Why your team sucks Vikings addition. I guess, trigger warning for some of you....

Your quarterback: Nothing.

I wish I were made of porcelain so that you could shatter me into a million pieces. I will never be rid of Kirk Cousins.
To root for Kirk Cousins is to contract Kirk Derangement Syndrome, in
which you’re forced to defend him despite knowing that you cannot. It’s a
horrible way to live and I resent it. Even Vikings management doesn’t
like Kirk Cousins. Who would? And yet, under orders from ownership to
not tank the season, they gave Kirk not just a contract extension, but
also a no-trade clause that slammed the door shut on my enthusiasm for
this team until 2024 at the earliest. Perhaps by that time, Kirk will
have died from contracting COVID-19 for the 97th time. FINGERS CROSSED!
I’m
shocked this man plays football with a helmet on. Kirk Cousins has
gamed the NFL better than any QB alive. He’s made hundreds of millions
of dollars by mastering the art of putting up numbers that only data
freaks respect while leaving his team with nothing to show for it. Here,
from Arif Hasan, is all you need to know about how Kirk plies his trade:

Cousins
threaded an impossible needle to land the ball in wide receiver Adam
Thielen’s hands and get into field goal range. With Rasul
Douglas watching and waiting to make a pick, that certainly seemed to be
more of an “intuitive” throw. And, to Cousins, that was a problem. He
should have, he said after the game, thrown it to Tyler Conklin instead
for a small gain.
“I mean, I could point to a half-dozen throws
there that were too aggressive, and I could argue that that’s one of
them. I don’t think you want to live doing that.”

This grinning Jesus pervert regrets throwing a touchdown pass. No wonder Adofo-Mensah trashed Kirk to USA Today before this season has even started:

“I’ll be frank. The one asset where you get nervous about not burning it down is quarterback.”

You
should be, egghead. Not only is Cousins my QB, he also apparently owns
this team now. The Vikings even brought back his BACKUPS, for fuck’s
sake. My team bought a murder house and then insisted on keeping the
bodies inside.
What’s new that sucks: Kirk aside,
the Vikings had every chance to freshen up a roster that had zero depth
and was polluted with expensive, aging veterans. Unfortunately for
Adofo-Mensah, no other team wanted any of this biohazard material. So
instead, he reworked the contracts of both wideout Adam Thielen
(unvaccinated) and safety Harrison Smith (unvaccinated) to make those
contracts MORE onerous than they once were. He also had the No. 12 pick
in the draft and traded it, at the last second, to Detroit for the right
to move 20 spots down and take a safety who still hasn’t cracked the
starting lineup. It’s as if Spielman was never fired.
O’Connell
brought in defensive coordinator Ed Donatell, who was hospitalized with
COVID-19 a season ago. Almost like they want Kirk, Thielen, and Smith to
finish the job on that poor bastard. They did nothing to fix the center
spot, with Garrett Bradbury keeping his job despite being the worst
pass-blocking center on the face of the fucking Earth. When you have an
immobile quarterback, it’s generally unwise to give defenses the
shortest avenue to reach him. And yet, the Vikings kept that little
house of straw as is. They used one of their second-rounders in April on
a guard who was charged with sexually assaulting two girls when he was 16 years old. Who might have been the driving force behind that decision?
Yep,
that’s new senior personnel executive Ryan Grigson, who’s here to
render moot any analytical advantage that Adofo-Mensah might have had to
offer. Perhaps Grigson can kill Kirk the same way he killed Andrew
Luck. Again, fingers crossed.
Elsewhere, the Vikings attempted to
paper over their deficiencies by signing a few bargain free agents at
guard, defensive tackle, and linebacker. They also imported edge rusher
Za’Darius Smith from Green Bay. Smith missed all of last season with an
injury, and yet I’m already confident nothing bad will happen to him
this time around.
Speaking of bad things happening, tight end Irv
Smith missed all of last season, rehabbed, went to his first padded
practice this summer, and needed thumb surgery immediately thereafter.
What has always sucked: The fucking statue.

