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The Firing of Matt Millen … In the Style of the Bard’s Tale Clue Book
Sep 24th, 2008 by Ice Cream Jonsey

Note from Ice Cream Jonsey:

Friend,

Long have I awaited thy coming of age. Our town of Detroit doth slowly wither under the cursed sorcery of Mangar, spawn of demons. Many hath challenged his power, only to encounter their doom.

One man didst nearly succeed. Matt Millen, the former general manager of the Detroit Lions, became imprisoned here through Mangar’s evil spell of winter. He failed, but in his failure lies the way to thy victory. Millen did keepeth a journal, and Mangar is either unaware of its existence, or believes it to have perished along with the impudent viscount. But the tome didst survive, and came into my keeping.

The path thou must follow doth with danger abound. Go, and take with thee the journal of a brave knight, and the prayers of an old man.

(signed) the dark and gritty… Ice Cream Jonsey!

-=[oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo]=-

From the Journal of Matt Millen

It is not to be tolerated! I refuse to kneel to the evil that has made its home in Detroit.

All of the brave knights who protect this town have vanished, leaving frightened serfs, women and children to face unprotected the hordes of strange beasts and ruffians that now inhabit the streets. My brave party and I can do little to reduce their seemingly infinite numbers.

We must destroy the wizard Mangar, surely the source of the evil invasion, and of the ungodly and impenetrable winter that imprisons Detroit.

-=[oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo]=-

The Sewer  

We are in a muck-drenched stinking sewer, and the beasts and blackguards who attack us here are too numerous to be described. Here we gain much wealth, and our skills are honed like fine steel blades. As we explore, we discover strange writings on the walls of this foul hole. I will record them faithfully here — their value will perhaps become clear later in our travels.

        “Pass the light at night.” A cryptic verse indeed. I believe I will take this advice to heart, and embrace my recent hirelings: Charles Rogers, Mike Williams, and Joey Harrington. We shall pass much, indeed.

        “YM EBD SI A RCAERAC.” I am no scholar, but neither am I a stranger to lore and letters. I can perceive no sense here.

        “Golems are made of stone.” Is this meant to lighten our hearts against a fear of encountering a golem made from the draft picks I could have received for trading the mentally-defeated Barry Sanders while he could still perform, instead of stubbornly holding on and robbing America of the joy of watching him play?

We shall venture further into the maze.

-=[oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo]=-

Harkyn’s Castle, Level Three

We encountered a doddering old fool who barred our path until we told him the name of the tavern on Archer Street. The answer, Naked Tavern, was found to be disquieting to some members of our party, though not Joe Cullen.

Ah, pride before a fall. Once again we are challenged to the utmost of our abilities, and emerge not unscathed. The Internet trolls! They attacked in an endless flowing stream, to slay them akin to holding back the tide with a bottomless bucket. We found out (too late!) that our recently abandoned green robes my own seppuku, my own life taken from my own hands using a sword that I alone pushed into my wheezing abdomen, would have rendered us immune to attack. At last we stumbled, blind with weariness, over hundreds of corpses, four of our, proud, slain warriors (Robert Porcher, Roy Williams, Jon Kitna and Jason Hanson) lying hidden beneath stinking mounds of Baron Harkyn’s dead legions. We can spare no time to hunt for them — may the gods forgive us.

-=[oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo]=-

Mangar’s Dungeon, Level Five

We are defeated at the last. The silver shapes were the key to entering the main chamber wherein resides a gloating Mangar. We are trapped like rats in a tiny room where even now the wizard sends his minions to storm the door.

But we are given wise counsel by Charles Rogers, who advises us to try to get this journal to Clark Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, and an expert in the futility of a general manager in his own right… in the hope that he will pass on the experiences written here to one capable of defeating Mangar and firing Carl Peterson. One final spell, cast by Mike Williams, using the life forces of Charles Rogers, Marty Mornhinweg, Kevin Jones and myself, will render Joey Harrington invisible for a time, enabling him to escape this place with the journal. Yet it is evil magic. Everything we have accomplished will be rent from the fabric of time and destroyed, and as the spell burns itself out, Joey will be consumed.

