2009 AFC North Division Preview

In the past, we broke down every team in detail before the start of the season, but this year we decided to view each division as a dysfunctional American family and base our predictions off their family trees.

Family Portrait:

Place of Residence:

Everything about the AFC North residence echoes with the clanging of horseshoes, the snorting of mules, the strutting of chickens, the rustling of dirt, and the hammering of nails. The air is heavy with work, and the house, located only a few yards from the barn, is a modest two story building that's been in the family for generations, through the addition of a second story, electricity, and indoor plumbing. Paul Brown laid the foundation. Chuck Noll built the stairs to the second floor with his own hands. Bill Cowher gutted the walls and filled them with copper pipes, while Boomer Esiason and Ray Lewis lit the house up, catching lightning in bottles.

Vacation Spot:

This family does not go on vacation. Repairs to the barn's roof or a new coat of paint on the house are always needed, and the herd of cattle that has produced seven blue ribbon steers won't mend any fences. The closest this family comes to a vacation is going to Pittsburgh for farm supplies. For the AFC North, work is an end in and of itself.

Favorite Pastime:

If the family finishes all their daily chores before sunset, then they meet out back of the barn to box one another, bare-fisted. The AFC North boxing matches are the American equivalent of the Roman Coliseum. Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs are rumored to have killed a man with their bare hands behind that barn and disposing of the corpse by feeding it to the family pigs. Mike Tomlin can knock a man cold with his bug-eyed stare, and the family cousins howl and bark like a pack of wild dogs, while the youngest sibling Chad Johnson sneaks off to the woods for sips of moonshine, leaving his twin brother Carson Palmer alone to deal with the knuckles and teeth of Troy Polamalu and Shaun Rogers.

Teach's Prediction:

A family as stoic in their daily life as the AFC North doesn't change much from year to year. The Stillers will win the division again. Mike Tomlin appears to be the next long-tenured coach for Pittsburgh, and at his age, that means he could still be coaching the Stillers when my grandchildren start watching football, which will be awesome if his intense stare can be matched by his senility. Baltimore should finish second once more in the second year of the John Harbaugh era. The only uncertainty I see is who finishes last between Cincinnati and Cleveland. Both of these teams are riddled with questions of substance and frivolity. The one I most want answered is whether Braylon Edwards' use of 5-hour Energy is why he failed his physical for Cleveland.

Langston's Prediction:

When this family meets up on the holidays, it is a site to behold. The bickering starts well before they actually see each other, and every year it's the same discussion. The Steelers brag about how well Ben is doing in school and how he won the spelling bee, all while he was the starting pitcher for the little league all-star team. While the Raven clan answer with "Well our boy got straight B's, and he went to the semi's of the spelling bee. But got tripped up by 'Pennsylvania' leaving the second N out of the word." Then there is the Bengals and the Browns, who are struggling the most out of the four families. Cincy's son was suspended for fighting and bringing a knife to school. Much like Cincy's kid, Cleveland's will have to repeat. But for different reasons, their son missed most of the year due to mono.

Ben and his family are pretty excited about the school year, he was just put in to the magnet program and is expected to exceed. Baltimore's son Flacco has been put into the honor's courses, and should do okay as long as he finds someone to cheat off of other than Derrick Mason. The Bengals and Browns are nervous about the upcoming school year, as they should be. They don't know how their sons are going to react to being a year behind their cousins. And with the departure of their two favorite teachers, Mr. Houshmandzadeh and Mr. Winslow, passing will become that much harder.