In
front of Kirk Cousins’ home, in between a few shrubs, stands a curious
tower. No more than four feet tall, it’s filled to the top with stones.
Inspired décor? Sort of.
Cousins laughs. “Oh, it’s a little
morbid,” he admits, “but it’s a tool my Bible teacher taught me in high
school, and I’m carrying it with me… when you have an understanding that
life is coming to an end someday, and that we only have so many days?
There’s wisdom in that.”

Indeed. Who knew that people
eventually die? Not me. I will poison Kirk’s lemonade and then plant
child pornography on his cell phone. Fuck him with those rocks.
If any starter gets hurt on this team, they’re doomed. Too many Minnesotans are Packers fans. Matt Birk
is a raging cock. Thielen is on the downside of his career and would
rather pledge allegiance to Satan than get the jab. Kellen Mond (also
unvaccinated) was exciting the day we drafted him and not a day since.
Aaron Rodgers is still in Green Bay. The Vikings are one of two things
that will get the worst people in some of the worst suburbs in America
to come into Minneapolis. The other thing is working in Minneapolis as a
police officer. The literal brain damage I have is child’s play
compared to the metaphorical brain damage this shithead team has
inflicted upon me. I now must routinely hurt myself to see if I still
feel.

Ratto says: Former center Matt Birk is
running for lieutenant governor of Minnesota on a Republican ticket.
Equating Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan is among his more benign
offerings. The good thing is that the Vikings never won a Super Bowl
during his tenure on their offensive line, so he doesn’t have a power
ring to mesmerize voters. Such is the power of the Vikings to create
statewide ennui in a football-mad area.
What might not suck: Roster aside, I can’t argue with anything O’Connell has done thus far. I think Kwesi will
be a good GM if the Wilfs ever let him be one. Andrew Booth was a
bargain in the draft. Justin Jefferson is a god. Ingram is scum but also
looks like an absolute stud out on the field. You see how I’m setting
myself here, yeah?

Go read the fan comments at the bottom of https://defector.com/why-your-team-sucks-2022-minnesota-vikings/
There's some comedy gold in there!!!

I have to admit...I'm not sure I can listen to KOC coach speak for more than 10 minutes at a time.

Might be more interesting/insightful during the real season after a game?

@"purplefaithful" said: I have to admit...I'm not sure I can listen to KOC for more than 10 minutes at a time at a presser

Might be more interesting post game/real season

I happen to agree.  Winning solves everything...but dude...its ok to shut up and get on with whatever you were planning on saying.  Maybe the new generation needs to be pampered some?
I actually think it'll be ok for Koc/Vikings to get punched in the mouth a few times during preseason so that he faces some adversity.

I admit it made me laugh (and cry) a few times. B)

Author went overboard with the covid stuff but most of his gripes are rooted in truth, if not totally factual.
Ingram seems like the early bright spot of the rookies so far but his past is very troubling. Dalvin is one of my fav players on the team but the stuff with his ex-gf was bad news and it does seem like it got totally brushed under the rug somehow. The trade down in the first was terrible value and Bynum seems to be holding off Cine anyways.
But all that said the team seems to be having fun and re-energized by the new staff. Fanbase too. GB and @ PHI are two very difficult first couple of games so I'm kind of bracing to be 0-2, but maybe that's okay. Like @AGRforever said maybe some adversity will help in the long run. If the team can stay healthy I do think they can gel and make a legitimate run at the end of the year.
Hoping for a fun season because I 100% agree with the author when he was saying how painful last season was haha. Just brutal! Things can only go up from that... right? Skol

@"pattersaur" said:

Author went overboard with the covid stuff but most of his gripes are rooted in truth, if not totally factual. Ingram seems like the early bright spot of the rookies so far but his past is very troubling. Dalvin is one of my fav players on the team but the stuff with his ex-gf was bad news and it does seem like it got totally brushed under the rug somehow. The trade down in the first was terrible value and Bynum seems to be holding off Cine anyways. But all that said the team seems to be having fun and re-energized by the new staff. Fanbase too. GB and @ PHI are two very difficult first couple of games so I'm kind of bracing to be 0-2, but maybe that's okay. Like @AGRforever said maybe some adversity will help in the long run. If the team can stay healthy I do think they can gel and make a legitimate run at the end of the year. Hoping for a fun season because I 100% agree with the author when he was saying how painful last season was haha. Just brutal! Things can only go up from that... right? Skol

I think I'd be happy with 1/1 after the first 2....

