A funny thing is happening with this year's installment of Hard Knocks. Previous seasons focused on obvious, larger-than-life coaching personalities in Rex Ryan, Herm Edwards and Brian Billick, but the idea behind this year's inside look at the Dolphins was to cut out all that cute shit and pull back the curtain on a team that usually erects a Berlin Wall between the media, the public and the secretive and surely fascinating things going on behind closed doors in a losing franchise.
However, with the Dolphins increased emphasis on transparency in an effort to improve public perception and, ultimately, ticket sales (as opposed to, you know, putting a fucking winning product on the actual fucking field), the HBO cameras are capturing more than the Dolphins bargained for.
Namely, the show shines a spotlight on the rampant ineptitude within the front office, an obvious lack of vision pertaining to players (particularly high draft picks) and an overall feeling of 'holy-shit-these-guys-are-just-kinda-winging-it-aren't-they?' that is baffling to behold.
For all the posturing by guys like Joe Philbin and Jeff Ireland -- men who preach indifference to celebrity -- what is striking is that their personalities are really the most compelling action within this year's Hard Knocks.
The means by which they passive-aggressively (and often times straight-up fucking diss) their employees lends credence to the rumors that the coaches (specifically, Philbin) are already losing the locker room. Granted, this is preseason/training camp but there is something inherently not right about the relationships between the front office, the coaches and the players. Watching the show you get the sense that the Dolphins -- despite a considerable overhaul in the offseason -- are more dysfunctional than ever.
On to the show highlights:
- First, the most important thing: With the inevitable cutting of human turnstile Les Brown, we have to say R.I.P. to Les Brown's girlfriend:
What a gloriously hot little minx. Also, Les Brown is a major crybaby. Dude, you got cut because you couldn't block a litter of puppies. PULL IT TOGETHER, BUDDY! I don't feel sorry for him. He has a hot girlfriend that looks at him like a horny teenage cheerleader and constantly wants to hit it. I don't feel sorry for Les Brown at all, and his tears only infuriate me.
- Free agent guard, 10-year vet and likely full-season PUP member, Erich Steinbach decides to retire. This is sad because he seemed like a kinda no-bullshit likeable dude, but this is also sad because we have to see the most homoerotic exchange of love jones between Steinbach and Jeff Ireland. Ireland's level of ass-kissing (somewhere between licking to the center of a Tootsie Roll and full on feedbagging his rectum) was retch-worthy. This was likely because Ireland has a tremendous amount of respect for Steinbach, but no I'm just kidding, it's because Steinbach is white and his mother is not a crack-puffing whore.
- Daniel Thomas was 15 minutes late for a lifting session, didn't follow dress code and was also cited for being late for the Carolina game flight, making Joe Philbin a bit 'queasy' (his words). You know what that means! Jeff Ireland and Joe Philbin will ship his whore-mongering, no-picking-up-pieces-of-trash, no-shoe-tying fucking ass to Detroit for a 7th-round pick and a French-language copy of "L'Etranger". You fucking sack of shit, Daniel Thomas. (Who Jeff Ireland moved up to draft, but WHATEVER THAT'S NOT HIS FAULT, PEOPLE. HE IS THE DECIDER!).
- We had an obligatory Lauren Tannehill segment (coupled with Jake Long's wife, Jackie) making an appearance at some county school function. She looked pretty good and that was very nice of them. I hope the football nerds watching enjoyed a rigorous and feverous masturbatory session in her honor. I hope you treated her image and memory with kindness and respect once you climaxed. That's all I got for ya on Lauren Tannehill.
- Worst segment of the night: Mike Pouncey out to dinner with whoever the fuck Kristian Fong is supposed to be. Absolutely brutal conversation between two incredibly vapid humans. It was like being led through CIA headquarters, taking an elevator down into the basement, passing various checkpoints using hi-tech handprint/ocular identification methods and walking into a quarantined room featuring a single electron microscope in the center of said room consisting solely of a slide of straight up DUUUURRRRHHHHHHHFFF for your analysis. Horrible.
- Jeffy Ireland comes from a long line of football men. Jeffy Ireland hung out with the 1985 Bears and hugged them. He also horsed around with them. Jeffy Ireland is NOT a byproduct of nepotism. Jeffy Ireland is an inferior offspring from greater men.
- Sean Smith is hella tough on the practice field. I even witnessed him catching a ball and running with it the opposite way. This was like having La Virgen de Guadalupe come into your room and explode into a supernovae of agape love and unity. Therefore, it will take years to know if Sean Smith doing these things ever really happened. We'll have to call in the Vatican.
- Finally, the Vontae Davis-Jeffy Ireland showdown, where Ireland informs Vontae that he's been traded to the Colts for a second-round pick and a used VHS copy of V.I. Warshawski/ Ireland is insincere, condescending and even rushes him off to Indy before the poor guy can call his beloved grandmother. Classic Ireland! Before leaving, Vontae curiously inquires what he was traded for (a 2013 second-round pick and a conditional sixth-rounder), and what follows is some deliciously awkward silence between the two men as Ireland pretends to act all busy while Vontae thinks what everyone in America was thinking when we all heard it for the first time:
"You stupid piece of shit, you traded me for that??"
Your Miami Dolphins travel to Texas to take on Dallas for the final preseason game tonight. Kickoff is at 8:30pm.
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