Matthew Stafford, Welcome to the Thunderdome

So, Matthew Stafford. Obviously, it's been a long time since the Lions had a real, live quarterback who didn't have to shield his face with his jacket like some degenerate criminal whenever he left either Ford Field or the Silverdome while people booed and threw trash at him. So, naturally, it's kind of an appealing thought, this strange notion that the Lions might actually have someone behind center who doesn't make Lions fans want to curl up in a ball or throw their remote at the television six or seven times a game or make them recoil in a combination of terror, humiliation and disgust whenever a fan of another team starts talking about the Lions and the parade of retarded shitbirds who have been trotted out there to allegedly play quarterback year after year.

So it should be refreshing, having a bona fide franchise quarterback, someone who can finally tell ol' Bobby Layne to shut the fuck up in his booze soaked grave. The only problem is that we've been down this road before. The names Chuck Long, Andre Ware and Joey Harrington are instantly familiar to any Lions fans and they send a wave of nausea running through the body and a tingly feeling down the spine that may or may not be the body's way of trying to shut itself down so it doesn't have to deal with the horror of it all. All three were top ten picks, all three were franchise saviors and all three ended up being bodies crucified on the side of the long, horrible road that the Detroit Lions have traveled down these many years. I mean, Joey Harrington had by far the best career out of the three of them. Think about THAT.

I wouldn't blame you if you've just said fuck this, torn out your hair and begun speaking in tongues and wandering aimlessly throughout your neighborhood, knuckles dragging, screaming at the children and the elderly like some deranged crackhead werewolf, but as much as I bitch and as much as I moan, I won't judge Stafford by what has come before. I only offer those three names, those three horrible names, as a reason why many Lions fans have an automatic gag reflex whenever Stafford's name is brought up. It's understandable, it really is. We've been beaten and abused like some poor mongrel dog so many times during the lifespan of our Lions fandom that any time someone puts any sort of a hand out towards us, we are completely incapable of judging whether or not that hand is going to pet us or beat us again and so we just snarl like lunatic beasts.

But, we can't wallow in our own sad sack misery forever. It starts to become a parody of itself after a while. It loses all meaning and pretty soon we are just dumb assholes screaming gibberish at other dumb assholes screaming back at us, echoing our raving until it is just a cacophony of stupid fear and dumb rage. Instead, we should take this time to step back and try to rationally assess the situation. After all, we have howled like beasts for years now, and it is possible(some would say incredibly likely)that we will resume that howling within a couple of seasons, and if that time comes, then fine. But for now, it's a new day, with new men in charge, new players to talk about, and new hopes for a future that I really, really want to be brighter than a past whose only light has come in the form of the flashes that accompany the nuclear detonations which have scarred the landscape of Detroit Lions football.

And that brings us back to Matthew Stafford. The future. The hope. The new franchise. Looking at the guy rationally, there are both reasons to be concerned and reasons to be excited. Let's start with the concerns. One of the telltale markers of a potential bomb is a quarterback's completion percentage at the college level. If it's below sixty percent, it usually spells trouble. I mean, if a guy can't hit that number in college, why would he be able to do it in the NFL? Many players picked high in the draft only to flame out have fallen below that mark, including Joey Harrington. How did our boy do? Well, for his career, Stafford had a completion percentage of 57.1 %. Panic time? Well, I don't know. There are a couple of factors which I think skew the numbers. The first is that Stafford started right away as a true freshman, and as a true freshman he played like, well, like a true freshman. He wasn't very good, completing only 52.7% of his passes. His next year was a bit better, as he completed 55.7% of his passes. But keep in mind he was still only a true sophomore. His junior year, his final season with Georgia, Stafford raised his game fairly significantly, completing 61.4% of his passes, playing behind a line which often failed to give him much time. This is a promising trajectory, and if Stafford played his senior year, chances are that his completion percentage would have gotten even better and by the time it was all said and done, he might have snuck above that 60% marker for his career. Is that a fair assumption to make? I think so. Stafford got better and better during his time at Georgia, and the numbers are perhaps unfairly skewed by his starting before he was probably ready. Georgia threw him in there as a freshman for better or worse - mostly worse - and his stats paid the price. I am tentatively not that concerned with this. Don't get me wrong, it is a concern, not just as glaring a one as it might seem upon first glance.

So, those are the numbers, or at least some of them anyway. But numbers don't always tell the whole story. Now, normally, I hate when people say that stuff, as it starts to verge into the whole David Eckstein Scrappy Do True Grit~ kind of nonsense that drives everyone nuts, but when it comes to quarterback, it can't be completely ignored. After all, this is a position in which leadership is a much treasured quality, and if your quarterback is easily rattled, chances are he falls apart in the fourth quarter like a junkie unable to find a fix, throwing up on himself, sweating profusely, shaking like he has Parkinsons and all sorts of other tasteless things.

So how does Stafford measure up on the all important leadership scale? Well, it's tough to say. These things are almost always completely subjective. One man's leader is another man's hobo and all that bullshit, so I'll just give you my opinion. Stafford never won that one big game in college, that career defining win that makes you think okay that guy can get it done. And, he was fairly easily rattled whenever the pressure got to be too much for him. These are not good things. But, then again, the exact same criticisms were leveled against Peyton Manning when he came out of Tennessee, and, well, that's kind of worked out okay for the Colts. Again, this is a concern, but it's been reported that Jim Schwartz, the Lions new head coach, absolutely loved Stafford's makeup and personality and I suppose if his coach thinks he's the man for the job, well, I can give him the chance too.

Physically, there is no doubt that Matthew Stafford is an NFL quarterback. He has an absolute rocket arm - right away, his arm is among the strongest in the league. He can fit balls into tight spaces(I am trying really hard not to turn this into something dirty by the way), and the idea of him throwing deep to Calvin Johnson makes me giddy. His arm strength can get him into trouble, as he tends to think that he can fit any ball into any place at any time, no matter how suffocating the defense(Still trying . . .). But these are good problems to have, all things considered, and after the noodle armed escapades of Dan Orlovsky last year, a guy who can actually get St. Calvin the ball deep on a regular basis is welcome indeed.

The upshot of all this? Well, I think Stafford has a chance to be very, very good. There's also a chance that he could end up flaming out in spectacular fashion. I know, I know, not exactly the toughest stand there on my part. If I had to guess I'd say that Stafford ends up making it. After all, my boy Adrian personally assured me that it was a good choice and I trust Adrian on all matters. But aside from that stamp of approval, everything that has come out of Detroit in the week or so prior to the draft was exceedingly positive when it came to Stafford. Everybody in the organization seems to be in love with him and that unanimity seems to point to the guy having a bright future with everyone in the organization doing everything they can to help the guy succeed. That may not sound like a lot, but it's been a long time since that was the case in Detroit. The Joey Harrington saga is a perfect example of that. The coaches didn't want him, Millen and the Fords did, and no one was ever on the same page. It will be nice to see the coaches actually believe that the guy they're putting out on the field is the same guy they think gives them the best shot to win. I know, it sounds ludicrously simple, and yet, it is something that has managed to elude the Detroit Lions for years now.

What they could have done differently: Well, a lot of people wanted the Lions to take Aaron Curry, the linebacker out of Wake Forrest. I was among them. Curry is someone who will be a starter for years in the NFL, probably on the outside. The Lions would have had to move him to the inside. Would it have worked? Probably. I think Curry is a good enough athlete, and smart enough, that it could have worked out.