Yah, as of August I'm also having a hard time getting beyond Ingrams past....

Totally over the top but that's what gets the clicks and likes. I get the points about last year. The complaints about KAM and KOC are nothing new. It's either he is too analytical or too inexperienced but guess what? It is what it is. I like that they went a different direction, I like it a lot. And whether or not people have an issue with KAM or KOC, time will tell on the results. This writer sounds extremely bitter and probably doesn't get out much. 

great stuff AgR, thanks for posting. very entertaining 

My favorite Vikings evaluation of the year. More about the fans than the team.
Oh well, saves me in the long run. Don't have to buy heavy chains to practice some Iranian brand of self flagellation. I've got the Vikings!

@"Vikergirl" said: Totally over the top but that's what gets the clicks and likes. I get the points about last year. The complaints about KAM and KOC are nothing new. It's either he is too analytical or too inexperienced but guess what? It is what it is. I like that they went a different direction, I like it a lot. And whether or not people have an issue with KAM or KOC, time will tell on the results. This writer sounds extremely bitter and probably doesn't get out much. 

They do these for all 32 teams. Its not supposed to be nice. 

@"AGRforever" said:

@"Vikergirl" said: Totally over the top but that's what gets the clicks and likes. I get the points about last year. The complaints about KAM and KOC are nothing new. It's either he is too analytical or too inexperienced but guess what? It is what it is. I like that they went a different direction, I like it a lot. And whether or not people have an issue with KAM or KOC, time will tell on the results. This writer sounds extremely bitter and probably doesn't get out much. 

They do these for all 32 teams. Its not supposed to be nice. 

@"Vikergirl" said:

@"AGRforever" said:

@"Vikergirl" said: Totally over the top but that's what gets the clicks and likes. I get the points about last year. The complaints about KAM and KOC are nothing new. It's either he is too analytical or too inexperienced but guess what? It is what it is. I like that they went a different direction, I like it a lot. And whether or not people have an issue with KAM or KOC, time will tell on the results. This writer sounds extremely bitter and probably doesn't get out much. 

They do these for all 32 teams. Its not supposed to be nice. 

Right but I am speaking about this one. It sounds like someone that has been sitting in the basement for a while. A lot of droning on and on but as fans we live through it, this writer just spews it out. The comments were entertaining though.

That’s one of the dumber things I’ve read in awhile, but the signs of psychosis underlying it, do evoke some mild curiosity. As a one time police officer myself, I sure hope the guy is off the job sooner rather than later. 

Someone doesn't like the vikings...  Oh dear, the horrors... Clunk, digital text being tossed into the virtual garbage can!  The author was way over the top but I'll defend his right for free speech.  It is not required to read everything that is written.

Bears version part 1 of 2

Your team: He still owns you.

