Recapping the Recap: or, Time to Puke, Rally and Get A Few Navajo Tacos

I admit, I love Kansas City. It's the single best midwest/rust belt/southern/east coast/Atlantic coast/Canadian city I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. It makes Detroit feel like a thousand pool cue blows to the grundle. Its many fountains humiliate the very idea of Des Moines. Would you rather live in Topeka? Maybe Little Rock?

Saying that, I feel cleansed. Because the way I feel downstairs after watching the Chefs worm their collective helmets up their collective shit-chutes is positively dirty. Vanessa Del Rio dirty.



I plan on making this tradition an annual occurence for as long as I'm alive, employed and not living beneath an underpass on I-70. I doubt I'll see many editions wherein the home team plays like the South Pueblo School for the Criminally Retarded's JV team. Everything was wrong in Chiefsville: the game plan, the performance, the attitude of the guy in the gold chain who impugned our patriotism for not maintaining a respectful silence during a halftime show that would have made Leni Riefenstahl spontaneously begin masturbating. It reflected that of the whole crowd--who ever heard of KC fans clearing out with 8 minutes left? Craziness.

(And before all you Chefs loyalists start pointing the poo-stained finger of our last Chargers game, consider the relative spread. Down by 38 is a lot worse than down by 16. And we were down by 38 1:33 seconds into that game.)

Anyway. It should also be mentioned that a totally obliterated gentleman showed us his balls--"here you go Denver! Got the Bat Wing!"--his wife showed us her tits and a totally different lady mooned us. And we parked next to a kid wearing Chefs-print Zubaz and drinking Crown Royal at 8 a.m.

God, I dig the midwest.
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Scooping My Own Non-Jackson

I'm not even going to pretend I know what that title means. Here's the deal, oh loyal readership of the HoG--we've let you down. The other two legs of thisyere Iron Triangle (which was a superb heavy metal band from Leeds, late '70s) have genuine excuses, i.e. work, for the infrequency of their posts. Me? Well, I've been huffin' a lot of rubber cement recently. Makes me think everything is better. It does, however, carry with it a few unfortunate side effects: dizziness, death of brain cells, neglect of blog.

I'd like to say things are going to be different from here on out. So I will: things are going to be different from here on out. Christ, that felt good.

Of course, that was a lie. The implosion of the Broncos' season has put me in about as foul a mood as I've been in for more than a decade, since the first time the McRib was discontinued. I can't enjoy my usual dose of Too Much Sports Opinion By Too Many Besuited Idjuts. I can't take my usual pleasure in fall Sundays--no one happily anticipates being the catamite in the prison shower. I can't even drink the pain anyway, though I've tried. Lord knows, I've tried.

So I'm just gonna sit here, cross-legged and angry, until my team starts playing like the contender I'd expected...or at least until Friday, when I'll be jetting out to the barbecue capital of eastern Kansas for a certain footballing contest between YOUR Denver Broncos and the Chefs of the plains.

More on that to come. But I'll throw you slavering dogs a bone--can KC run for the usual 200 yards Denver's been allowing without LJ? Me thinkest no...





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Couch-Scout v.3: Steelers, Squealers, Low-Down Dirty Double-Dealers

So the Admin thinks that two legs of this here aluminum tripod have forgotten about supporting the Orange-Robed Knights of the Front Range (patent pending)? Hardly. It's just that, for the only the second time ever, our local baseballers are rocking the postseason; that, combined with the worst Broncos team I've seen in some time--interestingly, or not, the Rockies lone wild card in '95 accompanied a disappointing first season under Shanahan--has meant that our orange poms have stayed, like Brodie Croyle, in the closet. Royals fans will recognize this experience from the tales their elders told them over the sod fires.

Anyway. Let's break down the game. Shouldn't take too long.


The Broncos are giving up 187.6 yards per on the ground. The Stillers are chewing turf at a 167 ypg, 4.8 ypc clip. That spells bad trouble, stinky smelly trouble, trouble like the dude who pooped on my driveway the other morning (and left behind his toilet paper!)

Plus there are the injuries, the off-field hi-jinks, the boomerang of karma, the falling pianos. Reknowned malicious career-ruiner Tom Nalen is done for the season. Javon Walker asked to Just Get the Damned Ball, already, even though, as Mike Klis mentioned in this morning's Post, he knew he was going to have to get his knee 'scoped. Awesome. Travis Henry sues the league to delay the inevitable, also awesome. Simeon Rice says he's healthy enough to play but goes into this game inactive, started making noises and now threatens to push that little Dutch fucker's finger right out of this creaking dyke, beyond awesome. No Rod Smith, no Al Wilson, just some kids, a bunch of aging mercenaries and Champ Bailey. Who is out tonight. Awe. Some.

