NFL Oh-Nine Previews: AFC North

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 5ish 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 North

Smokey: The vaunted AFC North. Home of the last year’s world champions, the Pittsburgh Stillers and the most arrests per division (probably). This entire division kind of makes me sad; when I think about all the towns the teams are from, I want to cry.

This past weekend, I had a layover in the hometown of the Browns and attempted to sleep before my flight to Buffalo…Except that the terminal had a giant wall of glass windows facing east. Good luck trying to sleep with the Erie solstice going on. It was annoying and left me grumpy, not unlike watching the Browns play. It speaks volumes about a team when the only significant thing that happened in 2008 was news of rampant staph infections and a busted testicle. Look for Cleveland to do absolutely nothing this year.

I haven’t watched one minute of this season of “Hard Knocks”, which is following the Cincinnati Bengals through training camp. I would’ve watched an episode, but no bloggers spent inordinate amounts of time dissecting the players’ wives, so I assume I’m missing nothing. Look for the Bengals to be fair to middlin this season, with Ochocinco eventually throwing them under the bus. Due to their ineffectual off-season moves, the Bengals may or may not end the season with two ties.

The Baltimore Ravens, as a rule, terrify me. Watching them warm up before a primetime game exposes the bulk of their team to be one step removed from rabid. The franchise’s consistency and defense-mindedness will always make them contenders, and Joe Flacco is the Matt Ryan of the AFC, so expect them to be in the hunt as we head into January.

Which leaves us with the aforementioned Stillers. Big Daddy Drew’s preview was pretty hilarious, but I will admit that not ALL the female fans are fatties, and what’s more, some are actually pretty awesome. I don’t mind their fans…yet. If they do lord it over the rest of the league that they’ve won more championships, I will aim for the knees, but all in all, expect Omar Epps’s crew to try the rare repeat in Miami next February.

Mickey: I agree with my older brother that the AFC North is a division of the haves and have-nots; this is quite obvious. And as much as I love to wax poetic about the smash-mouth identity of our own Carolina Panthers, the two teams who have created, maintained, and earned that moniker with consistency and to great results reside in the AFC North: the Steelers and the Ravens.

But no matter how much I respect that, damn, these aren’t really fun teams to watch. The Panthers balance the run-and-defense-first mentality with the explosiveness of Smitty, DeAngelo, and Peppers — and with the unsolicited stupidity of Jake Delhomme and stubbornness of John Fox. So while we yearn for the identities the Steelers and Ravens, we sometimes are our own worst enemies — which in my opinion, makes us much more entertaining.

Panthers comparisons aside, I see both the Steelers and Ravens with over 11 wins: those defenses are far too menacing, Large Benjamin makes enough plays that make you say dayum, and Joe Flacco is proving to be quite the steady hand. These are teams that belong in the elite of the league.

On to the have-nots though: the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bungles. The Browns settled their “quarterback controversy” today by hitching their wagon to the fabulous Brady Quinn, which is to say they shouldn’t expect to win more than 6 games this year. It has been routinely pointed out the Browns fired a Bill Belicheck disciple at coach and GM this past offseason…only to bring in other Belicheck disciples. The Belifuck Coaching Tree has yet to really prove it can produce great apples, and I don’t see it happening for the Browns.

I have watched one episode of “Hard Knocks” and so feel like I know more about the Bungles than I have in past offseasons, but I’m still not impressed with the skill positions or defense. Carson Palmer has long odds at coming back to his 2005 form, Cedric Benson is not the answer at running back, and no matter how many USC linebackers with long hair they pick up, their defense is still a bunch of nobodies. Which means the most interesting Bengal-related storyline will continue to be how Chad Ochocinco gets around the General Goddell’s Twitter policies. Good for me who works in social media; bad for fans of the Cincinnati organization.

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 AFC North gets a “now that’s a knife” — now granted, this was Pappy doing a spin on the Croc Dundee famous quote, and he would say it every time we went to an Outback Steakhouse. It was meant to illicit fear and power, like the top teams of the AFC North.

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