Your 2021 record: 6-11, which was enough for the Bears, at long last, to divest themselves of head coach Matt Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace. All they had to do was refuse to start the rookie QB they traded a mint for, get publicly embarrassed by Aaron Rodgers, dutifully help Rodgers’s Packers get back on track after a shaky start to their season, doink-not-doink a potential game-winning field goal at the gun against the Steelers, allow Tyler Huntley to drive the field and beat them with 22 seconds left, lose at home to the Vikings in a game that even Steve Levy couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for, watch Nagy fire himself as play-caller but refuse to admit it, watch Nagy also commit an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that led to an opposing field goal, buy up some land in the Chicago equivalent of Santa Clara, watch their fans fight for the title of @ScottBears with more ferocity than they ever put into rooting for this team, let their QBs get sacked 58 million times, and lose nine of their final 12 games. That’s all. Quite painless.
It is an everlasting curiosity to me that coaches are fired so frequently in the NFL, and yet are always fired so late. The 2021 Bears didn’t have to happen. They could have fired Nagy three years and 58 kickers ago. They could have fired Pace then, too. They didn’t. Instead, they let Pace and Nagy draft a quarterback KNOWING that they were gonna fire both men soon thereafter. Then they let that QB twist, wasted a full season, and then fired their braintrust. I’ve seen McDonald’s franchises run more efficiently. Why do teams do this? Don’t they know how precious these games are? Fans get 17 piddly shit games a year. It’s bad enough to throw away ONE of those fucking games. Ask the 2020 Eagles. But to blithely discard all of those games, just because? You deserve to BURN.
I’m gonna miss Nagy, and not merely because I cheer for a rival team that occasionally benefited from his idiocy. I’m gonna miss him. I’ll miss him displaying all of Mike Ditka’s bipolarity with none of the success to go with it. I’ll miss him opening every postgame presser by whipping himself with a cat o’ nine tails. I’ll miss his son getting booed at local high school games. I’ll miss waiting for a report from Patch.com about him getting fired to pay off like a good “wait for it” viral video. It’s much more fun when a coach is demonstrably bad instead of quietly so. Which brings us to the new guy …
Your coach: Eric Bie… NOPE.
That’s former Colts defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus, whose last name sounds like a prescription nasal decongestant. After firing Pace, the Bears outbid Minnesota to bring in new GM Ryan Poles from Kansas City, and Poles immediately vowed to “take the North and never give it back.”
Poles shrewdly never said WHEN his Bears would take the North, leaving himself an open window to put off that conquest until … oh, let’s say 2030. No reason I picked that timeframe. Given Poles’s pedigree, Bears fans were excused for anticipating that he would bring some offensive coaching talent—namely Eric Bieniemy—with him from the Chiefs and then use those people to build an offensive juggernaut around second-year quarterback Justin Fields. Instead, Poles quashed that potentially exciting development right away by hiring the defensive architect behind a 26-11 Week 18 loss to the Jaguars that cost Indianapolis a playoff spot. Matt Eberflus has already been cited for abusing contact restrictions in team OTAs. FUCK YEAH, BABY! NOW THAT’S BEARS FOOTBAW! Finally, you have a coach who’s dedicated to playing defense and running the ball, the way only the most successful NFL teams in 2022 do. Abuse of the term “hard-nosed” is also in the offing.
Your new offensive coordinator is Luke Getsy. The Bears have never had a good offensive coordinator in my lifetime. Look at this list and tell me you feel anything but abject despair. This team’s QUARTERBACK history is less depressing by comparison. Will Getsy, who has never called plays in his life, break this pattern? Listen man, I don’t even have to make an educated guess here to be right. I have more of a chance to be wrong guessing that next month will be September.  
Your quarterback: Justin Fields, who’s fucking terrible. You can blame the Bears’ historic incompetence for this if you’d like. Or you can be like me and admit that Fields is just a faster, more-alive version of Dwayne Haskins. Nagy baffled the world and enraged local fans by starting Andy Dalton at the beginning of 2021, presumably to give Fields a bit of extra time to prepare for the job of NFL quarterback. Turns out Nagy did us all a favor, because Fields will never be ready for this job. He’s much better off sitting on the bench, where fans can jerk off to his potential upside, instead of taking the field and instantly dashing all of those hopes by running around behind the line of scrimmage like a frisky Labrador before throwing the ball out of bounds.
Every fun play Fields made last season was a crust of bread thrown to a starving crowd down below. If you’re a Bears fan—and remember: many, many more people are not—you watched Fields occasionally scamper for 15 yards on busted play and you said to yourself, Hey there now ya know he could make dat play every game! No, he can’t. The mobile quarterbacking revolution will continue without Justin Fields. He’s not good enough, and neither is his team. Want proof?

