King Hippo is on assignment, having been informed that someone did NOT get that thing he sent them. His faithful translator/squire/parole officer Reverend Mayhem is your substitute teacher.]
/Takes a slow, lingering drag off the last cigarette in a pack bought January 8, 2000.
/Puts it out on his forearm.
Ahhhh, there it is. The familiar sweet agony of playoff disappointment. Like re-acquainting with an old girlfriend who always thought you liked it a liiiiitle bit rougher than you actually do. You hated it, but you kind of…miss it.
Sadly, I was actually unable to watch this afternoon’s first tilt between The Aaron Rodgers and the Tom Bradys. Oh, wait, it was Green Bay versus Tampa Bay- the media coverage made me forget that 94 other players were going to be bleeding, sweating and shortening their lives at Lambeau.
Not having seen it and being utterly unwilling to wade through any recaps describing the Stunning Bravery of Tom Terrific, I can’t give you an authentic sense of the ebb and flow. Thing seem to have been relatively even until the Packers decided to give some dude named Scotty “Doesn’t Know” Miller a free shot at the endzone right before halftime.
https://youtu.be/7_AKr1BEajA
Aaron Jones fumbled after halftime, leading to another easy score for Team MRSA. Three straight picks by Brady (two by Pro Bowler Jaire Alexander) SHOULD have been enough for Bay of Green to turn the tide, but it wasn’t in the cards. Down by eight with just over two minutes left and facing 4th and Goal from the 8, the Packers decided to kick a field goal to bring them within…uh…still a touchdown. This was not an utterly irrational decision- with the two minute warning and three time out, you could get the ball back on a three-and-out with a lot of time left to…um…do the thing you could try to do right now.
Ok, so it was kind of irrational. Especially when you realize the underlying assumption- that you will get a three-and-out against Brady when he doesn’t care about scoring- is utterly ludicrous. Brady has thrown many impressive passes in his career, but his meat-and-potatoes was high accuracy move-the-chains stuff- the “vertical running game”. If he’s not trying to get chunk yardage for a score, he’ll just bleed you out. And he did. Green Bay didn’t get another sniff. LaFleur looks like another idiot coach who wasted a good day and spectacular season by Aaron Rodgers. Same as it ever was…
The Bills-Chiefs game…I don’t want to talk about it. The Chiefs won handily. There were specific points of discussion (the Bills going back to timid-ball by taking field goals instead of pushing for TDs, Josh Allen’s accuracy reverting to 2019, etc.) about where the Bills fell short. But in the end, Kansas City just was a better, faster team than the really good, really fast Bills. I wish it had been prettier, and that Tyreek Hill had suffered a deeply painful career-ending injury. But I can’t argue with the result.
It’s also nice, because I can stop waiting for the inevitable, crushing disappointment. I was already bracing for a two-week buildup to a Super Bowl reliving all four prior defeats and then watching Brady fuck our souls into oblivion on international television once again, this time to the musical accompaniment of The Weeknd.* So now I can continue on my way, knowing that the hammer has fallen, the embers of hope securely ground out beneath it. So that’s nice. Here’s some music.
*Canadian Commenters: why is it spelled this way? Has centuries of profligate U insertion finally caused a vowel shortage?
Happy Robert Burns Day, everyone! I might find time to squeeze in a wee dram later today….
Haggis for everyone!
every year there seems like one of the teams who reaches the conference championships did so by over performing, and if it begins a downward spiral.
imagine a “losing the superbowl hangover” and combine that with “losing the superbowl hangover” and combine that with a “losing a conference championship hangover”
basically I’m wondering if theres some bizarre stat out there where its highly unlikely that all four conference finalists in any given year all make the playoffs the following year.
this year it was the niners, last year was the rams,
I’m not saying bills are gonna regress, but considering the quality of qb play from the other 3 finalists, odds are not on there side it seems, especially with the playcalling.
and i say that knowing full well how stupid green bay looks right now. they’ll be back
I say Green Bay is the team that regresses. Rodgers is not getting any younger and the window is closing quickly.
I’ve learned over the years to never hang my hopes on hall of famers inexplicably falling off their pedestals
Yep. Look at Brady now. 6 years after everyone said he was looking old and washed up.
Put Brady on the Steelers and he’ll look every bit as bad as Roethlisberger does. A good O line makes a YUUGE difference.
Green Bay’s O line got destroyed by Tampa.
Let’s not forget that P-blergh had a bunch of wins before they went into the toilet. I’d say their season was out of the ordinary.
