Gross Football Lunch – Week 7, 2026 NFL Season

Recipe of the Week: Rob Versus Pimento Cheese, Round Two

Ingredients:

• Sharp cheddar cheese
• Jarred roasted red peppers
• Mayonnaise
• Apple cider vinegar
• Hot sauce
• Salt
• Pepper

Method & Analysis:

Not all progress is linear. When I first had the idea of chronicling my journey toward making the perfect pimento cheese, I had it in my head that I would improve my pimento cheese skills with each new batch. The first one may have been disappointing but edible, therefore, the second batch would still have its flaws but otherwise be superior in every way. Batch #2 would have greater zing, better texture, a deeper and more attractive red-orange color, and provide me with a formula that only needed a few tweaks in order for Batch #3 to reach the zenith of trashy comfort food, thus completing my hero’s journey, satisfying my vanity, and conforming to the rule of threes for added reader satisfaction.

Of course, this didn’t happen; I wouldn’t waste a paragraph on wind-up if it did. Success makes terrible copy. Instead, my second attempt at pimento cheese was excessively wet, had a bizarre texture, tasted weird, looked somehow even paler than my first attempt, and was poorly received by all who dared ingest it. If you were to compare fucking up a pimento cheese to, say, feats of athleticism, then it’s fair to say that my preparation of Batch #2 was the equivalent of Steve Young’s quarterback performance in Super Bowl XXIX. I made six touchdowns’ worth of fuck-ups in making one of the most comically forgiving foodstuffs on the planet, and I’m not even gonna get a trip to Disneyland for my trouble.

So how did I manage to beef it this time, and what lessons can be learned from this disaster?

The basic process was the same as my first attempt; shred cheese and peppers, dump the shredded cheese and peppers into a bowl, then combine the shredded cheese and peppers with mayo and other stuff. I shredded eight ounces of sharp cheddar cheese using my food processor’s high-speed grater attachment, then did the same with about half of the peppers from a jar of store-brand roasted red peppers. One of the many secrets of pimento cheese is that lots of people make theirs with roasted red peppers instead of, you know, actual pimentos, and I figured I would mix it up this time out, in the name of science. And, of course, in recognition of one of my chief complaints from last time, I made extra sure to drain the jarring liquid from each pepper slice before shredding. So far, so good.

That would change shortly thereafter, however, as I started to combine all the ingredients. First, I got a bit in my head about how much mayo should go in, so I added a heaping half scoop from the big-ass spoon I was using to go along with the two heaping full scoops from that same spoon. That’s entirely too much mayo, and yet it was also the least of my worries. Next, lamenting the fact that I forgot to check if I had more than a couple drops of apple cider vinegar before making the first batch, I grabbed my mostly full bottle of the stuff and dumped in an extremely liberal splash. In fact, if you had timed how long I was dumping vinegar in, you might have gotten all the way to 1-Mississippi. Finally, I added the hot sauce, salt, and pepper. I think these additions were free of catastrophic miscalculation, but I can’t be certain.

I can’t be certain because, once I had mixed all this stuff together with a sturdy spatula (or possibly a wooden spoon, and I just had the revelation that part of the problem may be the fact that I was paying so little attention to detail that I can’t even remember what implement(s) were used for this), what I was presented looked like…oh boy I really don’t wanna do this, but I’m trying to position myself as Mr. Accountability so here goes. It looked like this:

BLORF! Take a gander at that off-white pile of wet nasty! See the oversized chunks of roasted red pepper! Marvel at the pool of mystery goo floating up top that looks like a puddle of liquidated circus peanuts! Wonder what depraved and misbegotten soul would shrug and seal this batch of false pimento cheese instead of dumping in straight into the kitchen trash, then taking the bag out of the can and around the side of the house, to be banished forevermore into the deepest, grimiest recesses of the dumpster bin? Who would expose themselves and their loved ones to this nightmare of compounded miscalculation?

This batch of pimento cheese tasted like nothing except off-puttingly large chunks of roasted red peppers, and was distressingly wet. I would dip my crackers such that I was scraping some of the wet off, and I thought I as making progress in doing so, but I did not. This fetid doom water only seemed to increase in volume as the volume of pimento cheese-like substance decreased, although mercifully, it also separated from the pimento cheese proper during this process. And, while my wife was brave enough to sully her tastebuds with this foul goo, she complained that it was too tart. That was the one thing I wanted to accomplish with this batch! I wanted some fucking zing, and there was too much for my spouse’s liking! GAHHHHHHH

[deep exhale]

Okay. I’m calm. I think.

Here’s what I think needs to happen on the next attempt. I am done with the food processor, at least as far as the peppers are concerned. I will either dice them as finely as I possibly can with my oversized hook hands or I will grate them by hand. And, come to think of it, if I’m not gonna use the food processor for the peppers, I won’t both using it for the cheese, either. Better to grate half a pound of cheese by hand than force myself to wash the food processor after using it for just one thing. I will also have to be careful with the apple cider vinegar, and use as little as I can while still getting some zing. Finally, and perhaps most crucially, I will start with as little mayo as I can, then add more if and only if I need to.

