Sunday, October 17, 2004
| Week 06 - 2004/2005 |
The epic Redskins/Bears tilt is on a big screen in the front room, and the 3-2 Chargers are playing the 4-1 Falcons on a little TV in the back. Unbelievable. I'm fucking hungover, I've already spent 2 and a half hours in a car this morning, and now I'm alone in the back because the douchebag TV guy wearing a Chiefs baseball jersey has the Redskins/Bears and his precious 1-4 Chiefs are on in the front. Beautiful. And he also can't find room for the Dolphins game, so there's absolutely no chance that Crazy Fish Guy will come sit with me. I think he's still upset that I banged his wife.
Games I'm seeing are Panthers/Eagles, Jets/49ers, Chargers/Falcons, and Browns/Bengals. Tony Siragusa is working the sidelines in he Eagles/Panthers game, and he says that the Panthers will be better with someone named Moorehead stepping in for the injured Kris Jenkins. Interesting theory, Goose, considering that Jenkins is about the best DT in football.
I have now been joined by my man AJ, and soon after that, some Jets fan that he knows has a seat with us. Shockingly, he's both a Jets fan, and not incessantly annoying. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, though, apparently. This guy tells me that he just pulled off a trade in his fantasy league, trading away Hines Ward for Andre Davis and Bubba Franks. Shrewd. Couldn't get the guy to throw in Curtis Enis, too? I don't know the guy, though, so I'm just nodding and telling him he made a good move.
The Chargers game is underway, and we hold them to a quick three-and-out. We take possession, and Drew Brees throws an interception. Not good. That was an old-Drew throw. However... offsides, Falcons. A reprieve. Come on, Drew. Be new Drew. Not old Drew.
Hey, the Eagles mascot is wearing Rocky's boxing shorts. That's kind of awesome. I hope the Panthers mascot puts on Ivan Drago's shorts and whoops his ass.
Old Drew throws another interception, and this one counts. This is not good.
The Falcons take possession, and Michael Vick is sacked. Igor Olshansky straight up the gut, and he buried him. This week, the Michael Vick Experience will be getting held down and forcefully penetrated by Igor Olshansky. Put that in a commercial, Nike.
Andre Davis hauls in a 99-yard touchdown pass from Jeff Garcia, and the guy next to me is talking quite seriously about how his Hines Ward for Davis/Franks trade is looking good. I gotta find a way to get this guy into my league next year.
Someone makes Reche Caldwell's knee look like a bendy-straw on the sidelines, and Reche is being carted off. Wonderful. Drew Brees has reverted to 2003 form, and our best receiver is on the back of a golf cart. When Nike makes a commercial about the MJD experience, it'll show a guy in a sports bar crying for 3 consecutive hours while a Jets fan next to him tries to trade Randy Moss for Bam Morris.
Maybe it's just me, but I think Jim Mora Jr. looks less like an NFL coach than he does a struggling stand-up comedian. I can just see him walking into a team meeting and going, "So what is up with the airline food?"
The Falcons hand if off. A waitress sticks her head in front of the TV. When she moves, the Chargers have the ball. That was awesome.
The Seahawks, in the game that was to be their big coming out party, are getting schlongwhipped by the Patriots, 17-0.
For some reason, the spell checker does not recognize "schlongwhipped."
Man, Jake Delhomme just took the nastiest helmet-to-helmet hit I've seen all year. Some Eagle just plowed the crown of his helmet right into Delhomme's earhole, and there was no call.
Michael Vick finds Alge Crumper in the endzone for a Falcons touchdown. I'm not saying it was a lucky play, but... well, it was barely a touchdown pass. It just as easily could've been an interception, and it was Vick's first touchdown pass since Week 2.
The 49ers are somehow up on the Jets, 14-0.
On 4th and goal inside the 1, LaDainian Tomlinson goes over the top with a vertical leap that would make Dominique Wilkins proud. He can get up there.
The Michael Vick Experience throws an interception, and the Chargers score a TD shortly thereafter. Drew Brees is getting back on track, and Eric Parker has stepped it up in the absence of Reche Caldwell.
I think the general public feels the same way I do about the Redskins. My man Chris, who's sitting in the front room, comes back and tells me that just about no one was paying any attention to that game until the Bears picked one off and took it to the house, and everyone cheered at the Redskins expense. Sweet.
These guys at the table next to me are talking about some fantasy football trade, and one dude starts a sentence with, "I swear on my mother's soul..." That's good. Because you wouldn't want to swear on your mother's soul for something that wasn't important. I'm sure mom would be happy to know that her soul was used to help her son make a waiver wire transaction for Eddie Kennison or something.
Every time I look over at the Eagles game, someone is getting hammered. The Eagles are doing some hitting today. They wanted this Carolina win more than any other on their schedule.