The Lions also could have gone for a left tackle like Jason Smith out of Baylor. Obviously, the Lions line has, uh, been not so good over the years, and someone they could plug in there for the next decade and not worry about would have been nice. Then again, you could say that about every position on the field when it comes to the Lions.

What we will see this season: Daunte Culpepper. At least to start out. Culpepper sucks, and he will likely continue to suck as the year progresses. I would be okay with them throwing Stafford into the fire. Look, the Lions are going to be bad again this season. They might as well give Stafford time to learn while there's no real immediate pressure to win. By the time year two gets here, it will be better to have had him struggle through his first season and be ready to go then to have had him standing on the sideline with a clipboard ready to struggle in season two. Of course, there is the argument that getting beat up as a rookie will stunt his development. I don't buy that. If a quarterback can't handle getting tossed around as a rookie, if he gets rattled and falls apart, then chances are good that he's not the guy. Eventually, he would get rattled and fall apart anyway. If it's going to happen, you might as well know earlier rather than later.

Overall Grade for this Pick: B+. This may have been the one spot in the draft where the Lions bowed to conventional wisdom and took the quarterback just because you're supposed to instead of the best player available. That said, they do really seem to like Stafford and it became increasingly likely in the days leading up to the draft that the Lions actually felt he was the number one player on the board. If Stafford is everything they think he can be, then this grade rises to a no-brainer A. But, the specter of grim failure and death is still there, and there are the bodies of the dead and dying still littering the roadside, and as much as I want to throw these images out altogether, it's a little tough to do so. I am just a man after all, and I can only take so much. I have plenty of hope in my heart and my head is starting to come around too, but while I may be a master of talking myself into believing in all of this, the past is never far behind, and the memory of the pain and of the sadness of utter defeat is always there, ready to smile a cruel, evil smile and drag me away again if I dare to turn around and look at it. We have to keep moving, keep running from that horrible past, and hopefully, Matthew Stafford can be the guy who steps in between us and that cruel son of a bitch and allows us to get some distance. I hope. At least for now, and given what has gone on, and especially what happened last season, that really is something.

Hovering Between Hope and Despair, Reviewing the Draft, Part 1

So far, the Lions draft has generally inspired one of two reactions, either the OH GOD NO, MORE OF THE SAME, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING reaction or the I'M HAPPY, THEY GOT THE BEST PLAYER IN THE DRAFT AT THREE DIFFERENT POSITIONS AND DRAFTED THE MOST TALENTED GUY INSTEAD OF REACHING BASED ON NEED reaction. That's a lot of caps. I'm sorry.

So, where do I stand on all this? Actually, somewhere in between. I know that's disappointing, as I'm sure everyone reading this expected me to howl at the moon and start speaking in tongues but please, I am a reasonable man.

I'm going to do a separate post wherein I break down each pick, see how it helps, how it maybe could have been better and all that jazz. It will be fun, and there will be lots of inappropriate jokes and the occasional Nazi reference.

So this is basically just a broad overview of what went on. The Lions did seem to cling to the philosophy of taking talent over need, which makes sense because really, let's face it, this is a team whose needs can safely be categorized as, well, everything. I think a lot of people will agree with that strategy, but I think most people are puzzled because the Lions didn't pick the guys who they, the fans, thought were the most talented. I mean, the Lions could have had the following: 1.1 Matt Stafford(they were going to do this, no use bitching about it), 1.20 Michael Oher, 2.1 Rey Maualuga. That would have been a mock draft devotee's wet dream.

But here's the thing. Just because a player is beloved in mock draft circles doesn't mean that NFL scouts and execs feel the same way about him. Maualuga clearly fell for a reason. Perhaps it's a stupid reason, but it's a reason nonetheless. I don't know what it is, and frankly it's not that important. Just because Todd McShay might be attempting to fellate himself whenever a picture of the dude comes on his TV or a player inspires Mel Kiper to play the ol' slide trombone doesn't mean that the same player is the one who makes a real life football exec yearn for a Return to Narnia. (Yeah, I'm just making up euphemisms for masturbation now. Try it, it's fun. You can make anything sound dirty.)

And yet . . . and yet, there were some needs which were obvious and pressing. The Lions don't have a middle linebacker. I mean, they have NO ONE. And yet, they passed on Maualaga and James Laurinaitis.(Good thing about this: I no longer have to repeatedly attempt to spell those names correctly without looking to make sure I got them right.) And as much as that will make things easier for me, it left me scratching my head when the Lions drafted DeAndre Levy, an undersized outside linebacker, apparently with the intention of moving him to the middle. Okay, fine, they liked the guy. But isn't this what they kinda just did with Jordan Dizon? They needed a thumper in the middle and they really didn't get one. But, expecting to fill all your holes through the draft is kind of dumb, especially when you have as many as the Lions. And maybe they have a plan for the middle that we don't know about. Damn it, I want to believe.

I am just sort of rambling here, thinking out loud, that sort of thing, but fuck it, what's the point of a blog if you can't gibber on like an idiot every once in a while? Anyway, I'm not ready to rush Ford Field like so many others seem to be. Much of that is probably just instinct by this point. Every time the Lions do something it must be wrong. It is a self preservation thing. Anyone they took would have been second guessed and torn apart simply because the Lions decided to draft him. I mean, if the Lions picked him, what's wrong with him, har har har, that sort of thing. Still, that's kind of dumb, and it takes away that whole hope thing that I mentioned being so important while the season was barreling off its tracks. At some point, you do have to say "Okay, let's give it a shot," take a deep breath and actually believe that someone over there will get it right. Especially now. As Lions fans, we get so few opportunities to really be optimistic, to think that the guys in charge might even know what they're doing. In a couple of years, sure, I'll be the first one talking about Death Valley and Bataan Death Marches and comparing the coaches and front office dudes to Nazis and Grendel and all that nonsense. But, for now, damn it all, I want to believe that it will get better.

The thing is, if I am being 100% honest here, I'm not sure whether this draft helped or hurt that belief. My initial instinct was that it hurt it, but that's because I probably fell prey to the whole OH MY GOD MAUALAGA GRAB HIM GRAB HIM NO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU IDIOTS DOING thing. But, hell, they got a few starters out of the deal, a few guys who will help immensely on special teams and a potential diamond in the rough at defensive tackle. One thing those infernal draft reviews showed was that you never know how any of this bullshit is going to turn out. Not even after a year or two. Four, five seasons down the road we'll be able to say how this thing panned out. Until then, fuck, we're all just dumb assholes screaming into the night.

The upshot of all this gibberish? I don't know. I'm still not sure whether this draft is good or bad. We'll see. I know that sounds like a copout, especially coming from me, but fuck it, I don't care. How about some more masturbation euphemisms? Playing Ball, Attacking Castle Greyskull, Foraging for Berries, Wrestling the Bear . . . it's like madlibs, just pick some words and go nuts. I mean, Playing Madlibs, sure, why not? "Honey? Honey?" "Just a minute, I'm Playing Madlibs." "Again?"

Okay, I wanted to talk about the draft and ended up discussing euphemisms for jacking off. This all got very weird but at some point I think I just ended up amusing myself and I apologize. I would like to say that the player profiles will be different, more serious affairs, but, well, you should know better by now.

