The Lions Won and Ernie Sims has a Monkey

The good news is that the Lions won. The bad news is that the defense, particularly the pass defense, looked like utter shit. To be fair, both Anthony Henry and Phillip Buchanon missed the game, but even had they played, Peyton Manning's QB rating probably would have just been comfortably in the triple digits instead of something which needed NASA scientists to calculate. Although, we could probably just do away with QB ratings altogether, just look around at one another, nod our heads, and agree to give Manning the ever so scientific rating of "Almost Perfect" and our pass defense the equally complex rating of "Fucking Horrible."

But, the Lions did win, and Ernie Sims does indeed have a monkey(more on that a little later), so all things considered, it was a pretty good day to be a Lions fan. The offense looked good, capable of moving the ball both on the ground and through the air. The quarterbacks looked good. Culpepper moved well in the pocket, Stafford's arm was ridiculous in all the best ways, and Stanton, well, Stanton is a gamer(There, I said it.)

Right now, if Daunte Culpepper were to start, I would be disappointed, but I wouldn't be disgusted. That doesn't sound like much, but Lions fans must work within the various shades of disappointment and anger in order to survive without going insane and running through the streets at night, scraping their knuckles on the pavement while they hoot and holler, flinging their shit at stunned pedestrians, screaming obscenities and terrifying small animals and old people. It is something you just have to live with, the knowledge that you will be sad and disappointed no matter what. Hopefully, that is all a mindset of the past, but as I have said before, Culpepper is a remnant of that terrible past, and if he starts, we will all have to live in that mindset for a while longer. The point of all this weird gibberish is that within that framework of negativity, Culpepper as a starter might not entirely be a bad thing, worth a few frowns and shakes of the head, but not worth setting yourself on fire like a Buddhist monk or anything. It might cause a few long looks at the ol' drain cleaner, but fuck it, if you are a Lions fan and you haven't chugged that shit like you were a freshman in college at your first house party and someone just introduced you to a beer bong, chances are that shit is staying put. I mean, it's not like they can go 0-18 or something like that. (Right? I mean, that's not possible, is it? Oh God . . .)

All that nonsense is an extremely(exxxxttttttrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeemely)backhanded way of saying that Culpepper doesn't look so bad. Of course, I am still firmly in the camp that thinks that Stafford should start right away. He can make all the throws in the world. Then again, everyone already knew that, and that was never in question. What everyone fears out of Stafford is a game like the one against the Browns last weekend, where it seemed like his body was possessed by the soul of a certain piano playing, smiling fool. But, Stafford bounced back. He moved the offense well, made some huge throws, and should have put a couple of touchdowns on the board if the offensive line didn't give out inside the five like it did on a couple of occasions. He really only made one bad throw. And no, it wasn't on the ball that got picked. That one was a deep bomb near the end of the half. That shit happens to every quarterback. The one bad throw he made was when he was being hauled down by a defender who blew through the line on one of those aforementioned plays inside the five. Stafford just sort of threw the ball to the end zone and he was lucky the ball wasn't picked. Still, even on that throw, St. Calvin almost came down with it for the touchdown and the Lions ended up kicking a field goal. So really, Stafford's one bad throw of the game almost resulted in a touchdown on a play that was blown up by the defense and didn't end up hurting the Lions at all. I will take that every time. Besides, this game showed that Stafford is capable of getting right back up and doing the job after shitting the bed. And really, isn't that what most people are worried about, that as a young quarterback he'll crack if he gets hit or has a bad game? I say put him out there and start moving forward now instead of waiting six games or whatever, when the team is 2-4 and everyone has decided fuck this season already.

Matthew Stafford is the Lions. They are both going to have good games and bad games. They are going to make us have horrible flashbacks to the bad old days, and they are going to do things that give us hope going forward. I would rather have them both grow together, organically. I think that is the only way this thing is really going to work. Everything has to be in sync, and when it finally locks in for good, everyone will be moving at the same speed, the same pace, and we can finally get the hell out of this shit hole we have been wallowing in for the past half century.

