Welcome to this season’s FINAL EDITION of Dick Picks, the only online NFL gambling column that was the inspiration for Robert Palmer’s entire musical catalog.
It’s here. One game left, and then an agonizing seven months without real NFL football is upon us. I bitched a lot this season because the games were shitty and the season seemed downright unnecessary when the playoffs went almost exactly as people would have expected, but even this butchered corpse of a season is better than sitting through months of baseball. I don’t know what it says about me as a person, but I’d much rather see guys being carted off the field with their skin being the only thing keeping their legs attached at the knee than listen to stories about guys missing 4-6 weeks due to “soreness.” God, baseball players are pussies.
ANYWAY… It’s the fucking Super Bowl guys!
Coming your way from beautiful New Jersey! They actually agreed to have a Super Bowl in New Jersey! BANANAS! Broncos! Seahawks! Italian men in sweatpants! Feel the excitement! I can’t stop using short exclamatory sentences! Please help! I think this is a stroke! GAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Alright, let’s settle down. We’ve got the two best teams playing in the Super Bowl for the first time in a while, so this has to be a pretty good game, right? Let’s suppose that it will be. We’ve got Peyton Manning coming off the greatest quarterback season in history, and Russell Wilson who by all accounts is Christ incarnate, but elusive enough to not get crucified. We’ve got Richard Sherman, the trash-talkingest, wide-receiver-coveringest, white-people-scaringest player in the league, going up against the most prolific passing attack since Keanu Reeves and that dude from the 7-UP commercials made googling one of my favorite bands an infuriating experience. If all else fails, we’ve got the Bud Light party boat! Which is like a really good trap I would come up with if I were Hitler and wanted to round up all the people I hated. Seriously terrorists: Bud Light Party Boat. Think about it. Please?
Okay, my conference championship picks went 1-1 (mostly because Richard Sherman hates white people) and I’m going to do this week a little differently since there’s only one game. I will talk about the game for as many words as I can get out of me at the moment, and then give my pick at the end. Hell, I’ll even try to guess the score, because what’s the point in being wrong if you can’t be wrong TWICE?! ON TO THE PICK! IT’S THE SUPER BOWL, MOTHERFUCKERS!
SUPER BOWL XLVIII: DENVER BRONCOS VS. SEATTLE SEAHAWKS
So after all of the bitching and moaning from sportswriters and television talking heads, we’re finally getting a cold weather Super Bowl that probably won’t even end up being that cold. Weather conditions are going to be pretty mild, even if they’re a little chilly, so we can focus on the actual football and not the fact that a game played by GLADIATORS and WARRIORS might be too uncomfortable for the shit-heads that use these terms to describe them. Speaking of the glorious and heroic Pro Football Writers of America, they managed to make this week all about themselves after getting pissy and throwing a giant bitch-fit when Marshawn Lynch wouldn’t answer their questions. Nothing gives me satisfaction like listening to idiot sports writers get filled with righteous indignation after being snubbed by an athlete.
“WHAT NERVE ON THIS MAN! DOESN’T HE KNOW HOW HARD I WORK?! IS HE NOT AWARE OF THE BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS PUT INTO MY LATEST PIECE: ‘Why Peyton Manning Wants to Win the Super Bowl for His Father?!!!’ I SPENT LITERALLY HOURS IN EXPENSIVE RESTAURANTS TALKING TO AFFLUENT MEN ABOUT A CHILDREN’S GAME TO GET THAT STORY! HAS HE NO RESPECT FOR MY ART?!!”
Don’t get me wrong, there are some great sportswriters who put in a lot of work to craft interesting stories, but 99% of these idiots are condemning Lynch when you know for a fact, if given the access they so craved, these fucking mongoloids would have just asked him a question about Skittles. This is America, and if Lynch doesn’t want to talk then so fucking what? Instead of jumping on him about his questionable off-field decision making and criminal history, the writers tear the guy apart because he won’t invite them to sit at the cool-kids’ table with him. These moral-grandstanding fucks are the same scum who write puff-pieces about Ben Roethlisberger graduating college, ignoring his history of sexual assault accusations, just because he’ll smile and joke with them in an interview.
