The NFL Blog: 2011 Horse Collar Awards Part XIII (125 Moments)

125 Memories, Moments, Stories, and Scenes from the 2011 NFL Season (No Particular Order)

1. The Lockout ends

2. Philly forms the Dream Team

3. The Dream Team starts 1-4

4. 9/11 anniversary around the NFL

5. Peyton misses the season

6. Dallas: Season of the Choke

7. Dallas Sunday Night problems

8. Cowboys ice their kicker

9. Cowboys let the Giants survive

10. Cowboys whipped by Giants in finale

11. Packers and Saints set the tone in opener

12. Vick knocked out in return to the ATL

13. KC killed in first two weeks

14. Ravens send Steelers message in week 1

15. Colts experience life without Manning

16. Colts avoid 0-16

17. Cam explodes onto the NFL scene

18. Bills stun the Pats in week 3

19. Bills tease with hot start

20. Bills collapse

21. Concussion mania

22. Harrison knocks out McCoy

23. Harrison fights with Commish

24. Lions comeback kids in comeback city

25. Young Bengals doin’ alright

26. Houston is for real finally (with defense?)

27. Houston QB’s drop like flies

28. TJ Yates and the Texans soldier on

29. G-Men and Eli still have that horseshoe

30. Chris Johnson’s overt holdout

31. Peyton Hillis’ covert holdout

32. The Original Raider passes

33. Oakland wins for Al Davis

34. Jason Campbell goes down

35. Palmer gets traded after all

36. Palmer still sucks

37. Jim Harbaugh brings the Niners roaring back

38. Heated Handshake

39. The Dolphins celebrate the Gators

40. Tebow Mania begins in Miami

41. Tebow Mania by Detroit

42. Tebow Magic again and again

43. Tebow Mania comes to a screeching halt

44. Tebow Mania stuns Pittsburgh

45. Tebow Mania crushed for good in New England

46. Falcons gamble fails

47. Payton and the Saints cut down

48. Brees rapes Indy on Monday Night

49. Chargers swoon

50. Ravens inconsistent as ever

51. Flacco questioned

52. Rivers drops the ball

53. Jerome Harrison gets traded and it saves his life

54. Eli burns the Pats again

55. Patrick Peterson says hello

56. Ravens stun Steelers to pull off the sweep

57. Skelton?

58. Bucs quit

59. Dolphins avoid 0-16 earlier this time

60. Bengals can’t beat contenders

61. Haynesworth cut

62. Ocho Sucks

63. Bears’ season destroyed by injuries

64. Sam Held was holdin’ everything

65. Pats own Jets again

66. Fat Rex and the Jets flop again

67. Suh stomps

68. Harbaugh Thanksgiving Bowl

69. Big Ben returns against Cleveland

70. Mendenhall For Truth

71. Mendenhall goes down in week 17

72. AP claims modern day slavery

73. AP goes down

74. TJ Yates and the Texans stun Cinci to clinch

75. Colts press their Luck

76. Green Bay perfection dies a quiet death in KC

77. Lions survive slip with thrilling win over Oakland

78. Simpson flips

79. Giants win the Battle of New Jersey

80. Fat Rex and the Jets eliminated in week 17

81. AFC West mess

82. Detroit eliminates SD and clinches in week 16

83. Oakland beats KC in OT in week 16

84. Raiders lose and Broncos back into the playoffs

85. Bengals back their way in too

86. Patriots overcome late starts late in the season

87. Philly dead

88. The most awkwardly meaningless Philly vs. Dallas game of all-time

89. Saints put away the Dirty Birds in MNF finale

90. Brees breaks the record

91. Aaron Rodgers’ ridiculous year

92. Packers win the regular season

93. Favre surprised Rodgers didn’t succeed earlier

94. Flynn catches Detroit sleepin’

95. Gronk

96. Jets Mess

97. Peyton vs. Irsay

98. Texans get first postseason win; Bengals done early again

99. Saints outlast Lions in WC shootout

100. Refs blow it dead in New Orleans

101. Falcons stuffed by NYG

102. Alex Smith and Vernon Davis knockoff Saints in a classic

103. NYG wins at Lambeau again

104. Refs blow it dead in Denver

105. Ravens survive Texans

106. Evans stripped

107. Cundiff chokes

108. Pats survive Ravens

109. Pollard strikes again

110. Williams tempts fate and loses

111. Fate finds Williams again

112. Giants knockoff Niners in OT

113. Brady’s strange intentional grounding for safety

114. Pat’s 12-men mistake costs them

115. Giants fall on fumbles

116. Madonna

117. Who the fuck is MIA and what did he/she/it do to piss the Christians off?

118. Halftime in America

119. Welker’s drop

120. Manningham’s catch

121. Bradshaw puts on the brakes (too late)

122. Déjà Blue in Super Bowl XLVI

123. Gronk and Light dance shirtless to LMFAO

124. Gisele Ono

125. ESPN pulls a Rod Martin (slamming the door in the face of the man they call Jaws)

The NFL Blog: 2011 Horse Collar Awards Part XII (Biggest Douche of the Year)