I embrace my companions, and taste the salt of Joey’s tears. Mike Williams has asked for my dagger — he has no wish to be captured alive. As he prepares the spell, I can but reflect that no man could wish to die in better company.

Mike begins. They come.

Fire Matt Millen

Saints vs Broncos
Sep 22nd, 2008 by Ice Cream Jonsey

(AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)I went to the Saints – Broncos game yesterday, and I don’t blame Martin Gramatica for anything. The guy had not missed a kick in a Saints uniform, so he had a lot of credit built up, as far as I was concerned. And all told, it was a great game. The Broncos won, but it was by far the most gripping game I’ve ever been to. It reminds you why you just might piss away your Sundays with the NFL and be at ease with it.

Things looked ugly for the Saints early, as their first drive stalled. The Broncos scored, turned a Reggie Bush fumble into seven points, and led 21-3 early.

From there, the Saints got their act together. The sun started to really beat down on the stadium. I was in section 532, up into row 33 and I think there were maybe three rows behind us and that was it. Honestly, they were fine seats and we were able to see everything on the field at all times. Our section was really cool, too – there were a lot of Saints fans present, and the Bronco fans that were there were chill. I never once felt like some animal was going to freak out because I wore my Bush jersey, and I probably couldn’t say the same about western New York, where I am originally from. (During the playoff game between Buffalo and Jacksonville in 94 or 95, I wore my winter jacket, which happened to be a Saints jacket… and Bills fans were tossing snowballs at me. If you wonder why that entire city crumbling, well, there ya go.)

I actually don’t feel that terrible about the game. The sun was shining, I got to see all my favorite players (would have liked to have seen Deuce McAllister enter the game), it was an up and down game that came down, essentially, to an attempted field goal, and it was a loss on the road to a team in a different conference. It’s not that critical in the playoff picture. I say all this because the old me would have been freaking out with vicious attacks, cruel taunts, unflattering impersonations and twisted carcicatures against Saints players and coaches. I just don’t have the bile any more.

The Saints are 1-2, and I just learned that Jeremy Shockey is out 3-6 weeks. Knowing Shockey, it will be three weeks. Our schedule really is easy, and I remain convinced that the team is gonna be fine. That being said, Reggie Bush is the Saints’ leading rusher and receiver, and has scored 4 times in 3 games. I was really considering bookmarking all the horrible, stock, by the book articles that trashed the frigging guy since he left with a partially torn MCL last year, but Christ, I am 34 and I just don’t have time to keep track of the shitty, shitty sportswriting that we see in this country. I knew I would be validated – he’s a fucking star – and… great? I am smarter than the average sportswriter? I already knew that.

 

My Football Team Signed Joey Harrington
Sep 19th, 2008 by Ice Cream Jonsey

I feel like I want to die. Do you know what that feels like? I am going to the Saints game on Sunday. I am looking forward to seeing Reggie Bush, and Drew Brees and Deuce McAllister. This was going to be an amazing trip. My boss, who is awesome, hooked me up with tickets. I haven’t seen the Saints in person in years. YEARS. And now look at this.

The New Orleans Saints have signed quarterback Joey Harrington.

I don’t think that saying he is the worst starting quarterback of all-time is hyperbole. At least, not for the number of starts he had. Ryan Leaf is probably, start for start, worse (oh by the way, Ryan Leaf did manage to beat the Saints once, I caught that game living at Da King’s house on Internet radio) but Harrington was able to compile his poor play over a much longer period of time.

And no, he is not starting on Sunday. He’ll be the third-string QB that can’t even enter the game unless stuff goes seriously wrong. But anywhere he goes, HE STARTS.

Here is an example of what it is like to have Joey Harrington on your team. The GIF I am going to link shows him fumbling a ball off a static table, and then throwing what would be an interception to a CARDBOARD CUT-OUT of a defender. LOOK AT THIS SHIT.

  

You know what, sometimes GIFs take a while to load, and I apologize for this, but for the love of Christ how does that happen? 

He’s started everywhere he’s ever gone. Drew Brees is fucked. He’s a goddamn marked man, and I’ll tell you what, don’t invest in Brunell futures, either. By all accounts, Joey Harrington is one of the most down-to-earth guys in sports. He is a team player. His favorite video game is Ms. Pac-Man. He was saddled with the worst general manager in the entire history of recorded human history in Matt Millen. JOEY HARRINGTON IS A NICE GUY. 