Okay, enough of that nonsense. The most important thing that I learned in yesterday's game was that, yes, Ernie Sims has a monkey. Along with his menagerie of lizards, snakes and all other manner of wild animals, The Lizard King, aka The Python King Cinnabon Sims, has a monkey. This is amazing. I had my notebook out, but this week I didn't really take any notes, largely because I am not that dude, and when I do take notes, my writing tends to suck ass. I am terrible at following an outline, and I prefer to just freeball it(yeah freeball it, I said it, leave me alone)and just write without really thinking too much about it. I might have a general idea of where I want to go, but I like to just sit down and write and see where it goes. But I am getting into too much writing nerdery and am straying off the point, which is that ERNIE SIMS HAS A MONKEY. So anyway, I wasn't taking any notes and then Ernie Sims was interviewed on the sidelines - he wasn't even dressed to play and yet he was the highlight of the game for me. Is it any wonder why he is my favorite player? Again, anyway, back to the point, when they mentioned that Sims has a monkey I grabbed my notebook and almost one whole page is devoted to the words HOLY SHIT ERNIE SIMS HAS A MONKEY, written all sloppy, like a retarded nine year old scribbled them. If anyone ever finds this notebook that I have begun half assedly keeping notes in for Lions games, they will have me beaten and then committed. The whole thing is just a bunch of gibberish like that, and I am vaguely uncomfortable that it is all a window into my weird ass brain.

JESUS, I am rambling like a damn loon. Anyway, the important thing is that Ernie Sims has a monkey. I can just imagine the two of them, chilling out at home after the horrors of 0-16, Ernie all depressed, and the monkey doing whatever he can to cheer him up until finally, Ernie cracks a smile and thanks to his monkey knows that everything will be alright. God bless you, monkey. It also makes me wonder whether the monkey is toilet trained or whether it just shits wherever it pleases. And does it throw it's shit? Like, are Ernie and his wife ever just chilling, maybe eating a nice dinner or something, and the little guy just starts throwing shit rockets at them? I bet Ernie's wife gets all pissed off and Ernie just shakes his head and tells her he'll deal with it and then him and the little guy just laugh their asses off about it later.

This is something I never really considered, but with all those animals, who cleans up all that shit? I mean, Ernie is a millionaire, he probably doesn't need to do any of that stuff, but he is also clearly an animal lover and so I imagine that he doesn't mind getting his hands a little dirty, like when a parent doesn't mine changing a shitty diaper even though the rest of us can't even imagine doing such a thing without vomiting everywhere. I don't know, I have so many questions. I am fascinated by all this.

After the whole monkey thing sunk in, the interview continued and the interviewer mentioned that Ernie recently got a new bird and then said that Mrs. Ernie(The Lizard Queen? Madame Cinnabon?)said that was it, that they were apparently at max capacity for their little animal kingdom. And then Ernie, in all his wisdom, was all WE'LL SEE ABOUT THAT, and my love for that great man was further cemented. I hope that glorious king and his no doubt beautiful queen reign for a million years, and that their kingdom of noble monkeys, wise lizards, brilliant snakes and dignified birds flourishes in the midst of this strange and savage world.

There were some bad things on Saturday. I mean, the defense couldn't cover anybody and no one could tackle anyone either. I'm pretty sure that Gunther Cunningham had to strangle a bag full of puppies to get through the night. But the important thing to remember is this: the Lions won and Ernie Sims has a monkey. And since we are optimists and gentlemen, we will focus on that and head into the week with smiles on our faces and love in our hearts.

Note: Jesus, I just reread all that before posting it and I swear I am not coked up and I promise that I don't need massive amounts of Adderall. I blame my love for Ernie Sims, and if that is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

Waylaid on the Road to Redemption

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Just Some Quick Thoughts

I decided I would try to do the responsible and nerdy thing and take notes during Saturday's preseason game between the Lions and the Browns. I didn't make it far. To be fair, I am not the note taking kind of dude, and so this probably shouldn't entirely be blamed on the putrid performance of the Lions, but what the hell, they certainly didn't make it easy. Anyway, this is word for word, stupid abbreviation for stupid abbreviation, what I had written down:

Kickoff - NO WTF
DEF. LOOKS LIKE SHIT
Browns Off. - No TD since 11/17 of last season, scored 1st Drive
Stafford - Int. 1ST PASS
Sp. Tms. SUCK
SHIT

Only the word "SHIT" took up the bottom half of the page and looked like it was written by a retarded nine year old. And then there may or may not have been a doodle of an orangutan in the margins.