The Thom Brennaman Award

NFL Biggest Douche of the Year

The Nominees

Annual Automatic Nominees

Thom Brennaman (Play-by-Play Announcer of Untimed All-Douche Soccer Game in Hell/Captain of the All-Douche Team/President of the Nepotistic Society of Douches/Lord of North Douchia/King of West and South Douchia/Emperor of the Greater Douchery Area/And Endless Other Titles Relating to Him Being the Supreme Master of All Things Douchy)

Tony Dungy (Overrated Former Coach of Bucs and Colts/Evangelical Ultra Conservative Right Wing Wacko/Says that His Teams Won God’s Way/Says that He is on God’s Side in Supporting Laws Banning Gay Marriage/Worshipped as God by Media/Not Allowed to be Criticized/Claims to Know God Personally/Criticizes Curse Words, Sex, and All Things not Pyscho Conservative Family Oriented/Preaches to Others About Parenting Despite the Fact that His Son Hung Himself Two Months After Attempting to Overdose on Pills)

Roger Goodell (Soft Spoken Ginger Commissioner of the NFL/Pushed Hard for 18-Game Schedule and then Switched to Fining and Suspending Players for Any Kind of Hit or Tackle that Could be Considered “Illegal”/Helped Drag League Through Completely Unnecessary Holdout)

Chad Johnson (WR-New England/Blabber Mouthed Attention Seeking Nerd Who Thinks He’s Cool and Tough/Dramatically Overrated Receiver/Complaining Whiney Baby/Changed Name to Ocho Cinco Which Means Eight Five not Eighty Five/Total Douche)

Donovan McNabb (Former QB/Hugely Overrated/Constant Victim/Fat)

Rex Ryan (Head Coach-New York Jets/Fat Loudmouthed Attention Hogging Coach of the Annually Overrated Jets)

Drew Rosenhaus (Lying Sleazy Scummy Agent)

Mercury Morris (Loudmouthed Former Running Back of the Overrated ’72 Dolphins)

Art Modell (Evil Pig Former Owner and Meddler/Ruthlessly Forced Out Paul Brown After Buying the Cleveland Browns and Then Callously Ripped Team From Most Faithful Fans in the Country for Reasons of Greed/Gutless Pig)

Mike Brown (Owner of Cincinnati Bengals/Terrible Owner/Cheap/Has Been Given Everything and Has Given Back Nothing/Threatened to Move Team in Order to Force Tax Payers to Fund Unnecessary New Stadium Resulting in Lopsided Stadium Deal Which He Pulled Off With the Help of County Commissioner Who Was Later Given Job With the Organization)

Adam “Pacman” Jones (DB-Cincinnati/One of the Worst Human Beings Alive/Total Waste of Life)

Terrell Owens (Former WR/Perhaps the Single Worst Teammate in the History of Sports/Douche/Clown Who Thinks He is Cool/Selfish Attention Hogging Douche/Fired Personal PR Woman Who Tried to Help Him After He Attempted to Commit Suicide)

Keyshawn Johnson (Former WR/Total Bust as #1 Pick But Thinks He Was Great/Loud Mouthed Douche Who Cried For the Ball and Called Teammate the Team Mascot/Alienated All of His Teammates/Was Such a Bitch During 2003 Season the Bucs Paid Him to Go Home a Year After Winning the Super Bowl/While Covering NFL Draft he Applauded the Panthers for Taking a Receiver Saying He Could Mentor the New Player, Totally Oblivious to What Everyone Else Knew Which Was That He Was Being Replaced/For Some Unknown Reason is One of the Main ESPN NFL Analysts Making All Coverage of that Sport on ESPN Unwatchable)

Deion Sanders (Hall-of-Fame CB/Loud Mouthed Attention Hog/Runs His Mouth Constantly/Attempted to Mentor Dez Bryant and Ended Up Getting Him Ruled Ineligible By the NCAA/Thanked Bishop Long in Hall-of-Fame Speech/Makes All NFL Network Coverage Completely Unwatchable/Clown)

Jay Cutler (Pudgy Spoiled Brat/The Josh Beckett of Football/Blames Everyone Else/Overrated/Jeff George Minus the Stache and Mullet/Whined Himself Out of Denver/No Toughness or Heart)

Current Player Nominees

Tim Tebow (QB-Denver) Nominated for turning his career into a crusade and for turning his religious views into a spectacle. Tool for Right Wing Evangelists.

