking open 40-yard TD pass. If you were watching that game and expecting at least a basic floor of 8-10 points from Samuel, you were definitely thinking it’s Mauna Loa time. Get out the drums! Time to let Samuel cook…. in Lava!
That’s it for this time around, folks.
As ever, keep your powder dry, your lineups set, your rival owners’ dirty laundry in your nasty little back pocket, and make that waiver wire yer beeyatch.
Your Make A Wish Commish,
tg
GO DOLPHINS!!!!!
ASTRAL GEEKS FFL 