The Eagles pick one off, and whoever's returning it has #90 Corey Simon out in front, leading the blocking brigade. Simon, looking like he's going about 340, is running through people, and doing so with incredible speed. Things that big just should not move that fast, unless they have 8-cylinder engines in them. TD Eagles.
By the way, I hate Eagles fans. Hate them.
Nate Kaeding, rookie kicker for the Chargers, buries a 53-yarder. Clutch. And then he launches the kickoff out of bounds. So, from 53 yards away, he can kick the ball as hard as he can, and fit it between two posts, just 18.5 feet apart, but given 160 feet to keep it in, he can't do it. Not so clutch. Kickers make rookie mistakes, too, I suppose.
Fox shows a crowd shot of two girls at the Eagles game wearing pink hats with the Eagles logo on them. I yell, "WHORES." The commentators then explain that for every pink hat that's sold, $5 is donated to breast cancer research. So, um... sorry. To make up for it, I'm buying a pink Eagles hat.
CBS is running a poll asking who's the best young quarterback in the NFL. Drew Brees's name appears on the list, which makes me smile. He deserves to be. He won't win, but the fact that he's even being considered... that just makes my day.
LaDainian needs a little bit of a breather, so we'll just put in Jesse Chatman, and HE WILL GO WHEREVER THE FUCK HE WANTS.
William Green is absolutely shredding the Bengals. The Bengals defense must be absolutely atrocious. Even the Browns can do whatever they want against them. By the way, Chad Johnson, who sent some Pepto-Bismol to the Browns DBs earlier in the week, has 3 drops and has made no impact on the game. I hope some drunken Browns fan throws a bottle of it at him and gets pink stuff all over him.
The Jets have managed to come back against the 49ers behind a Curtis Martin touchdown and some strong play by tight end Anthony Becht.
Michael Vick, unfortunately, can run very fast. He runs for a TD, and has closed to the gap to 14-17.
And after a three-and-out from the Chargers, Michael Vick throws a picture-perfect lob to the corner of the endzone for another TD. The Michael Vick Experience has made me nauseous. We dominated most of this game, and we trail by 4. Fudgecicles.
The Panthers are driving late against the Eagles. The game has been over for quite some time, but the Eagles do desperately want a shutout. So do the fans in the bar. Spitefully, I don't want them to have it. Come on, Panthers... Delhomme throws, touchdown to Mushin! HAHA.
Tim Rattay throws a pass to a 49ers receiver, who does what every good receiver does, and ducks as if the ball was on fire. I'm sure there's a logical explanation, like he thought the pass was intended for someone behind him or something, but still... that was amsuing. Somehow, that sort of thing only happens to really bad teams.
And the Chargers burn their last timeout with over 6:00 to play in the 4th quarter. That's... that's not good.
Alright... Nate Kaeding buries another clutch field goal, and we're down 1. We need a stop, and we need to get a score, and we need to do it in just a couple of minutes. I'm just glad that it doesn't look like we'll need those timeouts or anything.
And we just... can't... hold. Michael Vick is running for first downs, he's throwing for them... fuck that guy. I wanna go to a Falcons game and hold up a sign that says, "Yeah, well, your brother does little girls."
I go out to the front room for the 4:00 games, and some Redskins fan in a Patrick Ramsey jersey just won't sit down. His game is over, he's already celebrated a victory over the Bears like a Super Bowl win, and now's he's got to stand in front of the TV. Do me a favor, pal, act like the guy who's jersey you're wearing, and sit.
The game wasn't on anywhere, so I didn't see it, but I guess the Dolphins blew their best shot at winning a game today. I'm feeling for Crazy Fish Guy. CFG, you're a CF-OG. Keep rollin' hard, my man.
Jim Nantz sucks. All he has is a smooth voice. That's it. He is not good at calling games... not football, not college basketball. He never has been. An interception goes right through Chad Scott's hands, and Keyshawn Johnson catches it. Without a word about Scott or his actions, Nantz credits Keyshawn for "great concentration." I guess you gotta talk about the guys you've actually heard of. Nantz should never be allowed to leave the Augusta National grounds.
Y'know, some of the bitterness has dissipated... so I can admit that Michael Vick was pretty brilliant down the stretch. Don't get me wrong, I don't feel like the best team won that game, but... Vick was the man. May he get genital herpes.
Ben Roethlisberger is unspeakably impressive. The way he moves in the pocket, the way he throws the ball... nothing about him suggests rookie. It seems like he's got the respect of the team, too. It's an impressive thing to watch.
The only two games on at 4:00 are apparently Steelers/Cowboys and Raiders/Broncos. For divisional purposes, I have to root for the Raiders, and I'm pretty sure they'll be letting me down.
