Buhler’s Way Off: Predatory cat fights and sinking NFC South ships
By John Buhler
Of course predatory cats don’t like each other. Just ask A.J. Green how that Jalen Ramsey thing went. Also, Cam Newton needs a some help with 90’s movies.
The 2017 NFL season has been very neat thus far. I gotta be honest, man. That Week 9 mid-season finale we just saw on Sunday was amazing. I mean, yeah, the Los Angeles Rams and the Philadelphia Eagles just hung over half a hundred on the New York Giants and the Denver Broncos, respectively. This is what happens when you play Eli Manning Face and The Heist in football games.
But really, the amount of entertaining, dumb non-football football stuff was just incredible this week. Week 9 taught us a lot of things we just didn’t know. Apparently, you can’t put top-tier Bengals and Jaguars in a North Floridian cage and just get away with it. A.J. Green and Jalen Ramsey are great, but they absolutely HATE each other. That’s why we got an AFC predatory cat fight because why not? Feline ferocious!
Now that Les Miles is out of coaching, it turns out the best weekly press conference in football is absolutely Cam Newton. You come for the ridiculous Mad Hatter garb, you stay for the soundbites that come from somewhere uninformed. This is what happens when you lose your yogurt sponsorship. Just eat grass, baby!
Tampa Bay might have won on HBO’s Hard Knocks, but the Buccos are losing all the time. It’s as if the Raheem Morris era never ended. Josh Freeman is still struggling to understand what MIKE linebacker is and that majoring in reading color books at K-State doesn’t cut it in the NFL. He wasn’t strong then.
Of course, KC would go total cheeseball with its multi-man celebration. They might be a fun bunch, but the Chiefs aren’t The Fun Bunch. Apparently, hippitus hoppitus in Big D was not the answer for a Big W in Jerryworld. How. Bout. Them. Cowboys.
The last thing we might have learned is that even if you have a Pat Riley power slick, it does not mean you are slick or you are powerful. Dropping one ring on a table just does not have the same effect as hanging 10 in your offseason sales pitch. God, it’s hard to win in New York, isn’t? Week 9, thank you for being the mid-season finale I didn’t know I needed.
A.J. Green and Jalen Ramsey are just two crazy cats
Jalen Ramsey talks a lot of smack in that Tommy Tutone helmet of his. Not only did he get Jenny’s number, he got under A.J. Green’s skin and CAT FIGHT!!! It was one of those moments in an also-ran CBS game where the color commentary would be all, “Well, isn’t this surprising. You hate to see this.”
No! We did not hate to see this. Football is about entertaining us all the time. Why would you not want to see a top-five wide receiver duke it out with a top-five cornerback down in Duval County? Most likely you would see that when during the Cocktail Party when Georgia plays Florida, but Green has some of that Dawg in him. And guess what? You know what Green and Ramsey both hate? Florida, so why can’t they be friends?
James Cameron Newton has Titanic problems with late 90’s cinema
When you dress like you live for random steampunk conventions, you tend to be uninformed. It’s what you do. After being on the winning side of another patented Atlanta Falcons’ blown lead, James Cameron Newton let us know two things: 1.) He’s pretty sure the Titanic made it. 2.) He’s not into someone else’s idea of a cool Avatar because he’s the King of the World, or just the Greater Charlotte-Mecklenburg area.
To say James Cameron Newton was Clueless about iconic 90’s American cinema in that moment, you wouldn’t be wrong. It’s as if he was playing Dumb and Dumber about the whole thing. When you drive a sixth of the way across the country in the wrong direction, just go, man like the non-sinking Titanic James Cameron Newton believes to be Sailing Away like the poor Dolphins guy’s boat and his team’s season.
Jameis Winston’s Bucs hit the iceberg, then Mike Evans just hit a guy
It is Event Horizon in Tampa, as starting quarterback Jameis Winston has gone from eating stolen Publix crab legs to his own hand to get that win. He had enough digits to point at Marshon Lattimore and sic his favorite wideout Mike Evans on him. It was bad.
I mean Mike just hit a guy. He didn’t quite channel his inner Brick Tamland, but you never go full Brick Tamland unless you’re willing to not deal with the LOUD NOISES!!! Turns out steampunk James Cameron Newton was a total liar, as the Buccaneers totally hit that iceberg and their ship is sinking. Who knew that icebergs were in the Gulf of Mexico? Definitely not James Cameron Newton.
The Kansas City Chiefs sack race was campy, but effective, but mostly bad
Easily the most fun person on the Kansas City Chiefs is tight end Travis Kelce. The dude loves to celebrate and he took his post-score antics to the next level on Sunday: fake potato sack races. Yes, he and his three best buds in Alex Smith, Tyreek Hill and Demarcus Robinson raced and it was kind of awful.
Hill might be faster than ya, but not in a fake potato sack race. He ate turf after Kelce found pay dirt. Robinson made it like three feet before falling down. Why was Smith racing though? He could have torn something and it would have been Pat Mahomes time. Maybe had the Chiefs played patty cake they would have beaten them Dallas Cowboys.
Some halftime speech, McAdoo, huh?
With the New York Giants’ season pretty much Gone in 60 seconds, it was time for head coach Ben McAdoo to Face/Off with the New York media. They asked him what his halftime speech was in a game where the Giants surrendered 51 points to the LA Rams. Apparently, McAdoo had no answer to how’d they get burned.
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You have to wonder if this Giants season is worse than the end of The Wicker Man. Bees and hair product could bee disastrous. Somewhere over the rainbow, the Giants will find their next head coach. Look for them to be on the coaching carousel this January. McAdoo missed an opportunity to channel his inner Bluto on Sunday. He only has eight more opportunities. Make them count.