Lions Season Review, Part 7: The Journey Through Hell Continues

For a long time now the secondary has been the retarded Cyclops with lobster claws for hands living in the basement of the Detroit Lions while the other members of the family sit at dinner and pretend not to hear that poor bastard clawing away and pawing at himself from down below. And considering the rejects making up the rest of the Lions team, and especially the defense in recent years, that's really saying something.

For as bad as the Lions have been in this decade - and holy shit have they been beyond bad, the greatest source of constant shame for Lions fans has been the disaster area in the defensive backfield which has led, time and time again, to a weekly Armageddon as teams have passed and passed and passed at will until the Lions corners and safeties could do nothing but lie in a pool of their own feces and weep, cursing the gods who have made them such imbecilic wastes. Really, the last time there was any hope for a Lions cornerback was before Bryant Westbrook was injured and that feels like it was a hundred years ago. And the Bennie Blades era is even further far gone than that. Basically, it's been a long, miserable time, and every season it feels like we've hit the basement. And yet, every year, we find a way to tunnel further and further, until we look up and we can't even remember where the damn basement was in the first place.

And still, none of that compares to how awful these shitbirds were in the Year that God Forgot. It is a testament to how awful this defense was as a whole that three of the top five tacklers on this putrid team were defensive backs(Daniel Bullocks, Kalvin Pearson and Leigh Bodden). But don't let that fool you. It's not like those turds were any sort of noble last line of defense, single handedly cleaning up the mistakes of the rest of this moribund unit of despair. No, they were the last of the sad clowns to pile out of the car for Lions opponents to use and abuse, and used and abused they were.

We'll start with the opening game of the season, where they made Matt Ryan, in HIS VERY FIRST GAME, look like Joe Montana. And then it was Aaron Rodgers, who if he played the Lions every week would have had his own harem of Wisconsin farm girls. And let's not forget the neck bearded one, Kyle Orton, whose booze soaked wreck of a body annihilated the Lions defense so ruthlessly that I was sure he would be the named the new national spokesman for King Cobra. The Lions couldn't stop anyone all season long, and it wasn't like this was one of those defensive backfields that gives up a ton of big plays but makes a lot too. No, these assholes managed one interception all season. ONE GODDAMN INTERCEPTION. Cue Bob Uecker taking a pull off of a bottle of Jack Daniels.

I mean . . . JESUS, I have seen some bad pass defenses in my years as a Lions fan, but this . . . this abomination was something else entirely. A look at the personnel only serves to slam home the obvious and irresistible conclusion that when the trials for crimes against humanity are held, these are the guys who will end up standing on the scaffold, pelted by fruit by angry villagers while a rope with a noose waits around their necks. I am perilously close to yammering on about NAZIS again and so I will just get on with this thing.

We'll start with the corners, where prior to the season there was hope for immediate improvement over the previous season's sorry effort. Starting with Brian Kelly, the veteran corner who excelled in Tampa Bay's famed Cover 2. Many analysts have gone so far to say throughout Kelly's fine career that he was born to play in that defense, and so even though he was a little long in the tooth, and although he seemed ominously like just another one of Rod Marinelli's ex-Buc castoffs, there was reason for optimism. He promised to provide, if nothing else, a sterling sense of leadership and a veteran presence~ in the lineup which would belie mere stats. Yeah, not so much. From the very beginning of the season, it was clear that Kelly was old, overmatched and done done done. Seriously, at times it looked like he would struggle in a rec league with a bunch of fat cops and construction workers who would stop after every series to chug a beer. His decline was so stunning, so immediate, and so immense that when the season was over he was no longer on the team, set adrift even though there was no one to replace him. That's how bad he was.

The other newcomer who gave Lions fans a faint sense of hope that this year would be better was Leigh Bodden, who the Lions managed to get from the Browns in the ill fated Shaun Rogers deal. There was some hope that Bodden would continue to evolve from a playmaker with a tendency to get burned into someone who could leave behind the mistakes and still make plays. The only problem with that was that Bodden forgot about the play making part and seemed content to still make mistakes. Oops. Bodden was the man who had the lone interception in the secondary, which makes sense because he was far and away the most talented. Perhaps Bodden's best game came in the first game against Minnesota. Unfortunately - and this just about sums up his season - Bodden is best remembered for being called for a phantom pass interference call which directly led to the Lions losing that game. That was also the game where Dan Orlovsky took his infamous long walk on the beach known as the back of the end zone. Not that I am bitter or anything. In short, Bodden was brought in to make plays for the Lions, but once he was there, he found himself playing in a system completely unsuited to his talents - not unlike Dre Bly - and the fact that he was brought in with everyone knowing this is just one more damning piece of evidence against the mayors of turd town who ran this organization into the dirt. Of course, being so ill fitted, Bodden didn't do a damn thing and when the season was over he was cut loose so the Lions wouldn't have to pay him. Oh well.

Among the other players who found themselves on the receiving end of hellacious beatings were Travis Fisher, who can handle the run well for a corner but whose playmaking skills are woefully lacking. When he has to start and handle an outside receiver he is toast, too slow to do anything but stare at the back of the receiver's jersey as he dances away from him. He is probably an okay depth player, but asking any more of him than that is a fool's gamble. Of course, since the Lions coaches and management were made up exclusively of fools, they gambled and they lost.

