Apparently, He Was a Good Man

So they fired him. Big damn deal. The fact that this was even apparently up for debate as the season drew to a close is evidence enough of how enormously and irreparably screwed up the Detroit Lions are as an organization.

Rod Marinelli was a terrible coach, just awful, and no matter how often people tried to sugar coat it by explaining over and over and over and over again that he was a good man who never quit on his players, blah blah blah, it doesn't obfuscate the fact that when it came to the singularly most important thing about being a professional football coach - winning the damn games - he was an utter and complete failure.

Of course, dumb columnists and stupid talking heads are obsessed with creating a narrative for every story, something concise and banal enough to be easily repeated and printed without any real thought going into it. It happens every time a story breaks about virtually any topic. Event happens, those who are paid to explain said event mine the story for the simplest, most linear explanation of what happened, they repeat this explanation, no matter how distorted, until they create a fucked up alternate reality where said simple, linear explanation is the inarguable truth, and everyone moves on without actually talking about what really happened. This happens all the time, with big events and with small events. Now, the firing of a football coach is a decidedly small event in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn't mean that I'm not annoyed and pissed off by how retarded the storyline that has been thrown out there happens to be.

Apparently, Rod Marinelli is a good, honest, hard working man who, given a decent situation with at least a modicum of talent can be a heckuva football coach. But, unfortunately for poor Rod, he was placed in an impossible situation in Detroit. for goodness' sake, even Vince Lombardi combined with Don Shula, Bill Walsh and Jesus would have lost with this team! Poor Rod, it's too bad he had to take the fall for what went on.

Oh, just fuck right on off with that weak ass bullshit. Good God. Has everyone gone retarded? Rod Marinelli might be the single biggest reason why this team went from bad to historically awful, why they were toiling in mediocrity one season and were ushering in the apocalypse the next.

Now I know that everyone wants to blame Matt Millen, and yeah, fuck that dude. He was a horrible, horrible general manager and with him at the helm the Lions were never going to go anywhere. And when everyone is done blaming Millen they want to blame the Fords for keeping Millen for so long and for not bringing in a dynamic new personnel guy like that caveman looking dude in Atlanta. That's cool, the Fords are horrible owners, and their history of letting shitty executives hang around is abominable. But the Fords and Matt Millen combined to produce a team that was going to go 5-11 or 6-10 every year. The Lions went 0-16, and I don't think people truly understand what a quantum leap that really is. 5-11 and 6-10 every year is a painfully bad team, a franchise who aspire to mere mediocrity, easily forgotten and dismissed. 0-16 is the WORST TEAM IN HISTORY, a team who everyone remembers, and will remember FOREVER. They are not just bad, they are the Hitler of NFL teams. That is how bad these turds are in comparison to everyone else. The past decade they have just been the incompetent petty banana republic dictator who everyone laughs about and then forgets once he is killed by some ambitious army colonel. This year they became something awful, something so odious that no one who follows football will ever forget. That is how godawful they are this year: THEY HAVE ME YAMMERING ON ABOUT DICTATORS, NAZIS AND HITLER FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

So, you'll forgive me if I don't forget that Rod Marinelli was the head coach for a team that went 7-9 last year, started 6-2 and had a legit shot at the playoffs for the majority of the season, only to go 0-16 the next season. Last season, the Lions had a prolific offense and a porous defense. The offense could keep them competitive, even if it wasn't the most efficient, and the defense, while bad, could still come up with the occasional big play, due largely to the team's one blue chip defender, Shaun Rogers. The Lions absolutely beat the shit out of Denver last year using this formula and managed to beat six other teams as well and probably should have won at least a couple of more games. They weren't good, but there was something there to build off of at least. But because they did better than they have at any other time in this woeful decade, Rod Marinelli earned himself some credibility and the right to reshape the team more in his image.

So out went the freewheeling passing attack of Mike Martz that was the one thing the Lions were good at. They could throw the ball and they could score. But, you see, according to Marinelli that wasn't the right way to win. No, you had to run the ball and control the clock. Never mind that going into the season the Lions' offensive line was as bad as it's always been and that the Lions lacked a single running back who wasn't a rookie or an underwear thief, they were going to play some hard nosed, smash mouth football damn it, because that's how you do things in Rod Marinelli's world.

Also out was big Shaun Rogers. Yeah, Shaun was lazy, and was kind of a degenerate but he was also the only player on the defense worth a damn. But he didn't carry that lunch pail that Rod Marinelli wanted and so he was out even though the Lions didn't have anybody to replace him, with the exception of a wildly overpaid player who had played about a half dozen good games in his career and a cast of retreads and career backups. But never mind that shit! No, the Lions needed to be a bunch of no nonsense hard workers. Talent? Pssh, that shit's for flash in the pan hotdoggers. You'll never win with that.

So, the one thing the Lions had going for them on offense and the one thing they had going for them on defense were both suddenly gone, leaving them with . . . well, leaving them with 0-16. And both decisions are ones that can be laid right at the feet of Rod Marinelli.

He is a good man, and really, who gives a shit? He does a job where he goes out and screams at a bunch of millionaires and poor, weekend warrior referees every weekend. His job includes making people run and telling people to hit some other people all so they can win a game. What part of that has anything to do with being a good man? You either win or you lose and that's all there is. Rod Marinelli believed in his system and his system was a failure. That's just the way it is. The blame is his and that's also the way it is. If you want to be given credit for being a good man go work with children or the homeless. Change somebody's life for the better. But last time I checked no one was patting Jimmy Johnson on the back for being a kind and profoundly decent man. No one is waxing poetic about Bill Belichick and the dignity with which he lives his life. Because it doesn't matter, not in the NFL. 0-16. That matters. And that's the only storyline anyone should care about here.