Week 10, In Which Your Hosts Wonder Whether Or Not You’ve Missed Us

We were doing so well, posting our award-winning* reports every week, spotlighting the artistry, pageantry, and general goofiness of Our Favorite Professional Sport. And then, sometime after Week 4, our weekly update simply… disappeared.

We apologize, dear readers, for offering you disappointment instead of snarky, smirky, smart-assed commentary. We could go on (and on, and on) about the turmoil that our analysts have been wrestling with (trust us—we have a good reason for our silence**), but we have decided that we would rather simply pop the clutch and get back in gear.

So, after a few weeks of silence, we humbly offer our belated views of Week 10. We may touch lightly on some games (and we will completely skip commercial breaks), but worry not, friends—next week, we’ll be back with a vengeance.

* OK, this is only technically true if we agree that fictional awards pulled out of the thinnest ether (not to mention orifices normally hidden from polite company) can be counted. We don’t have a problem with that. We trust that you don’t either. (Or that you don’t care. Or, likely, both.)

** Let’s just say that you should keep a watch out for our upcoming contest, “Win A Date With Your Favorite Recently Separated Weekly NFL Update-r.”

And now, on to the games…

Baltimore @ Tennessee: We were thrilled to see Steve McNair play well in his return to Whatever-The-Hell-It’s-Called Stadium. We were also thrilled to see Tennessee very nearly pull off the win. The only things that would’ve made us happier? If Tennessee had actually won, and if someone were to peg Coughlin with a “D” size battery. (We know—Coughlin wasn’t coaching in this game. Still, it would’ve made us happy. Unbelievably happy.)

Buffalo @ Indianapolis: Once again, the Colts make it this far into the season with a perfect record. Just as, once again, they will fall in the next week or two, and they will finish with 12 or so wins, and they will lose in the divisional round of the playoffs. That’s why they call it a “tradition,” friends…

Cleveland @ Atlanta: After his horrendous performance, Michael Pric—we mean, Vick had this to say: “I take sole responsibility on the offensive side . . . It hurts.” At first, we were tempted to stand on our chairs, cheering Mr Vick’s willingness to take responsibility for his team’s performance! But then, we kept reading…

The Falcons quarterback took off running on the next play, appearing to get another first down, but a holding penalty on Eric Beverly negated the play.

"That right there determined the outcome of the game," Vick said. "We could have been on the 5-yard line."

So, apparently, “I take sole responsibility” means “I should’ve been playing with different linemen.”

As the song tells us, so close, so close and yet so far…

Green Bay @ Minnesota: Brett Favre, who is having a stellar season considering his rapidly advancing age, had yet another good game, dissecting the Vikings defense for almost 350 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions. Making this feat even more spectacular was the fact that Mr Favre did all this with an onion on his belt, which was the style at the time…

Houston @ Jacksonville: At first, we were very frightened. While it has been awhile since we’ve read Revelations, we vividly recall that there is a reference to a multi-colored bull “sweeping” through the land in the days immediately preceding Judgment Day. After Houston’s second stunning upset of the vastly superior (but then again, who isn’t, with the exception of the Raiders?) Jaguars, we were sent in blind panic in search of a Bible in which we could look up the appropriate passage. (And let’s just say, without getting into a religious discussion, that finding a Bible in our expansive San Antonio headquarters is not an easy task. In fact, it’s almost as difficult as finding a camel with needles in its eyes, or something like that…)

Luckily, our memory was incorrect. The passage in question very clearly states that the end of the world will come when the Texans sweep their division, which should come about long enough after we have died that frankly, we don’t care.

Kansas City @ Miami: OK, we were all surprised with this outcome. With Damon Huard and Joey Harrington slinging the balls, we all expected an Arena Football-style outcome, with scores in the upper 50s and record-shattering yardage totals. And while we were all disappointed with the reality that was this game, at least we can take some comfort in the fact that we now have a wonderful new phrase that we’ll just love to use whenever we can: slinging the balls…

New York Jets @ New England: For taking out the Patriots, Eric Mangini has officially been promoted to Five Cheese. Nicely done, Mr Mangini!

San Diego @ Cincinnati: We wanted to come up with a joke here, but we were just too impressed with the offensive display. We have long been fans of Marty Schottenheimer and of the San Diego Chargers, but we never thought we’d see the Chargers with such a potent passing offense again after Dan Fouts, one of our favorite QBs of all time, retired. We are pleased with these Chargers, greatly pleased.

