Blog

Friday, September 7, 2007

The Posedown - NFL Week 1

Van Walker lives in a small, dark room in a country far, far away overrun by grasshoppers.  I have never met his wife, but imagine her to be really hot.  Van beat me in a sportswriting competition last year through a combination of prestidigitation and graft.  He has no friends.

After spending all of last football season at each other’s throats, here we are again.  Each week, Van will hold still while I pummel him.  Despite having to sit through Van’s ill-considered noodling, I hope that you find my opinion enhances your understanding of the weekend’s games and, indeed, enriches your life.

My picks with Van’s odd little rebuttals are available on Van’s site.  Please go there to bask in the full glory of my wisdom.

Thursday

New Orleans at Indianapolis
Van’s pick: Indianapolis
This is going to be a fun game to watch, unless you’re a fan of shut-down defense. The Colts finished dead-stinkin’-last in run defense last season (21st in overall defense), and that was before all their good players turned a ring into a new contract elsewhere. The Saints couldn’t shut down Rex Grossman last season when it counted. First one to one hundred wins…

Bill: Is the problem here maybe that you have never seen an NFL game that did not involve the Bears?  For all you do not know, and wow, do I have no time to start on that, you have the pace of this game dialed in.  Look for Paul Westhead prowling the sidelines.

Sunday

Denver at Buffalo
Van’s pick: Denver
J.P. Losman gets it twisted and avoids Dre Bly’s side of the field, and wanders off wondering just who the hell that Champ Bailey guy is. And if he’s not too busy fathering another child by another woman (two more and he can field his own football team), Travis Henry will be gutting the Bills while Jay Cutler finds his rhythm with his toys at WR.

Bill: Why’s it always gotta be about baby mommas?  How come you never say anything about dog fighting?

Pittsburgh at Cleveland
Van’s pick: Pittsburgh
The Brady Quinn era won’t start until after Cleveland plays Baltimore and New England. The calls for the Brady Quinn era will start at precisely 1:22 p.m., Central, or as soon as the Brown’s “offense” slinks off the field, tails firmly between legs. Willie Parker is more than enough to get Pittsburgh into the left column.

Bill: Everybody needs to get something straight here: Charlie Frye is fine.  Brady Quinn will not fix Cleveland’s problems.

Philadelphia at Green Bay
Van’s pick: Philadelphia
Donovan McNabb goes to Green Bay, shakes the hand of the old dude wearing Brett Favre’s jersey, and then wears out the Packer defense to the tune of 42 points…and it will be his fault, because he only wanted to get back at Favre after those stinging T.O. comments…just like it was his fault that they lost the Super Bowl…just like it was his fault that he kidnapped the owner’s daughter and made Philly draft him, right after having sex with Monica Lewinsky inside the WMDs buried underneath the White House Lawn, after counting his receipts from Halliburton…I mean, really, what else can the Illadelph blame on this guy? All he has been is their best QB EVER, and they are already starting to buy Kevin Kolb jerseys…geez…

Bill: What’s wrong with having sex with Monica Lewinsky?  You can buy Kevin Kolb jerseys?

Kansas City at Houston
Van’s pick: Houston
It sez so right here that alleged Atlanta GM Rich McKay is forced to watch this game the same way that Alex de Large was made to watch violent porn in A Clockwork Orange…Matt Schaub shows why you let a player play himself off a team, instead of just sending him to Houston for, what, a J.R. Richard baseball card? Larry Johnson will get his usual 50 carries, not that it will matter, because, well, who else is going to advance the ball? And Herm Edwards yells at the press because the object is to win…the game!

Bill: Joey Harrington may be playing for McKay’s job right now – ooo, did you feel the chill right there? Meanwhile, in this game, how is it possible that Kansas City has subtractions every year but never any additions?  Doesn’t that violate some law of thermodynamics or something?  Is Damon Huard playing for Carl Peterson’s job?  Whatever happened to Brock Huard?  Man, I hope they aren’t playing this game in my market.

Tennessee at Jacksonville
Van’s pick: Tennessee
Wow, what a stinking mess this has become down in the swamp. They got rid of their best QB because the coach didn’t like him. They are still starting the wrong guy at RB, but that’s fixable because Fraud Taylor will be broken before I finish writing this sentence. Their WRs couldn’t catch a bullet in the Congo. Meanwhile, Tennessee comes in with a genuine leader at QB, no more distractions from players named after arcade games, and a not-so-quiet air of confidence.

