Buhler’s Way Off: Patriots, plants and catch rule stuff
By John Buhler
The New England Patriots are good at football and amazing botanists. They have successfully cultivated a catch-rule plant in the Foxborough snow. It works.
If I had one regret above all in high school, it is that I didn’t take horticulture. My parents thought that would have been a bad idea and they kept telling me that Herbology was not a real thing. Well, it was real for Neville Longbottom, and he helped Harry Potter breathe underwater that one time. Five years of Spanglish never got me one bit closer to being a master botanist or a crappy NFL tight end.
Sometimes, back in Athens, GA when I was majoring in leisure studies, I’d think about the world I would like to live in where football and plants ruled everything. Hedges around every field. Kudzu sprawling on every gridiron. Ivy climbing up every goal post. Everybody hated my idea, probably because “Herbology” wasn’t the appropriate vernacular for such front-porch conversations that led into nothing at 3am.
I was lonely like Rob Thomas, but I don’t want to be lonely no more and I sure don’t want to have to pay for this. To me, I needed the right source of inspiration to get my dream off the ground. Well, to0 bad the Evil Empire beat me to it.
They’re just smarter than everybody else. Not only are they gridiron heroes, but they have themselves the best Plant since Robert. He may be from New York like Paul Simon, but you can call him Al. Are you catching the drift? The Patriots not only have a plant that can do photosynthesis out the wazoo, but can rule in their favor in pass defense opportunities. And now they’re going to win Lombardi Trophy No. 5 No. 6. Shibby!
Albertus Riveronus is 100 percent a native plant species of New England
Even though I’m fairly sure it snows in New England every single day, there is at least one plant native to the six-state region that thrives in the late December frost. Some people call it Bostonian kudzu. To others, they refer to it by scientific name: Albertus Riveronus. However, it is best known as the New England catch plant.
It doesn’t need sunlight or water to live. It just needs the fear sweat coming off tight end-like receivers like Austin Seferian-Jenkins, Jesse James and Kelvin Benjamin. Seferian-Jenkins has a hyphenated name, so that just makes life hard anyway. No wonder he didn’t “catch” this. James is named after an 1880s outlaw/motorcycle enthusiast. He wasn’t B.A. Baracus enough to come up with “that” grab, so I pity the fool. If it was a big ole box o’ Bo Time, Big Kelv would have had “this” for sure. No doubt.
The Patriots have to be feeling Hella Good about their Albertus Riveronus plant. Because of this New England catch plant of theirs, Darth Sidious, Avocado Ice Cream, The Tick and The Clown Show Bro will get to watch their plant grow in the Foxborough frost through January. Jimmy G might be all handsome and stuff in The City by the Bay-e-yeah!, but the Patriots love their catch plant more than Sidious likes not having days off.
Andy Reid never has enough time. I mean, how can you expect to use all 60 minutes of an NFL game efficiently when you’re also the Kool-Aid Man and the Tron Guy? You can only be so efficient with Alex Smith as your quarterback anyway. So what is Big Red to do? Get in the Christmas spirit by being Santa Claus at a post-game presser.
His press conference was easily 40 times better than anything Tim Allen did in any of those 46 Santa Clause movies. You should be doing Tool Time things, Buzz Lightyear stuff and that’s it. Let’s let Commander in Chief of the Chiefs get decked out in red, tell us we’re special and then eat all our mom’s cookies because life’s hard when you’re Half Baked like Jim Breuer.
Besides delicious barbecue ribs and a lifetime contract for Rob Riggle to do Rob Riggle stuff on the FOX pregame, what else could metro area KC want for Christmas? No, you’re not winning the Super Bowl because you’re the Chiefs. Just be happy that the Andy Man beat the snot out of Titanic James Cameron Newton at press conference garb. I’m not opposed to him Santa-ing it up whenever he talks to the media in perpetuity.
Marshon Lattimore will never be the butt of a joke
While he was doing whatever he does for the Chicago Bears, third-string veteran quarterback Mark Sanchez had the best day of his life on Christmas Eve. This year, he got the greatest present of all. Somebody did something better with his butt than Sanchez.
There was no Butt Fumble for New Orleans Saints rookie cornerback Marshon Lattimore. He had the Butt Pick, as in he picked the ball off with his butt, as in he made an interception of Matt Ryan with his gluteus maximus. S.C.I.E.N.C.E.! This was easily the greatest interception since Malcolm Butler tormented the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX. No butts about it, man. For sure.
If I were Lattimore, I would learn every single frame of the famous Charlie Kelly Butt Dance. Lattimore makes a great play for the Saints going forward and it’s just Denim Chicken, baby! Who cares what the Saints’ spaghetti policy is ’cause WHO DAT? That Butt Pick was so good, even The Waitress would give him the time of day. Ring, ring on your bicycle thing.
Earl Thomas is bout them Cowboys, except he plays for the Legion of Meh …
It’s all doom and gloom for the Legion of Bloom. Even though the beat the snot out of America’s Team, you would have thought Earl Thomas had a bad experience at an Alice in Chains concert or something. I mean, how can you not enjoy MTV Unplugged?
Well, it turns out that Thomas wasn’t unplugged after all. He demanded that The Clapper would bring him home to Big D to play for them Cowboys! Does Thomas realize that the last time them Cowboys were amazing, the Smashing Pumpkins were the best band in the world? You’ve got a better chance of winning a Super Bowl with the Browns and the Falcons than you do with them Cowboys.
Then again, I guess the gum-chewing of Mr. Violent Beauregard can be a little much. Getting caught on camera was about as awkward as that time Dr. Tobias Funke tried to get his rocks off or that time GumChewbacca just hired a special teams coach against the rules at USC because he felt like it. Thomas’ free agency couldn’t come faster.
7-9 BS: Ted Thompson Face is the Eli Manning Face of NFL GM faces
Not that he’s really, really, really ridiculously good-looking or whatever, but Eli Manning Face‘s version of Magnum is essentially the face of 7-9 BS. If you can stare into the sun while holding Jeff Fisher’s emotional support animal, I mean, you’re the dude, man.
We screw around here in this column-ish thing I do all the time, but nothing is more important to me and derives more enjoyment of NFL football for me personally than 7-9 BS. I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life. I got the Silversun Pick-Me-Up moment I needed, as the frozen cheese cult known as the Packers got shut out by the For Whom The Bell Tolls Vikings. This face by Green Bay GM Ted Thompson is 1,000,000 percent 7-9 BS and I love it.
Next: NFL: 15 Biggest Draft Busts Of All-Time
To me, it says “I now understand why other teams ‘participate’ in free agency.” Just because a guy is a star in a State Farm commercial doesn’t mean he can star on the Frozen Tundra. When your default mouth positioning resembles the amount of points you scored on the Vikings defense at home, therein lies your problem. This is why mouth breathers should never get past middle management. Where’s the owner? Oh, wait … I’ll wait … I’m waiting … Nevermind …