- Ehud
- Sep 19, 2003
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football.
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A TOURIST GUIDE TO THE AFC EAST THREAD
By a Minnesota Twins fan
Greetings! If you, like me, are here out of curiosity what the gently caress is up with this thread that posts at about six times the speed of any other thread in the Football subforum, then welcome. This is the thread for the AFC East, a division of NFL football which all involved will probably agree was a mistake, but it's too late to do anything about it now. Unlike the NFC East, which has been uniformly terrible for at least a decade, the AFC East has featured some of the most uniformly good AND uniformly bad teams of football for just about as long. After a long period of solo domination by The Most Hated Force In Football, things have recently slumped and stumbled into something much more resembling parity. Let's go over some of the sights and sounds you will see in this thread.
THE BUFFALO BILLS
The perpetual bridesmaid of the division, the Bills have never won a Super Bowl despite having some of the mightiest teams in the history of the sport. Bringing up the past with this crew is fraught with danger, as some may react violently or collapse into sobbing when overwhelmed with the thought of what could have been, which is a feeling very familiar to baseball fans. Currently, however, the Bills are Good! Probably. God we hope so this time. They have a phenomenal quarterback in Josh Allen, who actually transformed into his potential capability and is now a terrifying offensive weapon, along with a very nasty defense and solid coaching. Usually. Do not ask about the Jacksonville game. The problem has generally been that every now and then, the Bills' superhuman efforts to be competent produce too much strain and they lapse into complete buffoonery on one or both sides of the ball for a bit. As the Bills are a Good Team, they have generally recovered from these and gone on to keep stomping the opposition, but it has cost them a few shots in the last few years. Hopefully that will change this year! The Bills have been putting out some of the best football (along with some of the funniest) in the last few years but have yet to make it past the Kansas City Chiefs and their human superweapon Patrick Mahomes to get to the big dance, though no-one is doubting their talent (lest they end up like the Patriots did last year). Maybe this year will be the year?
The Bills are a very fun team to watch because Josh Allen is a beast, Stefon Diggs is a beast, Von Miller is going to almost certainly continue to be a beast, and at this point you generally want them to succeed just to end the perpetual agony. Even when they hosed up in the past it wasn't hyper amusing so much as painful to watch. They are the Gallant of two teams owned by the Pegula fossil fuel magnates (the Goofus are the Buffalo Sabres ice hockey team). They also have an absolutely amazing fanbase who love jumping through tables, and some excellent thread posters. Expect Bills posters to never buy into the hype initially due to many, many years of being burned, but if good things happen, the celebrations are nuts.
Noted Posters: fsif, t a s t e, Paracausal, pasaluki, Lance of Llanwyln
THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS
Ah, the Patriots. gently caress 'em. Even if you don't follow football you probably know the Patriots. After spending most of their existence as an outright gong show, the Patriots acquired legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady and spent literally two decades building the most terrifying dynasty in sports history around him and master coach Bill Belichick. This much prolonged success can have disastrous effects on a fanbase, and produced levels of toxicity and entitlement in the Boston area not seen since the height of Celtics basketball. It seemed like it would never end, and the Patriots would just forever be good and dominate the division. Then Brady left. Things have been how you say not so great since then.
Let's go over the list. Belichick is like eighty and while still probably a deadly coach, has to start from scratch again building up a team around a new quarterback -- which takes time he probably doesn't have. This has not been aided by the Patriots having miserable drafts for the last like ten years, and Belichick's prolonged success meaning the coaching positions around him have thoroughly atrophied. When one man is a supercomputer running your team with ruthless efficiency, his supporting positions tend to just follow his lead. This showed in how his understudies have almost all failed horrifically when trying to head coach elsewhere, and some of the worst have now come back to coach positions alongside his kids. Results have not been good. As a combination of all of this, the Patriots look like they are finally falling off the mountain, emblemized by limping into the playoffs last year only to be ruthlessly stampeded to death by the Bills. They do have some nice pieces like their shiny new QB Mac Jones to look at, but overall there are few signs the situation is getting better, and the Boston area in general looks like it may be headed for the mother of all hangovers from its eighteen-year high. Nobody will feel sorry for them.
That said they do have some good posters here, you can feel sorry for them even as you mock their team. Patriots posters are rarer than others partly because every non-fan hates the team at this point, but the ones who are here as actual fans are drat sincere Patriots fans, as you can tell by how bitterly mad their decline makes them. They can see it coming, and all they can do is spit acid and shitpost about how useless their receivers are.
Noted Posters: Impossibly Perfect Sphere, Phobeste, Shimrra Jamaane, Nodoze, Magicpants
THE MIAMI DOLPHINS
Possessing a complete dipshit of an owner, the only perfect undefeated season in football history, and an extremely obnoxiously catchy fight song, Miami has spent a long time in the past as a major threat in the NFL. That time has NOT been the last five to ten years. The bad thing about having The Perfect Season is that it sets expectations to live up to, and the Dolphins just have not been able to. Ever since Dan "Laces Out" Marino retired, Miami has been lost in the murk and drifting from mediocrity to failure and back again. Everyone thought they might have finally hit a winner with Brian Flores as their coach! This turned out to be wrong as Miami hosed that up so bad that it resulted in a discrimination lawsuit and NFL sanction (well, the latter is supposedly because they sent Tom Brady a text message). The Dolphins are an ineptly owned team and have been ineptly run for a while, but they have dangerous pieces and will occasionally wake up from their cursed slumber to rip some hapless team in half, which is always a good time. Their quarterback is a god drat lightning rod both in the regular NFL media and also sometimes in this thread; avoid bringing up Tua unless you want to reignite a sectarian conflict. Which, sometimes that produces funny posting, but at this point it's really just mostly retreading old ground.