The depth was so bad at corner that by the end of the season the Lions found themselves using a combination of Ramzee Robinson and Kalvin Pearson at the Nickle Back position. And like the band of the same name, these dudes were atrocious. Perhaps that's not fair to them though, as really, they should never have been put in that position. Robinson was once Mr. Irrelevant in the NFL Draft - the last player to be selected - and he is little more than a fringe player, while Pearson is a safety, not a corner, and not even a very good one at that.

And since we are talking about the safeties, let's talk about the Lions group of young, talented, and yet beleaguered safeties. We'll start with Daniel Bullocks, who was on his way to a promising career before he blew out his knee in 2007. There were a lot of people who thought he wouldn't make it back, but Bullocks found himself as a starter once again for the Lions last year. And, really, he played okay. Of course, okay is relative here. I mean, it's kinda like saying that dirt tastes good when you're used to eating nothing but shit. Bullocks is okay, and he has a chance to be a lot better, especially as he gets further removed from his knee exploding. Of course, there is also the chance that he could regress, and let's not get too excited here. I mean, he was probably the best defensive back the Lions had last year but it wasn't like he made any big plays either.

Starting the season at Free Safety was Dwight Smith, another former Buccaneer who promised to stabilize a weak Lions pass defense. Again, not so much. Smith was hobbled by injuries and ended up being, like Kelly, a big disappointment. I know, shock of shocks. Still, I am saddened, as Smith has sort of a checkered past and for entertainment value I enjoyed having a guy around who could be at any moment arrested for waving a gun around in traffic. Oh well part two.

With Smith out the Lions were forced to turn to Pearson, yet another ex-Buc, and while I am sure he provided Marinelli with countless wet dreams, the truth is that Pearson is yet another fringe player who was forced into a larger role than he should have ever had to take on. He's a decent tackler, and in the last game of the season against the Packers he actually played pretty well, but Pearson's biggest talent appeared to be allegedly choking out his pregnant girlfriend, and although charges were dropped, it's kind of hard to watch the dude play and not think about that.

All in all, the lack of talent in the secondary, along with some key injuries (to Dwight Smith, Keith Smith and Stanley Robinson, a pair of young corners, and Gerald Alexander, who had started the year before as a rookie when Bullocks was hurt and played pretty well), not to mention utterly fatal and inane personnel decisions, doomed the Lions to the sort of apocalyptic wasteland that they found themselves in a year ago. Also, if you go back through these reviews, I think I used the word apocalyptic in every single one of them, which . . . well, ladies and gentlemen, your 2008 Detroit Lions.

What We Learned: That these guys couldn't cover a JV team. We learned that the corners were either washed up or completely unsuited to the Cover 2. We learned that the safeties were a little more solid but still incapable of making plays, and we learned that when you build your team on a foundation of castoffs from your previous employer, you are only setting yourself up for failure of epic proportions. Kelly, Smith and Pearson were all former Tampa Bay players and all three were culpable in the mess that went down. If there is any one place on the field where Marinelli's lazy nepotism was the most strikingly obvious, it was here.

What We Can Expect: Unlike the previous installments of this tale of horror and woe, this one comes after the Lions signed the bulk of their key free agents. And what we can expect is something completely different than what was here this past season. For starters, the team will be almost definitely ditching the ill fated Cover 2, beloved by Rod the Terrible, in favor of a more attacking style. This means there is a need for more conventional cornerbacks capable of playing both man and zone. Leigh Bodden would have likely been a good fit but he was too expensive and also carried with him the stink of utter failure, and so the Lions went out and aggressively remade their starting cornerbacks. They started out by swindling Jerry Jones, trading the bones of the soon to be released Jon Kitna for Anthony Henry, a sure starter who although not an All Pro by any means is worlds better than the retarded chimps the Lions would have been forced to go with otherwise. They then signed Phillip Buchanon, coming off a season when he started all sixteen games for Tampa Bay(I know, but this isn't a Marinelli situation because Buchanon isn't a Tampa Bay guy. I mean, not really. Shut up, you know what I'm trying to say here. If you don't, leave me alone, I don't care.) I'm wary about Buchanon. For starters, I'm pretty sure that Harpo doesn't like him, and I trust my boy Harpo on all matters. He has also had an up and down career and while last year he was apparently pretty solid, he was a disaster with Houston after being a disappointment with the Raiders. He's probably instantly the most talented defensive back the Lions have, but let's face it, there's a good chance this one blows up in our face. This does take the pressure off the Lions to find a cornerback with one of their first three picks, but I would still like to see them grab a corner somewhere in the draft, and in an ideal world they would find yet another player to really solidify things, but we don't live in that world, and the Lions REALLY don't live in that world, and so I suppose this will have to do - for now.

At safety, Bullocks will probably start at one safety position. He's a good enough hitter to start at strong safety, but he's athletic enough, even after the knee injury, to start at free safety. Gerald Alexander is sort of an enigma. He had a decent rookie year filling in for Bullocks but he missed most of last year with an injury and, really, if we are being honest here, sucked enormous amounts of dick before that. He'll probably start opposite Bullocks and let's just pray that he builds off his rookie year and not this past season.

All in all, I think(or at least I hope - God do I ever hope)that this is an area of the team that will be much improved over this past year's edition. Of course, a retarded troop of howler monkeys would be an improvement, and so I'm not getting my hopes up too high for any real success or anything like that, but a return to the days when these dudes were occasionally embarrassed instead of constantly humiliated would be okay - for now, anyway.

What I Said Before the Season: Grade: F, because fuck this shit, that's why.

Final Grade: F. Clearly, I had already had enough of this shit by the time I got to these turds in the preseason. I see no reason to go back on that now. Once again F for fuck this shit, that's why.