Jesus. This is what it must feel like to be, I dunno, a Lions fan. Rooting for a draft pick before the campaign is halfway finished.

The Broncos could, of course, recover and make the playoffs, but to do so they'll have to play like a completely different team than the one we've watched through knotted fingers these past three weeks. Specifically on defense. And offense. And special teams. And coaching. And weather-related acts of Zoroaster.

I doubt it will happen. And though I'll be in my usual rooting posture--drunken fetal position near the ottoman--I carry that doubt into this contest. The Traveling Family of Displaced Steeltown Porkers that show up en masse for every Pittsburgh roadie will be, in between heart palpitations, thrilled by a 38-7 victory. The rest of us will listen to Powerslave in our bedrooms and draw pictures of dragons.


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BroncosVille Discusses: Too Early for Mass Suicide?

There's no way to get around it. The House has fallen into disrepair. The soffits are soft, the plumbing unplumbed. There are fucking three-pound rats running across the kitchen countertop and the Administrator is fighting them off with a mop handle.

So let's apply a metaphorical coat of paint to this bizzy. First up, a softball to the lurkers: have the Broncos finally sunk to the bottom of the AFC West?

It rips my lower intestine to say so but it looks like a nod. They got old at key positions quickly, following the loss of Sam Brandon at safety and the additions on the defensive line, and simultaneously went young at others, i.e. quarterback. Bad combination.

Add to that the baffling special teams...sweet skating Christ, you could bring in a young Dick Vermeil coated in magic Papale sauce and it wouldn't matter. Scott O'Brien was pining for some soothing whiskey after week two; by now he's probably scoring Mexican brown at the corner of Colfax and Logan. Before the Chargers game we cut the young returner everyone was chubbin' about three weeks previous for a guy we dropped beforehand. Guy we dropped promptly fumbles away a touchdown before Cutler can strap on his helmet. Ay. Yi. Yi.

The run defense is simply dreadful. Sam Adams is 350 pounds of Krispy Kreme. Alvin McKinley gets in the game only to get pushed to the side. The rookies have their moments, but they're rookies. They say it takes around three full seasons for young front four guys to really develop, which could mean the next few years around these parts will have a distinctly Cardinals-esque feel to them. Champ is great and Bly's not bad, but a 14-foot tall Lester Hayes golem couldn't cover an NFL receiver as long as they've had to.

I've been saying 6-10, 5-11. I'm not straying too far from those predictions. This will, I think, be the year that produces the Broncos' first Top 10 draft pick of the Shanalithic Era.

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Couch-Scout V.3: Colts vs. Broncos

I second--nay, third--everything the Administrator said about the HoG's current wheeziness. This week has been a livin' nightmare of drunken debauchery...so I guess kinda more like one of those "special" dreams than an actual nightmare. Anyway. I'm gonna keep this short and not particularly sweet, because the game is on in a few minutes and I haven't made a drink yet.


The Colts, as Stephen Wayne Methusa-Cobb would happily tell you between bites of corn pone (you grow up on the frontier, you get a taste for the stuff), are the Broncos' bete noire. Their bugbear. The team that gives them more trouble than any other.

No need to rehash the many humiliating losses they've visited upon us during Manning's tenure. They're etched upon my retinas. I see them when I sleep. That awful touchdown in the playoffs when Al Wilson stopped to argue over who had Marvin Harrison and forgot to actually lay a hand on him. The legend of Brandon Stokley. Our absolute inability to get a finger on Peyton...god, OK, that's enough. I'm getting queasy.

Anyway, to the game. Last week, our run D got overwhelmed by the mighty Jaguars of Jacksonville, and with Joseph Addai looking like a top 5 back (may I take a moment to say that I liked him comin' out of LSU, and hoped the Broncos would draft him? May I? Too fucking bad for you if you said no), I expect more of the same. Cutthatmeat knows when to take the straight road. If that happens, we'll lose by 30 points.

However, if the center of the line stiffens up, if Simeon Rice can start layin' the bricks of that Camelot he promised us, we'll make this a game. I have a hard time imagining that we'll play two oomph-free games in a row. That's a mighty large "if," admittedly, since I feel this squad is showing uncomfortable signs of mediocrity.

The final? It pains me. It really does...

Colts 37, Broncos 17.

Ugh.
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