Bill: Fred Taylor has played in 72 of 80 possible games over the last five years, including fifteen last year.  Tennessee’s Chris Brown and LenDale White, in their combined five years in the league, managed only 55.  The ground game is only one reason Jacksonville rolls here.  David Garrard, Jacksonville’s acknowledged second-best quarterback, is better right now than Vince Young.  And don’t make me go to the other side of the ball, dog.  Don’t make me do it.  I hope you don’t get hurt when you fall off the Titan bandwagon – there is the potential for a lot of people to land on you.

Atlanta at Minnesota
Van’s pick: Minnesota
This is one of the two games that Stephen Hawking predicted will rip a hole in the space-time continuum, ushering in the endless nightmare of Cthulu and his mindless hordes of tentacular monstrosities. Think I’m kidding? Someone paid green, folding cash to watch Tavaris Jackson and Joey Harrington for 60 minutes…no, really, someone did…really…Minnesota wins this game because they won my coin flip. Period.

Bill: Umm…

New England at the Jets
Van’s pick: New England
Bill Belichick has been gameplanning this matchup ever since the schedule came out. Believe it. Word around the campfire is that Charlie Weis was unprepared for Notre Dame’s first game because he was faxing a whole new offense to Foxboro. Tom Brady will be allowed to throw to Randy Moss whenever Moss gets behind a Jet…which will be all day long, making Moss happy, Brady tired, and Belichick satisfied after delivering an oldfashioned Joisey beatdown.

Bill: New England pounds the J-E-T-S, but how can Moss be a factor having missed the entire pre-season with a strained uterus?

Carolina at St. Louis
Van’s pick: St. Louis
Nice guy Drew Bennett makes a smooth transition into St. Louis’s offense and no one will notice. Torry Holt’s knee will be gimpy, and no one will care. Steve Smith will break something during warm-ups and no one at ESPN will hyperventilate.  John Fox will snatch DeShaun Foster’s heart out through his mouth at midfield and it won’t even make the local highlight reel. We’ll be too busy watching Steven Jackson stomp through the depleted Panther defense like a mastodon through the permafrost. This one is ugly…for Carolina.

Bill: Once again, right symptom, wrong disease.  Jackson is a force, a Herculean feat in waiting…crap, I have a man-crush on Steven Jackson.  But he is not this week’s story.  This week’s story is defense.  Both defenses will play well, but the Rams make a couple of big plays on D to win.  I must say, though, I had no idea until right now how little I care about this game.

Miami at Washington
Van’s pick: Washington
Remember that other Stephen Hawking pick I warned you about? This is the other one. You’d think that the Homeland Security Office would stop Miami at the airport and demand that they play this game over the internet or something, but nooooo…I’m thinking someone in D.C. (Evil Sith Lord Darth Cheney, perhaps?) will profit from the endless reign of blood and terror that the world will endure at the tentacles and fangs of Cthulhu and his raving horde of demons…

Bill: Erm…yyyyyyyyyy…I was kind of hoping the Cthulhu thing would not come up again.  I guess this gives me license to make a lot less sense next week.  Hopefully, the nine people in our readership are factoring your hysterical rambling into their office pools.  Because that should keep everyone coming back.

Detroit at Oakland
Van’s pick: Detroit
That sound you hear Sunday night will be the sound of thousands of MoTowners leaping onto a Honolulu Blue bandwagon, drinking the kool-aid and yelling that their beloved Lions are finally done with all that losing. The problem here is that these are Lions fans, easily the most deluded of all football fandom. No one can tell them that they only beat a 2-14 disaster last season, a team run by a geriatric who thinks it’s 1964, a team that inadvertently cut its third round pick, only to see that pick get snatched up by an alert Houston squad…Nope, Jon Kitna puts up numbers worthy of Don Majkowski, Calvin Johnson makes a few highlight reel catches, and the Lions win their season opener. And that’s about all the joy they are gonna get in the D this season.

Bill: There you go again.  What exactly are numbers worthy of Don Majkowski?  I am not overly impressed that either of us are picking against the Raiders.  You realize that if we just pick against the Raiders every week, that guarantees us at least 13 victories on the season?  And unfettered entrance into Valhalla?