Adrian Peterson (RB-Minnesota) Nominated for saying that the NFL was “modern day slavery.”

Albert Haynesworth (DT-New England/Tampa Bay) Nominated for once again doing absolutely nothing to earn his ridiculous pay check.

DeSean Jackson (WR-Philadelphia) Nominated for once again being a complete diva and for deliberately playing half-assed (while still getting paid in full) so as to stay healthy in hopes of signing a bigger deal this offseason.

Vince Young (QB-Philadelphia) Nominated for labeling the Eagles a “Dream Team.”

Jason Babin (DE-Philadelphia) Nominated for calling the Eagles the “Miami Heat” of the NFL, despite the fact that the Heat had recently choked in the NBA Finals. Also for being a total meathead.

Asante Samuel (CB-Philadelphia) Nominated for whining and complaining when his team was losing and for proclaiming himself to be a “future hall-of-famer” on his own website.

Ndamukong Suh (DT-Detroit) Nominated for being totally out of control and then blaming everyone else. Also nominating for being a mediocre player despite the ability to dominate.

Santonio Holmes (WR-New York Jets) Nominated for blaming everyone else and helping turn his team’s locker room into a complete mess.

Rashard Mendenhall (RB-Pittsburgh) Nominated for saying 9/11 was a conspiracy, that there was no reason to hate Bin Laden, for reiterating those statements and then trying to hid behind freedom of speech. He also said that the NFL and the slave trade parallel each other.

Joe Flacco (QB-Baltimore) Nominated for complaining to the media about being unfairly criticized.

Peyton Hillis (RB-Cleveland) Nominated for his despicable attempt to force his way in restructuring his contract by pretending to be hurt and refusing to play.

Colt McCoy (QB-Cleveland) Nominated for blaming his coaches for putting him back into the game after he received a “concussion” and then allowing his father to publicly criticize the way it was handled.

David Nelson (WR-Buffalo) Nominated for his attention seeking and lame celebration with his girlfriend in the game at Dallas in week 10. With his team in mid-free fall and losing 21-0, Nelson caught a 3-yard TD pass in the 2^nd quarter and then ran all the way over to where his Dallas Cowboy cheerleader girlfriend was and handed her the ball. This was apparently Nelson’s master plan after talking it up all week in the media. The Cowboys would then score 23 unanswered points to hand the Bills a 44-7 defeat. Buffalo would go on to lose their next 5 games as part of a 7-gm slide.

Mark Sanchez (QB-New York Jets) Nominated for sucking and for being a total douche.

Coach Nominees

Raheem Morris (Head Coach-Tampa Bay) Nominated for being an absolutely dreadful head coach and for allowing his team to quit in a way almost never seen in professional sports.

Front Office Nominees

Jim Irsay (Owner-Indianapolis) Nominated for trying to manipulate the Peyton Manning situation to make Manning look like the bad guy.

Stephen Ross (Owner-Miami) Nominated for concocting a ludicrous scheme to have the Florida Gators National Championship Team celebrated in Miami on the same date that Tim Tebow’s Denver team would be in town to play the Dolphins.

Media Nominees

Chris Berman (ESPN Broadcaster) Nominated for that ridiculously awful and annoying commercial with the fat girl from American Idol.

Joe Buck (Fox Play-by-Play Announcer) Nominated for being himself and because I’m so fucking sick of his annoying ass. I’m just fucking sick and tired of his annoying face and his annoying voice broadcasting 50% of the meaningful sporting events year in and year out. I’m fucking so sick of him saying “and we welcome you into our booth” and then turning and looking at Troy Aikman and then turning back to us and making that “I just queefed” smirk.

Mike Pereira (Fox Officiating Guru) Nominated for being an annoying piece of shit defender of all things officiating.

Other Nominees

Ex-Players Suing Over Concussions (Various) Nominated for trying to get money for nothing by claiming that they were somehow bamboozled into playing a sport that they obviously knew was dangerous and for claiming to be suffering from head injuries. Not only do they not seem to be suffering from these head injuries (considering that they all seem to be leading normal lives and we never heard any of this before); they are mostly guys who played a handful of games 20 years ago.

