It seems cruel to keep making the Lions play the games at this point. Just give the other team the win and let these dipshits stay home and go to shitty costume parties and steal each others drawers or whatever the fuck it is that they do. But no, the Lions have too much of that so called professional pride, enough to show up every week anyway, but apparently not enough to actually pull their shit together and win at least one damn game.
This week the Lions have Tampa Bay, which should be interesting if only because roughly half the Lions roster, their head coach, their defensive coordinator and even their new general manager, Martin Mayhew, are all former Bucs in one way or another. Which if you think about it is just sad. It really paints a picture of a lot of what has gone wrong for the Lions this season - aside from the mistakes and disasters of He Who Shall Not be Named that is. Rod Marinelli is so in love with his old franchise, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, that he has focused all his efforts on emulating them as much as possible, down to bringing in all of their old castoffs and leftovers, in terms of both coaches and personnel. Real coaches, real winners, don't slavishly follow along in the wake of more successful people and teams, hoping to somehow emulate whatever success they may have had. No, they do it on their own. They figure out what works, and what doesn't, and they add their own wrinkles to it, and their own players, ones that they have developed, not plucked from the dumpster of the more successful team. They take those new players and they take their own ideas, and they take those wrinkles that they got from the old and they blend it all together until finally they have something new, something that's theirs, and not some pale copy of a smarter and better coach. And that's one of the key reasons why we are here today, at 0-10, soon to be 0-11. Instead of figuring out how to win and how to inject his own thoughts and ideas into his team, Rod Marinelli is content to just try to make the Lions look as much like the Bucs as possible, and all that has gotten him and all that will continue to get him, is a team that looks and plays like the Junior Varsity version of the Bucs. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if we found out that Marinelli just spends every night sitting at home, alone in only his diaper, watching on an endless loop the footage of the Bucs Super Bowl win, alternating between masturbating and crying until he drifts off to sleep.
Of course, on the other side, the Bucs have a Lions castoff of their own. Jeff Garcia sucked when he was the Lions, and at the time everyone thought that it was just the dénouement to what had been a fine career, the quiet final passage in a tale that was ready to come to a close. But no, it turns out that Garcia was still capable of being a productive NFL quarterback for a playoff caliber team, it was just that shit was so fucked up in Detroit that he, along with everybody else, looked like they were either 100 years old or in way over their heads. Sounds familiar, right? I am sure there will be many more Garcias to come in the upcoming years, guys who seemed like they were done or couldn't hack it in Detroit but who magically come alive elsewhere. But, for this weekend anyway, the only one who really matters is Garcia. I figure it is not only possible, but also extremely likely, that Garcia will have one of those days where he goes something like 35 of 40 for 350 yards and a few TD's. Mostly, it will be one of those dink and dunk fests that the Lions will flail about hopelessly trying to defend, and when the game is over everyone in Detroit will be wondering the same thing: where the fuck was this guy when he was with Detroit? But don't blame him. Blame the Lions, because it is clear that they have the opposite of the Midas Touch. I don't know, call it the Shit Touch.
Offensively, the Lions will likely be a little bit better this week if only because Daunte Culpepper has one more week in the system under his belt. That is not to say that the offense will be good, but there will again be stretches of competence. However, there will also probably be at least a few horrible, game altering mistakes, which coupled with Garcia's steady hand will likely be enough to give the Bucs the win. I know that they have an ancient, over the hill Warrick Dunn running the ball, but as the Lions have so often proved this season, especially the past couple of weeks, just about anyone who has at any time in their career been a legitimate NFL running back can and will run the ball all over their shitty defense. On the other hand, Kevin Smith looked pretty good at running back for the Lions last week against a pretty good defense, but I doubt that it will be enough to counter what the Bucs will be able to throw at the Lions pitiful defense.
The death march continues, I just hope Rod Marinelli has that Super Bowl game footage cued up for those lonely nights once he is unemployed and the Lions are on to their fiftieth fresh start or so of this decade. Perhaps he will be taken back into the arms of his beloved Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They can have him.
Predicted Final Score: Tampa Bay 31, Lions 21
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