Thanksgiving with the Lions

The Lions have lost the last four games on Thanksgiving by an average of 20 points, and have lost by double digits in all four of those games. So I think we pretty much know what we're in store for this Thanksgiving, especially since the 0-11 Lions are playing the 10-1 Tennessee Titans.

Every year around this time I cringe because I know what's coming: the Lions will be embarrassed with everyone watching them and in the days leading up to that inevitable defeat there will be hoards of talking heads and braying jackasses on ESPN, on blogs and in newspaper columns screaming about how the Lions shouldn't be automatically given the early Thanksgiving game every year. Which to me is just unspeakably cruel. I mean, come on, what else do Lions fans have? Jesus, you people are fucking animals. We have the shittiest franchise year in and year out in the NFL, virtually every one of our can't miss prospects ends up either being too shitty for even the Lions, playing for somebody else after tanking it with the Lions, or sitting at home smoking weed and playing X-Box after, well, doing the same thing with the Lions. Hello, Charles Rogers! We have one playoff win in the last fifty years and our greatest run of sustained success during that time period came with Wayne Fontes as the head coach and Scott Mitchell as the quarterback. Our offensive line has been in shambles ever since our two best players on the line were paralyzed or killed by a runaway car, and that was more than fifteen years ago! We have a head coach who speaks in nonsensical gibberish, raving this week about twinkies and soft creamy middles after a reporter asked him a question about wanting the spotlight. Perhaps there is a .0000000000000000001% chance that old Rod is some sort of idiot savant, and inside of his seemingly inane babble there lies a gem of stunning genius, but I doubt it. Instead, I think I am pretty safe in making the assumption that Marinelli just forgot where he was and who he was talking to and began rambling about twinkies because Old Man Ford told him that if he held his shit together without pissing and shitting himself during a game he would give him all the twinkies he could handle.

So that's what we are stuck with as Lions fans, that is the twisted, fucked up saga we follow year after year after miserable year and still you want to take away our Thanksgiving game, the one thing that we have to actually be somewhat proud of, the only thing that represents even a whisper of tradition for us. You vicious assholes.

Look, we all know that the Lions are going to lose tomorrow. They just will, and they will likely lose by a lot. But that's hardly the point. You take this away from us and what do we have? Not one damn thing. We're just a free floating disaster of a franchise, rooted in nothing but our own misery and decay. Maybe we were worth something once, back when dudes all still wore hats to work and James Dean was the hot shit, but fuck, that was fifty years ago, and with every year that passes that all seems like something out of some musty old library or museum, barely remembered yellowed news stories buried in the archives. They aren't alive, they don't resonate in any way with us today. They might as well have happened in Narnia or Middle Earth or some other bullshit fairy land. But the Thanksgiving game is the one thing that's still there, the one thing that reminds us that somewhere buried beneath all the shit there's a franchise that still means something. Even if we don't know what it is, even if we can't touch it, can't feel it, can't understand it, it still means something. It's all we have left.

Anyway, as for the actual game, expect the Titans to run right over the Lions defense with both Chris Johnson and LenDale White. The Lions have been especially woeful against the run lately, and the Titans should be able to march right through them with stunning ease and efficiency. Throw in a couple of Kerry Collins touchdown passes following blown coverages by the Lions shitty linebackers and defensive backs and you have the recipe for a Titans scoring binge that the Lions won't be able to even come close to keeping up with.

Offensively, I expect the Lions to struggle even more than they have the last few weeks. The Titans front four, led by Albert Haynesworth and Kyle Vandenbosch, should be able to completely suffocate the Lions run game, leaving the offense in the hands of Daunte Culpepper again, and if Daunte has proven anything since his return it is that given the opportunity he will fuck up and fuck up badly. I expect that Calvin Johnson will be able to get deep for a big play maybe once, but Daunte will throw a couple of picks, probably fumble it at least once, and everyone will go home knowing exactly what they knew before the game: that the Lions are terrible and they are going to be terrible for the rest of the season and that there are no answers on this team or on the sidelines or in the front office. And the more I think about it, the more I realize I was wrong. We don't have just the one tradition left. We have two: Thanksgiving and the Lions being a shambling wreck of a team. If we have to put up with the latter, at least let us keep the former. Oh well, happy Thanksgiving, or Happy Thursday if you are Canadian or European or Martian or whatever.

Predicted Final Score: Titans 38, Lions 14