The Grump: Week 10 Playoff previews for every team in The Blast Zone

Locked In — Find out what we know about the team your favorite team needs to beat

The Gridiron Grump special to Blast Zone Media

What in tarnation is going on around here? First you take over your mother’s half-brother’s second cousin’s timeshare at that special parking spot down by the river and the next thing you know it’s time cancel a lifetime subscription to the local newspaper and try to figure out what the heck a Blast Zone is other than four-foot radius directly behind me after a few too many McDinky burgers.

Well now that I’ve got those matters of course taken care of, please allow me to introduce myself. I’m a man of no wealth and less taste. But I catch on pretty quick and I’ve been reading some old clippings left behind in the Winnebago and following along with this new BZM crew to figure out who’s who and what’s what on the gridirons I’ve heard so much about for so long.

To put it simply, which is the only way I know how, I’m the Gridiron Grump’s “cousin”, straight from the Staten Island Grease and Cheese Factory where I was “let go” when it was six. months past due for a mandatory raise.

Which is the way it goes when you sign a contract with Cheese Enterprises. But really, can you think of anyone greasier or cheesier than me?

But I digress. Whatever that means. They made me sign a contract not to air that dirty laundry

The Blast Zone Media guys reached out at the end of the summer to see if I could join the team, and carry on the tradition of Oscar the Grouch style trash can journalism. Being unemployed and vengeful, I of course said yes and I was supposed to be here in time for Week 1 but it’s a long trek across America when your means of transportation is a big thumb.

I thought I had the ride all figured out after a bearded guy in a Colt Vista picked me up somewhere near a blue dot in Nebraska, but I absentmindedly stole the car and left the driver behind in a Denny’s parking lot when I became distracted by the Monday Night Football mysteriously hovering over the Badlands of South Dakota. Trying to fix my karma, I picked up a wayward hitchhiker with my newfound wheels and was promptly held hostage by a man who spoke softly but carried a big stick.

Luckily, I was saved by the original driver when he was walking by at the exact moment I was trying to pull money out of an ATM machine to pay my own ransom. As we got the heck out of Dodge, one big stick richer, I realized you’d have to be crazy to pick up hitchhikers these days. But even crazier to think I’ve got money in the bank.

But that’s all in somebody else’s rearview mirror now and I’m settling in just fine with a gifted Winnebago as my chariot while following along with local football teams on the road to State.

I even found time to chat with the eight coaches who still had their player practicing this week, and I’ve pounded out a guide that reminds me of a Hungry-Man TV dinner. At the end of it you won’t be hungry anymore.