Roethlisberger suffers a knee injury of some kind. Millions of Pittsburghers are flocking downtown to the 16th-street bridge, ready to throw themselves off if the injury is in any way serious. People in Pittsburgh haven't been this upset since Journey broke up in 1987.
I haven't written anything down in a while... I've been drawing dirty pictures on napkins, depicting AJ and Danks doing filthy things to each other. Hey, everyone needs a hobby.
Say, what happens if Tommy Maddox is named the starter when he comes back from injury? How soon after the press conference would Bill Cowher be murdered? Under an hour?
And for the first time this year, we hear the word UNABATED! I suggest that we start a new tradition, and do a shot each time we hear the word "unabated." First, we have to invent our new unabated shot, though.
We debate for a while about what the shot should consist of. I vote for Tequlia and the sweat of seven Nepalese virgins. The bar doesn't have it. We argue until we all just forget about it and don't do the shot.
My waitress this week is being exceptionally nice to me. There are smiles, attention, physical contact. I think she senses that I'm a man on the rebound, and she wants to move in. I guess now would be a good time to give an update on the old girlfriend, too. I haven't mentioned her this year, because... she hasn't been there. You might be thinking that she found a better job somewhere else, but it's more than that. What I'm saying is that she left me. Without a word, without a note, the trollop just up and left, leaving me with only the receipts I saved from the times she served me. It's an emotional topic for me.
If you're new to the Smorgasbord this year, there's a good chance that you have no idea what I'm talking about. Basically, I developed a very special relationship with a waitress here, and I made her my girlfriend. In ImaginaryLand. For a more in-depth explanation, you can check out last year's Smorgasbords, starting about 2/3rds of the way down the page in Week One.
The point of all this us... I think this waitress wants to be my new girlfriend. In fact, I'm sure of it. I just don't know if I'm ready to commit yet. I enjoy the courting period so much. She brings me a beverage, I smile and say thank you, and we do the same thing with various items like peanuts, chicken wings, and handi-wipes. The "early relationship" phase is so sweet and so exhilarating... I don't know if I want to rush into anything.
I'm watching the Raiders game, and it occurs to me... I recognize a lot of the bastards in the stands. The guys in the spikes and Darth Vader costumers... I've seen them so much that I know who they are. It's sad. What kind of message are we sending to America's youth by letting these people in public, let alone putting them on TV? It's just sad. Hey kids, want the attention of a nation? Drop out of school, get a job at the carnival, do all your clothes-shopping at the Halloween store, go to Raiders game, stab a few people, and you can be famous, too!
Oh, good... Archie Manning will be a special guest on CBS next week. I really felt that was the one thing lacking from their NFL coverage; the perspective of a career loser who's raised his youngest son to be a big wet pussy. I can't wait.
The Cowboys have gone up 20-10 on the Steelers. This is weird. Vinny Testaverde is playing the Steelers, and he's yet to throw an interception. Will the old Vinny make an appearance? Anyway, down 10, let's see how Ben Roethlisberger responds.
Jim Nantz: "Bill Parcells said that Ben Roethlisberger is the best-looking young quarterback to come into the league since Dan Marino." Hm. I never thought Dan Marino was all that attractive. Different strokes, I guess.
Roethlisberger scrambles, shucks, jives, and finds Jerame Tuman in the back of the endzone for a score. I guess that's how Ben Roethlisberger responds.
In case anyone was wondering, the Raiders are getting their asses pounded.
Chris Hope's helmet comes off two plays in a row. Might wanna look into actually buckling that chinstrap, fella.
Well... Old Vinny has made his appearance. With 2:36 on the clock, and the Cowboys up by 3, Vinny fumbles in a most unusual fashion. A first down for the 'Boys, and the game is over. I thought the worst-case scenario was eating some clock, punting, pinning the Steelers deep, and making them drive the length of the field. As it turns out, the worst-case scenario was Vinny fumbling, and Kimo Von Oelhoffen picking it up and setting up a Steelers win.
Jerome Bettis caps things off with his customary 4-inch touchdown carry... and he's keeping the ball This just irks me... Duce Staley has been a workhorse all day, Jerome manages to get behind a blocker and prance his ass into the endzone, and he's keeping the ball? I hope he's taking it to Duce Staley. Duce says it's alright with him, and it's working out alright for everyone, but if the Steelers were 1-5... I doubt that would be the case.
CBS with a shot of Vinny Testaverde on the sidelines, sitting on the bench with a look on his face that says, "Dammit... I am still Vinny."
With a slim chance to still win the game, the Cowboys get down to the Steelers 30 with a hook-n-lateral play to Terry Glenn. And due to some home cooking from the clock operator, they have one shot from the 30. A few tense seconds later, it falls incomplete. Steelers win.