San Francisco @ Detroit: However, we are not pleased with either of these two dog teams. Woof.

Washington @ Philadelphia: We must confess something here. We didn’t watch this game. Not a single play. We think the Eagles are overrated, and have been for several years now, and Joe Gibbs’ freaky big earlobes frankly creep the sh*t out of us. We apologize. Next week, we’ll suck it up and watch these guys.

Denver @ Oakland: If we were Mike Shanahan, we would be a bit worried about our Broncos. Yes, they have a good record, and they are on track for a comfy spot in the playoffs, but when your team tees off against Oakland and you end up with the same number of first downs that the Raiders get, your offense is in trouble. We are fans of the Broncos and Mr Shanahan, but we are starting to fear for their chances of post-season success…

Dallas @ Arizona: The Cowboys, on the other hand, showed the Broncos how it’s done. When you’re up against one of the puny teams, your only option is to roger them soundly. Luckily, the Cardinals are one of the easiest teams in the league, willing to let just damned near anyone feel up their endzones. Come on, Cardinals! Have some self-respect! At least make them work for it…

New Orleans @ Pittsburgh: Just a short while ago, we were conversing via email with one of our loyal readers who wanted to know when we were going to throw our support behind the Saints. We admitted to our reader that we had, in fact, come to see the light, and that we believed that the Saints were an actual, honest-to-God contender this season. We immediately warned our reader that this admission was a kiss of death, as teams that we support tend to fare poorly as the season wears on. (This is the reason why we hated writing the above glowing praise of the Chargers.) We predicted to our reader that the end would come soon for the Saints, now that we were behind them.

To all Saints fans out there, we apologize. Next week, we’ll go back to mocking them, and their performance will pick right back up.

St Louis @ Seattle: Oh look, a bright shiny object!

Chicago @ New York Giants: We have recently had an epiphany. We have long despised the comic strip “Prickly City,” but we’ve never known precisely why. Yes, we disagree with most of the political views expressed therein, but that has never before been a reason to view a comic strip with abject horror*. But then, in a flash of insight, we realized the problem: the kid in that strip (we have no clue what her name is, and frankly, we don’t even care enough to look it up—the link above is pretty much all the effort we’re willing to expend on this item) looks just like Coughlin! Check her out… Small, furtive, beady eyes set about a quarter of an inch apart, huge head (just like Coughlin with his homeless-mental-patient-who-wears-a-hat-that’s-several-sizes-too-big hat), bile and vitriol spewing from her lips… We don’t know if the writer of this strip had Coughlin in mind when he/she/it designed this detestable little girl, but he/she/it might just as well have because he/she/it nailed it.

*An obvious exception must be made here for “Mallard Fillmore,” which is, quite possibly, the single stupidest and least funny comic strip ever written, and yes, we’re including “Mary Worth” and “Gil Thorp” in that statement. If there were a course being taught somewhere on how to appear funny without actually being funny—how to tell stories that are amazingly joke-like but not actually jokes, for example—then the textbook for that course would have to be a “Mallard Fillmore” book. Reading “Mallard Fillmore” is like listening to someone sing who has absolutely no sense of tune or rhythm. Finding that there are people out there who think “Mallard Fillmore” is funny is one of those little quirks of life that make us question the existence of objectively verifiable reality. “Mallard Fillmore” is a running pustule on the beautiful cheek of comedy, a cancerous tumor in the otherwise healthy body of American humor. It is so loathsome that we refuse to even link to it, lest we become contaminated with its disease.

And yet, every day, we read the fucking thing. We think we may need help.

Tampa Bay @ Carolina: We were busy moving furniture around in our house during this game (it’s amazing how much empty space one has when one’s life partner of twenty or so years moves out), so we didn’t actually pay much attention to this one. We were glad that Carolina won, but we were, shall we say, distracted.

We are, however, glad to report that we kept the sound turned up during the entire game so that we could check in on it from time to time, and not once did we feel the urge to throw heavy objects at the screen whenever we heard Kornheiser talking. We were even able to laugh at his goofy appearance in the pregame analysis (and we are using the word "analysis" well beyond its structural tolerance here). We choose to see this as an affirmation that, no matter how frustrating the events of one’s life become, they will still pale in comparison to someone else’s. In our case, we may be feeling sad and lonely these days, but at least we aren’t as ugly, ill-informed, and dull-witted as Tony Kornheiser.

There is a certain amount of comfort in that.