As this past Sunday approached, the football world was preparing itself for a grandiose battle of unbeaten 2-0 NFL giants. On one side of the field, you could see a team which had doubled its win total of last season with a victory the previous week, a team led by a four-foot nine-inch quarterback who is 45 years old throwing to the starting Bears receivers of 1994. On the other side of the field, there were the Bengals. If you think it’s funny already, don’t laugh.
The first team, which NFL buffs would immediately recognize as the San Diego Chargers, is now one of three unbeaten teams at 3-0. Of course they beat the Bengals, who do you think they are? The Bears? By the way, these are the same Chargers who won one game all last year. ONE. This year, they added the aforementioned Doug Flutie at quarterback and about half of the former Bills defense. Oh, and they have the next Emmitt Smith in rookie running back LaDainian Tomlinson. As for the Bengals, I will not give any reasons why they started 2-0, because there aren’t any. It was pure luck. In fact, I predict they will go 0-13 from now on. But they did beat the world champion Ravens.
Speaking of the Ravens, they have had a tough start to their season. First, they barely beat the Bears at home, 17-6 (it was 10-6 until the very end), and that’s when they found out they’ve got issues. Then they lost to the Bengals, at which point Ray Lewis had to dissuade Tony Siragusa from jumping in the Ohio River, telling him that he is too obese to get over the guard rails anyway. The biggest reason why the Ravens might not repeat as Super Bowl champions is the loss of star running back Jamal Lewis for the season in training camp. Without him, these guys have absolutely no running game and have to rely on newly acquired quarterback Elvis Grbac and a bunch of crap receivers. Their defense is pretty damn good, though, in fact good enough to carry them, as their tough win in Denver showed. They totally shut down the Broncos’ normally excellent running game and thus controlled the tempo. This game showed that no one should discount Baltimore as a legitimate champion that might defend its title.
The two other unbeaten teams (up there with the Chargers) are the Rams and the Packers. The Rams seem to be back in their 1999 championship form because they now have a semi-decent defense to go with their all-world offense. Running back Marshall Faulk is catching the ball better than many teams’ best receivers and Kurt Warner is one of the very best quarterbacks, as long as he is healthy. And why are the Packers 3-0? One big reason: Brett Favre is fully healthy for the first time in several years, and he’s kicking some ass for my fantasy team. Running back Ahman Green has been a find since he was acquired at the beginning of last year from Seattle, and he has put up Pro Bowl statistics so far.
Everybody predicted the Buccaneers to win the Central Division, but they have sucked so far and so have the Vikings. It looks like the Packers should win the NFC Central this year, unless the Bears stop them. Haha. Hahaha. Maybe I should stop laughing at my own jokes. O.K. I’m O.K. now.
But seriously, the Bears could finish ahead of last in the division this year. Of course, I’m not implying that the Vikings are really worse than them, although they did lose to them with flying colors a week ago. But I am implying that the Lions have the capability to suck even bigger donkey balls than the Bears. Let’s just say that Detroit’s quarterback, Ty Detmer, threw seven completions a couple of weeks ago, and 85 to the Browns. And this guy is still starting over their other conehead quarterback. But that’s all right, because the Lions are my most hated NFL team. My dear Bears are a respectable 1-1 at this point. Before the week 2 game against the Vikings, I was praying for four-time Bears waivee Shane Matthews to get injured, because John Madden can throw farther than he can. I didn’t want him to get decapitated or split in half, mind you. I am not a bad person, just a malicious fan. But I did get my wish — Matthews suffered an ankle sprain that was fairly mild but still kept him out of the second half of the Vikings game, so the infinitely more competent Jim Miller came in and with his first pass gained more yardage than Shane Matthews in the whole first half. In total, Miller threw for about 200 yards and two touchdowns in barely more than a half. Maybe now the Bears will be able to utilize their receivers, rumored to be the strength of their team.
A next-to-final remark: the new Bengals of the NFL are the Washington Redskins, who only a year ago were supposed to go 16-0 and win the Super Bow l and help owner Dan Snyder become less of a psychopath. Now they have been outscored 112-16 in three games. Jeff George, their starting asshole, was cut before this week, making no difference whatsoever. Now their starting asshole is Tony Banks, who is just the same type of asshole that George was, but one that likes to expel the ball from its possession a lot more. Until the real Bengals return to form, these guys should keep us entertained.
I’m sure that even some people who don’t regularly follow football are aware that NFL games were canceled for what would have been Week 2 in light of the terrorist attacks that took place five days before that Sunday. It was a great decision by the NFL, not repeating their mistake of playing games just two days after President Kennedy’s assassination. As for the missed games, they will be made up in the last week of the regular season. Of course, this moves the playoffs back one week and thus causes a problem because there is some kind of car show planned in the New Orleans Superdome one week after the Super Bowl was initially scheduled. This means that running backs will have to avoid ’60s Chevys and ’90s Toyota Camrys as well as similarly-sized defensive tackles while trying to gain yards during the game. In any case, the NFL asked these guys to haul their piles of metal on wheels elsewhere for that day, even offering to pay all the expenses that such a departure from plans would cause, but they have refused so far. They just don’t get it. I hope Gilbert Brown sits on all of their cars and crushes them — that will show those bastards. In any case, there have been several proposed alternative plans to correct this nuisance; the most exciting of which involves the Super Bowl being played in New York. I am sure this idea will get a lot of support because it would help the city greatly, but also for another reason. A Super Bowl played in 2 feet of snow? Hells yeah!