Reviewing the Drafts: Celebrating the End With Lizards and St. Calvin the Great

Okay, so I'm kinda cheating a little bit as I reach the end of this draft review debacle, but that's only because I don't really see the point in talking about players I've already talked about a bunch of times, none of whom are particularly interesting. Well, I guess the Drew Stanton entry might be kind of worth doing, but that's only because my irrational disdain for poor Drew would only result in me running on like a jackass for a few paragraphs about why I think he isn't the dude again and will never be the dude despite everyone else in the state of Michigan having wet dreams about him. And, well shit, I've started doing that already despite myself, haven't I? Fuck it, let's just move on.

Anyway, I'll just focus on the two first round picks from the 2006 and 2007 drafts because they are probably my two favorite players on the team and I kind of want to write about dudes I like for a change instead of ranting and raving about hollowed out collarbones and piano playing quarterbacks and Grendelish front office types.

With their first pick in the 2006 NFL Draft, the ninth overall, the Detroit Lions selected Ernie Sims, a linebacker out of Florida State. For the first time - and the only time - in the apocalyptic reign of Matt Millen, the Lions took a defensive player in the first round. Right away, there were questions about Sims from long suffering Lions fans, primarily focusing on his lack of size. I remember more than one person bitching to me that they picked a midget linebacker. Hell, I probably made a couple of jokes too, but that is just my nature. The truth is I was pretty happy with the pick. Sims was - and is - a highly athletic superball who if properly aimed can blow up an offense. He's capable of being an incredible difference maker. I mean, he was rated the number one high school prospect in the country in 2003, coming in just ahead of Reggie Bush. So, that's the type of upside we're talking about here.

Sims stepped into the starting lineup right away, and over the short course of his professional career he has been the one player worth anything in the Lions back seven, and after the departure of Shaun Rogers prior to the Season of Unnumbered Tears, Sims was pretty unquestionably the best defensive player on the team. Of course, that dude who played Corky on Life Goes On would have been the best player on that woeful defense, but we will let the slide in favor of aggrandizing my man Ernie Sims.

But aside from Sims' obviously prodigious talent, he also seems to be a pretty weird and awesome dude. Ernie likes lizards. Lots and lots and lots of lizards. He has basically turned his home into a zoo for the little beasts, along with a bunch of dogs and spiders and all sorts of animals. I call Ernie Sims the Lizard King and I don't care how fucking lame that is, that is his name to me. And the Lizard King is the only player on that whole damn defense who I have any sort of rooting interest in aside from the uniform they happen to be wearing. In fact, most of those turds inspire nothing but loathing and a vague sense of nausea so my devotion to the Lizard King is all the more acute. If I could save one player from this team in a Noah's Ark type situation it would be Ernie(well, aside from St. Calvin, but we are getting to him). Yeah, yeah, this is getting fucking bizarre. I know. But damn it, I have so very little as a Lions fan, and so the very few things that I have to be proud of, I'm really proud of.

Sure, Sims sucked last year, but so did everyone else, and I blame most of that bullshit on the coaches being idiots and on an otherworldly level of frustration that must have been pure torture for the Lizard King. He was undisciplined and tried to make every play himself and ended up making no plays, and well, that shit will happen when everything is going crazy and people are swan diving out of the upper deck and players are committing hari-kiri on the sideline. I mean, as a fan it was awful, I can only imagine the pain that the poor noble Lizard King had to endure while his kingdom went to shit around him.

But, as much as I love the Lizard King, nothing can compare to the devotion I have - along with every other Lions fan - for the Lions first round pick in the 2007 NFL Draft, the second overall, a certain Calvin Johnson, a wide receiver out of Georgia Tech.

What Calvin Johnson means to the Detroit Lions and to its fans right now cannot be overstated. In the middle of this hellstorm, amidst all the folly, all the laughter, all the tears, all the insufferable bozos and dipshits, Calvin Johnson is the one good thing, the one untainted thing, that we have as Lions fans. He is the best wide receiver prospect in the NFL and he has the potential to be the best player period. It is astounding that he is one of ours. We are like horrible crack mothers with seventeen children who all end up being thieves and whores only to have the youngest kid turn out to be a goddamn genius. We barely know what to do with ourselves, but we will stab any motherfucker who tries to hurt our Calvin.

Of course, there is the strong likelihood that we will fuck him up just like we fucked all the rest up and he will end up using his genius to swindle other crackheads out of their rocks, but damn it, we had this once before and it all ended in tears - literally.

There once was another, beautiful, perfect, better than anyone else. His name was Barry Sanders and he too was ours. And he was magical. For a while he did everything he could to make us look presentable, respectable even. With him around, we cleaned ourselves up and were able to mingle with normal people for a change. Of course, the playoffs would roll around, and we would inevitably lose our shit and be caught out back, giving handjobs for a hit off the pipe and everyone would remember what scum we really were. And that got to poor Barry after a while and he ended up walking away, broken and ashamed of it all. The poor man cried because he was ruined and destroyed by Lions Disease.

And now, miraculously, we have a chance to do it all over again. Calvin Johnson is that kind of a talent. And I am terrified that we are going to make the same mistakes over again and in a decade he will break down and walk away shaking his head while we lay slumped in the corner, beaten once again by the demons that come with being the Detroit Lions and their fans. It is terrible, it is awful, and damn it all, I really, really don't want it to happen with Calvin.

Calvin Johnson is something beautiful in a world that has been beaten ugly one too many times. It is cold, it is gray and no one has any real hope. Every Sunday is an exercise in dread and utter frustration. We didn't win one goddamn game last year, but there was always that one play in every game when Calvin Johnson would get the ball and do something absolutely magical and for a moment, all of it seemed like it would be okay. It didn't matter that we were the worst team in NFL history, it didn't matter that we were at the nadir of an era which was filled with the never ending screams of the dead and the dying, it didn't matter that we had just suffered through the most calamitous leadership since Nazi Germany. It didn't matter because we had Calvin Johnson and nobody else did.

Look, I recognize that I have gone completely insane in this post, yammering on about crackheads and handjobs for rocks and all that shit, but this time I'm not going to apologize for it. It may be maudlin nonsense and retarded gibberish but I don't care. I have to suffer through a lot as a Lions fan and if that means that I act like a damn fool when the subject of Calvin Johnson comes up, then so be it. He is amazing, he is special, and he might be the most talented player in the NFL. And he is ours.

Reviewing the Drafts: 2005, or PAIN, HORRIBLE PAIN

By the time the 2005 NFL Draft rolled around, I think most Lions fans were just in a sort of numbed daze, beaten retarded by the otherworldly incompetence of Matt Millen and the parade of jackasses, buffoons and simpletons who were called upon to make any sort of decision in the Lions organization. The early returns on the 2004 Draft were pretty good, and so there was at least some faint hope that one day, when Matthew had been taken down like Rasputin and a full exorcism had been performed at Ford Field, the Lions might have some small sliver of hope. What we really needed was a good draft to make us feel like, maybe, in a few years things wouldn't be so bad. Instead, we got jokes about wide receivers and a few years later, 0-16.

Let's just get this over with, shall we?

With their first pick in the 2005 NFL Draft, the tenth overall, the Detroit Lions selected Mike Williams, wide receiver out of USC. And the world burned.

Sigh. This shit is just depressing by now. OH LORD WHY? Being a Lions fan is hard enough, now I have to talk about Mike Williams? I knew this draft review was going to end up with me raving like a deranged freak. Oh well, here we go.

