The Philosophy of Failure

Is there any hope? I mean, any at all? Well, in the bigger picture, I think we've already established that no, there is no hope. But, in the shorter term, as in this week and this week only, maybe there's a sliver of hope. Maybe the Lions can beat a 49ers team that really isn't that good either. Maybe Rod Marinelli can successfully stifle the offensive game plan of Mike Martz. If anybody knows what Martz is going to do, it's Marinelli. On the other hand, everyone else knows what Martz is going to do every week too and still, he's reasonably successful and I see no reason why Rod Marinelli should somehow be able to effectively game plan better than anyone else. And maybe the 49ers aren't that good, but neither were the Falcons, and look how that turned out.

There seems to be a strain of thought going around that if the Lions can simply avoid a bad start like in their first two games then they might be okay. I have a problem with this line of thinking for a couple of reasons. First, these starts were not just bad. They were horrendous, nigh apocalyptic really, so to suggest that the Lions can simply avoid their occurrence is the most ridiculous of foolhardy wishes. Why not just hope for a million dollars delivered by a truck full of supermodels who will blow you over and over again, sprinkling pixie dust all over your dong so that it stays perpetually hard? Look, the Lions have struggled to start games because they aren't any good. There are no mystical reasons for their struggles, no weird fuckups or strange bounces that have led to deceiving scores. No, the Lions just suck.

Another reason why I have a problem with this line of thinking is because what on earth would possibly make someone think, given this team's long and tortured history of utter failure, that they could just make a few tweaks here and there and then rise up and kick ass? I mean, come on, this is not a team that has been beating everyone's ass for years and is just off to a shaky start this season. No, this is a team that is perpetually putrid. This is the football team I have followed virtually my entire life. They have always sucked, they suck now, and they will suck until the end of time.

And so, sadly, I don't really see this game being any different. The Lions were annihilated by Michael Turner in Week 1 and Frank Gore is probably a better back than Michael Turner. Not only can he run the ball, but he can catch it coming out of the backfield. Basically, he can operate as sort of a poor man's Marshall Faulk for Mike Martz and that's kind of scary. Meanwhile, the Lions have, in successive weeks, made Matt Ryan look like Joe Montana, and Aaron Rodgers look like John Elway. Now granted, JT O'Sullivan isn't as talented as either one of those two guys, but it's not like either one of them have a long track record of dominant NFL performances either. I expect that O'Sullivan, with his quick release, will look like Dan Marino against the Lions overmatched defense. And yes, I know it's sad that the Lions defense is overmatched by the 49ers of all teams, but let's face it, the Lions D would be overmatched by a pee-wee football team.

Offensively, who knows what will happen? The Lions might be able to find some success if they recognize that the only way they are going to consistently move the ball is by throwing it to Calvin Johnson and Roy Williams. Johnson looks like a phenom, and even though Williams has gotten off to a slow start and doesn't look like he even gives a shit at times, some of the blame for that can be put on the offensive game plan, which has given Williams shockingly little opportunity to make plays. Sadly, he has been sacrificed thus far to the god of running the football, who has apparently deemed that the sacrifice isn't enough since the Lions running game is somewhere between utter shit and complete disaster. A competent football coach would recognize this and adjust accordingly, but the Lions coaching staff is anything but competent. Rod Marinelli is the very definition of an immovable stubborn old prick, and if he says he wants to run the ball then BY GOD THE LIONS ARE GONNA RUN THAT FUCKING BALL. Once more into the breach, and once more the Lions will be picked apart by enemy machine guns, mere cannon fodder misused by befuddled and obsolete generals too fucking scared to try anything different because they are old and pathetic.

Which brings us to the sad conclusion that the Lions are unlikely to snap out of their perpetual funk this week. The defense goes up against a coach in Mike Martz who knows everything that it is going to do. If anyone can find even bigger holes than were already there, it is Martz. And he has a quarterback who was with him in Detroit last year in JT O'Sullivan. This does not bode well for a team that is petrified of anything the least bit dynamic. But there's more. With this team there always is. Marinelli and Martz hate each other. I mean, if they could charge across the field and slit each other's throats without the threat of a fifteen yard penalty and I suppose imprisonment, then I am positive that they would. They are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Marinelli is safe, conservative, boring to a fault. And Martz is wild, dynamic, always looking for the next big play, someone who forgets the little things that Marinelli obsesses over. And again, it is to his own detriment. And so what we have here is a battle of philosophies. Neither man is going to change his game plan to beat the other, because to them that would defeat the purpose. They have to win their way because that's the only way to humiliate the other man and win an argument that no one else really gives a shit about anymore. Both coaches are flawed, but Marinelli is more flawed. It's that simple really, and when he tries to prove that the Lions can win through a carefully controlled ground game, Mike Martz's offense will have blazed out to a monster lead on them and that will be the ballgame.

Look, I can scream all I want about how bad the Lions always are. I can fuss and I can cry and I can rant and I can rave about Matt Millen, but right now, this year, the team's biggest and most fatal flaw is a complete and utter lack of inertia. There is no forward progress. Rod Marinelli is a dead coach, a shitty caretaker who wants everything done his way. He is a petty drill sergeant who cares more about making sure that his players walk and talk the right way, wear their colors properly and spin their rifles when they are supposed to than he does about actually storming the field and defeating the enemy. He is woefully miscast as a general. That might be alright if he had dynamic advisors around him developing strategies that could allow the team to swoop in and, despite its lack of talent, somehow win the battle. But he doesn't. Instead, all he has are people just like him around him, people who care more about the proper way to look and act than about winning, people who are married to a philosophy more than they are to the naked greed for winning that is necessary to be a big time football coach. Real coaches go with what works. Real coaches do what it takes to win. They aren't out there trying to make some bullshit point about the proper way to do things, about winning with class or any of that horseshit. They just win. And sadly, as long as the Lions continue to care more about philosophies, the only philosophy they will be able to claim an expertise in is the philosophy of failure.

Predicted Final Score: 49ers 31, Lions 21