Beer and football VIII — week three

The game: Texans at Patriots
The beer: Warsteiner Dunkel
The result: Win, 36–33; Rams win, 41–39
The commentary: Football! If I can survive the Rams game (those color-rush yellows were it), with Brian Hoyer (!) evaporating a fourteen-point third-quarter deficit while I remained blissfully unaware until switching over to the NFL Network after Project Runway, and another—another!—epic Brady comeback then I am a golden god. But wait! Do I really consider a second consecutive Thursday Night Football pick tonight, this time against the goddamn Bears?? It's either that, the bewildering Seahawks over the Colts or the Saints over Jay Cutler (shudder) and the Dolphins in London. Prepare the gilding, motherfuckers.

I am not alone (though I was early: see weeks two, four, ten and seventeen from last year's "top-rated" season and the archives back through beer-and-football's inception) and there is much falling-skies talk in New England regarding Matt Patricia's crew of merry Pro Football Focus subscribers. No pass rush, poor on-field communication, little confidence in presumed role-players who got paid in the offseason, a lack of "Free Free Safety Advice" instructional videos on YouTube… lucky for us that pliable old quarterback is rolling along. Gronk, White, Cooks, Hogan, Amendola, the goal-line version of Gillislee, some flailing man named Dwayne Allen who has as many catches as I do: this offense is averaging thirty-two points a game behind an atrocious line and some (dwindling but ever-present) questionable Josh McDaniels calls—fun to watch and root for as various acids churn away downstairs. This will be a season full of action.

Football (pool)! It was a goddamn slaughter, distributing twenty-two strikes (two-thirds courtesy of Jets–Dolphins) and fully eliminating Ken, one of the Brians and maybe a Matt—the CBS RICO app could use a data-visualization and user-interface overhaul. Meanwhile, my spreadsheet blossoms as strategic color application and a new (this week) magic-number calculator (now seventy-nine) put the commissioner to shame. Again. Prepare the units, motherfuckers.

A guest brought the dunkel to G's birthday party a few weeks ago—I don't know how many successive parties' refrigerators it passed through but it found a home here and wasn't bad. I was prepared to write about a blowout win signifying the good guys "dunking" and/or declaring "war" on the league but that metaphor expired early… until a Rumsfeld Brewing Co. Warhammer Slammer IPA toasts a win against the Falcons in three weeks.

Quick sizzle: On the train the other day I misread a guy's TOUGH MUDDER shirt as THOUGHT MURDER, which will be the name of the black-metal song I compose after the same Falcons game.

Up next: "Charlotte Gordon has written a book about two women who changed not only the way we think, but the way we are." Hoo boy. Cheers!