RADIO
Listen, man, I'm just straight-up done. I am one hundred percent over this, and after this most recent presidential debate, I was inspired to say something. Not about the election - God no, that debate was a hot mess. But it did make me feel like yelling incoherently for theatrical effect at something that made me mildly angry, so here goes.
I can't support the NFL's absurd standards of player conduct anymore. It was bad when they fined Brandon Marshall for wearing green cleats for mental health awareness instead of pink ones for marketing to women breast cancer awareness. Roger Goodell has roughly the same status in Boston as the New York Yankees and the letter R. Some lady got the vapors when her daughter saw Cam Newton dance in the endzone and made a national case about it. Now we're here, where the NFL is throwing out taunting penalties like Halloween candy and the league's brightest stars spend half their games on the knife's edge of ejection because the NFL feels they need to shut down "sexually suggestive" celebrations in their telecasts (brought to you by Viagra, Cialis, and that uncomfortable quasi-nauseated feeling you get watching 80-year-olds give each other bedroom eyes in a loving, lingering shot that lasts for approximately 5 minutes).
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It's Monday Morning... What Just Happened
So in the spirit of the NFL's draconian celebration rules, today's Stars and Duds will rank various players' celebrations by the magnitude of the fine I predict the NFL will give to them and why. Let's put on our best "out of touch insufferable trust fund baby" hats and pretend like we make decisions in the NFL. It can't be any worse than what we've currently got.
The Duds:
These celebrations will be ranked in an ascending order, from lowest monetary amount to the highest amount. If you disagree with the fine issued, just remember that I'm pretending to be the NFL so I literally don't care about you at all unless you are currently giving me money. This goes double if you're one of those strange wo-man creatures we've been hearing so much about recently.
6. Nickell Robey-Coleman: The Quasi-Pump
The fine: $3,000
Now, Robey-Coleman didn't do much after his utterly unsurprising pick-six of Case Keenum, but there was the barest hint of a pump after the touchdown. Since we're following the "three pump" precedent famously set in the case of McCringleberry v. Peele, he was not flagged nor fined heavily, but since there was at least an implied pump, we have found definitively that Robey-Coleman was not in compliance with the NFL's policy of stringently avoiding sexually suggestive material. At least until the next Carl's Jr. commercial.
5. Ezekiel Elliott: Feeding the Beast (Multiple Times)
The fine: $6,666
Regardless of Elliott's magnificent 133 yard, 2-touchdown performance, his "feed the Beast" celebration is one that we feel could possibly be construed as Satanic, especially if you capitalize the word "beast" to land the joke, so we in the NFL want to make it perfectly clear that we abhor the worship of Satan and set ourselves against the Adversary in all of his wickedness and destructive ways.
Just to be clear, though, this isn't a position we take on moral grounds, because we're pretty sure even rebellious teenagers have favorite teams, but mostly because we spent 3 hours last week in the presence of some asshole who wouldn't shut the hell up about LaVey's Satanic Bible and we are one hundred percent sick of "baby's first pissing off Mom & Dad" religion. Elliott gets the fine of the Beast and we hope he finds Jesus.
The fine: $7,500
First off, Dean Spanos has been whining at us ever since we awarded the Inglewood proposal to Stan Kroenke and it's getting really annoying, so when the first-round pick that he aggressively tried to screw over had the gall to celebrate laying his hands on a quarterback, it really set Dean off and that's just a sight and sound no one wants to see or hear. It's astounding the sounds you can make when you're a spineless yes-man but you've dedicated yourself so wholly to screwing over your team's city financially that your skin is pure flint.
Anyway, we at the NFL want to make sure that it's understood by everybody that we in no way condone when a player lays his hands on another person. "Person" is of course a word which here means "quarterback, because they make us the money." I'm sorry, what? Wo-man? That's that weird word again. You mean those weird beings that buy our pink shit in October? You're saying that's a people? You're just not making any sense, we're moving on.
The Studs:
Now these are the celebrations that are just unacceptable by "Leave It To Beaver" standards, so God knows that it's our job to shut these hooligans down before they start having sock hops after 8 pm or kissing their girls before going steady.
3. Tom Brady: Albuquerque - 3000 mi
The Fine: I Don't Know, Whatever Four Game Checks Is For Him
Mostly just because screw this a**hole, man. We can't stand the dude.
2. T.Y. Hilton: Semaphore Shuffle
The Fine: $25,374
We have no idea what this celebration means, honestly, and we just chose a number at random in case T.Y. Hilton was signaling extraterrestrial overlords that the planet is ripe for invasion and harvesting.
What, do you not have a fine for that? What kind of clown league are you running that you don't have a fine structure set up in case of alien invasion?
1. Odell Beckham, Jr: Bygones be Bygones
The Fine: $1,000,000
This celebration is one that could set a dangerous precedent in our league and we want to make sure that no player ever does anything like this ever again.
If the players start displaying self-awareness, fans could become accustomed to it and then start expecting us to start showing self-awareness and we are totally, fully, and completely opposed to that in any way, shape, or form. Now if you'll excuse us, we need to package all of these into a celebrations highlight DVD we can sell at $60 a pop.
Ugh, I always hate going into that "owners" frame of mind. Jerry Jones leaves his exotic dancers residue in there, and I always come out with lingering thoughts about how successful Levi's Stadium is. It's a dark place, completely disconnected from humanity, and the longer I stare into that abyss the more it whispers to me about how much money could be found if you moved the Packers to Milwaukee. It's gross. I'm gonna have to take like eight showers now, and hope I'll be clean by next week.
*None of the videos in this article were created by me. All credit for the videos goes to their rightful creators.