Bears part 2 of 2

What’s new that sucks: You are tanking. Quite openly, in fact. The 2022 Bears are an exercise in subtraction by subtraction. Gone is rapidly aging edge rusher Khalil Mack, traded to the Chargers for a handful of picks that will instantly prove forgettable (like second round safety Jaquan Brisker). They lost their only good O-lineman in James Daniels. They lost Akiem Hicks, who single-handedly made this defense good whenever he was healthy. They watched Eddie Goldman skip town and then retire. They let Tarik Cohen, perhaps the only bright spot of the Nagy regime, limp out the door.
Oh, and wideout Allen Robinson fled to LA and now sleeps like a baby every night. How is it that I can pick any offensive position on the field and point to the Bears having a storied history of failing with that position? Do you know who they added to their receiving corps this offseason? Byron Pringle and Equanimeous St. Brown: two wideouts who were underwhelming despite having Hall of Famers throwing them the ball. And then they traded for N’Keal Harry, which is like trading for syphilis. What do you even trade to GET N’Keal Harry? A fucking ColecoVision has more value than this slob. Harry is hurt already, and an injured N’Keal Harry can only be an improvement over the healthy incarnation of N’Keal Harry.
The good news is that, unlike the way they did in 2021, the Bears are tanking by design. You don’t sign Nathan Peterman to be on your roster if you’re serious about winning football games. Poles and Eberflus clearly have little interest in building around Justin Fields, or at least they have a very odd way of showing it. Instead, they’re gonna feed him into the wood chipper with one of the sorriest offenses in football, throw their hands up when he eats shit out there, and then get to the business of rebuilding the team from scratch. Just in time for them to move.

They keep trying to trade Robert Quinn and failing. Roquan Smith wants to leave because the Bears refuse to pay him more than five cents a game. I wonder why they’re so parsimonious …
What has always sucked: Your ownership.
That’s human skin tag George McCaskey, seen here auditioning for the role of Alfred in a dinner theater production of The Dark Knight. George was last seen using the death of ESPN reporter Jeff Dickerson to chastise Bears fans, whose offense was telling Matt Nagy’s son that his dad should be fired, which McCaskey then did. And this man is one of the YOUNGER members of the Bears board of directors, the majority of whom are also members of the McCaskey family. Everyone on this board is so fucking old that they just recorded a video will challenging Richard Pryor to spend $30 million in 30 days.
George—may I call you George, shithead?—used his end of season presser to claim, as team president, that he’s “just a fan” of the team while asserting his right to personally oversee the hiring of Poles. So now you understand why the hiring of Poles and Eberflus means nothing at all. They’re a fresh coat of polish on a badly aged turd.
And frankly, I’ll be happy when the Bears leave. It’s for the benefit of everyone involved. I won’t have to hear ancient Bears fans bring up 1985 ever again. I won’t have to see offseason Cubs fans polluting the Soldier Field stands wearing Darnell Mooney jerseys even though they don’t know who that is. I won’t have to watch Mike Wilbon pretend like Bears-Packers is a viable rivalry of any sort. And, best of all, I’ll watch the Nu Bears lose nine games a year in an empty fucking parking lot. The best of all worlds. Oh what’s that, you say? Lori Lightfoot has a plan for them to stay? Well let’s have a look at that plan.
That plan was designed by John Shoop. This team is dogshit. They’ll never have a great tight end. Their O-line is a string of finish line tape. They have no idea how to intercept a pass. And their uniforms are still butt ugly.
Ratto says: Ed McCaskey didn’t like Matt Nagy’s kid being booed at a high school football game the previous year so he scolded the heartless little bastards and then two months later fired Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace. He thus embossed his reputation as a man with a heart of gold and a head of zinc.
What might not suck: David Montgomery is still very good and will still somehow get nowhere near enough carries.

Lions version part 1 of 2:

Your team: Detroit Lions.