That said, Brady is the GOAT, even when people don’t want to admit it. So, his 80% is still better than most QBs. In two years, he will still be able to win more games than any Jets QB for the next 20 years. I mean, that’s just how it is. He’s not washed up yet. Maybe another year or two.
Apparently Tom Brady is now the Bucs’ all-time leader in playoff TD passes. That’s just sad.
In two weeks, he might be the Bucs’ all-time leader in Super Bowl losses. Let’s focus on that. Keep Brad Johnson immortal.
I’ve used a similar argument:
you look at brady’s first superbowl win and its sandwiched between two of the most underwhelming super bowl qbs ever.
what should have happened is that the league acknowledged how defenses had won championships, inexplicably the young pretty boy from michigan/california inexplicably became one of the NFL’s golden boys .
i know Brady is one of the best of all time the turn of the century is the time frame I really began to closely follow football and espn and company were in love with Brady and wanted to elevate him to goat status as early as 2003, when that era’s Patriots success could clearly be attributed to belichik.
in 2007 brady had matured as a passer but even that year his team got a shitload of free agents and his stats were inflated
It’s true that Brady’s first title came on the strength of the defense — he threw one TD pass that entire playoff season if I recall correctly.
But I think that NFL teams already are too prone to try to copy whatever last year’s champion did. At the time of the Pats’ win, the league had already swung quickly from “let’s copy the Ravens’ and Giants’ defense-first approach” to “the Rams’ Greatest Show on Turf is clearly the model every team should copy.”
There are broad trends in the league — you wouldn’t want to try a 1970s style “four yards and a cloud of dirt” running game, and various rule and enforcement changes have opened up the passing attack — so you do have to change with the times. But in general I think there’s many ways up the championship mountain. “Defense wins championships” is just a platitude. You win championships by winning games, and you win games by outscoring the other team. Doesn’t matter if it’s 7-3 or 48-47.
Never thought I’d see “Sarah Huckabee” and “running” in the same sentence. Just goes to show that, by simply dealing only with stupid people, a big fat, lying, fake Christian can become a leader of stupid people.
But what’s her 40 yard dash time?
Oof! Rodgers’ cap hit is over 37,000,000 bones this upcoming year.
He deserves all the bones.
I thought that was Matt Barkley.
I don’t know why I watch the NFL, where the results consistently disappoint me, when I could be watching $GME stock instead, which is genuinely fun right now.
I apologize for making Rev write up a painful fixture, but he did a very good job. Much more eloquent than my “fuck everything.”
Anyway. good luck to Mahomes-y, but the boycott continues.
So, the Lady LemonJello, as part of her job, has to come up with menu items from the Owl teams cities.
Our discussion of options:
Bay of Green – bratwurst, cheese curds
City of Kansas – BBQ (in the distance, Andy Reid’s stomach growls)
Buffalo – wings
Bay of Tampa – Tapioca? ???
For Tampa, I’d go with sponges and shitty cigars.
Penicillin shots for Tampa – moldy green jello shots
How DARE you, sir? That’s my child you’re calling “moldy”. Indeed. Harumph!
Some sort of seafood that isn’t nearly as good as the locals tell you it is.
Gotta do a Cubano. Got to.
Made at Publix by a woman named Hazel.
Missing dishes:
Beef on Weck and sponge candy (Buffalo)
Tums (GB)
Maalox (KC)
Cipro (TB)
Tampa should just be conch fritters and wings from Hooters
Sorry that your team sucks less than my team but more than the two best teams. Will this cheer you up?
https://twitter.com/AdamParkhomenko/status/1353454393148928000?s=19
Had a strange encounter. I wanted to text my girlfriend. AKA future missus right. Instead of texting her phone started ringing, in a minor panic, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, she answered.
We had a great conversation.
I’ve only talked to her twice in the last year.
Slow play.
I asked her if I could steal her away in 5 years to retire in Europe.
She said yes.
Hell yes.
Nice!! Congrats!
Great, but the final test…showing her this site. WHEN?
As my wife calls it “My mental nerdery”
I already did. Her only questions were about Thai massage and “Who’s the redhead?”
Excellent job and sorry your Bills couldn’t match the Chiefs. However, they have a bright future.
On the other hand, I hope Aaron Rodgers treats his coach like family.
Why in the everloving fuck didn’t he just run it in?
And then yes, take the shot on 4th down.
I believe it’s the everloving slow sweet fuck
– Dok Zymm
But yes, he should have run it in.