Lions Season Review, Part 8: The End

Well, here we are, at the end of this horror show of a season review, and so far the most common phrases used have been the aforementioned horror show, apocalyptic, 0-16, and of course, Nazis. And perhaps more importantly, we are at the end of this whole debacle of a season, and with this, I will attempt to close the door on this horrific shit and will try my hardest not to speak of it again. Oh sure, it will come up here and there, as a reference point or as the basis to some disturbing joke, but this should do it in terms of talking about it as the main topic. I'm not sure how to feel about that. I mean, is it weird that I feel a little bad, a little wistful? I mean, this past season was such a bizarre and memorable season and it was my first blogging about all this bullshit, so, I mean, it's natural to want to . . . you know what, never mind, ignore all this depraved gibberish. I'm clearly addled and I should be celebrating the fact that I won't have the same old dogs to kick around anymore. Not that I kick dogs or anything.

But if I did, the biggest and dumbest dog that I kicked around all season won't be around next year. No, thankfully he was put to sleep by his owners. Unfortunately, for Bears fans, he has been reincarnated, and will be roaming around their sidelines, working with the defensive line, slobbering all over Lovie Smith, and hey, good for him. After all, he's a good man, blah blah blah, and he never should have been promoted beyond that position in the first place. It's kinda like that story Flowers for Algernon, where that retarded chap is made into a genius, only to return to the depths of retardation by the end of the story. Only, Marinelli never went through the genius phase of the story and there were no scientists involved. Not that I know of anyway. I don't know, maybe Marinelli is Charlie and Millen is Algernon. I'm sorry, this is descending into weird, awkward gibberish and I have already wasted enough of your time with my bizarre rantings about Lennie Small this season, and now this weirdness about reincarnated dogs and superintelligent mice and janitors, and so I won't travel down this path any longer.

Anyway, this season was the final thunderous sign that Marinelli was in over his head, for people who doubted it in the first place. Unfortunately, 0-16 was such a strong sign that it was not only clearly visible to the blind, but also to the dead. Maybe it was a bit of overkill, but honestly, it was probably the only thing that could have gotten him fired. If the Lions went 2-14, I'm sure the Fords would have just shrugged their shoulders and said let's give him another year. But more on them later.

I have ranted enough about Marinelli on this blog that I don't think I need to go through his litany of mistakes one more time and so I will just sum up by saying that he's not cut out to be a successful head coach. He just isn't. And I know there are still a lot of people who would disagree with me, who would tell me about his ability to motivate his players, about how if he had a team with talent it would be a different story. But Marinelli is just one of those guys who is so set in some naive fantasy land way of doing things, some archaic yesteryear version of how the game should be played, that no matter what situation he steps into he'll always do the same thing, and always make the same fatal mistakes. He'll bring in people who he's comfortable with, players who are pliable, bendable to his will, regardless of talent, and he'll ship out anyone who doesn't fit the no nonsense, anonymous lunch pail types that flit about in that little fantasy life in his head, where he's Vince Lombardi and football is some grand metaphor for life instead of a game, played by millionaire manchildren for drunks in the stands. And when it's all over, he'll have a team full of nice guys, led by a nice coach who win exactly nothing.

And that's that on Marinelli. It was what it was, c'est la vie and all that nonsense. Perhaps from your rotten ashes, some good can come.

But we can't talk about Marinelli without talking about his famed nepotism and that brings us to his assistants, and because I don't want this to go on for a billion words I will just stick to the coordinators.

Let's start with the offensive coordinator, Jim Colletto, who prior to this debacle was probably best known for guiding the Purdue Boilermakers to a 21-42 record from 1991 to 1996. Not exactly inspiring, but hey, sometimes good coordinators can be shitty head coaches. What the subsequent years showed was that Colletto was, much like Marinelli, a guy who was most comfortable coaching a particular position group, in his case, the offensive line. He served as the offensive line coach for the Baltimore Ravens for six seasons before heading back to college and the same job with UCLA, where he spent a year before ending up in Detroit as, you guessed it, the offensive line coach. And when Marinelli forced out Mike Martz in favor of a power running, ball control offense, Colletto happened to be right there, sharing his vision for power football even though the Lions didn't have the players to execute said vision.