That was as far as I got, both with the notes and the game. It was 17-0 by then and I decided to preserve what was left of my sanity. More later, probably, if and when I decide to go back and watch whatever horrors unfolded after that point. I did read that Swayze Waters kicked a 51 yard field goal, so I might watch Point Break again instead. We'll see.

Just Win? Oh Hell, Why Not?

For as much as I derided the first preseason game against the Falcons as a meaningless glorified scrimmage, the truth is that there was a lot of anxiety amongst Lions fans heading into that game. After all, all we had seen for the past year was a nuclear wasteland of dead bodies and cruel winds, a desert of bleached skulls being picked clean by terrible mutant beasts who laughed in our faces and shit in our salads. And when it was all over, we were promised that we would get some new age Moses as a coach who would guide us out of this desert and into a lush wonderland filled with candy canes, mermaids and blowjobs. But, as excited as we all were, and as much as we looked forward to this happy new future, the sad reality is that until we started moving again, we were still trapped in that desert, and while Rod Marinelli and Matt Millen were no longer skulking about, whipping us with their chains made of failure and sorrow while we wept and begged for mercy, their ghosts still remained and when those ill winds would pick up, we would be forced to deal with their stench all over again.

But then the game against the Falcons came and it went, and with it, a lot of the foul hopelessness of the past went with it too. We were no longer in that horrible desert. We hadn't reached the promised land yet, but we were finally moving. Unfortunately, even though we are moving, we are moving slowly, and as much as want to believe that we'll make it, we're still unsteady, reeling from a lifetime of sorrow and pain. All it takes is one glance back, and we see those horrible beasts gaining on us, devilish smiles on their horrible faces, and we start to panic and wonder if they will overtake us once again. Because as much as we hope and as much as we try to be good, optimistic happy fans, the truth is that we just don't know. We don't know if this whole thing will work out. We don't know if this will finally be our chance to escape the nightmarish hell we have been stuck in as Lions fans for the majority of our fandom.

And that brings us to this weekend's preseason game, the annual tilt against the Browns, in which - at least it's my understanding - the winner gets control of Lake Erie and the loser is boiled in acid. Or maybe it's the other way around. In any event, I'm fairly certain that Lake Erie is involved somehow. With one game out of the way and some of the questions that have hovered over this team all preseason starting to be answered, now comes the time when we all start to worry whether or not the good things that happened in the first game can be duplicated, or whether they were just a mirage in this terrible desert and we will once again be dragged back into that miserable past to be tortured by those horrible beasts.

The terrible thing about failure, especially failure on the unprecedented scale that we just experienced, is that it just makes the future seem even scarier. It shouldn't. I mean, what else is there to be afraid of as football fans after going 0-16? But the sad reality is that the clock doesn't just reset after 0-16. Every loss after that just feels like a continuation of 0-16. Every fuck up, every dumb decision, every fumble, every interception, every missed opportunity feels like a carry-over from the hell of the past, instead of something new and correctible. It makes the prospect of success seem almost absurd, a ridiculous dream that will only make us hurt all the more in the end, when our heroes are dead and broken once again and we are weeping and praying for an end to all the misery.

But, as terrible and as depressing as all that is, the other side of the coin is that failure tends to breed desperation. We know what it feels like to lose on the most absurd scale possible. The players know it, the fans know it, anyone connected with this team in any way knows it. And so when each new practice, each new game, each new player comes along, there is a crazy sense of hope attached to it, a feeling that maybe this will be the one that rockets us out of this hellish desert and into the lush green land full of puppies and grenade launchers filled with good beer. We get excited because we want to win so very, very badly, and any sign that we can actually do this makes us giddy.

In the first game against the Falcons, the defense played well and the offense moved the ball. A couple of rookies made big plays and some unheralded names on defense stepped up and stuffed the Falcons when it mattered the most. Hell, after the game the Lions even brought back Swayze Waters. Such a happy day, all is right with the football world. And now we are both excited and terrified as we wait to see whether they can duplicate - and improve upon - that first little litmus test.

I know it still doesn't matter. Last year's preseason and the ensuing debacle proved that in the most extreme way. Still, winning feels a hell of a lot better than losing, no matter the context, and especially for us.

