Tonight NFL Week Seven gets underway with a Jets-Patriots match-up in Foxborough. Belichik's Patriots are the closest thing to a machine in the NFL. The last several seasons though, since their Super Bowl XLVI defeat by the Giants, New England has looked all too human.
Nonetheless, Belichik, though I have loathed his teams for decades, is hard to bet against. He knows how to win, and his Patriots, led by the aging "teen idol" Tom Brady, are always atop the AFC East. A couple Sundays back I caught the first half of the evening game against the undefeated Bengals. Brady led the Patriots offense with ruthless precision.
The Rex Ryan Jets are another story. Once endowed with the league's most formidable defense, the Jets at 1-5 are a team adrift. Ryan probably should have been fired at the end of last season. Maybe tonight New York will surprise us, but that is most unlikely. The Patriots at home have proven to be almost unbeatable in the regular season.
Now that these Thursday night games are available on broadcast television, I must say that I look forward to them; it is something akin to the tradition of the Thursday night party that fraternities put on while I was at the university. Though I was never a member of a frat, their Thursday night parties had a spillover effect for everyone else on campus -- a bridge to the weekend, a way to chop down the five-day work week.
But the Thursday night game is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the humiliating defeat suffered by the Super Bowl XLVIII Champion Seattle Seahawks by Dallas.
I tossed and turned all night long this past Sunday. I awoke every 90 minutes. The most searing episode was around 2 AM when I jolted up muttering to myself about the offense.
While it is true that the defense was manhandled by the Cowboys, if the Seahawks had mustered one or two sustained drives, I think the outcome would have been different. The planned and hoped for (by the Carroll brain trust) transformation of the offense this year from a power-rushing attack to a West Coast style passing attack has, after five games, been a bust. It's time to either return to Beast Mode or start heaving bombs down the field to Harvin and Richardson.
I've compared these weekly posts on the NFL to a dream journal, a brief mostly colorless record of my bachelor Sunday waking dream life, lying on my mattress on the floor in front of a 13-inch color TV, absorbing the various telecasts from 10 AM to the end of the Sunday night game on NBC. Well, the Cowboys-Seahawks Week Six game was a nightmare. Prompting the question, Why am I so attached to this team? Sure, they are Super Bowl Champions. But the Holmgren Seahawks were almost Super Bowl Champions -- and I loathed that team.
It has something to do with the composition of the squad. The fact that the Seahawks marquee players are all black, young and appealing (to me at least) has a lot to do with it. Even though a Richard Sherman and a Marshawn Lynch are extremely wealthy by working-class standards, they strike me as representative of the rest of us struggling on the front lines of the rat race with our degraded lives at work.
The reverse image of the National Football League is the repetitious, "trial by ordeal," soul crunching, 50 out of 52 weeks a year American way of earning a living where no respect is given and any dignity we manage to display we do on our own dime.
But the home team offers an idealized space where we are young, strong, fast and potent. Every Sunday we are allowed to transfer our identity out of our mundane, hopeless lot to a collective consciousness of positive actualization.
Until, of course, a beat down like last Sunday happens. Then one's world is turned upside down. The order of the mundane soulless routine is cast asunder. I began to question my attachment -- and how attachment defines identity.
To make matters worse, on the train ride to work Monday morning, a bevy of Cowboys fans, wearing their team jerseys and sporting Lone Star paraphernalia, crowed and boasted of their dominance on their way to the airport.
One guy, a black guy from Baton Rouge sporting a Dez Bryant jersey, traveling with his young son and demure wife, was particularly boorish. Talking at the top of his voice for 45 minutes, he relived the entire game, belittling the Seahawks -- "There's no way they're going back to the Super Bowl. No way. They're done." -- celebrating the dominance of his Cowboys. A young white couple with big dark blue Lone Stars on their chests nodded and cackled in agreement at every dull pearl the Baton Rouge Dez Bryant uttered.
I gritted my teeth and tried to read the newspaper. It was painful, but I held my tongue. Then when the train pulled into its last stop at the airport station I couldn't resist one parting comment. "Well, for your sake, I hope you can keep DeMarco Murray healthy."
The young white couple politely responded, "Oh, yes."
But Dez Bryant, with a foul look smeared on his face, didn't say a word. He knows the truth. The truth is that DeMarco Murray has been injured each of the last two seasons, missing a significant amount of time. When that happens the Cowboys become one-dimensional with Romo throwing the ball non-stop. They don't win that way.
Murray already has 130 carries after 5 games. Chances are good given past history that he will sustain another injury. I don't wish that upon DeMarco Murray. He is an excellent running back and seems like a good young man. But Dez Bryant from Baton Rouge should be a little more discrete on a commuter train in Seattle. Dallas has not won the Super Bowl yet.
As for the defending Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks, things do not look good. Injuries on defense and an offense that cannot establish a rhythm (and haven't been able to all season minus the home opener against Green Bay) portend a brutal, painful year ahead.
I've been down this road before with the defending Super Bowl Champion San Francisco 49ers during the 1985 regular season. That season changed my life. I became an alcoholic. I dropped out of the university for a semester. The 1985 49ers showed true grit just to make it to the playoffs as a wild card.
We'll see what the Seahawks are made of -- if they have the toughness of those '85 49ers. Sunday in St. Louis will be a good indication. The Rams are a dangerous team despite their poor record. St. Louis was up early at home against Dallas and San Francisco. Both the Cowboys and the 49ers were able to come back. But the Seahawks so far have not shown an offense that can mount a comeback.
In a nutshell, NFL Sunday Week 7 will point the way to whether Seattle makes the playoffs. A loss to the Rams means that the Seahawks will not repeat as Super Bowl Champions.
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