One Neckbeard To Rule Them All (or, The Only Neckbeard to Rule No Other Ones, or I Only Came Up With This Title Because I Watched Lord Of The Rings Last Night)

Sorry Kyle, I had to, it's the picture that best represents the NB.

Welcome Bronco fans to:
Dude with a crappy beard week
AKA Seriously, if that’s all you can grow why even try week
AKA Guy with more holes in his beard than the San Diego secondary week
AKA Sorry for all the negativity but this dude replaced my dude Rocket Arm week
AKA Sorry for all the hostility but my beard is supreme (this is no joke), my beard would kill his beard in a Baltimore street fight, my beard is Omar from The Wire, his beard is Wallace
AKA Welcome to my beard is better than Ort’s neckbeard 367 days a year, and that extra day is the day I shave, and that extra extra day is the day he finally grows a beard week
Welcome. Neckbeard. Welcome.

Anybody have a Dad? Yeah. Me too. My Dad had a beard all through all of my childhood. Nothing supreme, just a real solid, well groomed red face cover. One day he shaved his beard. Now, I am sure, I am positive that many of you know where this is going, many of you probably share the exact same experience as I am about to describe right now. My Dad shaved his beard and appeared to me to be the absolute strangest human I had ever seen. Creepy. Who is this guy? Grow it back Dad! Now!

Kyle Orton isn’t my dad, but he did shave his “beard”. And so I ask, who is this guy now?

(Note: most statistics in this post are fictional. Or. 100% true. Whichever you choose to believe.)

When I found out we were doing Kyle Orton week I knew I wanted to write a research-enriched, stat-heavy breakdown of the new Broncos QB. We all started e-mailing each other to try and feel out who was going to write what, and who was wearing what on Friday night (we decided on biz-caj). Through these group emails I was volunteered to write the Neckbeard piece. Fine. So I decided I’d half ass it and wing it, maybe write it on my 20 minute break at work. Then I thought, no, I will stick to my guns and write a research enriched piece. Then I thought, nah I’ll just half ass it, but pretend I did a lot of research. Genius.

I went to neckbeardstats.com. There I found more than enough material to grow an educated opinion on this new 26-year-old QB with 17 year old facial hair.

What I learned.

As a collective fan base, Bears nation disguised their discomfort for Orton by turning him into a mythical figure aptly named Neckbeard, supposedly deriving powers from his scraggly full neck of hair. His ability was all together heightened. Now with beard he was able to manage football games, now able to throw 30 yard bombs, now able to do multiple keg stands in one hour, now able to amass a handful of embarrassing photographs on the World Wide Web.

From a follicle, a single greasy long straight hair grew forth and birthed a Super Hero.

They even memorialized him with this ESPN Chicago contest.

Orton through out his young career has amassed over 5,000 yards and 30 touchdowns in just over 30 games started. It turns out he threw 25 of those 30 touchdowns, and gained close to 4,000 yds with his neckal shrubbery.
This myth has legs folks. Very shaky legs. That is why, while I do realize that this neckbeard is something that could grow on me, I’ve assembled a short list of people I’d teleport to the top of the QB depth chart in his place.

5 athletes I would rather have starting at QB, based on beards alone

1. Kimbo Slice– Everyone keeps calling us Patriots West, ok fine, but we need our Tom Brady. With Kimbo and his beard we can assure ourselves the next three out of four Superbowl titles.

2. Franco Harris– Tremendous beard connections everywhere, head hair/neck hair/back hair. Made of steel, have to believe McD could turn him into a probowl QB.

3. Ricky Williams– Speculators have long flirted with the idea of Sticky Ricky making his way to Denver. Hear me out, we go strictly wildcat offense, he grows his dreads, grows his beard, and grows some Colorado export in his basement. Everyone’s happy.

4. Rollie Fingers–

Not a football player. Doesn’t have a beard. That’s two strikes Rollie. What he does have is indisputably

the best athletic facial hair EVER. Style plus era plus talent plus personality= world facial hair icon.

5. This Guy– Horace Greeley, started the New York Tribune in 1841, reigns supreme as the King of the Neckbeard. Kyle, you have some work to do if you wanna be the best.

My jury of one is still out on Neckbeard Orton. I don’t have a kool aid mustache just yet. I am however open to the changes that we’ve gone through this summer. I have one good friend that is a Bears fan. The moment I found out about the trade I called him, he was of course ecstatic, but also assured me that he truly did like Kyle Orton; as much as I wanted to believe him it felt like a sick joke. I called that friend the other day and told him I was writing a piece about his favorite ex-quarterback. If he truly did like Neckbeard he wouldn’t mind proving it to me with a haiku.

He wrote two upon my request. The first to be written mid day. The second to be penned later that night following a few intoxicants in hopes of adding some sentimentality. It worked. Ladies & Gentlemen, Mr. Eric Martig.

cold, thin, patchy, spots
hotter than jay cutler shots
minus thirty yards

cheer for orton’s beard
dander, bugs, and warm stale beer
escaping from bears

All the sillyness aside, I know a lot of unanswered questions rest on what happens this season. We will surely have a greater understanding of which team got the better end of the trade/we’ll know if McDaniels will be sticking around/and if Orton is a band-aid or our new starting QB. We will have answers, but in the mean time, when we strip away the arbitrary aspects of football like wins, and get down to the bare bones, isn’t it great to have a quarterback that we can like? A guy who is already a hall of famer, a guy you can play laser tag with, a guy you can be proud to call your field general. A guy that grows the crappiest & simultaneously awesomest beard in the National Football League! Yes, yes it is. Now we just need Captain Neckbeard to throw away his razors.

As a beard admirer, I once asked a bartender in New Orleans how long he’d been growing his trophy piece.
His answer: Since I stopped shaving.
Indeed.

Break is over, gotta go.

a couple great beard sites.
stuff in my bead
World Beard Champions