Fuck. All right, fuck this, he’s a Saint now. I’m on board. He’s gonna play, he’s never NOT played, I just have to accept it. I have been told that I need to let go of the future and the past, in order to truly be content with my life. 

I am letting go of the past. (Except for the GIF up there.)

I am letting go of the imagined future.

God save us all.

164 Yards and a Score
Sep 8th, 2008 by Ice Cream Jonsey

I grew up in western New York, and the fans there were always busting on Bruce Smith and Jim Kelly. You play football, you have a target on your back. That’s fine.

I hang out at a few bulletin boards for my favorite team, the New Orleans Saints. There are guys there that don’t like Reggie Bush. Even out of our own little sphere, he seems to get an inordinate amount of shit. And for what? I’ve always maintained that he was key to the team getting to the NFC Championship game in 2006. In 2007, everyone on the team sucked in the first four games. (If the Saints had lost to the Bucs today, I would not have been able to say that they “sucked.” Getting drilled 41-10 last year to open, at Indy? Yeah, that performance sucked.)

But I guess my point is, after watching Bush go for 164 total yards and a score, is that these sportswriters are able to churn out generic article after generic article, none of it backed up by actually watching the games. They look for some universal narrative that won’t get them mocked by their peers, and “Reggie Bush being a disappointment!!” seemed to be the one they grabbed onto. At least for the next seven days we don’t have to hear it.

(I am also enjoying the headlines that read, “Bush stays course as Saints hold on to win.” It’s great to see even a random NFL article make fun of the colossal joke we have as Prez. But hey, they didn’t like Truman at the end, either! So it’s all good there!)

You really have to watch these games to get a good feeling for how the players perform, and I think I’m going to be writing less-cocky opinions in the future, because I’m definitely not able to catch all the games. I don’t want to turn into one of those choads still banging the drum that the Cardinals are an embarrassment or whatever. (Maybe historically, but they went 8-8 last year and started things off correctly this year. We get used to these 13-3 to 10-6 turnarounds, but there seems to at least be some slow, steady progress there.)

The other thing about a sort of statistics-based view of the NFL that always gets me is a story I remember about one of the Saints teams under Haslett. Completely poised to go to the playoffs, there is some rumor that Joe Horn or Joe Johnson slept with Willie Roaf’s wife. Enough strife immediately appears to have them completely blown out to end the season, and they end up going 7-9. I’m not saying that there can’t be a more measured and nuanced look at football, that somehow brings you to the conclusion that Reggie Bush is the worst #2 pick of all-time and the Texans are now geniuses for not trading down and continuing to make the playoffs, but I’m going to need to see cuckolding quantified before I am totally ready to sign off.

 

Retrospect: the 2004 New Orleans Saints
Aug 21st, 2008 by Ice Cream Jonsey

The 2004 New Orleans Saints are the only team that I have seen pack it in during the second game of the NFL season.

It’s quite true. Years from now history will forget, but I won’t — the 2004 San Francisco 49ers were putting street free agents on their defensive line due to injury. For game two they started guys who weren’t in camp with them… or anyone. Ken Dorsey was the quarterback, playing in his first game for Christ’s sake! If you get beat by a quarterback starting his first game, ever, it’s actually indicative of a mess of failures within your organization and Dorsey, to his credit, almost did it.

The 49ers would have won the game if backup running back Jamal Robertson didn’t fumble and give the Saints one more crack with the ball, and even Yahoo didn’t mention it in the recap. The Saints had given up on the season, but an unforced miscue gave them a second chance.

I can’t fully explain how little they wanted to win that game. My brother said once that the team seemed like they were more interested in hitting up the strip clubs and giving each other a hotfoot than actually playing football on Sunday. I saw them play with a lead in the third quarter once in 2004. They acted like a team that was shocked at what time the game started each week. As if they were a disorganized flag football team. Whoa, playing at one o’clock?!! What the-? Is it early this week? Sure coach, I’ll get right to the game, don’t take the coin flip till I get there! Where’s my helmet?