I remember watching a special on the Big Ten Network about Lloyd Carr, the former Michigan head coach, and in it they were focusing on the '97 team that won the national championship. Lloyd recalled that Michigan had lost 4 games for 4 straight seasons and there were some whispers going around that Michigan was no longer among the elite in college football. And then, one day, Charles Woodson, the Michigan cornerback/receiver/punt returner who would win the Heisman over Peyton Manning in '97, decided that he was sick of losing. From that point on, Woodson, Carr and Michigan made it a point to win every day. And what that meant is that no matter what you were doing, you went out and you did your best. If you were in practice, you practiced as hard as you could. If you were in meetings, you paid attention as hard as you could. You did all the little things during the week so that when the game finally arrived, you were ready to win because you had been winning all week long. I know that sounds like some empty Marinelliesque DO IT THE RIGHT AWAY bullshit, but there is a world of difference between empty words falling out of the mouth of a man so wrapped up in clichés that he can't see beyond them to what really matters, and a team actually deciding to do it.

The Lions game against the Browns is meaningless as far as the record books go. Just like the Falcons game. But, man, winning sure beats the hell out of losing, so why not win now, whether it matters in the record book or not? Fuck the desert, fuck the beasts, fuck the ghosts, fuck the pain, fuck the misery, fuck the losing, fuck the failure. Just keep winning, keep moving forward, and one day, we'll be in that wonderland, celebrating, drunk and happy, and the ghosts of Millen and Marinelli will haunt a desert of failure that's empty and pointless, because the rest of us will have all moved on.

The Lions play the Browns, and just like last weekend, I want to watch Matthew Stafford throw a ball so hard he breaks the space time continuum, and I want to see Ernie Sims and Louis Delmas hit someone so hard he shits his pants. I want to see Kevin Smith truck some fool and I want to see Aaron Brown do a triple back flip using the goalpost as a prop. I want to see Jim Schwartz wrestle Eric Mangini to the ground and submit him with a rear naked choke - perhaps while naked, why not? - and I want to see Shaun Rogers rip off his uniform after the game starts to reveal a Lions uniform underneath. I want to see Brady Quinn beaten and hooked up to Sammie Lee Hill and dragged around the stadium like Hector behind Achilles, and I want to see Jamal Lewis get picked up and powerbombed through a table by an enraged Landon Cohen. I want to see Jim Brown drop to his knees and beg for the soul of his beaten franchise, and most of all, what I want is to watch the Lions win again. That is a lot of weird bullshit, but fuck it, I'm a weird guy, these are weird times, and it's weird to be a fan of a team that went 0-16 last season. But winning, for a Lions fan, is probably the weirdest thing of all. It's probably not as weird as Hitler jello wrestling with a werewolf on PCP or Tom Cruise or whoever, but it is still pretty weird, and if I can imagine those things happening(and so help me, I can, which is just terrifying), I can imagine these dudes who have caused me so much sorrow and so much agony over the lifespan of my fandom doing the impossible and actually winning. Why not? Like I said, we live in weird times.

It Doesn't Count? Well . . .

It is an embarrassing admission to make, but the truth is that when Jason Hanson's field goal sailed through the uprights at the end of the game to give the Lions the win in the first preseason game, I got a little excited. It is a ridiculous thing, given that it is essentially a meaningless game that I myself basically derided in my last post, but fuck it, that is what 0-16 will do to a man. It does strange things, embarrassing and terrible and leaves you pumping your fist like a retard on a Saturday evening in mid-August. The win doesn't mean a damn thing, as evidenced by last season's 4-0 preseason championship, which will likely be highlighted on every resume Rod Marinelli sends out from here to eternity.

"I see here you went 0-16 in 2008. Can you explain to us what happened, Rod?"

"Well, if you'll just look at the bolded red font there, I think you'll see that I guided the team to a 4-0 record in the preseason. That's right, undefeated. And you know why? Because we did it the right way. Wait . . . where are you going? Oh, I see. I'll just show myself out."

And then, in my head, some goons show up to rough him up anyway, because, well, why not?

As ridiculous as getting excited about winning one of these exaggerated scrimmages is, the alternative is even worse. When that game ended, I was just happy that I didn't have to see those poor fools shuffle off the field, humiliated once again, while Dominic Raiola flipped off the ten fans who were still left in the stands and the quarterback was hustled out of the stadium with a coat over his head like some degenerate criminal under a shower of garbage and piss. The scars of that terrible 2008 season are fresh, and they are still ugly and they will haunt us for a long time. Anything that doesn't remind us of those dark and brutal days then is naturally a good thing, and fuck it, I was happy when they won on Saturday.

