NFL Oh-Nine Previews: AFC & NFC West

Back when Mickey and I were doing our own thang at the Sports Brethren, we would double-team a weekly post about every Carolina Panthers game. We might not see eye-to-eye on everything, but we always brung the heat and the passion in our weekly chronicles of the NFL’s greatest team. Here at the Cube, we’re hoping to bring that same noise and funk on the NFL as a whole, in our true double-team style.

With that in mind, holyfuckingshit football’s a’comin! We are but a scant 18ish days from the first NFL Sunday, which means it’s high time we stop pandering on about baseball and fanciful things and get down to business.

Thus we present the Cube’s NFL Oh-Nine Previews: AFC & NFC West

Smokey: The Western divisions never seem to get much respect around the league, which is due primarily to two things: time zones and suckitude. The first part guarantees that one of these eight teams will be playing in the afternoon, a time period that comes after you’ve just spent five hours tailgating, pregaming and getting shitfaced during an early game, and are entering some sort of meat/booze coma. Your eyes have started to glaze over, you’re reveling in a solid win, or lamenting a loss and just when you think your Sunday’s redeemable and you can get something done, the afternoon games start. You’ve got a choice to make: tuck in for the long haul, or abandon football for the day. This decision gets demonstrably easier once the Raiders or Niners are involved.

The Panthers beat every team in the AFC West last year, and I was on hand to witness the most dramatic victory of them all. That win against the Chargers didn’t change the end result last year & they won the division. The lingering sting of our come-from-behind, last-second win shouldn’t keep them from winning the division again this year. The Chargers are essentially the king of the special needs kids; they would be described as “high functioning” by magnet school supervisors.

The rest of the AFC West will do what they do, which is fail. The Broncos failure should be pretty spectacular, considering how good Cutler’s looked this preseason for Chicago and the fact that the coach is a hothead. The Chiefs will whimper and stumble through a season whose failures will define inevitability. They try and try, but I don’t see them getting over their .500 hump this year. Then there’s the Raiders who invent new and exciting ways to fail. Even after a attending a Raiders home game, and subsequently having my car broken into and ish stolen from me, it’s hard for me to feel anything but pity for the Raider Nation. They are the Sisyphus of football.

The NFC West sent a representative to the Super Bowl last year and I still can’t take them seriously. Look for the Seahawks to try and get one last great year out of the Balding Wonder. Seattle’s motley crew should wrestle the NFC West champions’ belt from the Cards this year, but the whole division is so efficient in its suckability, that really this is anyone’s for the taking. Except for the Niners. Those guys don’t have a chance. If you prefer your suck to have an extra helping of underwhelming with it, then the Rams should be the team you root for.

Both divisions will continue to linger until some sort of positive consistency shows up. Sure, the Chargers seem to always find themselves deep in the playoffs, but then they end up having to travel four time zones away and it fucks up their internal clocks and then LaDanian disappears. Outside of San Diego, though, the past decade has shown the two Wests to be fraught with bad play, even worse coaching, and a few flashes of halfway-decency. Expect more of the same this year.

Mickey: I defer to Smokey on all things Left Coast: he’s lived and thrived there for the majority of the Aughts; I’ve never spent more than five days at a time beyond the Mississippi. I think of The West the way Red thinks of the Pacific Ocean: scare me to death, something that big. So I’m right fine to stay in my East Coast ways and look at football in the West with a mix of elitism, utter apathy, and sometimes, downright righteousness.

In the NFC West, I’m going to disagree with Smokey and think that the Buzzsaw have enough in them to repeat as division champs. Maybe I just have the images of January 10th still lingering in my head, but it may also be because Fitzy is a beast and I believe in the Lord and quarterbacks who play football in his name (see also: Tebow, Tim). I also think the Niners are going to fare decently, if only because I’m terrified of Mike Singletary (he might could come eat me for saying bad things about him) and because their defense boasts the one young linebacker, Willis, people insist is better than BeasTon (which I wholeheartedly disagree with, of course, but still admire). After them, I’ll take the Seahawks, who downgraded in my opinion by letting the Great Mustache go and bringing in Jim Mora, Jr. I remember enough about his Vick/Falcons days to remember him being batshit crazy, but not in a good way like Singletary. Bringing up the rear will be the Rams: does Marc Bulger still start for them? Dear Lord, I hope not.

As for the AFC West, Smokey’s right in that it’s The Whale’s Vagina and then urrybody else. The Chargers have those awesome light blue jerseys, they’re the Mighty MJD’s favorite team, and I’ve always enjoyed their wee running back Sproles, even back in his K-State days. LDT’s not the beast he once was, but Marmalard is a proven QB, even though I’ve thoroughly despised him going back to his Wolfpack days. But even with all that going for them, they’ve still got Norv at the helm, which means they’re not winning the big one. Ever.

The rest of the division is a joke: the Broncos seem as if they actively wanted to make their franchise worse this offseason, something they’ve succeeded wildly in; the Chefs were shut out by the Panthers 34-0 in my presence last year and no, Matt Cassel and an aging Vrabel won’t improve them enough to be contenders; and as for the Raiders, I hear their defense is underratedly good and I still have faith in McFadden (if only because of his SEC heritage), but I don’t trust that offense to produce much of anything.

Oh, and fuck USC. I really hate them.

Gratuitous Cap’n Pappy quote (Growing up, our pappy, “Cap’n Pappy,” had many a’sayings that we didn’t exactly reckon we knew what they meant, but had a vague idea. In his honor, we’ll assign a quote for how we think he’d describe each division): The NFC and AFC Wests receive a “woo, boys, it stinks to hog heaven in there” distinction — a favorite of the Cap’n to describe Smokey’s gastric remnants, and an apt description of the NFL’s 8 Western teams.

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