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.