I blamed the coach at the time — Jim Haslett — and his co-ordinators (Mike McCarthy on the offense and Rick Venturi on the defense) and I guess I still do, a little. For years the Saints played like they didn’t get any sleep the night before. It’s funny, seeing Mike McCarthy coach the Packers these days. It’s not as funny seeing our coach in 2008, Sean Payton, abandon the run just as easily as McCarthy did.

Two teams made it in 2004 at 8-8 and it really burns me that my mediocre team wasn’t good enough to be one of them, especially since they beat one of them outright (the Rams). Although! As bad as things were in New Orleans, I’d have hated to have to wish that my Super Bowl draught would end with Mike Fucking Tice at the helm (as Vikings fans would have, in 2004). There is a reason he never got another head coaching job in the league. When I grew up, the Buffalo Bills had a few like that before Marv Levy took over. It really does say it all.

In the end, the 2004 Saints were eliminated in the various tie-breakers because their former kicker — Doug Brien — missed like a 90 yarder that the Jets (who had nothing to play for) had him try against the Rams.  The way that Haslett cut him, I wouldn’t have blamed him if, rather than kick the ball, he simply took off his pants, revealed “FUCK” on his left cheek,  “HASLETT” on the right and hiked the ball himself into his own end zone.

And I will never forget the image of Johnathan Sullivan, the worst player in New Orleans Saints history, watching the game completely stone-faced. I am not going to make a fat guy joke here. Back in 2004 we still had hope.

I have a little bit of hope today, in August of 2008. Not much. Six times the Saints have made the playoffs and once, back in the 90s while I was in high school, I had to work a shift at the Hilton Big M during one of the games. They just don’t go often. It’s also a little funny to see Bobby Hebert win that stupid ESPN poll for “Best Saint of All-Time” considering his selfish contract demands, and subsequent refusal to play in 1990 wasted one of the prime years of the Dome Patrol defense, putting up 6 points in the playoffs against a Bears team that got creamed the next week against the Giants. (We could have been the team that got creamed in the second round that year!!) Hebert wasn’t great, but he would have done a better job than Walsh.

But if the team does do well, it’s important – for me – to remember how much terrible football I watched to get there. 2004 was one of those seasons.

The NFC South – Tradition and Excellence
Jul 24th, 2008 by Ice Cream Jonsey

Greg from Atlanta writes:
How are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers looking for this year?

Here’s the great thing about the NFC South – it has the least amount of “tradition” of any division in any of the four major sports, except that hockey one with Atlanta, Carolina and Washington. I would like to tell you a quick story about tradition, but it involves Boston-bashing, of which I am trying to do LESS. I know many wonderful people in the Boston area and if I get on the bandwagon of hating sports fans in that area, I am going to lose real friends. So none of that!

But anyway, I was on a bus back from Bills-Saints right before 9/11 and this worthless chowd starts giving me shit about the Blue Jays and their lack of tradition. He was lamenting how they won the World Series twice and, at the time, the Red Sox hadn’t in like 8,000 years. “No tradition,” he hissed.

Now, he was a terrible sports fan (Stieb, Barfield, Bell, Cox, Jimy, Carter, Alomar, etc.) but it shocked me that people actually care about that sort of thing. We shouldn’t! Teams shouldn’t get advantages because they were good 50 years ago, and that’s why, even though the NFC South is pretty terrible, we do manage to dump a decent team into the mix each season. In fact, I’d bet that the NFC South has had the least amount of time elapse since all 4 teams made it to the Championship game of their respective conference. I am not going to look it up, but the last one to make it was Tampa Bay in 2002: Bills/Browns/Texans/Chiefs haven’t been there recently in the AFC, and Cowboys/Lions/Niners in the NFC. I’m sure there were others, but honestly, I think about horrible sports teams enough in my free time, I’m trying to keep the blog more professional.

So with that in mind, I can answer the question about the chances of the Bucs, Falcons, Panthers and Saints by saying anything we think we know is completely irrelevant! I think Atlanta will win the division, and here is why:

– How many drives were killed by a combination of Vick and Harrington and the awful hands of Falcons’ receivers? I looked it up, and 872 drives were negatively affected by the QBs not being able to pass and the receivers not being able to catch, skills which help both positions. No wonder they run the hell out of the ball, usually. Chris Redman was the best pure quarterback they had in ages. But because of the worst-to-first tendencies in the NFL, I am convinced that Matt Ryan will be a star.