That is, I’ll do all of this later, once I’ve recovered emotionally. My next therapy appointment is in six days and I expect this will take multiple sessions to unpack, so don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. You’ll need the oxygen.

Week 7 NFL Confidence Nihilism Pool

That’s right, the confidence pool is dead. Long live the Nihilism Pool!

Week 6 was yet another week wherein life and its many complications intervened to prevent me from watching much football, and while my stats from last week aren’t as bad as I thought they might be when I learned that I have once again tricked myself into picking the Ravens over the Browns, despite years of hemorrhaging points to this exact match-up. Bur for real, it’s the fucking Browns! How on earth does it make a lick of sense to pick those assholes!? This was just the biggest loss of a week full of Ls in the low teens and high single digits, which are the losses that always hurt.

My point is, I didn’t watch much football last weekend, I didn’t do all well in my picks last weekend, I don’t think I have any real idea of what I’m talking about heading into this weekend, and I may or may not be coming down with a sore throat. Why watch condensed replays and find study film and read recaps and opinions from ball knowers when I can lie in bed playing Smash Tennis? Sounds pretty silly once you think it out loud like that, doesn’t it?

So instead of making picks and assignments with confidence, or for reasons that have anything to do with each team’s relative strengths and weaknesses, I’ve decided to attune to this broken nation’s continually souring vibes to bring you these unexplained and nigh-indecipherable cryptics. None of the pool information that follows is a positive prediction of what I expect will happen in Week 7. Rather, each one of these is an existential riddle with no answer, a series of punchlines that can only be understood when examined through the prisms of late-aughts pop culture postmodernity poisoning and the psychological complications endemic to sustained over-the-counter throat lozenge abuse.

Needless to say, I will not be explaining a single one of these picks; rather, I will be displaying them, then burying them in the groundwater-soaked time capsule of the internet to grow moldy and decomposed over eons, that its eventual unearthing may disturb the imaginations of whatever sap is unlucky enough to unearth them at some future time that cannot be recognized, but is also all too familiar. With any luck, that sap will go on to realize that their belief in the end of history is made possible only through the exploitation of material surplus necessarily that turns a blind eye to the bones and blood their palace of socioeconomic comfort is built upon, but if not I can settle for making that same person feel like they got whacked over the head with a garbage bag full of frozen tuna steaks.

Continue, if you dare!

Bye: Bills, Chargers, Commanders, Jaguars

Okay, I know I said wasn’t gonna talk any actual ball this week, but I have to make an exception, here. Enough with the Rams! Get these assholes off of my TV and off of my timeline! They suck! And, lest you be tempted to reveal yourself as the joyless pedantic scold we already know you to be and Well, Actually me with any one of the various advanced metrics that consider the Rams a Top-10 team, know that your nerdy quant shit is helpless in the face of the eye test. Watch these morons try and play! They can’t cover kicks, they ran out of kickers, Matthew Stafford is holding the ball for too long and throwing wild stuff when he gets rid of it, and Sean McVay is calling plays like he’s trying to save their season with His Divine Offensive Genius instead of a normal coach trying to put a good drive together, which is the most obvious symptom of coaching brainworms there is.

For god’s sake, enough with the three tight end packages. You’re acting like a neat wrinkle for freshening up short yardage offense can form the backbone of an entire scheme across multiple season when every opponent you face has had a year to prepare for it, specifically! I did watch the condensed replay of their hilarious loss to the Cardinals, and at one point Greg Olsen mentioned that the three tight ends are a ploy to get opponents to send their base defenses out on the field. Every DC wants to be in nickel all the time now, so this is good for the Rams, right?

But in fact, this is further evidence of McVay’s Depraved Optimizer Brain. Just because off-ball linebacker is not a valued position in the context of a salary capped player market doesn’t mean NFL-caliber linebackers are a constant mismatch that can be constantly exploited. Most of ’em can keep 2nd through 4th string tight ends in check in the passing game, and all of ’em can stack and shed a tight end in the run game. These guys take on guards! What are you doing!?!? Enough already! Just throw it Puka and Davante! Each one of them is better than five Colbys Parkinson.

If y’all’s coach can’t keep the brainworms in check, the least y’all can do is lie down in the 4:05 Eastern slot for the rest of the year and die like the Chargers. I don’t wanna hear from the Rams again until it’s Ty Simpson time, because life is hard and I could use a good chuckle.

There’s nothing I can say about Jalen Hurts’ blood clots, and the Eagles’ negligence in dealing with those clots, that hasn’t been said elsewhere by better writers with superior wisdom, compassion, and intelligence. But, I gotta say, that sure sounds like a mighty fucked up thing you did, Eagles. Shame on your organization, shame on your coaching staff, shame on your medical staff, and shame on anyone else who let Hurts get on a plane with blood clots, then play a football game overseas. That was gross and bad, and you should feel gross and bad about it.

3 Points: Steelers over Saints*

Hehehe, France isn’t real, be serious.

Enjoy the games, everyone!