As for the actual game, well, it's tough to take a lot away when the game flow is unnaturally chopped up by the mass substitutions that take place and the drives against third string defenses and so on. But there were a few things that stood out to me. First, the quarterbacks. Daunte Culpepper looked better than he's looked in a while. His scrambling seemed to be there, which has been missing ever since his knee told him to go fuck himself, and he managed to execute the offense with a semblance of competency. Still, there were a couple of plays where he looked like the Daunte Culpepper we all know and despise, and he got a couple of series in and that was it, so I'm not sure if we really know anything we didn't on Friday.

Matthew Stafford impressed me. His bazooka arm was on display. That doesn't necessarily mean he made a lot of huge, deep throws. The places where his arm really shined were on the tight throws over the middle of the field and to the sidelines, particularly a gorgeous, jaw dropping, perfect throw that Kerry Colbert caught.(Which, incidentally, was about the only thing he caught. I wouldn't be surprised if he got back to the locker room and found all his shit in a box. Oh well, hopefully he doesn't steal anyone's underwear on his way out the door.)Stafford really only made one bad throw. Unfortunately, it was a fucking terrible play, a total rookie move where, under pressure, he threw off his back foot while falling, into the flat, where it landed softly in the arms of a Falcon who ran it back for a touchdown. It was his first game though, and fuck it, I saw enough to think he should be the guy when the season starts. He had a nice touchdown throw to Derrick Williams later in the game, who, by the way, looked good at receiver for the Lions(thank you thank you thank you), and for the most part, Stafford looked like he is at least as competent and ready as Culpepper. And if those two are on roughly equal footing, why not go with the future instead of the broken down old guy? But I have been over that shit before and will not degenerate into a rant about why I think Stafford should be the man again.

But that's only two of the quarterbacks, which leaves one, the much loved Drew Stanton. As soon as that game ended, I knew that the usual clamor would begin for giving ol' Drew a chance, and, well, no. I am fully aware that I have an irrational disdain for Drew Stanton, but fuck it, it is what it is and I will not try to force myself to love the dude. I know everybody else loves him, and want to talk about how he's a gamer and not a practice player and all that shit, but what I see out there is a player whose arm isn't strong enough, who gets too rattled in the pocket, and generally seems jumpy and nervous - not the attributes you want in your quarterback. I know most people won't agree with me, and hey, that's cool. I can almost see Ty shaking his head at me right now. But I just don't see it. He always looks to me like he's on the verge of vomiting in the huddle. I know he can make some plays with his feet, but a lot of times I think that's because he freaks out way too early and just takes off. Yeah, he led the game winning drive, but, man, the dude who should get most of the credit for the Lions comeback is Aaron Brown. Stanton made some smart plays, but let's not forget that drive where he threw an awful pass - I mean just terrible - that was picked off. It was an awful read, and it made Stanton look like he was in way over his head. It wasn't even a case of a guy trying to make something out of nothing, like Stafford's. At least with Stafford, he'll learn that you don't have to be the hero and to just chuck the ball away sometimes. Stanton's was just dumb. But he got bailed out thanks to a pass interference call. Had that not happened, chances are this game looks a whole lot worse for Stanton. I will concede that he can be a decent backup, but come on, this shit about how Stanton needs to be given a chance to win the starting job needs to stop. If Drew Stanton is our starter, we are utterly and completely fucked.

Okay, enough bitching about Drew Stanton. I know I am just about the only Lions fan alive who doesn't like him, and so I will move on. I mentioned Aaron Brown earlier, and with good reason. GOOD LORD. That dude is fast. And he's smooth too. He just sort of glides down the field and when he gets some room, he's gone. He went from a guy who had to work hard to make the team to a guy who no one wants to see leave town. I think everyone fell in love with him during that game and after he did his backflip following his last touchdown, a cult hero was born. This is the dude who all the fans are going to be pulling for, and with his performance and the way Derrick Williams played, suddenly what I already thought was a good draft looks that much better. Those were probably two of the three guys I was the most worried would be busts and if Saturday's game was any indication, I think they both have a good shot at not only making the team, but tearing shit up once they do.

