Hockey? Baseball? Help.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking. The Draft is over. We have one long, hot summer to go before football starts, with not a whole hell of a lot to keep us going until then. There’s the approximately 18 months of endless NHL and NBA playoffs to sit through. There’s baseball, but despite growing up with the Royals on summer radio, I just can’t make it through the fourth inning of any single game. The Voice just ended this week. The forecast says boring, with a slight chance of interest from the Summer Olympics. Very slight.

Well, fortunately, it’s not too early to think about the regular season! We are actually just 17 weeks away from the first week of NFL football! So to help bide the time, I thought it’d be fun to work our way backwards through the Regular Season, beginning with the 17th week of the NFL season, through the eyes of an unrepentant Addict. There are a bunch of interesting games on the schedule this year, so over the coming weeks, I’ll pick and choose a few of them, in reverse order, until, come hell or high water, we make it to the opener against the Falcons.

In Week 17 of the National Football League, the Chiefs play the Broncos at what will then be known as the Dominos-Oreos-Nokia-Kraft-Evian-Yoplait Field at Mile High, or the DONKEY Farm for short (Mile High, then Invesco and now Sports Authority Field? What the hell). Going in, both teams will have qualified for the playoffs, either as a wildcard or division champ, with the winner staying in contention for a first round bye. Here are a couple of highlights from the game, as I see it.

Peyton Manning will have developed a nervous twitch from the beatdown he took in Week 12 from Tamba Hali, Justin Houston and Dontari Poe’s fearsome pressure up the middle. Pioli’s crack videotaping crew has concluded that Manning’s twitch is actually triggered by something very precise – the sudden backwards propulsion of center J.D. Walton, one microsecond after the snap, when Poe benchpresses him two yards into Manning’s sternum, over and over again like a worn out barbell at the Combine. Armed with this information, Romeo stacks the D-line, finally finding a role for Jalil Brown, disguised as a wiry defensive end, to ensure single coverage by Walton, the unfortunate Broncos’ center. Walton, who by now jumps at the sounds of his own labored breath, is such a basket case that even Sabby is on the line, just to yell “gotcha” at him once or twice a game. The Broncos rack up 15 false start penalties. Glenn Dorsey now just owns Ryan Clady, leaving Tamba wide open to go after Manning. Unfortunately, Kendrick Lewis mistakes one of Peyton’s twitches for a pump fake, and gets beat on a 40-yard score. Head Coach John Fox is observed by Kendall Gammon in a moment of extreme indecision, trying to figure out whether to put in Caleb Hanie or Brock Osweiler for the gun-shy Peyton. Fox decides on Caleb, only because he liked Caleb Carr’s book, The Alienist, over Brock Lesner, the MMA and WWE star.

Caleb quits after one play when he realizes that Eric Decker is the Broncos’ best receiver. Decker is best known for, in order: 1) dating country singer Jessica James; 2) catching that God-awful pass from Tebow against the Chiefs last year; and 3) playing for the Denver Broncos. Willis McGahee is so done with this team that he offers to go back to the Buffalo Bills, for free.

In response to Manning’s TD pass, Devon Wylie, the Chiefs new speedster, runs a reverse on the ensuing kickoff with Dexter McCluster. Their combined speed shifts them into hyperspace (yes, that hyperspace from Asteroids). After landing at the 50 yard line of the Rams-Patriots game in London in October, they run a second reverse, scoring a touchdown for the Chiefs back in DONKEY Farm. In other special teams news, Dustin spills all of the childhood secrets on his brother, Bronco punter Britton Colquitt. Jalil, who has emerged as the team’s reincarnation of Albert Lewis on punt blocks, leisurely strolls towards Britton, but now carries a perfect miniature replica of the scary doll that sat in the corner of Britton’s childhood room, staring him down every night. Brown blocks two punts.

On offense, Eric Winston and Jon Asamoah are blowing gaping holes for Jamaal Charles and Peyton Hillis. They’re averaging close to six yards a pop, and Charles has already busted one for 75 yards and a touchdown. Hillis has run over Von Miller so many times that he’s again a finalist to be on the 2013 cover of Madden, which he responds to by running off the field shrieking, like a 250 pound MacCaulay Culkins. With Bowe eating up a double team and Moeaki and Kevin Boss keeping the safeties honest, Jonathan Baldwin is just destroying Champ Bailey. Baldwin’s got 8 catches for 150 yards and two TD’s. Notably, after his TD’s, Baldwin calmly hands the ball to the ref like he’s been there before, because he has.

With the score 42-21 Chiefs and the clock winding down, the Chiefs find out that the Bengals lose to the Ravens, so we get a first round bye! To punctuate the victory, Ryan Succop hits a 64 yard field goal, breaking the NFL record for field goals by a yard. Even better, the Chiefs now own the field goal record for DONKEY Farm!

How does that sound, Addicts? I spent this week watching re-runs of We Are Marshall, and I know I’m just days away from watching reruns of games on the NFL Network, just because I am jonesing for some football. We’ve got a ways to go – how are you passing the time, Addicts?!