Numbers are meaningless without other numbers. You don’t know if eating twelve pancakes is a lot without knowing the record for eating pancakes. Well, okay, any sane person knows eating twelve pancakes is a lot. Bad example. But you know what I mean. I mean those plate-sized pancakes you get at the Wells Diner not those saucer-sized pancakes at IHOP. The blueberry pancakes at the Wells Diner are delectable, but I can’t imagine eating more than three.
Don’t Mess with… You know…
So, it’s a good time to be 4-3-0 for the Houston Texans. Unlike any other time they’ve been 4-3-0. For once, they aren’t already three games behind the division leading Indianapolis Colts because the Colts without Peyton Manning are like the Blowfish without Hootie. Check that. Coldplay without Chris Martin. (Blowfish without Hootie just sounded funny to me because Blowfish and Hootie are both funny words. Coldplay without Chris Martin is clearly a better analogy.) They only have a half-game lead over the second place Tennessee Titans, true, but they just junk-punched those same Titans 41-7 in Nashville and did so without arguably their best player, WR Andre Johnson. A game like that will leave a mark. It’s hard to picture the Titans winning the AFC South after last Sunday.
The Angel of Death is an Angel, too…
Getting beaten 62-7 will leave a mark, too.
A lot of teams this time of year find themselves saying “There’s still a lot of football left to play.” In most cases, it’s said with optimism, perhaps even a touch of defiance. I can’t imagine the Colts saying it without a palpable sense of resignation. I can’t imagine Colts fans saying it without a quaver of dread in their voices.
Schadenfreude Tastes Like Crème Brulee
And every time I hear a Pigskin Pundit or Bobblehead note that when the Patriots lost Tom Brady, New England went 11-5-0, a cruel smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.
Even God Hates the Miami Dolphins
So the Dolphins had a 15 point lead in the 4th Quarter, with three minutes to go. Three minutes until they would own their first win of the season. Just three minutes. First win. They had to give up a touchdown, an onside kick recovery, another touchdown and a two-point conversion just to force overtime. And that all happened. Then they lost in overtime on a 52-yard field goal by Matt Prater, who had missed two earlier attempts before his redemptive game-winner.
Why do such cruel things happen? Because God hates you, Miami Dolphins, that’s why! I don’t know what you did but it must’ve been bad. Not only do you lose again, but the author of your excruciating fate is one of the players you’re honoring in a special celebration of the 2008 national champion Florida Gators, Tim Tebow, who is showered with cheers from your own home crowd.
Tebow!
And you wanted to trade for Kyle Orton, the player benched in favor of Tebow.
Why didn’t the Dolphins go after Tebow instead of Orton? They didn’t think they were just a Kyle Orton away from the Super Bowl, did they? Did they not get his peculiar awesomeness? Were they oblivious to his messianic college career and his legion of followers right there in Florida?
Wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care and say Tebow!
The new regime in Denver and specifically old school head coach John Fox, still twitching from his Jake Delhomme experience, wanted to roll with the reliable if unspectacular Orton. He and GM John Elway didn’t seem to have any use for Tebow. He had Josh McDaniels stink on him. Plus, you know, wild high and away.
Okay. Tebow was awesome for 3 minutes but he was the opposite of awesome for 57 minutes. (Perhaps God was testing him.) I doubt his Miracle in Miami has changed John Fox’s or John Elway’s mind. It certainly didn’t silence the haters. And we shouldn’t forget he was playing the Dolphins who are currently listed as a synonym for “execrable” in the most recent edition of Roget’s (terrible, awful, appalling, disgusting, repulsive, deplorable, revolting, abominable, atrocious, very bad, Dolphins). Still, I can’t help but look forward to whatever Yahweh has in store for Tim…
Tebow!
Have the Kansas City Chiefs got their mojo back? Or are they just another 3-3-0 team happy there’s still a lot of football left to play? After a 0-3-0 start, with Jamaal Charles on IR and HC Todd Haley and starting QB Matt Cassel fighting over whose turn it was to make breakfast, the Chiefs had been left for dead by the pigskin commentariat. Now? Thanks to a decisive win on the road in Oakland and San Diego pulling a San Diego in MetLife Stadium and the utter improbability Tim Tebow can beat anybody but the Dolphins, the defending AFC West champions suddenly look like the defending AFC West champions.
Perhaps they are who we thought they were…
The Lions have lost two in a row and Matthew Stafford is “day to day”. (Aren’t we all?) That Best Thanksgiving Day Game Ever? Yeah, not so much. Don’t look now, Detroit but that’s Chicago in your rear view.
Why do the San Diego Chargers continue to disappoint? Shouldn’t we all know better by now? We really shouldn’t have any expectations, even with an 11-point lead and yet…
Damn you, San Diego!
Note: Googling “Chargers Choke Again” generates approximately 1,390,000 results. Googling “Heimlich Maneuver” generates approximately 522,000 results.
Matt Ryan is a cyborg. We knew that, didn’t we?
The Green Bay Packers have already won the next three Super Bowls setting a record with 61 wins in a row (regular season and playoffs) and we’re caught in a time loop created when a black hole passed through our sun’s core in 2014. We’ve been forced to relive the next three years numberless times, the plasma membranes between recursive realities thinning, and as they become transparent, we see what we have seen before again and again. Layer upon layer, blow by blow, year after year, the iconography of the Green Bay Packers is imprinted on our Jungian circuits, becoming archetype, spiritual framework, religion.
Yeah, I don’t really know what would happen if a black hole passed through our sun’s core.
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