Mike Williams was an awesome player in college. I remember watching him in the Rose Bowl make a one handed catch for a touchdown. He was physically dominant at that level and at the time everyone had him pegged as a surefire can't miss blue chip A-1 superfreak godzilla monster cyborg prospect. And then Maurice Clarett decided fuck it, he wanted to challenge the NFL's draft rules. Shock of shocks, the little hoodlum won and Mike Williams decided that he was going to go along for the ride, declaring for the draft after his sophomore season. Of course, it wasn't long before that decision was reversed and Mike Williams found himself shit out of luck, ineligible for both the draft and for his junior season at USC. Oops. Williams ended up taking a year off and when the next year rolled around, the Lions nabbed him with the tenth pick even though he was obviously rusty and scouts were starting to worry that he was too big and too slow to play receiver in the NFL. There was a lot of talk about moving him to tight end, but, well, that never happened, and in the end, receiver was where Williams stayed. And that's where he died.

Right away, Williams was tagged with the ignominy of being publicly excoriated by his coaches and his organization for being out of shape. The basic sentiment in the Lions camp was that Williams was lazy and needed to be pushed. The whole thing started off as a debacle and continued on that way over the next couple of pathetic seasons, seasons in which Williams went from hanging on the edge of oblivion to a free fall of wasted potential and shattered dreams. Hang on, I am myself hanging on the edge of maudlin gibberish right about now, and I need a moment to pull myself back in.

Okay. Williams was a fucking disaster. There's absolutely no other way to spin it. I mean, you can't even try. And I haven't even gotten around to the whole three receivers in the first round in three years part of it! Good Lord. How did Matt Millen avoid being tarred and feathered and run down Woodward while Lions fans heaped buckets of shit on him?

Today, Williams is out of the league or dead in a ditch or who the hell knows. All that's important is that he sure as hell isn't with the Lions, and for a top ten pick isn't that just grand?

Right now, I feel like Bob Uecker's character in Major League, drinking Jack out of the bottle, cursing on the air, and saying to hell with it. But damn it all, if there was one thing you learn as a Lions fan, it's to just keep moving and to never let yourself drown in the sea of shit which is always rising while the arms of the dead, the already drowned, reach up at you from the horrible bottom and try to pull you underneath with them. THE HORROR. What kind of a twisted fool would continue on like this, cheering for a team that inspires such dark thoughts and twisted gibberish?

Good God, this is getting terrible. Let's just finish this nonsense.

With their second round pick, the 37th overall, the Lions selected Shaun Cody, a defensive tackle out of USC. Cody seemed like a safe pick, the kind of guy who had limited upside but would always be a solid performer on defense, a low ceiling, high floor type. But Cody never seemed to take that next step while he was with the Lions. Every season, it seemed like he was on the verge of stepping into the starting lineup and taking his place as the solid, dependable starter the team wouldn't have to worry about for years. And every season, Cody never took that step. In four seasons with the Lions, Cody started a grand total of twelve games, unable to step in and start regularly even in the Year of Unnumbered Tears, a year in which the middle of the Lions defensive line was regularly abused. I mean, Walter Payton could have run for 200 yards against that line. And I'm talking about Walter Payton RIGHT NOW. And that dude is dead. Cody's disappointing tenure with the Lions ended just a couple of months ago when he did what anyone in his position would do and got the fuck out of town - a little too late, but hey, no one wants to hang around and clean up the nuclear waste after the meltdown, you know?

Let's see who else the Lions could have drafted, shall we? Well, the next two picks after Williams were DeMarcus Ware and Shawne Merriman and, well, fuck this.

The 2005 NFL Draft will be remembered by Lions fans as an absolute horror show, perhaps the nadir of Millen's reign of terror - at least when it comes to the drafts, there is that whole 0-16 thing after all. Mike Williams will always be remembered as the third receiver drafted in a row by Millen, the punch line to a horrible and infuriating joke which will always hang over Detroit like a shit cloud. It's a terrible thing that we all want to leave behind, but the stark and horrible reality is that none of those three receivers, all top ten picks, are with the Lions. It is stunning and it is horrifying and it is the ultimate indictment of Millen when his ability to draft is brought into the discussion.

I still have two more years to go in this infernal review and thankfully Calvin Johnson looms on the horizon and next time around I get to talk about one of my favorite players, Ernie Sims, so hopefully the darkest of these horrible days is behind us. And hopefully, it'll finally be behind the Lions and all of their fans soon too. After all, I am an optimist.

Reviewing the Drafts: 2004, or Wha . . . What Happened?

The shit train rolls on, and we make our next stop in 2004. By this time, any pretense of respectability or even mediocrity had been murdered and buried, dug up again, had its corpse desecrated, set on fire and shot into space. In short, the Lions were a fucking disaster and no one had any hope that this team was going to be anything but ass ugly as long as Matt Millen was still skulking around Ford Field like some horrible Grendelish beast, eating our hopes and dreams in his cave or office or wherever the hell it was he slithered off to when the sun went down.

And, with all of that happiness in the air, Lions fans wondered if the 2004 NFL Draft could be any better than the last couple of abominations. There was still a faint hope that Charles Rogers' collarbone would behave itself and we didn't quite know yet that Charles' body was 70% bong water, and so we still harbored hope that he might be salvageable. But the Joey Harrington dream had died and with it went most of our hopes for anything worth a damn. At best, we hoped that the groundwork could be set for a Millen free future with a few key talented pieces in place for whoever cleaned up the mess of this colossal disaster. So, how did the 2004 NFL Draft contribute to that future? Well . . .

With their first pick in the 2004 NFL Draft, the 7th overall(Hey! They were getting better. Right? RIGHT???)the Detroit Lions selected Roy Williams, a wide receiver out of Texas. It was reported at the time that Williams was number one on the Lions overall draft board so, naturally, excitement for him was high. There was also some bewilderment about his being selected a year after the Lions took Rogers, supposedly their number one receiver of the future. It was also the beginning of the jokes about Millen and his strange affinity for receivers, but that horse has been beaten to death and so we will let it rest in peace.

Things started off well enough with Williams as his first couple of seasons he looked like a young receiver who would only get better, and in his third season, he broke through and ended up in the Pro Bowl. Excitement was high. Here was a legitimate blue chipper that Matt Millen and the Lions could hang their hat on. At least he got that one right. That was the general sentiment. But then Williams faded just a bit the next season and there were signs that he was contracting the dreaded Lions Disease, which had claimed so many others who were forced to slap on a Lions uniform week after week, year after year, including the beloved Barry Sanders. Williams began to sulk on the field, started dropping balls, and by the time the next season rolled around, I was a little worried about old Roy. Still, I thought he could bounce back. And then he went out and proceeded to look like he would rather be chilling on the beach or watching TV at home or lying dead in a ditch than playing for the Detroit Lions and I knew that it was over. Like AIDS, Lions Disease is horrible and incurable, and when he was traded to the Cowboys, it was sad and yet I knew that it was inevitable and so I waved goodbye to Roy Williams and what he could have been and said hello to the draft picks we got in return.

I won't say that Williams was a bust. He was a very good receiver for four seasons with the Lions, a Pro Bowler in one of them, and if he had been on any other team in the league, I think we would still be talking about him as a premier receiver. But, fate was unkind to Roy and he had his soul sucked dry by that hideous shitbeast called failure, and in his despair, he circled the drain until he found himself where he is today - starting over with the Dallas Cowboys, desperate to prove that last year was a glitch. Only time will tell what will happen with Williams, but his story is a sad, shameful one that should be told as the lead in to the entire pathetic Detroit Lions saga. He could have been great, should have been great, but being a Lion caught up to him, and that's really all there is to say about that.

