No time for love, Dr. Jones- let’s get right down to it.

BRING FORTH THE ACCUSED!

PRESEASON MVPs

CHARGE: Breach of promise

OMG YOU GUYS DID YOU SEE DAK PRESCOTT! START HIM NOW! FUTURE EM VEE PEE! HOW BOUT THEM COWBOYS! GGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! /passes out, loses bladder control.

Oh yes, boys and girls, it’s that time of year. That time of year when the mirage of meaningful football leads even the most steadfast and grounded of football fans to believe things that are Patently Bullshit. You too will fall into the trap of believing that a. one player’s performance presages a Big Year for them, or b. that X team looks great/horrific. And you will be Wrong.

“But Reverend!” I hear none of you exclaim, “There are real football players, wearing real jerseys, playing in giant taxpayer-subsidized palaces of excess! They’re actually hitting each other! IT MUST MEAN SOMETHING THAT JACKMERIUS TACKTHERITRIX JUST LIT UP THE JETS’ THIRD STRING SECONDARY!!!!”

And that is the Lesser Lie that we all accept while we are busy rejecting the Great Lie that preseason games should cost the same as a regular-season ticket. That while the preseason games don’t mean much to veterans, young players are showing their potential, and that a player who has an impressive preseason will carry that momentum into the regular season.

These are Lies, stumbling blocks placed in our way by Nyarlathotep to distort our sense of reality and fuck up our fantasy football drafts. Whenever you see a promising rookie doing well in preseason, remember Kenbrell Thompkins and tremble.

The only time you should take player performance in a preseason game even slightly seriously is when a player tears an ACL, or a pectoral muscle, or a P90X or whatever. Then you can probably safely conclude that he’s going to have a Down Year.

TODD MARINOVICH

CHARGE: Trespassing naked while carrying around a bag of drugs.

Whelp, sometimes the charge pretty much tells the whole story. Former USC, RAAAAAAAAYYDDAAAHHHH and Los Angeles Avenger was arrested for being allegedly found…um…trespassing in someone else’s backyard in Irvine, California. Passed out. With a brown bag full of marijuana, meth and the accoutrements thereto. Without any clothes on.

For those of you not familiar with Ancient History (specifically the reign of Bush I), Todd Marinovich was essentially what would happen if you raised a kid like Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck, only the kid had the temperament of Johnny Manziel, the maturity of Ryan Leaf, and the chemical dependency issues of, well, Manziel and Leaf. Raised by the NFL’s first strength-and-conditioning coach from birth to be “the perfect quarterback”, he was nicknamed “Robo Quarterback” and “the world’s first test-tube athlete” during his collegiate career as USC, Marinovich started using drugs in high school and “went pro” on that front far before the NFL draft, getting busted for cocaine possession a month after his last bowl game. Al Davis, being Al Davis, still drafted him in the first round. He showed flashes of brilliance and flashes of dumbassedness on the field. However, his off-the-field-generalship was uniformly poor, as the friend who he was getting clean urine from for drug tests went on a bender and tested positive for alcohol four times the legal limit, landing him in rehab for the one thing he wasn’t abusing at the time. He then moved on to LSD, presumably to improve his field vision. From there it was pretty much an uninterrupted free-fall, culminating in getting busted using his signing bonus to buy heroin the same day. He allegedly got into art, painting a giant mural for the city of Garden Grove, California, although he was never convicted.

For those who are curious as to how The Todd has fared in the battle against Father Time:

RYAN GRIGSON

CHARGE: Threatening nation’s Strategic Gravy Reserve

Good news for several small towns’ worth of minors- their child support payments will come through for a least this month. The secondary-deprived Indianapolis Colts allegedly signed Trojan Quality Control Technician Antonio Cromartie to a one-year deal.

Normally, I would call this a win-win for both parties. Cromartie doesn’t get locked up for criminal non-support. The Colts, who were apparently planning to play the first several games of the season using no actual people at all in the secondary, get a warm body.

Actually, it wasn’t that bad of a move on Grigson’s part. I mean, in terms of removing an addict from sources of temptation, it’s pretty hard to find a better match for Cromartie than Indianapolis.

Unfortunately for Grigson, Jim Irsay celebrated the signing on Twitter with one of his signature Classic Rock references, which may have undone the whole plan.

When reached for comment, the head of the Indiana Association of Obstetricians was found weeping in the corner of his office.