Okay, so the Lions offense was terrible. How much of that is Colletto's fault? It's hard to say. I mean, he only had a year, so it's not like we can point to some track record of egregious failure or anything, but what is clear is that in a game that requires you to be dynamic in order to keep from being pulled under and drowned in a pool of shit, Colletto was anything but. He was basically an offensive version of Marinelli(I will ignore the obvious joke about Marinelli and the Lions in general being offensive and will just move on, as should you. Deal?) He has a track record as a coach that speaks to this, having largely failed when given responsibility beyond the scope of his precious linemen, and to think that he could come in and spin gold out of straw was pure fantasy. The Lions offense could move the ball one way, and one way only, and that was through the air. It was imperfect, it was inconsistent, and it was the only thing that had worked for the Lions in this decade of pain and sorrow. The personnel basically demanded it, and yet, Colletto, with Marinelli's blessing, chose disaster instead.

But Colletto and his rampant mediocrity went largely ignored when it came to the townsfolk loading up on torches and pitchforks. Instead, the bulk of the fans' wrath fell on Joe Barry, the leader of a monstrously bad defense which led the way in the charge to 0-16, or I should say fell out of the way and let everyone else run by them on the way to 0-16. That's bad enough, but oh yeah, Barry is Marinelli's son in law, and it's hard to overlook that fact when it comes time to dissect exactly what went wrong. It would be one thing I suppose if Barry was some Belichickian wunderkind, and Marinelli happened to be his father in law. These things happen. I mean, take Lane Kiffin. He took over the Tennessee head coaching job and he immediately named his father, Monte Kiffin as DC. The elder Kiffin is a renowned DC though, so no one was exactly crying nepotism over that. Meanwhile, Barry was a positional coach with the Buccaneers who followed Dad in Law over to the Lions, where he was given a promotion. There's a bit of a difference there. Also, I apologize to Harpo for bringing up Lane Kiffin.

Of course, all this was famously addressed when, as the ship was broken apart and each piece was sinking miserably while all those involved drowned one by one, a Detroit newspaper writer asked Marinelli at a press conference if he wished his daughter had married a better defensive coordinator. Of course, this was a shitty thing to do, classless, tasteless, and all that jazz. But I am not one to throw stones when it comes to that sort of thing, and so I will just say that, well, although it probably shouldn't have been said, it wasn't like it was exactly wrong. Barry was a lousy defensive coordinator, and the only reason he had this particular job was pretty clearly because of his ties to Marinelli. Perhaps it's not fair to say that these were all personal ties. I mean, the two did spend a number of seasons together on the staff in Tampa Bay and thus, Barry was likely on the same page as Marinelli when it came to scheme and all that jazz. But, the appearance of gross nepotism was nonetheless always there, and when Mt. Doom erupted all over the Lions season, it became all too easy a target.

Look, this is it in a nutshell: the three coaches with the most responsibility for the Detroit Lions were guys who had never been anything more than positional coaches in the NFL. You had a linebackers coach, a defensive line coach and an offensive line coach. These guys were collectively in way over their heads and when the bottom finally dropped out, none of them were capable of turning it around, or even stabilizing the team so it could mire in mediocrity instead of the depths of hell to which it plunged. And when the ruins were finally sifted through and all the useless parts were discarded, they all ended up largely where they were before - Marinelli is the defensive line coach for the Bears, Barry is back with the Bucs as linebackers coach, and Colletto is at home with his wife or dead in a ditch or who knows where. You know, they're sort of like that janitor, Charlie, in that story Flowers for . . . oh never mind.

Perhaps I have gone a little softer on these guys than I thought I would. I assumed that writing about them would unleash a torrent of hatred yet unseen here, but I think I just have a sort of mild disdain for them now. After all, they are beaten, exposed, and none of them will ever hold a job of more consequence than position coach again. I could say fuck them, eat shit and all that good stuff, but really what's the point? They are dead and hopefully their graves will be paved over so they never arise again as hideous zombie beasts to plague us poor fans who have suffered so much and received so little back over the years. Let their demise serve as the foundation on which to build something new, something better. No one will ever forget what happened while they were here. I mean, how can we? But perhaps that is for the best, like the Germans remembering Hitler, determined not to let something like that happen again. Oh come on, you had to know I couldn't get through this without rambling about Hitler and Nazis.

But there are people in the organization who are still there, who are always there, who after each embarrassing coach is run out of town still sit in their offices, seemingly oblivious or ambivalent to the fact that their football team is not just bad but a national joke, made fun of by everyone with a pulse. And those mainstays are the Fords.

