As I am slowly stewed in the cauldron of misery that is being an Eagles fan, today I take some heart in the fact that the Birds are taking on the Rams, who had (in terms of points allowed, at least) the second-worst defense in the NFL last year. They gave it up more than the DOLPHINS, and those poor bastards only won one game.
The best part is that this is an IMPROVEMENT for St. Louis. Back in the bright halcyon days of Warner, Faulk, Bruce, Holt, and those other guys, Mike Martz basically realized "hey, if I can score 45 points a game I don't even need to PLAY defense." And for the most part they did not, and we salute them for their bravery in essentially abandoning 50% or so of football.
In celebration of the full-fledged return of the NFL and the beginning of the Brian Westbrook Countdown To Injury And With It The End Of The Eagles Season, let's take a look at some other historically awful defenses.
L.A. Galaxy, 2008
It is said by some that soccer is a dumb game. These people are wrong and stupid, unless their only exposure to soccer is watching the display of hapless shenaniganery that is the Galaxy D. If that is the exceedingly unlikely case than yes, what you are watching is, in fact, both wrong AND stupid. They managed to broadcast their genre-defining ineptitude on national television a few weeks back when they played Chicago on the ESPN Thursday night game and a group of so-called professional soccer players were run ragged by a 36-year old who was barely a year off having a small explosive device go off inside his knee and a guy who, quite tellingly, has scored half of his career MLS goals against Los Angeles.
Don't get me wrong. I loves me the B-Mac. But Brian McBride is not exactly the height of human physical potential any more. Talented though he may be, Brian McBride is one slow-ass motherfucker. You're sitting there reading this on a Sunday morning, sipping your coffee and hoping you'll be completely awake before the games start and you are, at this moment, as fast as Brian McBride. You would probably bag two or three goals were you to end up in a game against the Galaxy.
Kentucky Men's Basketball, March 28, 1992
Yeah, you played well for 39 minutes and 57.9 seconds. Unfortunately, a college basketball game is, in fact, 40 minutes long.
I would have loved to hear the huddle talk before this one. "Let's see, Grant Hill is on the inbounds, don't have to worry about him... hey, I've got an idea. Let's cover everybody! I mean, there's a CHANCE they won't try and get it to the 6'11" guy, right?"
You go through all that shit to beat Duke and then you fuck it up in the last 0.08% of the game. For shame, Kentucky Wildcats. For shame.
On the plus side, you did give me and my friends a ton of enjoyment when we spent every free moment for a solid week afterwards in our high school gym trying to replicate Laettner's shot. I don't think anyone ever did, but then again none of us were on the Dream Team either. Also I went to a snooty prep school so we were all probably wearing wingtips too.
Newcastle United, eternally
Here's another great idea in the history of sports. Let's take Shay Given, who by any account is a very, very good goalkeeper, and then put a bunch of fucking sock monkeys in front of him and call it a defense, thus insuring that we will lose all the time because our world-class keeper has to make 453 saves every game. Also we will let opposing forwards just run into him like a Ferrari and tear his bowels into small pieces.
Some might argue this point, and to those sad chowderheads I have two words: Titus Bramble.
What, still arguing? Here's two more words: Jean-Alain Boumsong.
A word of advice: if one of your defenders was once voted "Worst Player In The Premiership," your defense is pretty bad.
Nazi Germany, 1944-1945
"Well, all right, boys! Well done all! We've conquered most of mainland Europe, we have tanks and barbed wire and machine guns and thousands upon thousands of troops covering every single intersection between Calais and St. Petersburg... looks to me like this war is WON, fellas! Break out the champagne! No, Strauss, you Bavarian dumbass, not that sparkling wine crap! CHAMPAGNE! The real thing! We didn't conquer the damn province for nothing.
"What? Americans? What Americans? Those lazy assholes aren't gonna do a damn thing...
"Ah. Hm. I see. Yes. Well, er... Berlin, you say? Right this way, Mister Eisenhower."
Imperial Navy, Battle of Endor, 4 ABY
Seriously, HOW DO YOU FUCK THIS UP? You are the Galactic Empire. You have Star Destroyers up the yin-yang. You have, by all accounts, an inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder in TIE Fighters alone, never mind stormtroopers. Yes, we know your soldiers (and probably your pilots) can't hit the broad side of a barn with a basketball. That shouldn't matter. You have a giant space station that BLOWS UP PLANETS, and you get your ass handed to you by Billy Dee, a talking squid, and some other kind of talking cephalopod.
How about a little discipline in the face of a technologically inferior enemy that you massively outnumber who can not, it should be noted, BLOW UP FUCKING PLANETS? Jesus, who are you guys, Newcastle? Your ships are Star Destroyers. That rolls off the tongue, don't it? Ssssstarrrr Destroyyyyyyerssss. Your ships destroy stars. Their ships are named after letters. Do I want a ship that destroys stars, or the ship that yesterday's episode of Sesame Street was brought to me by? Hmm. Tough choice. And still you manage to lose to these multi-culti douchebags. Sad.
(For the record, Admiral Ackbar is obviously the squid; I'm not sure what Nien Nunb is. An octopus, perhaps? Also it is worth noting that this is still my favorite sequence from any movie, ever. It is the Platonic ideal of Awesome.)
And so, the beginning of kickoff Sunday and another season of wishing Terry Bradshaw would somehow suffer some kind of tropical infection that would render him mute is almost upon us.
Against the Rams defense, a worthy addition to this pantheon, the Eagles are 9 point favorites. If you don't recognize that as a sucker line, congratulations! You are not an Eagles fan. Man I wish I knew what that's like. Must be sweet.
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