Chicago at San Diego
Van’s pick: Chicago
Too many people are focusing on the wrong things in this game. What about Rex Grossman? What about Cedric Benson? What about San Diego’s lack of proven receivers? What about L.T.? Here’s what you should be asking: who is the backup QB in San Diego? For all the huffing and puffing about San Diego’s sack-happy defense (thanks, NFL Fantasy), the Bears come in with a truly superior defensive unit, with nothing but axe-murderers and werewolves at every position. Philip Rivers is truly the QB of the future in SD, because that Bears defense is going to knock him into tomorrow.

Bill: I should have taken San Diego in this game.  You can be damn sure I will be cheering for them.  Everybody gets that Van is a Bears fan, right?  You picked up on his subtly placed context clues?

Tampa Bay at Seattle
Van’s pick: Seattle
The Artist Formerly Known As Shaun Alexander has a throwback concert, Matt Hasselbeck throws to no one in particular, and the crease in Jon Gruden’s forehead get so deep that the National Seismic Institute declares it a fault line.

Bill: Certain folks at the worldwide leader have spent the last week trying to convince me that the Bucs are going to be an OK football team.  While I gracefully acknowledge that they have more information, more access and more knowledge than I do…what the hell?

The Giants at Dallas
Van’s pick: Dallas
Gotta love T.O. He’s like that Ron White joke; he has the right to remain silent, but not the ability. Here we are, at the start of a new season, and he’s already thrown Tony Romo under the bus. Nice. For a guy that would like to see as many balls thrown his way as humanly possible, he sure does a great job of pissing said ball thrower off. And poor Julius Jones, in his walk year, gets to watch in horror as Marion Barber III vultures goal-line score after goal-line score. Meanwhile, the G-men “welcome” back Mr. Prenup, Michael Strahan, who really is only playing for the love of the game, and not the $22 million that he owes his ex-wife in the divorce beatdown of the century…

Bill: TO has finally crossed the veil.  Nobody cares. He can start giving interviews claiming to be the messiah while standing naked with an African Gray Parrot on his shoulder who translates into Esperanto and we will all recognize it as we now do every occasion he opens his mouth – as a desperate plea for attention.  And what happened in the off-season with Barber, anyway?  When did he become the III?  It seems unlikely that somebody births ancestors, but maybe I don’t actually get that whole theory of relativity thing.  Have you seen the blurb that Michael Strahan’s Dad wrote him a letter in 1999 trying to warn him that, “Jean (his ex-wife) is a sick, evil lady.”  Dads are smart.  Shoulda listened to your Dad, dude.  Meanwhile, if you are looking for something to get me for Christmas – Jean Strahan’s lawyer.  The game?  Oh, yeah, the Giants are going to get mobbed.

Monday

Baltimore at Cincinnati
Van’s pick: Baltimore
This game is a slugfest that’ll be fun to watch. Both RBs will be productive. Both QBs will be wise and distributive. The really fun part will be to watch the emergence of Mark Clayton for Baltimore. Baltimore gets an early lead and rides Willis McGahee to victory.

Bill: The big story in this game is Steve McNair.  McNair, who is only 34 but comes out to be 219 using one of those online calculators, is starting for my fantasy football team because I waited until the 11th round to draft a quarterback.  I’m thinking there is an Easter egg somewhere that will let me start McNair in 2003, but I haven’t found the right combination of buttons yet.

Arizona at San Francisco
Van’s pick: San Francisco
It’s almost not fair that Alex Smith gets to start his Pro Bowl campaign against Arizona, because detractors will argue that his numbers are inflated (I mean, after all, this is Arizona we’re talking about here). Frank Gore will make fantasy owners across the land really happy with his combination of rush/receive yards, and the revamped Niner defense will probably take more confidence from this victory than they should, because, after all, this is Arizona we’re talking about here…

Bill: Alex Smith is not going to the Pro Bowl.  Tennessee is not beating Jacksonville.  Cthulhu is…I have no idea what Cthulhu is.

So, let’s see – by my tally, you have…carry the three…no clue at all.  I will try to get a couple wrong next week so you don’t feel so bad.  Looks like I overestimated you this week.

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