— Last year they had a clearly disinterested coach, and while I don’t think it’s necessary to go to bed at 3:00 AM and wake up in your office at 5:12 AM, having a guy who seems somewhat happier to be there in Mike Smith is going to make a clear difference.

— I have gleefully pointed to the Saints’ schedule as the worst one in franchise history (worst, as in, contains the most terrible teams) but the Falcons benefit as well. Detroit, KC, Chicago, Oakland, and St. Louis. The Falcons suffer because they can’t play the Falcons twice, but those are otherwise five games I would actually favor them in to start the season. Anything can happen in a division game, so let’s say they split – 8-8 is very possible without having made a ridiculous argument yet.

— There should be an important statistical analysis of the receivers, linemen, staff and playbook of the Falcons inserted here. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a good PECOTA tool for football, so none of it matters. A prediction supported by my nonsense has just as much chance as ringing true as one with actual numbers behind it.

So that’s what I feel about the division. On paper, I think the Saints have the most talent, due to the fact that they brought in Shockey, Vilma, Sedrick Ellis and Randall GAY, but they also have the only coach capable of losing games on his own in the division. (I will give Mike Smith the benefit of the doubt here, it’s quite possible I’m wrong and he tries to ice a victory by having a beleaguered halfback attempt a reverse with the WR with the worst hands in the league, and… okay, no, that’s not possible.) The Bucs have the best coach, but I can’t believe that John Fox is on the hot seat. Well, what can you say, it is what it is.

Everything is up for grabs, but my early prediction is that whoever wins the division is playing for the right to go to the Super Bowl. The NFC South will have played the most worst teams, probably suffered the least amount of injuries and had the most pressure on their coaches. We may see one good team and three squads of abortion that are horrible enough that Fref Phelps starts protesting outside the stadia, but still.

Let’s Solve Some (NFL) Problems
Jul 23rd, 2008 by Ice Cream Jonsey

What are men good at? Problem solving! Let’s go and solve some problems around the NFL. We can’t solve all the problems, but that won’t stop us – men! – from trying.

GREEN BAY PACKERS
There’s no downside to bringing Brett back because people get hurt all the time in the NFL. You’re saying to yourselves that you want Aaron Rodgers to have control of the team early on, so he establish his blah blah blah. Why? WHY? Let Favre start and when he, being 39 years old, takes one in the sternum, you have Rodgers ready to play. Yes, Brett has never missed a game – neither did Cal Ripken until he started missing games.

Additionally, the quality of play decreases as the season goes on, because starters everywhere get hurt. So Rodgers will face worse teams the longer this goes on. If Rodgers plays like shit, then move him back to the bench when Favre is healthy. If he plays well, then great. PROBLEM SOLVED!

BUFFALO BILLS
You’ve needed a quarterback since Jim Kelly left town, and nothing will ever improve until you get one. Kelly isn’t strictly correct; Flutie was flawed but good enough to play ball. And Wade Phillips let him start the entire season, only to pull him before the playoffs. You all deserve this, for fucking around with the QB spot like that. But that was around 8 years ago, so I think we can heal now.

I encouraged you to take Matt Leinart, and who knows how that has panned out. But I’d take a QB in the first until you get a good one. Brady’s not going anywhere, and you’re going to need to gun with him. Get a QB, a REAL quarterback and… PROBLEM SOLVED!

JAVON WALKER
Your blood is too iron-rich, which is why knives and bullets are so attracted to your general person. Get off red meat and fish for a few months and you should be fine. Let the gunfire erupt around you. Also, don’t move to Oakland if you were traumatized by a teammate’s unsolved murder (thanks Denver cops – between this and the JonBenét debacle, the only real crime you’ve solved recently was Columbine, and those two spotted you their crimson-smeared faces in a crumpled pile while still wearing ammo. Keep writing those traffic tickets though). PROBLEM SOLVED!

