The Other Fifteen

WOOO!!!  FOOTBALL!!!!  WOO!!!!  That’s right friends, everyone’s favorite bone-crushingest, Xs-and-Os-iest, brutish-yet-tactical sport is back!  For those of you who missed it, here’s a link to my off-season run down of each NFL team. But in
honor of the start of a new NFL season, I feel obligated to offer some completely random and poorly thought out guesses at what will happen this season.  And yet, despite my admittedly taking-random-stabs approach, I will probably be about as correct as half the journalists out there putting serious research and thought into their predictions.  So here is a list of things I think will happen this season.

• The Detroit Lions will be bad.  See?  I’m already 1 for 1, and the season hasn’t even started yet.
• Some team will come out of obscurity to prominence.  Since this is a total crap shoot, I’m going to go with the Texans.  It would be too easy to choose a team like Seattle or Jacksonville, since they were both awesome two years ago and just took a year off last year.  In fact, anyone who chooses them as “sleepers” is a pussy.  There.  I said it.
• Many idiots will pick the Eagles to win the NFC East or even the NFC Championship even though they’ve only won their division once in the last 4 years and have the exact same fucking team every year, with the addition of a couple young receivers and a psychotic backup QB.  Side prediction: Brian Westbrook will get injured this year and Donovan McNabb’s abilities to take his team all the way will be questioned by fans and the media.  Side note: that prediction I just made, which comes with a guarantee, is part of the reason that Philly will never win with this team.  Also, they can’t run up the gut.  Also, Andy Reed is the Walrus, koo koo kajoo.
• Eli Manning will continue to baffle everyone on the planet.  His face reads like he has no idea what’s going on.  He talks like an awkward pre-teen.  He throws for a low completion percentage.  Yet he wins and is considered a leader.  And those people aren’t wrong.  Sometimes I don’t get football.
• Kurt Warner will thank Jesus for something, and maybe even everything.  Just once, though, I want an athlete to blame God for their loss.  If he’s the reason why people win, then by deductive reasoning isn’t he punishing the losers?  And if so, can we start having sideline confessionals as to why the losing players feel that they are being punished?  Now THAT would be must see TV.
• Brett Favre will be forced to retire after this season with an inoperable case of old people smell.
• The Redskins will be ok at best despite spending tons of money in the off-season AGAIN.  Seriously, Daniel Snider doesn’t learn a thing.  Still trying to shove that one-more-expensive-free-agent peg through the championship hole.
• Green Bay fans will be disappointed when they wake up and realize that they are still fat.
• Philadelphia fans will disgrace their city by doing something atrocious.  Scratch that, Philadelphia fans will accurately portray their city by doing something atrocious.
• The Raiders will continue to provide more entertainment off the field than on it.  Unless you enjoy schadenfreude, in which case you will love watching the Raiders.
• Everyone on the planet will spend the first quarter of the season talking about the Wild Cat offense revolutionizing the game.  Then defenses will figure it out and it will be relegated to an occasional trick play.  That’s EXACTLY what happened last year with the spread offense.  The Pats used it to go undefeated in the regular season and everyone tried to copy them… Until the Wild Cat came out.  Then that was the new “revolutionary formation.”  It just proves that 90% of the population easily gets caught up in hype, and also has an extremely short memory.
• Both Ohio teams will suck balls.  And they deserve it, too.  Don’t give me that look, Ohio.  You know what you did.
• Vince Young will continue his mental breakdown.  It’s too early to say if this will be tragic, comic, or tragicomic.
• Several players will get arrested and suspended for a variety of offenses (I REALLY went out on a limb there).
• Travis Henry will get someone pregnant.
• Chad Ochocinco will do something hilarious that will offend Joe Buck’s delicate sensibilities
• Phillip Rivers will continue to be an indefensible prick and that will somehow further endear him to his teammates.  You stay classy, San Diego.
• Drew Brees will finally get that birth mark removed from his face and will win the MVP, proving that voters were misinterpreting the phrase “the face of the franchise.”
• Mark Sanchez will indeed follow in the footsteps of “Broadway” Joe Namath, and by that I mean that he will appear on TV wearing pantyhose and fur coats.

Ok, now onto the serious predictions:

Division Winners: Giants, Vikings, Falcons, Cardinals, Patriots, Steelers, Colts, Chargers

Wild Cards: Bears, Panthers, Ravens, Texans

NFC Championship: Giants over Falcons.

AFC Championship: Steelers over Raven

Superbowl: Steelers over Giants

For those of you thinking to yourselves that picking the Steelers is the safe pick because they’re the defending champs, you’re an idiot.  It’s pretty rare to repeat in this league.  It’s only been done seven times in the history of the Superbowl.  Compare that to the three-peats that happen in baseball and basketball, but never in football, and you’ll realize that this isn’t a safe pick.  You know what?  I don’t have to defend my predictions to you.  If you don’t like them, you can go make you’re own damned predictions.  I’m done here.