I've held off on the whole woe is the city of Detroit and woe is the football team for a long time now, largely because I hate that kind of pap. It's too easy, too Mitch Albomish, to tell stories about Jimmy, the out of work auto worker who just wants to see his poor football team win a game. It's almost an insult to the people of Detroit, and the people of Michigan. It reduces them to ridiculous stereotypes, Detroit Black Face. It's lapped up and spit out again and again because it's easily digestible, the Timmy fell down the well kind of story on a city and statewide level.

But when talking about the Fords, there is a weird sort of synchronicity here that is impossible to ignore. It's difficult to look at what is going on with their failing company, the behemoth that has meant more to the state of Michigan than any other company, and then look at their football team, and not see it. Ford is the name in the state of Michigan. It's not just Detroit. It's all of Michigan. The entire state is touched in some way by the auto industry. Everyone knows someone whose job is in some way tied to the performance of the Big Three in Detroit. And of those Big Three, Ford is the one that means the most. And it means the most because in some ways it's the most human. The name, Ford, is enough. It evokes everything which made Detroit great, which made it strong. The capitalist wonderland that was Detroit once upon a time existed because one man, Henry Ford, made it exist. Michigan grew up around that. The state's identity is so inextricably tied to it that when it fails the whole state feels it.

It feels ridiculous to talk about a football team in this context, and it is. I hate doing it, but it's too hard to talk about the Fords without talking about it. They have a name which is magic in the state of Michigan - or was. Now it is just a punch line, made ridiculous by the degeneration of a company which was once the shining beacon of American capitalism. And every time the Lions get even worse than they were, which always feels impossible and yet always happens, those names are thrown in the faces of Lions fans once more and we have to face the fact that Ford means something completely different than it used to mean. It's synonymous with failure now, and that's just incredibly sad.

Lions fans are desperate. Every year, people rant and rave that the Fords should be forced to sell the Lions. Hell, this year, some people even wanted the annual Thanksgiving game taken away as punishment for the Fords by the league for operating such a piss poor franchise. When it has gotten so bad that fans are willing to cut off the only thing they have left that means anything to their franchise, you know that it's probably time to step away from the team. But the Fords are nothing if not stubborn. The absurdities of real life have proven that, and if they are incapable or unwilling to salvage what's left of their legacy, the company and the name which are legendary in Detroit and in Michigan, why would they bend over backwards to do the right thing when it came to a football team?

I hate to be so fatalistic, but the Fords aren't going to suddenly wake up one day and decide that the Lions are the one thing in their life that they need to make right. No, the Lions are a petty diversion, and the only way we are going to be competitive is through sheer, dumb luck. Maybe that will happen, maybe it already is happening with the new regime, who I really, really like so far. Maybe. But no one should delude themselves into thinking that the Fords will do anything but hold on to this football team like some dingy trading card that they've had for decades, sitting in the attic, collecting dust, because it's just something that they're used to having, a sentimental reminder of a past that was so much more secure, so much more promising.

Look, the Fords are what they are. And they're not going anywhere. The only hope for Lions fans is that the team succeeds despite them. This is not that uncommon around the league. Think of Al Davis, think of Jerry Jones, Daniel Snyder. There are a myriad of lousy owners in the league, but at least many of them have had success in the past. Davis used to be great before he became old, insane and a vampire. Jones managed to get some of that dumb luck when he hired Jimmy Johnson when he bought the team. And Snyder, well, Snyder will give anyone money who claims to be a football player. The Fords have been lousy owners for almost fifty years. FIFTY YEARS. And there has been one playoff victory in that time. It seems irrational and, really, outright insane to hope that after all this time they will get lucky and the guys they put in charge of the team will actually know what they're doing. And yet, here I am, hoping that they got it right this time, that whatever anti-Midas touch thing they've got going on will somehow not matter. It is a fool's hope, it is ridiculous, and it's the only thing that Lions fans have left. Blind, bizarre, irrational hope. The Ford name may be broken, battered and shit upon by the harsh realities of, well, reality, and the sad truth is that it will likely never come back, but people want to believe that it means something, especially in Michigan. The truth is that it will probably exist mostly as an elegiac reminder of a better time. It would just be nice if, in some minute way, the football team could make people hear the name Ford without their face scrunching up like in one of those Bitter Beer Face commercials.

And so much for all that gibberish. I am kind of ashamed for devolving into such maudlin bullshit, but being a Lions fan will do that to you I guess. 0-16. It certainly was a thing, and in its own way it has a sort of epic quality to it, but I am verging close once again to the absurd and the ridiculous and so all I will say is that it is over and fuck it, they start next season at 0-0.