With Williams in the fold, the Lions decided to address their moribund running game, trading up so that they had the 30th pick overall in the first round. And, with it, they selected Kevin Jones, a running back out of Virginia Tech. Going into the draft, there were really only two running backs who carried a first round grade, Jones and Steven Jackson. The Rams snapped Jackson up with the 24th pick leaving Jones to the Lions. At the time, I remember being both happy and slightly disappointed. I thought that Jones would be a quality back, but I liked Jackson better and, although, the Lions really didn't have a legit shot at Jackson, they were tantalizingly close. Still, with Jones set to take over, I figured the Lions had another piece in place for that inevitable day when the villagers would drag that beast Millen out of his lair and burn him alive.

But, things don't always turn out the way that we want - a massive understatement when it comes to the Lions and their fans - and while Jones showed plenty of initial promise, eclipsing the 1,000 yard mark as a rookie, he battled injuries over the next few seasons, the sort that tend to linger and linger and linger and . . . well, you get the point. His inability to stay healthy was bad enough that the Lions released him prior to last season, despite the fact that they had no one else and they were switching to a ball control running game. His release was puzzling to say the least, but then he went to the Bears and did exactly nothing. My thought is that he is damaged goods, unsalvageable, and that's too bad because as a rookie, Jones averaged 4.7 yards a pop and later on he even developed into a decent safety valve receiver out of the backfield. He could have been so much more than he was, but a combination of injuries and being stuck behind the wall of shit that has been the Lions offensive line for years left him bitter and searching for a job last year. At only 26 years old, he found himself seeing only the tiniest amount of time running the ball for the Bears and he's probably done.

With the Lions seemingly shoring up the future of their offense in the first round, they decided to finally fill the hole left in the middle of their defense when Chris Spielman left town. There were a couple of years when Stephen Boyd provided a presence there, but really, since Spielman left, the Lions lacked an identity on defense, and I guess they figured that a decade later it was time to finally fill it. And with their second round pick, the 37th overall, the Lions made an attempt to establish an identity in the middle by selecting Teddy Lehman out of Oklahoma.

Again, this was a pick that at the time I was pretty happy with. Lehman was an uber-productive linebacker at Oklahoma, and although he didn't have the mountain of upside of a high first round pick, he was good enough and productive enough in college that I figured he could step right in and be a starter for years to come. He just seemed like one of those players that was ready made to get in there and go from day one. He had mounds of big game experience and had been on the national stage for a while already. There was a little concern that the Lions were planning to move him to the middle from the weakside, but he seemed to me, what with all that experience, to be someone who could make the transition. All that was left was for him to stay healthy. Yeah, about that . . .

Lehman started all sixteen games as a rookie in the middle for the Lions. He wasn't spectacular, but he was solid enough - pretty much what I expected. In fact, he ended up logging the most plays of anybody on the team. And so, I figured that the Lions had their man for the foreseeable future. And then the injuries started. Over the next three seasons, Lehman failed to start a single game for the Lions. Every year, the hopes that he would be that guy to fill the hole left by Spielman grew dimmer and dimmer until finally, we all just accepted that he was a lost cause. When the Lions finally released him prior to last season, it was met with little more than a shrug. He was just another casualty on the brutal killing fields on which the Lions are eternally trapped.

In retrospect, the Lions 2004 draft was fucking bizarre. On the one hand, Williams, Jones and Lehman all managed at one time or another to be exactly what they were supposed to be. Williams was a Pro Bowler game breaker, and both Jones and Lehman were quality starters as rookies. Three picks, three starters. That seems like it's a quality draft. On the other hand, not one of those three finished the 2008 season with the Lions. Using that measuring stick, it's hard to call this draft anything other than a complete disaster. The only thing that really matters though is that on the Bataan Death March that is the Detroit Lions year in and year out, these three all fell to the side and were bayoneted and hastily buried in a ditch while everyone else wearily trudged on. There's never any time to stop and mourn the dead when there are so many of them, and that's always the case with the Lions. Every year, more and more future stars are injured or come down with Lions Disease or turn their collarbones into a bong and we are left just staring in slack jawed horror wondering when this horrible march will come to an end.

My thoughts are turning dark and if I keep writing I will either slip into twisted gibberish or maudlin sentimentality or, more likely, some fucked up mixture of the two. The Lions tend to do that to me, and so before I start raving about Nazi cannibals or escaped werewolves on PCP and vampire apes, I'll just leave the ruins of the 2004 Draft behind and look forward to 2005 and . . . Mike Williams? Awww . . . son of a . . .

Reviewing the Drafts: 2003, or Brother, Can You Spare a Collarbone?

Moving right along, following the turd of a pick that was Joey Harrington, Matt Millen was given a chance to get it right one more time in 2003. By this point, as Lions fans we had come to understand that Matthew was, uh, a bit of a disappointment and would likely never take us to the promised land. And after more than 40 years of wandering in the desert, that was naturally a little disconcerting. But, we are Lions fans after all, and disappointment and a general disdain for management are our most revered traditions and so we sucked it up and hoped that Millen could salvage something - anything - out of what had become a nightmarish situation. He would never get us to heaven, but perhaps he could keep us from hanging out in the lowest circle of hell.

Of course, if we had known then what we know now, Ford Field would probably lie in ruins and National Guard units would still be keeping a perimeter around Detroit while we ran amok for the next several years, degenerating into a foul band of rampaging hooligans, speaking some pig gibberish made up of grunts and wild gesticulating, resorting to cannibalism and furiously beating off in front of the camera crews that showed up to chronicle our descent into madness and savagery. It is a thin line between civilization and chaos and it doesn't take much to make men base creatures with violence on their minds and hatred in their hearts.

I'm sorry, this has gotten completely out of hand, and I'm not sure where this twisted gibberish came from but let's just forget that it happened and move on. I'll only say that being a Detroit Lions fan can be trying and leave it at that.

Anyway, we didn't know how awful things could truly get yet, and so when the 2003 NFL Draft rolled around there was the hope that, maybe, if things broke right this time around, the Lions might be able to still yet crawl out of the sewer they had been languishing in since Matthew the Terrible showed up. How did things turn out? Well, let's find out.

With the second pick in the 2003 NFL Draft(notice the picks getting better and better - or worse and worse, depending on your perspective), the Detroit Lions selected Charles Rogers, a wide receiver out of Michigan State. Excuse me a moment while I strangle a puppy and then scream obscenities for the next twenty minutes or so.

Okay, I'm back. What to say about Charles Rogers? I once made a joke that Charles Rogers' dream would be to have a hollowed out collarbone that he could use to hide his drugs in, and that pretty much sums up Charles' tenure with the Lions. Over three shameful seasons, Rogers was constantly either nursing his poor cursed collarbone or getting busted for being perpetually high. I mean, at the very least, couldn't this dude have found a way to get high and play football? It's also been reported that while in college, Rogers failed a drug test EVERY SINGLE YEAR. For fuck's sake Charles, you should have gotten together with Jeff Smoker while you were in college and tried to invent a better Whizzinator.