Gisele (Brady’s supermodel wife) Nominated not so much for her comments which were not meant to be public but for mass emailing “friends and family” to pray for Tom in the weeks running up to the Super Bowl.

The Finalists and the Award Winner

Third Place: Jim Irsay

Runner-up: Mike Pereira

Winner: Tim Tebow

Comments: Jim Irsay got into the race late but he definitely earned his spot here. Look, Irsay is nowhere near the biggest douche among owners or the worst owner. He’s not anywhere near the worst of the trust-fund baby owners. He’s got some good attributes and he’s done an okay job for a trust-fund baby. However, all of this “protecting the Horseshoe” crap and this trying to turn Peyton Manning into a villain is uncalled for and complete bullshit.

Irsay has done absolutely nothing to help make the Colts what they are today other than being smart enough to hand the reigns over to the Polians and Peyton and watch the W’s stack up. He’s doing the right thing in trying to put the future of the franchise ahead of everything else, but trying to make it seem like Peyton is the bad guy is just weak. Without Peyton Manning the Colts aren’t shit. There’s no new stadium. There’s no Super Bowl. If Peyton can’t play then the Colts have to move on. But he deserves not to be vilified by the owner on his way out.

Now on to Pereira. Fuck, I hate Pereira. They always bring his smug ass on and he just blurts out a bunch of garbage which doesn’t add any sort of insight whatsoever to the situation. When a question arises about why the refs did something dumb, Pereira will defend the officials regardless of the facts. He’ll just give a long defiant speech about how the officials did the exact right thing, and when he can’t think of any reasonable defense he’ll just blurt out a bunch of stuff that doesn’t make any sense.

Each speech has the same bottom line: the officials were 100% correct and everyone else is retarded. If someone dares to question or criticize the officiating Pereira will go out of his way to condemn that person and say how amazing it is that they don’t understand the rules. He never seems to understand that we all know the rules, we just think they’re being interpreted in a dumb fuck way.

Pereira thinks when someone complains about a call it means they don’t know the rules. He is simply too much of a smug know-it-all mouth piece for the league and the officials to recognize that many times when people are critical of a call they are in fact criticizing THE RULE! It’s not that they don’t understand the rule; it’s that they think the rule sucks!

But worst of all it’s his smug attitude and the fact that he thinks it’s his place to go around writing articles directed at individual broadcasters and say they don’t understand the rules of football.

We can all agree that Pereira is a tremendous douche, but the winner this year was, well, preordained. It had to be Timmy Tebow, the 2^nd Coming. The Blessed Virgin will obviously be an automatic nominee from now on.

As I’ve stated many times previously, I don’t have any problem at all with the way he plays. He’s not a great player but he’s got amazing will and toughness and leadership qualities. However, I have a big, big problem with him as a person and the way he carries on about his religion.

He revels in the way that the ignorant masses truly believe that he is God’s quarterback. Tebow himself seems to truly believe that God chooses to help him win the game of football while millions starve. He brings the religious right and the psycho Christians to the game. He brings the propaganda machine that interrupts my football coverage with their perverted ads about Jesus and the Lord and the Children and all of that garbage.

He is my enemy. And he is most certainly the NFL’s Biggest Douche of the Year.

The NFL Blog: 2011 Horse Collar Awards Part XI (Best/Worst Moments)

Best Moment of the Year (Tebow Edition)

3. Lions crush Tebow and the Broncos (Week 8)

2. Tebow Mania comes to a screeching halt with 3-gm skid (Week 15-17)

1. Tebow Mania dead at halftime in New England (Divisional Round)

Comments: Yes, Tebow Mania was such a big deal, it has to have its own category.

Best Moment of the Year (Non-Tebow Edition)

3. Cundiff gags against the Pats (AFC Championship)

2. The Catch-III (Divisional Round)

1. Dream Team loses 4 straight (Week 2-5)

Comments: I guess these always depend on the way you look at them.

Worst Moment of the Year (Tebow Edition)

3. Tebow Mania begins (Week 7)

2. Tebow Mania rages (Week 9-14)

1. Tebow Mania resurrected (Wildcard Round)

Comments: Again, Tebow Mania requires its own category.

Worst Moment of the Year (Non-Tebow Edition)

3. Welker’s drop (Super Bowl XLVI)

2. Falcons 4^th and short problems (Season Long)

1. Concussion Mania (Season Long)

Comments: So these are more personal than most of my awards, aren’t they?