The running backs as a whole looked pretty good. Kevin Smith looked good in the short time he was in there and Brown looked spectacular on a couple of plays. Allan Ervin even showed up and looked like he could do some things. Aveion Cason on the other hand, well, I'm guessing that he is about to be released for roughly the four thousandth time by the Lions. We will probably see you again some time in November Aveion, but no offense, I kinda hope we don't.

Other than that, offensively the Lions looked okayish. The receivers looked like shit, but everyone who will be on the team was injured anyway, so . . . yeah, I'm not reading a whole lot into that. The good thing about that is that it makes the performance of Stafford, Culpepper, and okay, Stanton that much more impressive. Meanwhile the line did a generally adequate job of blocking in both the pass and the run. Basically, the offense actually looked functional and sprinkled in a couple of big plays, and the screen passes installed by Scott Linehan just looked gorgeous and were a real weapon. After last season, that's more than okay.

Defensively, the Lions looked better. Of course, that means absolutely nothing. I mean, the team could have been eaten by wild hyenas and I still would have said they looked better than last year. The defensive line actually managed some penetration(oooooh, dirty), with Landon Cohen in particular blowing up a couple of plays in the backfield. They were still pushed backwards too much, but again, any semblance of competence is a huge step up from the horrors of last season.

The linebackers looked okayish. The starters didn't get much time and really, much of this defense is going to rest on their ability to make plays, do a dependable job cleaning up when the line fails, and drop back and cover the middle of the field when the defensive backs wander, dazed and bleeding, from the action. The one notable thing that I took away from the game was that Ernie Sims is apparently a married man now, and that his wife understands her place in the realm of the Lizard King. Apparently she gets that his animal subjects are his true love, but since his other nicknames are Cinnabon(try to figure it out, it will be fun) and the Python King(so dubbed by our very own LB), she should be happy.

The defensive backs looked pretty good in coverage. Anthony Henry looked solid, which is a big relief because everyone is worried that he is too old and slow to hold shit down on the corner. The one player who really impressed me though was Chris Roberson, who made a few really nice tackles in the open field. He started off the game with a huge stick on special teams and then later on, he made a huge tackle on a screen play that was close to breaking for a big play in the fourth quarter with the Lions down and needing the ball back. Stuart Schweigert looked good too, as he flew into the backfield and made a couple of tackles for loss. I kinda hope both dudes make the team. As a whole though, the defensive backs missed too many tackles. Kalvin Pearson looked like shit. He is a Marinelli guy, and, well, the stink is too great on him for me to get past. When he fucks up as egregiously as he did on Saturday, that stink is fucking intolerable.

The defense as a whole did look too sloppy. Michael Turner's touchdown run was a call back to last year, a bonanza of missed tackles that had me suffering post traumatic stress and weeping silently into the cruel night. But none of that was as frustrating as the penalties. GOOD LORD. The last Falcons touchdown drive felt like a scene from Necessary Roughness. There were four Lions penalties on two plays. I half expected to see someone get flagged for karate kicking someone. It was absurd.

But, all in all, both the offense and the defense looked like they weren't overmatched. They didn't look particularly great or anything, but a reaction of WELL OKAY, SURE WHY NOT is a hell of a lot better than HEAD FOR THE HILLS ONLY THE STRONG WILL SURVIVE which is what every game last season was filled with. Again, it is completely ridiculous to get excited about what happened, given that it was the first preseason game, and game is probably a generous word there, but we have suffered so much and those who are still here are both the stupid and the strong, the heroic and the foolish. We deserve to smile, even if for a fleeting moment and even if it is completely meaningless.

One last note: I know this shit is kinda long, and a little heavy on the THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED AND THEN THIS HAPPENED which isn't usually my deal, but this was the first time I had seen these dudes play in a long time and so I got carried away a little with the analysis. Next time I will talk about werewolves on PCP, vampire apes and Hitler. I promise.

Weird Bullshit and the Preseason

In a couple of days, the Lions will play their first preseason game of the year against the Atlanta Falcons. It is the first time any of us will get to see what the reborn Lions look like and it will come against a team who most of us desperately want to use as the model for the upcoming season.