Poor Charles. Poor Lions fans. Here was a dude that was compared to Randy Moss coming out of college and ended up playing only 15 games in the NFL. Here was a dude with 4.28 speed in the 40 who ended up, less than four years later, running a 4.8 while working out for the Kansas City Chiefs. Here was a dude who was supposed to be the future for the Detroit Lions, the man who would be their playmaker for years to come, the first legitimate weapon of the Matt Millen/Joey Harrington era. And here is a dude who last month was living in jail and who a year before that was arrested for allegedly beating on a lady, eventually pleading no contest to a trespassing charge. I think it's safe to say that Charles Rogers was an EPIC bust.

If the Lions had known how that one would turn out - and really, the warning signs were kinda there - they probably would have just packed up and gone home for the rest of draft day and boarded up their homes for the eventual barrage of wild, angry fans. But before I get carried away with more talk about cannibalism and beating off, I'll just stop and say that, unfortunately, Matt Millen, in all his infinite wisdom, decided to keep drafting.

With their second pick, the 34th overall, the Detroit Lions selected Boss Bailey, a linebacker out of Georgia. At the time, I was pretty happy with this pick. Bailey was kind of a superfreak of an athlete, the brother of Champ Bailey, and a first round talent who had miraculously fallen to the Lions in the second round. There was only one problem. You see, Boss Bailey isn't a very good football player. For all of his speed, for all of his athleticism, and for all of the "Holy shit, Boss Bailey, that guy looks awesome" talk, Boss had a habit of not being able to stay healthy, and when he was on the field, he had a habit of being, well, pretty clueless.

I liked Boss Bailey, and like Kalimba Edwards before him - along with countless other players - every season I, along with every other Lions fan, waited for it to be the year that the light would finally come on and Boss would become that terror hell beast that every team wants and every fan loves. But, it never happened, and last season Boss Bailey found himself in Denver where another group of fans got to watch him alternate one or two "Awesome! Boss Bailey!" plays with a whole lot of injury and a whole lot of not being very good. Boss was a bust, but on the bright side, he was a hell of a blitzer in Madden.

Who else was available for the Lions to draft in 2003? I am beginning to hate this part of the review and I wish I had never started doing it. One pick after Charles Rogers, the Houston Texans took Andre Johnson. adflkAWKJFN;WENF;MWEMNFM[EFMWKOEFEF,F'QWRFQWRGKWRGVQWMRGQW'RG'WR'GV'QRGMG

Ahem, sorry, just had to throw a little temper tantrum there. Anquan Boldin was also picked in this draft, but no one had him down as a first rounder and, again, I am just making excuses here and so I will move on.

2003 was Millen's chance at a do over, his chance to make things mildly tolerable. He was never going to be able to make things right, but there was the hope, at least then, that if he got his shit together in time, maybe the Lions could at least get back to the head of the mediocrity table. But Charles Rogers happened, and the jokes about Lions and wide receivers had their seed. These drafts are how a thing like 0-16 happens, and I'm just looking at the first couple of rounds here. If I went into the later rounds and sorted through that wasteland, these reviews would not only be absurdly long, they would involve you witnessing the degeneration of my mind. Forget about writing weird gibberish about cannibalism and the like - I would probably be out there doing it if I was forced to go deeper than I already have. But never mind these dark mutterings and awful visuals. They are merely the ranting of a lifelong fan of the Detroit Lions. And that speaks for itself.

Reviewing the Drafts: 2002, or A Farewell to Hope

Jesus, I just realized that the draft is less than two weeks away and I said I would finish all these stupid reviews by then. I still have six to do, including this one, and I'm going to try to get them done by then - try being the key word there. This would be fine if I could keep from getting into inane gibberish or rambling like a mental patient, but, well, this is unlikely as you well know. Still, I shall try to wade through the tears and struggle above the heaping mound of shit that is the Detroit Lions in this lovely decade. Anyway, let's just get on with it.

We're up to 2002, and after a fairly boring and dare I say it, competent, first draft, the Lions follies under Matthew the Worthless began in spectacular form as the Lions raced out to a 0-12 start on the way to a 2-14 season. The opening gun to this era of absurd pain was really more of a thunderous cannon of suck announcing for all to hear that the next several years would be filled with the kind of apocalyptic horrors that would have left even someone like Mr. Rogers or perhaps the Dalai Lama weeping and gibbering, cursing the gods and frothing at the mouth, muttering "cocksucker" at Matt Millen every time he thought about that awful beast.

And then, with that steaming pile of shit still fresh in the backyard, the Lions attempted to clean it up in the 2002 NFL Draft by selecting the man who would be the savior of the franchise, the man who would finally be able to take the baton(or perhaps the bottle of Wild Turkey)from Bobby Layne and lead the Lions to glory and fame. Yes, in the Year of Our Lord 2002, the Detroit Lions, with the third pick overall, selected one John Joseph Harrington, quarterback out of Oregon. If you need to step away from your computer, feel free. Maybe take a walk, maybe vomit, I don't know. Perhaps you already vomited, in which case feel free to clean up.

Yeah. Joey Harrington. Joey fucking Harrington. Joey Blue-Skies. Joey Sunshine. The Piano Man. Smilin' Joey. Things, uh, they, well, they didn't work out so well. If there is any one player who represents everything that happened in the Millen era, any one player who Lions fans think about when the horrors of this hellish decade of pain and madness haunt their scarred minds, it's Harrington. Fairly or unfairly, he was the iceberg that blew a hole a mile wide in Millen's hull. Sure, it was a hull made of string cheese and failure, and it would have fallen apart anyway on its own, but Harrington was the one who exploded that son of a bitch wide open, and once that hole was there, Millen's fate was sealed. It only took six years for the fucker to finally sink completely beneath the waves.

The truth is that Harrington should never have been drafted where he was drafted. I know, I know, "obviously," you're saying. But, I'm not talking just in hindsight. There were legitimate questions about Harrington before he was drafted, ominous things like "Why can't he complete sixty percent of his passes in college? How the hell is he going to be able to manage that when he's playing against professionals?" And then there was the fact that, supposedly, the Lions coaching staff didn't really want to have anything to do with Harrington, but our boy Millen, that once in a lifetime buffoon, made the executive decision to say fuck it, you'll take him and you'll like it. He was Millen's kid, his baby, and he was going to be the man because the boss said so. And continued to say so, and continued to say so, and . . . on and on it went until that fateful day when John Joseph Harrington was finally told to clear out his locker. Unfortunately, that day took four years to get here.

Look, Joey Harrington is a nice guy, a good dude who deserved better than to be the Jason Vorhees in this depraved horror flick that Millen created. But, to Lions fans, he is, and will always be, the symbol of the greatest era of failure in NFL history. And really, not a lot else needs to be said about Joey Blue-Skies.

The Lions had a chance though to grab another impact player in the 2002 Draft, as due to their gross incompetence they had an early pick in the second round, the 35th overall, and with it they grabbed Kalimba Edwards, a defensive end out of South Carolina. At the time, I was pretty excited about this pick. Edwards was projected to be a late first round sort of guy and so when he fell to the Lions at 35 I thought he was a little bit of a steal. A tantalizing player blessed with raw talent that most players would kill for, Edwards looked like he could potentially be the pass rushing terror that could spark the Lions defense for years to come. Of course, the words tantalizing and raw talent tend to carry with them a dark side. I mean, usually those words are reserved for somebody who still hasn't quite put it all together. But, no worries, right? I mean, he was with the Detroit Lions, what could possibly go wrong? Yeah.