THE REST OF THE LEAGUE EXCEPT THE GIANTS
When Brady is out there throwing it around up by fifty, you send each player with instructions to destroy his KNEES. The knee is the worst body part to get injured in the NFL. (Right now the spine is flipping his keyboard.) It takes at least six months to recover – some of these guys have started tearing ligaments in the playoffs and coming back the next season, but still, that gets rid of him for the rest of the year. If his backup, Matt Cassel,  is raining death upon you then that’s part of the game and your team should think about being disbanded. But to see grown men let the scores get run up like they did last year, with — in one case! — the Pats going after the knees of the Bills’ quarterback!!!!! … is amazing. This single-handily makes rugby players more manly men with more pride. If Belichick is going to be stupid enough to keep sending him out there, then hurt him. PROBLEM SOLVED!

DETROIT LIONS
Remove everyone from the team but Matt Millen, clearly, this is an organizational issue, except for, like, the very top. PROBLEM SOLVED!

ROGER GOODELL
Nobody gives a shit about games in Europe, the game is worthless without a good salary cap, floor and revenue sharing, the draft should never leave NYC, the draft should start at 11:00 EST, the concept of the NFL Network is retarded since you get all your money from the networks, disciplining these animals that line up each Sunday doesn’t matter and nobody gives a good goddamn about football in Los Angeles. Fuck all this up, however! You’re doing great work. Just because people in their thirties have never truly had a horrible commissioner run the NFL, it doesn’t mean we don’t recognize it since (after the OKC / Seattle debacle) every other major sport has a completely worthless guy at the highest level. Actually, you fit right in. PROBLEM NOT SOLVED!

The Jeremy Shockey / Jason Taylor Trades
Jul 22nd, 2008 by Ice Cream Jonsey

How nice of the Saints to deal for Jeremy Shockey during football week here at JC!

The deal was a 2nd and 5th round pick in the 2009 draft for Shockey. I had really hoped that the Saints weren’t going to give a second up, but, well. At the same time, the track record of draft picks for the Saints has been almost universally terrible, and if football were subject to the same kind of statistical analysis as baseball, I’d suggest a stat like Average Team Draft Pick Worth, where we see that a draft pick by, say, the Steelers is worth a lot more than one by the Saints, because the Saints are so bad at it.

I think the Saints had a good draft this year. They were terrible in 07. It was great in 06. Why not roll the dice on Shockey? He makes the team better immediately, and head coach Sean Payton doesn’t have a contract for 2009. For as good an offense the Saints had in 2006, the 2007 Saints were held to low points many times and just couldn’t get it going. So they now have another option.

The knocks on Shockey is that he is an enormous douchebag, that Eli Manning got better when he wasn’t around, and that he drops some catchable balls. I don’t care about the first. I really don’t – so he called Bill Parcells a homo. I’m pretty sure that Bill Parcells has said some mean things to his players over the years. Everyone’s a (rich) (well-compensated) (don’t feel sorry for them) adult here. I haven’t seen anyone deny that he leaves it all on the field.

Manning may have gotten better with Shockey not around, but that’s not going to be an issue with Drew Brees, who helped make an All-Pro out of TE Antonio Gates in San Diego. Brees is in his prime, and if the two of them put in the work they should play well together.

As for dropping balls, well, that puts Shockey right at home with the other receivers on the team except Colston. (It is amazing to see Marques Colston work – when he drops one, it’s because someone took his legs out from him. When Devery Henderson misses one, it’s because someone threw it to him in a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere.) Everybody needs to work on their pass catching in the Saints offense, particularly Reggie Bush, so Shockey can benefits from the drills, too. (And we have no idea what kind of hands Robert Meachem has in the pro game.)

So, I guess I like the move. A second rounder is very, very valuable, and I don’t think the Giants had much leverage, so I am not in love with the trade or anything. Giant fans don’t seem to be thrilled with it, which means they don’t feel they ripped off the Saints. Likewise, Saints fans aren’t whooping it up like when we got two first-rounders from the Dolphins for Ricky Williams. I know that on ESPN’s “1st and Ten” the categorically announced this as a triumph of the Giants, but in the NFL you really, really don’t want those kinds of people on those kinds of shows in your corner.

