NFC SOUTH
Atlanta Falcons A friend of mine once went to a bar in New Mexico called Jose O’Shea’s and realized that there was a bar in his hometown in Indiana called Carlos O’Kelley’s. Who are these Latino-Irish people founding bars in random places? he wondered to himself. I still don’t totally know the answer…but I do know that everyone on the Falcons’ receiving corps is descended from that same proud bloodline. Julio Jones? Tony Gonzales? Now all we have to do is get Roddy White and Matt Ryan to change their names to Roddy Blanco and Matt Mencia, and we can all get together to celebrate Cinco de County Mayo.
Carolina Panthers With each subsequent incompletion and/or pick-six, Jimmy Claussen is doing more to undermine Mel Kiper, Jr.’s credibility than anyone else in the league. Or as I like to call it, “Saving America from herself.”
New Orleans Saints Playing defense against the Saints must be like raising octuplets. They come out of the huddle, and it’s Colston and Meachem and Lance Moore and Devery Henderson and now Mark Ingram and Darren fucking Sproles, and you’re just like, Shit, there is going to be vomit and cheerios all over this place. And then they do some crazy Sean Peyton play where he basically crawls inside your head, figures out what thing will confuse you the most, yells “The Annexation of Puerto Rico” and 2.1 seconds later one of their white-guy tight ends is catching a 27-yard completion where all he did was lumber up the field for a while and then stick his hand up.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers I still don’t totally get why they were good last year, except that they always struck me as one of those teams that was too dumb to realize that they were supposed to be bad. But isn’t that sort of how life works—unwavering self-belief beats clear-eyed self-assessment any day of the week. The only thing that can slow this team down is their rookie-filled offense realizing, while waiting outside a liquor store for Old Man Ronde Barber to come back out from buying them all another keg of Red Dog, that they shouldn’t be this good yet.