Edwards flashed pass rushing ability at times during his tenure with the Lions, but in six seasons he never even managed to become a full time starter. A maddening player who should have been better than he was, Edwards is symbolic of every player who put on the Honolulu Blue and Silver and then proceeded to tease fans with his potential. We wanted him to be good, we needed him to be good. Every season, we would cling to him like a life raft and say things like "Well, if Kalimba gets his shit together, we'll have a pass rush, and that will take pressure off of the corners, and . . ." Well, you get the point. And every year, he went out and he disappointed and every year the Lions defense played like shit. That can't be laid at his feet. I mean, the guy was really only a part time player. But, in a way, Kalimba Edwards is the Detroit Lions - promise topped off with failure, a never ending saga of "oh, he'll get better, he just has to . . ." It is the story of the Detroit Lions and the story of its poor beaten fans.

But enough of this gibberish. This is getting maudlin and ridiculous, and I am nothing if not an optimist and so I say fuck it, keep reaching for the stars Kalimba, perhaps one day you will be that terror hell beast for some team. Unfortunately, the Lions won't be that team.

Who else could the Lions have selected in this draft? There were no other really decent quarterbacks to come out of this draft. And since Harrington was such a high pick, perhaps it's appropriate to see who was picked in the top ten after him that year. There was Quentin Jammer, who went fifth overall to the Chargers, and if rumors are true, that is who the Lions coaching staff wanted all along. Go figure. He's been a starter for several years now in San Diego even if he hasn't become the perennial Pro Bowler that one might expect out of a corner picked in the top five. There was also Bryant McKinnie, the mountainous left tackle out of Miami who has gone on to be a starter for several seasons with the Vikings. Or how about John Henderson, who went 9th overall to Jacksonville. He's been to a couple of Pro Bowls. And a couple spots after him the Colts took Dwight Freeney, and . . . ugh, someone lock up the drain cleaner.

There weren't a lot of comparable options to Kalimba Edwards at defensive end in the second round that turned out any better. Aaron Kampman did go three rounds later, but, well, every other team fucked that one up too and he did take a few years to really get going, and . . . and, I am just searching for reasons not to weep like a baby.

The 2002 Draft stands as an important landmark in the trail of tears that is the history of the Detroit Lions. It was Matt Millen's stamp on the team. Unfortunately, the stamp was made of shit. Millen would have many more chances to get it right and ultimately he would fail almost every single time. But as far as the drafts go, this is where it started, this was the beginning of both the funniest and most terrifying sentence uttered every draft day: "The Detroit Lions are on the clock."

Reviewing the Drafts: 2001: (Insert Lame Pun or Play on the movie 2001, perhaps A Shit Odyssey - I don't know, make up your own)

Well, here we are, in that fateful year known as 2001. A lot of stuff, uh, happened in 2001, but for our purposes we will stick to that singular disaster that ended up leaving so many of us in tears, angry and afraid at the same time, confused and left with doubts and questions about who we were and what we represented. It was a savage time, an era fraught with bellicose ramblings and neighbors brawling in the streets with one another, a dark age when we cast aside our morals and our long held beliefs with the aim of hunting down one terrible man who had wrought so much carnage and destruction. Those were evil days and they all began on that fateful day in 2001. Of course, I am talking about the day, that infamous, horrible day, when the Fords hired Matt Millen.

Last year, Millen was finally dragged from his cave or office or wherever, and thrown onto the streets(or behind a desk on NBC, same thing really), and although there was no Mission Accomplished banner hanging on an aircraft carrier while Lions fans celebrated wildly, it was perhaps the only good day in The Year of Unnumbered Tears. Unfortunately, it took over seven years to get to that point, and - deep breath here - right now we're going back to the beginning, a prospect so frightening as to leave me gibbering in front of my computer, having to restrain myself from crying out in horrified anguish while I leap up and run amok, waking the neighbors with unearthly grunts and mournful howling. It's 2001, and here we go.

With their first pick in the 2001 NFL Draft, the 18th overall - yes, once again, the Lions were the upper crust of the decidedly mediocre at that point, and oh how times would change - the Detroit Lions selected Jeff Backus, an offensive tackle out of Michigan. Now, I watched a lot of Jeff Backus in college. He was a good player on a very, very good line. He wasn't the best player - that honor belonged to Steve Hutchinson - but he was good enough to be considered a low ceiling/high floor kind of guy, meaning that whoever drafted him would get a guy who would be almost a sure starter, a guy who would be a solid contributor for years to come, but would probably never be a Pro Bowl type player. It was a safe first pick by Matt Millen and company, and it turned out mostly how people expected it to.

Backus has started every game of his Detroit Lions career, 128 in all, and for the most part he's been someone the Lions didn't need to worry about - at least not as much as just about every other position on the field. He's never been great, or really all that good for that matter, and in a perfect world, the Lions would have been set everywhere else and could have tried to replace him earlier, but this is not a perfect world - sweet Jesus is it not - and the Lions have had to put up with him steadily declining for most of his tenure with the team. Backus is a little small for an elite tackle, not quite athletic enough and most fans think he should be run out of town on a rail. Scouts apparently see something that most fans don't though, and so Backus has stuck at left tackle since he showed up. There is some thought that he should be moved to guard, but this is something that has been talked about since he was drafted and nothing has ever come of it. I'm leery if it ever will and more than likely, another year of Backus - at least - awaits us at left tackle. We just have to hope that his tendency to seemingly give up a sack a game can somehow reverse itself. The probability of this ranks somewhere on the same level as me being pinned with a Medal of Freedom and riding naked on a unicorn in a ticker tape parade flanked by Elvis and Bigfoot. So, yeah, there's about a 98% chance that doesn't happen. The other 2% is because I will continue to hold on to hope that all of the above will in fact happen one day.

The Lions had two second round picks in 2001, and with the first one, the 50th overall, they once again addressed the offensive line, which had indeed been offensive for a number of seasons. Ahem, anyway, shitty puns aside, the Lions drafted Dominic Raiola, who, like Backus(by the way, I almost typed Hutchinson and oh how I wish that was who was in a Lions uniform all these years), has been a perennial starter for the woeful Lions. After one season serving as an understudy at center to Eric Beverly - and Jesus, that 2-14 season in 2001 is starting to make some sense - Raiola took over the starting job and hasn't relinquished it since, only missing time last season due to injury. On the bright side, Raiola has probably been the Lions best offensive lineman since being inserted into the lineup in 2002. Unfortunately, that's not really saying much. Raiola is an athletic center who can hold his own against a good chunk of the league. Unfortunately, he's too small, and when lined up across from a top defensive tackle, or especially against some space eating superhog, Raiola will struggle. Still, he's been a starter for years now, so you have to say this wasn't a bad pick. Of course, it did end up resulting in Raiola flipping off his own fans and then becoming terrified that they would come to his home with guns, but in the world of the Detroit Lions, that unfortunately still qualifies as a successful draft pick. Jesus, I feel nauseas.

With their second pick of the second round, the 61st overall, the Lions decided to bolster the other side of the line by selecting Shaun Rogers, a defensive tackle out of Texas. Rogers was a first round talent with a nineteenth round brain, lazy, unmotivated, but capable of wrestling a grizzly bear to the ground. He should have been a top ten pick on talent alone, but because he is who he is, and because of a litany of injuries which kept him from ever being truly dominant at the college level, Rogers fell all the way to the Lions near the bottom of the second round.