Your 2021 record: An uplifting 3-13-1, so long as you don’t count the fact that they lost the first eight games of the season, or that they didn’t win their first game until December, or that Justin Tucker booted them back across 8 Mile Road, or that they finished DFL in their division for the fourth straight year (that number seems low, actually), or that their miracle win against Minnesota came only after Minnesota staged a miracle win against them first, or that they successfully executed two fake punts in one game against the Rams and still lost, or that they benched their starting QB, or that they still haven’t had a 1,000-yard rusher since Reggie Bush, or that their final victory of the season came against a Packers team that was resting its starters, or that they lost the No. 1 overall pick because of that win, or that they didn’t win a single road game, or that they tied the Steelers thanks in part to missing an extra point in regulation, or that their brain(word loosely used)trust may not have known that ties still existed, or that their former starting quarterback went to sunny LA and IMMEDIATELY won a Super Bowl without them.
Other than that, I see a lot of promise.
Your coach: Tell you what gentlemen, I’ll say this about a 3-13-1 team: They may not look like much, but they’re always hungry. People see a guy that hungry coming and they start thinking to themselves, My god, this guy’s looking to eat anything he can get his hands on. He’ll eat grass. He’ll eat dirt. He’ll eat my FAMILY. I better get away from this guy before he bites my dick off! A man that hungry is a man that fears nothing. Nobody with a full belly wants to see these spider ants of a football team coming!
Your coach is the very hungry Dan Campbell, who isn’t afraid to cry after a tough loss. That’s a lotta crying.
Not long ago, I watched Rex Ryan squeeze out a few extra years of employment thanks to his ability to give the local press decent copy to work with. Same deal with Dan Campbell. I spent the bulk of last year subjected to way too much breathless praise for beefy Ted Lasso here. He cries! His players love him! He’ll be so fun on Hard Knocks! He’s so loyal! HE ROLLS OVER ANYTIME YOU OFFER HIM A TREAT! Let’s adopt him!
All of that nonsense willfully elided the fact that A) the Lions picked Professor Kneecaps here to run their team instead of someone who would have been far more qualified, and B) Dan Campbell is a fucking terrible coach. He managed his QB situation with all the skill of a strip mall orthopedist. He and his staff lost their first game against Green Bay—the Packers game that counted—because they refused to throw the ball down the field. He went for it on fourth down many times, even deep in his own territory, when his offense sucked. You think I like ragging on a coach for going for it? I don’t. I wish every other coach had Dan Campbell’s iron balls in such moments. But what every other coach DOES have, unlike Campbell, is a working brain. Know who else was a nice guy? Norv Turner. He sucked, too.
Your quarterback: You don’t have one. You have this guy.
That’s Jared Goff, last seen working as Ryan Gosling’s stunt double on the set of the new Barbie movie. You might remember Goff from last season when the Lions benched him, only to realize that all of their other quarterbacks were somehow even worse. You might also remember the time that Goff didn’t realize the ball was about to be snapped. Or you might remember that Goff is a system QB who wasn’t even good when he was in a good system. The Lions don’t seem to remember any of that, because they had all offseason replace Goff and did NOTHING. They could have drafted someone, or traded for a veteran, or even hired your cousin Fred to do the job. They did none of that, hence nothing else about this team matters right now. A headless chicken in Iron Man’s armor is still headless.
Your backups are still Tim Boyle and the immortal David “Mister” Blough. Ten years from now, one of these men will be hired as offensive coordinator of the Falcons and then fired a year later.