The Dolphins are in their first year with a new coach and a bunch of new pieces, and QB Tua Tagoaviloa is set to have his make-or-break year as hopefully this time his offensive line will not be made of wishes and spinning playground toys. He also has one of the most skilled ball catchers now in the form of Noted Woman Respecter Tyreek Hill, so hopefully that will improve things. They're kind of in trouble if it doesn't, because a lot of their future has either been mortgaged for this present or taken from them as penance for texting Tom Brady. Dolphins posters are, surprisingly, usually the most hopeful of the thread (in a very relative statement) -- they can see the positives in the team pretty well, though they have also been through a LOT of suffering and will very quickly recognize when it's all going to poo poo.
Noted Posters: Ehud, Amy Pole Her, is pepsi ok, TheBizzness, Hamhandler
THE NEW YORK JETS
New York City has eight Big Four sports teams in its metro area; exactly three of these are allowed to be good at any given time. It has been a long-rear end time since the Jets got to hold that Burger King crown. The Jets won Super Bowl III way back in 1969 and since then have been subjected to every indignity and misfortune you can think of. Incompetent ownership, incompetent coaching, incompetent players, injuries annihilating careers, hilarious injuries annihilating careers, Brett Farve, Rex Ryan, a QB running into his own lineman's rear end ("the Buttfumble"), teams that were good but couldn't quite make it, teams that were some of the worst that have ever existed, Adam Gase. Mentioning Adam Gase without "gently caress that guy" in the same sentence may be a criminal misdemeanor in some parts of NYC (and Miami, for the record).
The Jets have two things going for them: they have never hit the true low of going completely defeated in a season, and they have recently enacted a purge of this round of incompetent leadership along with drafting some very good new players recently (good drafting has been a rarity for the Jets for decades, well beyond any particular coach, GM, or even owner, so this is a breath of fresh air). Their QB, Zach Wilson, is rumored to be a cougar hunter. Their defense and running game may have actual players instead of hypotheticals this year. They got a guy named Sauce for God's sake! And yet already injuries have started to put chinks in this rosy window. Maybe Mekhi Becton will achieve his potential sometime before 2050. What is guaranteed is that Jets posters will sometimes appear optimistic, but this is only because they have become numb to the misery. Jets posters know how bad this team can be and by God they'll wallow in it if given the opportunity, but as 3/4 of this thread can tell you, there is nothing like a fan starved of anything good for months who gets given genuine hope.
Noted Posters: mcmagic, Professor Funk, syzpid, Diva Cupcake
MCMAGIC CONTENT WARNING: McMagic is the Jets' most prolific poster in this thread and possibly the most prolific poster in the thread, period. He is also CONTROVERSIAL. McMagic is absolutely guaranteed to hold the hell out of whatever opinion might be in question at the moment, and will defend it at length whether it is right or wrong (he's a pretty aight poster). This is a sign of Dedication, however, not being a Hot Takes Machine, and in the modern sports environment determining between the two can be very difficult for an amateur. It is important to recognize when this is happening and do not engage. Allow veteran thread posters to handle the situation. This is especially true when the Jets are actually playing football.
Note that thread may contain multiple other AFC East fan regulars and irregulars who I have not mentioned due to forgetting them like a dipshit.
WHAT TO EXPECT
Holy poo poo this thread talks a lot eh. By far the most of any of the divisional discussion threads, and not just because of McMagic either. The AFC East is a very close-knit environment and sometimes the posters for this division will actually just post here instead of in GDTs, usually when in-division games are happening. They really shouldn't, but you try and stop 'em. If you enjoy a bunch of habitual pessimists who actually know a lot about football using that knowledge to advance their pessimism and yell at each other about how they're changing positions repeatedly and hated X player last week, or the fiftieth Tua argument in the last month, or just words to shove in front of your eyes to stop your brain from screaming at you, then this thread is for you. Also they're funny as hell.
The Bills are almost guaranteed to win this division if things proceed as planned. If this thread can tell you one thing it's that nothing ever proceeds as planned. The Dolphins and Patriots are currently strangling each other to try and follow up the Bills, with the Pats trending down and the Dolphins trending up, while the Jets are still stuck in the basement picking up the pieces -- they're doing a lot better at picking up the pieces, but they're not done with the process yet. Either the Dolphins or Pats could make the playoffs as a Wild Card; it would probably be detrimental to everyone if it was the Pats this year but that hasn't stopped them in the past. This might also be the first year since 20 goddamn 15 that the Jets beat the Patriots. Be sure to tune in if that happens.
agreed that mcmagic is the best poster in the thread
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Sep 6, 2022 16:49