I have killed Rod Marinelli over and over again on this blog for the decision to get rid of Shaun Rogers. That has probably skewed how I actually feel about Big Shaun, as he became sort of a symbol to me of all the bullshit that I have repeatedly slammed Marinelli and company for. The truth however, is that, leaving Marinelli aside, Shaun Rogers was a maddening player who one day would look like Superman(who can forget the unreal ass kicking he gave Denver in 2007?), and the next day he would look like he would rather be at home, sleeping one off, or at the zoo chilling with some seals, or dead in a ditch, or cleaning sewers, or . . . well, you get the point. There were times when Rogers looked like he didn't give the slightest of shits about football and it caused the Lions defense to fall part more than once.

By the time Rogers was traded, he was pretty much reviled by most Lions fans as a lazy, shiftless bag of shit who was just going to drag the team down the more disenchanted with Marinelli he became. I thought that at the very least he could still give the Lions a few games where he could make the difference, but I am an optimist at heart(shut up), and perhaps he would have sunk to new lows, ballooned up to 400 pounds and spent every week holed up in his favorite strip club rather than practice. Whatever. There are no winners in that whole mess and he is done and he is gone and all we're left with is the question of what might have been with Shaun. It's both a tantalizing and a cruel question to ask. If he was everything he could have been, the Lions may have indeed gotten over the hump at some point. But he wasn't, and for a fanbase of an 0-16 team, the what could have beens are almost too terrible to contemplate. It happened, concocting scenarios in which it didn't happen are just an exercise in foolish masochism, and so all we can do is wave goodbye to Big Shaun and wash our hands of the whole terrible thing.

Oddly enough, the 2001 Draft, Millen's first, was also his most successful, as the Lions landed three quality starters - at least by Lions standards - with their first three picks, including two stalwarts on the offensive line and a defensive tackle who was a two time Pro Bowler while with the Lions. You can't get too worked up over that, and there were no real bombs or busts in this class, but the devil always comes with a smile and a handshake, and if we would have known what the future held in Detroit with that buffoon Millen in charge we would have ignored the seemingly competent first draft and began loading up on the torches and pitchforks then and there. 2001. It was a wild year, terrible and strange, and it was just the beginning.

Reviewing the Drafts: The Calm Before the Storm

So I was listening to the Velvet Underground earlier and naturally, Heroin made me think of the Lions and so I figured I'd throw up another installment of my review of the drafts of Christmas past - "throw up" being the key phrase.

There's one quick note that I wanted to mention before I get on with this lunacy. Apparently since they started playing basketball games at Ford Field, the team that has used the Lions home locker room is 0-5, including both games in the Final Four last night. So, even the Final Four has been infected by the Lions stink. This is a franchise so miserable that one sport can't contain it. No, instead, Lions Disease is spreading like a virus. I'm beginning to wonder if Abe Lincoln used the Lions locker room at some point. Oh Lord, why?

Anyway, we're up to the year 2000 in our draft review, edging still closer to the Matt Millen era. We're not there yet thank God, but the clouds are darkening and if we knew any better we all could have prepared a bit better for the coming storm. Maybe we could have told loved ones how we really felt about them before it was too late, maybe traveled to places where we always wanted to go, did something crazy just to say we did it, something, anything, as long as it was done in a world still innocent, untouched by the madness, the horror, of that buffoon. It's too late for any of that shit though, and so all we can do is look back and try to remember the final draft class before the world went dark.

With their first round pick in the 2000 NFL Draft, the 20th overall - and again, yes, it is shocking that there was a time when the Lions were the upper crust of the mediocre set - they selected Stockar McDougle, a mountainous offensive tackle out of Oklahoma. The year before, the Lions selected Jabba Gibson, and it looked like they were looking to set the outside of their offensive line for years to come. It was an enticing prospect, a line bookended by two huge, athletic tackles. It was a nice dream, but dreams aren't real, and when it came time to wake up, the Lions found themselves left with exactly nothing.

McDougle was kind of the original Lennie Small in Detroit. Like my man Lennie, McDougle was a big, athletic, seemingly talented guy who just happened to suck at football. There was no Gosder Cherilus brought in to replace McDougle though, and he stuck around for five seasons with the Lions. Gibson and McDougle. They were supposed to be the future of the Lions offensive line. Instead, they both bombed, and today neither one is anything but a faded memory to most Lions fans. They're not even notable for being failures. There has been so much that has gone wrong, so many players who have failed utterly and spectacularly in Detroit, that neither one of these guys is anything but a footnote, an "Oh yeah, I guess I sorta remember that guy." When that is supposed to be the future of the offensive line, well, the future contains things like bleached skulls, drain cleaner, bad Jay Leno jokes and weekly apocalypses. McDougle played one season with Miami and one with Jacksonville after leaving the Lions, both seasons serving as a backup, and hasn't played since 2006. Bust? Bust.

With their second round pick, the 50th overall, the Lions took Barrett Green, a linebacker out of West Virginia. Green was an undersized, fast linebacker, a good tackler and a guy who seemed like he was primed for a successful NFL career. Green stepped into the Lions starting lineup in his second season and over the next few years he became better and better. He was still too small and he was injury prone, but he was fast, a decent playmaker on the outside, and someone who I was happy was a Detroit Lion. Green naturally felt otherwise, and really, who can blame him? He bolted for the Giants as a free agent following the 2003 season, only to have his career unraveled by injuries and a general lack of productivity. After two years with the Giants he found himself trying to stick with the Texans but he never played a game at linebacker for them and to date, his last NFL game was played in 2005 with the Giants.

It's hard to nail Green down. Was he a great player? No. But he was certainly a good player, a nice pickup in the second round. But injuries derailed his career, and even if they hadn't, he took off from the Lions as soon as he could. Ideally, you would want a guy you picked up in the second round to stick around longer than a few seasons, especially when he is a starter. He's not a bust, but he's not someone you can point to either and say "There, that's a good pick." Even when the Lions do something right, it doesn't really work out. Oh, Lou Reed, sing to me about heroin again.

So, who else could the Lions have taken besides Green? Well, other linebackers who went after him include Marcus Washington, Adalius Thomas and my man Dhani Jones. Washington was the only one drafted in the same range as Green though. Would he have been a better pick? Probably. Washington was a productive player with the Colts who then went on to a Pro Bowl season with the Redskins in 2004. Of course, there is a good chance that he would have bolted at the same time that Green did, so I don't know, fuck it, let's just call it a wash.

Meanwhile, as far as McDougle goes, players taken in the next round at tackle include Marvel Smith, Chad Clifton and Todd Wade. Mark Tauscher went in the seventh round. I don't know why I do this to myself. Clifton's been a Pro Bowler, obviously he would have been a better pick. So has Smith. Wade's been a starter for much of his career, and Tauscher has been a starter since he slapped on a Packers jersey. I've got to stop doing this. Oh, the horror! The horror.

All in all, it was a fairly boring draft class. McDougle was a mediocre player who lasted a few years both because the Lions wanted him to be better than he was and because they had no one else. Green was pretty good but bolted as soon as he could. The most productive player the Lions drafted might have been Reuben Droughns, their third round pick. He twice rushed for over 1,200 yards. Of course, neither season was spent with the Lions. As draft classes go, there have been better and there have been worse. Oh, have there ever been worse. The Millen era is almost upon us, and all we can do is shudder when we remember that fateful day when he rode into town on a pale horse, and Hell followed with him.