“Wow, so honorable of you to get your degree despite having already won the Super Bowl. No, that’s okay, I don’t want to see your weird dick. Can I sit on your motorcycle again? Do you mind if I call you Ben?” We should make these people watch every Super Bowl in a Siberian gulag with their only source of heat being a car battery attached to their testicles with jumper cables.
WOW I really let that one get away from me. Back to the game, people. This week is all about FOCUS! The team with the most focus and other important buzz words is the team that will win. It’s all about WHO WANTS IT MORE! YOU DON’T GET TO GO TO DISNEYWORLD IF YOU DON’T WANT IT AND I SHOULD KNOW BECA– USE I DON’T WANT TO GO AND THEREFORE HAVE NEVER BEEN! What are we even talking about anymore? Oh yeah, the Super Bowl. Sorry I’m pretty manic right now and therefore easily distracted and hey have you guys ever thought about the fact that we could shut down the government through nothing but inaction? Think about it, if EVERYONE stopped voting and paying taxes all at once- fuck I’m doing it again. Okay, deep breaths. Broncos. Seahawks. Broncos. Seahawks.
AND WE’RE BACK! Generally in games like this I skew towards defense. Denver has one of the most talented offenses ever, but teams have been doing a great job lately of slowing them down in the red zone and forcing them to leave points off the board. They should have put up 45 easily on both San Diego and New England, but they couldn’t finish drives and let both teams hang around for much longer than they had any right to. Both of those teams were built around the defense having some small victories while the offense carries them, and in both instances it was the offense that failed them. Seattle’s defense doesn’t do small victories. They attack and they score points if you make any mistakes.
Peyton will have time in the pocket because he always does, but Seattle’s downfield coverage is generally so good that the short passing game is going to be their best chance of moving the ball, and this is going to require Wes Welker and his big dumb helmet to take a lot of hits over the middle from a lot of guys who very much enjoy using their bodies to punish other men. It’s going to be very difficult for the Broncos to give up opportunities to score and still win this game, because something tells me they’re going to be punting far more than they had to against New England.
On the other side of the ball, Denver is set up well to stop the run, but keeping an edge on Russell Wilson may be an issue, as their pressure tends to come from up the middle since Von Miller has been out. If Wilson can leave the pocket, Denver’s secondary can’t be trusted too long in downfield coverage, and the opportunity will be there for a lot of big plays. The refs will be interesting to watch in this game, because an aggressive defense facing a Peyton Manning offense could lead to a lot of penalties against the Seahawks. However, with the NFL having to relive the black eye the officiating in Seattle’s last Super Bowl gave them, it’s possible that a lot of flags could stay in pockets to avoid another roar from the Pacific Northwest. I think it would be naïve to assume the officials don’t consider these things. I’m not saying I think this game will go full Caligula (although let’s be real, somebody is probably fucking a horse) but I do think it will be more of a fistfight than the Broncos offense is comfortable with.
So with all of this in mind, I’m going with the Seahawks (+2) as my pick. Denver walked through the AFC without ever having to face a defense this talented and, much like the Patriots in ’07, their offense seems to be slowing down at the worst possible time. I think Russell Wilson wins the MVP, Peyton flees the stadium in Papa John’s Pizza Zeppelin to their love den in Omaha, and Richard Sherman challenges George Zimmerman to a duel/spelling bee. I also predict that Pete Carroll will puss out on the Gatorade bath and make one of those smug “I saw it coming you rascals!” faces. Also, who is Bruno Mars? I bet he dies when some scaffolding falls on him and they just keep rolling through the half-time show like when Owen Hart died, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers writing an impromptu eulogy about how much Bruno Mars liked to have sex in California. It should be an excellent Sunday, filled with good football, terrible music, and GoDaddy.com pretending that it’s hard to find boobs on the internet. Final score: Seahawks 27, Broncos 20.
LAST WEEK (Okay two weeks ago but fuck off): 1-1
PLAYOFFS: 6-3-1
