Green Bay vs. Chicago: Familiarity Breeds Contempt, Even in Sabretooth Tigers

In a world of assassins and mutants, everyone has a moniker, a special power, a hidden motive, but when two people meet, having shared a divisional bed, real names are used and their are no disguises to be worn or charades to be played. Sabretooth becomes Victor Creed, and Mystique can not help to hide that she is nothing more than a blue-faced whore despite her efforts to shape shift into something less noticeable and grotesque.

Today, when Clay Matthews stalks the likes of Jay Cutler, the act will be done with an emotion that is one half love and one half hate, and the vicious hits will come with a kiss that feels a lot like death. But don't be surprised if the result of such combustible personalities and dramatic stakes results in something quite ordinary, like when they last met and the score was a pedestrian 10 to 3. The great irony of two mutants mating is that their offspring is often born into this world as ordinary and vile as a Graydon Creed, a man whose only super power is to be cold-hearted and human. And, because their meetings often turn into stubborn genetics that cannot evolve into something grander, is it any wonder then that the Packers and Bears speak their pillow talk under the sound of a howling, bitter wind, off the shores of Lake Michigan?

Green Bay vs. Atlanta Preview: How to Cool a Sabretooth's Fire?

After burning through the only physical specimen in the League that is his equal, Clay Matthews tossed his mane and snarled, "See you later, bub," the carcass of Michael Vick resting under his cleats, with its claws not even extended--the battle was more one-sided than one would expect. Clay unleashed his savagery without regret, without restraint, and Michael played like a domesticated animal asking when to sit and when to roll over. Now, the Sabretooth prepares to hunt inside a dome, that in the Atlanta skyline resembles an ice cube staring blankly into the sun. The temperature never rises and never dips; its set to the cool beat of Matty Ice's heart: it does not falter. Perhaps the best way to slow a creature shaped by fiery furnace and heated hammer is with a flurry of play action passes and a Beast of a runningback, Michael Turner. Perhaps the only way to stop a fire is to freeze it.



Then again, what good will snow drifts and blizzards do when the anger of one's adversary was born out of the Ice Age? Could it be that the football fury that is Clay Matthews was born solely to make quarterbacks like Matt Ryan feel what it's like to shiver, to quake, to fail, to know the coldness of their flesh and veins?


The game may be indoors, but it is still a battle of elements. It is still a game of violence. And it is still about survival on a cold, desolate plain.

Green Bay vs. Philadelphia Preview: A Sabretooth Tiger and a Wolverine

Relentless and unafraid, these two warriors, with mysterious and darkened pasts, will meet tomorrow on a cold field of winter. They have both endured a season's worth of pain and anguish, their raw athleticism and deranged work ethics twisting them into a yin and yang of surly passion. The day has come when only one can survive. Clay Matthews, blonde mane flapping in the Arctic wind, is a killer by profession and bloodline, while Michael Vick, origins unknown and unfathomable, is a grizzled veteran trying to convince everyone that he has once and for all conquered his demons and is comfortable with shadows. Both can taste blood, have tasted blood, and both seek redemption inside a stadium, not knowing that such miracles occur in some place much more holy and more unreachable, and, perhaps, that's why they play so hard, because there is an anger inside them, like a blue flame, that feeds on the idea that all this hurt is for something that is no more than an amusing game.