Lions 2/2

What’s new that sucks: Jacksonville’s fuckup at the top of the draft was Detroit’s windfall as they snatched up edge rushing god Aidan Hutchinson with the No. 2 overall pick, then used their other first-rounder in the Stafford deal to hoodwink Minnesota into trading away their No. 12 pick. The Lions promptly used that pick on a wideout who probably won’t be able to play until November.
Because this is the offseason, you can say that the Lions have a plan. I’ve heard that so many times, from credible football people, that I’ve bought into it myself on occasion. Wow man, maybe this Lions team WON’T finish last! They’ve got a foundation now! They’ve got pieces! Ah, but the Lions have had pieces before. Many, in fact. It never mattered in the slightest. One of those pieces retired rather than ever play for them again. Another piece still wants the $1.6 million this team owes him. And another piece just won a Super Bowl for a team that has exactly three fans. Talent amounts to nothing in Detroit, and there’s less of it on this roster than many otherwise sensible people realize. Aidan Hutchinson’s sister won Miss Michigan and she’ll probably win more than he ever will here. The rest of the Lions’ defense is nothing but slobs.
Elsewhere, nose tackle John Penisini retired after just two years on the job, depriving me of easy dick jokes. DJ Chark, no stranger to performing well for horrible teams, signed here in the offseason. The Lions also signed Devin Funchess to play tight end and to eat whatever pizza crusts you’re about to throw away. And Mike Hughes arrives from Kansas City to bolster a secondary that will forever be in need of bolstering. Wow. What a haul. The road to 4-12-1 begins HERE.
What has always sucked: The same shit that always has. You will see Penei Sewell among league leaders in false start penalties again. You will draft TJ Hockenson in your fantasy league thinking you got a bargain, only to watch him miss the five to seven games with a pulled collarbone. The only Lions you’ll be able to name are the ones playing for other teams now. You’ll marvel at Amon-Ra St. Brown’s ability to go for 150 yards and two scores in a 20-point loss. You’ll remember that Campbell is this team’s only marketable employee. And you’ll be reminded that the Michigan accent remains the worst of all Midwestern accents. Michigan people overheard the Wisconsin accent and were like, “Hmm, not quite nasal enough.” I went to Michigan 28 years ago, and I STILL can’t get that aaaaaaaccent out of my head.
And Michigan people aren’t even nice. They’re dicks. They don’t bother with the veneer of niceness that makes so many other Midwesterners at least tolerable. Instead, you end up with a bunch of braying shitheels pretending they’re from the East Coast while sounding like they grew up in a fucking hay loft. No wonder Matthew Stafford left with a wink and a smile:

You know how many times I’ve been subjected to this fucking ad? I have all of its beats memorized, right down to Stafford smirking into the camera after telling the AT&T lady, “Oh, so getting a new phone is like ditching my old shithole of a hometown WHICH I STILL TOTALLY HAVE A THING FOR SERIOUSLY I MEAN IT?”
You listen to me, Michigan. Every night, Matthew Stafford and his wife sit out on their lanai in Manhattan Beach, watch the sun set over the Pacific, and LAUGH at you. They laugh until they throw up. All of you know it. You have lived in Michigan for decades now. You know that your life is just as awful as your football team is. You know that no one ever regrets fleeing your state. You watch, year after year, as your friends and acquaintances move onto greener pastures and discover the joys of living out in a more functional, beautiful world. And yet, look at you. Still in Michigan. Still rooting for this team. Still miserable. An entire life spent waiting to die. No group of fans deserves it such a wasted life more than you do. Get fucked.
And, as always, fuck Bob Seger.
But Drew, Bob Seger is a…
No he isn’t. Fuck Bob Seger.
Ratto says: Having surrendered any pretense of actually becoming good, the Lions have only the Thanksgiving Day game to defend, and despite the complaints of viewers who think they deserve marquee showdowns in every single one of the 272 three-hour entertainment slots the NFL shoves down your thorax, they are right to retain it. For one, they were one of the original Thanksgiving Day games in 1920 when the league was born, and the only one to Lion it up by losing 28-0 to the Dayton Triangles. The Heralds folded at year’s end, as did three more Detroit-based teams before the city stole the Portsmouth Spartans and renamed them. It’s a monument to irrelevo-failure that the Lions have maintained for the last 55 years, and a statement about our future as a culture that should be brought to bear at all holidays. “Sure you want Bucs-Chiefs or Bills-Chargers, but this is your life in a pandemic/recession. Shut up and watch.” And you will because you see logic in Deshaun Watson being suspended for one quarter for every massage therapist he assaulted. Send a greeting card to your soul in hell.
What might not suck: D’Andre Swift is one of those Lions backs where you see him make a good run and you’re like, “Goddamn, they gotta give that guy the ball!” And then they don’t.