The other big trade was Jason Taylor from Miami to the Redskins. The Skins sort of… well, sort of had to make this move, with defensive ends Phillip Daniels and Alex Buzbee both lost for the season. Taylor is a much, much better player than Shockey, but he’s also older. Taylor says he’ll finish out his contract, so that gives Washington at least two years of good production. Unlike most of the other defensive ends in the game, Taylor is not an anthropomorphic lard field that cavemen dump their waste into, so if he does regress some, it’s not going to be because of his weight.

Washington had made a bunch of horrible moves to get veterans since Daniel Snyder took over the team, but I don’t know if they have ever really brought in someone of Taylor’s quality before? So the shitty moves before colors the good acquisition now. As for Miami, they had to make this move, and good for them to get the second they were looking for. I am very hesitant to say that they will suck next years, because worst-to-first turnarounds in the NFL happen all the time. But they are posing themselves to get back into the playoffs in 2010 with moves like this.

State of the Saints
Jul 21st, 2008 by Ice Cream Jonsey

I’ll make you a deal! You please, please, please read even the football posts and I will try to keep them funny even if you hate football!

All right! When it comes to the NFL and ICJ, things are pretty fucked up! I like a team I picked when I was about four and they have probably been the worst professional sports team in my lifetime, with the possible exceptions of the Los Angeles Clippers and the Houston Texans. The Saints went to the NFC Championship Game two years ago, and I think since they started playing the Super Bowl, the only other NFC team that has not done that is the Cardinals? The Cardinals had some good teams in the 70s, but I can’t recall how far they got. Anyway, going almost 40 years and still being a game from the Super Bowl is not great. Them’s my Saints!

Last year was a complete horror, featuring an 0-4 start, a four game win streak to get even and then a loss against a Rams team that was 0-8 at the time. I was at a friend’s wedding for the Rams game, but I knew leading up to it that the Saints would lose. And I am one of the more positive fans! The Saints don’t beat teams featuring a new, inexperienced quarterback, and they never, ever beat teams that are winless that far into the season.

So it all comes down to this. What has to happen for the Saints to make the playoffs?

– They have to win the winnable games on their schedule. No offense to anybody on the teams the Saints play, but you’re all horrible. The best team the Saints play is San Diego, and that game is in England, where anything can happen! That’s a pretty shitty flight for the Chargers, I guess new and terrible NFL commish Roger Goodell couldn’t quite work out the logistics of flying LT and Merriman to Deimos? Maybe next year, let’s get a team there! (David Stern is stroking his chin, pondering moving the Kings there right now.)

– Nobody can get worse! The offensive line for the Saints needs to hold and nobody can get hurt or take a step back. That will be tough because nothing like that ever happens.

– Reggie Bush doesn’t need to get 25 carries a game, but he does need to get positive yardage when he touches the ball. Always. My friend Brian, after viewing the GET LAMP trailer, said that I was wearing the jersey of the most overrated running back since Ricky Williams, a shot I couldn’t defend! If Bush is scoring every other game, returning punts and generating a little more yardage than he generated in 2006, he’s gonna be fine.

– I can’t even get started with the defense. Jason David was the worst free agent pick-up of all time. If Reggie White was an example of picking someone up correctly, like getting a beautiful escort you pay thousands of dollars for and are honestly worried if she’ll do you at the end of the evening because of how classy she is,  Jason David was going into the prostitute zone within your home town ten blocks from the police station, and yelling that you’ll pay a hundred dollars for a hummer through a megaphone. Doing it that way, you’re overpaying, you’re negotiating poorly, you’re drawing unwanted attention to yourself and Peyton Manning and/or the cops is/are going to set the tone for the night and pick on you.

There are some new players coming in on the defense and honestly, I don’t know that the Saints lost anyone that clutch. They are coming to Denver this year, so I will get a chance to see them and so far nobody has been crippled in workouts, which is a plus! I think that the Patriots are going to go on a revenge-fueled tear through the beginning of the season and ultimately win it all (though I do think someone takes a shot at Brady’s knees if they keep running it up), so all of this is ultimately moot. Hopelessness hasn’t stopped me from buying the NFL Ticket again though, because if you are only going to follow the Saints when it looks like a good deal of hope is involved, you haven’t figured out what rooting for the Saints is like.

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