The Falcons drafted Matt Ryan high in the first round last year, and then stormed to an unlikely playoff birth, which, incidentally, was kicked off by an unholy thrashing of the Lions in Week 1. They ran all over us like werewolf cheetahs loaded on crank and Matt Ryan was able to complete passes whenever he felt like it while our defense flailed about like retarded junkies, shaking and moaning while the earth opened up, the heavens fell and Rod Marinelli shit his pants in mortal fear and confusion on the sideline. It was not the best week for a Lions fan, and it presaged a season of ungodly terror, a season in which the final evisceration of a dying franchise was both brutal and drawn out over months and months, a season in which we as fans shed unnumbered tears and screamed into the night for it all to stop, only to tune in week after week to see our team fumble and bumble its way to 0-16.

The fact that in the preseason the Lions went 4-0 made it all the more mystifying for many Lions fans, who were perfectly content to overlook the obvious warning signs that this was a team barreling down the tracks towards a massive chasm because it felt good to watch their team win. Even if the games were meaningless, exaggerated scrimmages really, it was nice to watch their dudes do better than the other dudes. Of course, this was all horribly wrong, and it should make us all realize when we watch any of these preseason games that the final score is absolutely fucking meaningless. There is value in the preseason, I suppose, but it is more for the coaches than the fans. They get to see their players in game action, or what passes for game action in the preseason anyway. For us, it's just a chance to watch something resembling football after too many months off.

Will the Lions win on Saturday? Probably not, but who cares? The real stuff is still almost a month away, and for now, I just want to see Matt Stafford throw a ball through a barn door, and I want to see Ernie Sims knock some fool out and then I want to parse through the meaningless plays like every other football dork and look for signs that Player X might actually make something of himself or that Scheme Y will cause Aaron Rodgers to shit his pants. And then in a few weeks, when the rosters get pared down to their final numbers, we can all react in shock when the star defensive player during the preseason who really looked good out there gets cut and ends up on somebody else's practice squad.

There are four of these infernal things. If this were baseball, that would be the equivalent of 40 preseason games, 20 for both basketball and hockey. It is kind of absurd and is one big reason why someone always gets hurt. There is a reason they only play 16 games anyway. It's because this shit is brutal, and dudes get fucked up doing it. It's almost a miracle if, over the course of four weeks, everyone survives. The preseason is all about landing in Normandy, and everyone who gets through these beaches alive will get to then navigate through the French countryside, dealing with 20 foot tall, thick ass hedges, Germans shooting at them and French people running and screaming day and night, huddling in bombed out buildings, and . . . and . . . I have no idea how we ended up here and I apologize. Who are the Nazis in this scenario? The Falcons? Who are the French people? Are the giant hedges the Williams Wall? Does that mean that Minnesota is like France? This is so confusing. And this is why you shouldn't just write without thinking shit through, but fuck it, we have come this far. Much like the soldiers who landed on those beaches. Hilariously inappropriate? Inappropriately hilarious? Grossly offensive? Offensively gross? I am just lost here, but now I am wondering, who is Hitler?

Okay, so this took a weird turn, but by now you should know this is a real possibility any time you read any of these things, and so we'll just try to move on. TO BERLIN. Okay, sorry.

Anyway, we seem so close to the season, maddeningly close really, and we're all desperate to figure out what these new and improved Detroit Lions are all about. But, as close as we may seem, we are still four whole preseason games away, and a lot can happen during that time. And if we learned anything from last season's fiasco(well, aside from how to talk yourself out of sitting in the garage with the car running)it is that we really can't learn much from these preseason games. So, fuck it, watch and don't learn anything. Watch and pretend to learn something. Watch and then pretend that Matthew Stafford slew a whole gaggle of ghosts with only his arm, a half empty keg and a football. Or, maybe that will happen, and maybe you should watch because you never know, I guess. Someone might wander onto the field, drunk and pantsless, hurling obscenities at confused players. Maybe Rod Marinelli and Matt Millen will run in with steel chairs and beat the shit out of the new regime while the crowd boos and throws garbage. Maybe the Lions will win. And I suppose even a fake win is better than anything that happened last year. So, watch, don't watch, something resembling football is happening, and what it really means is that we are just one step closer to meaningful football being played and hopefully, closer to that meaningful football translating into something, anything, resembling the faintest bit of redemption and joy.

Fighting the Past and Embracing the Future

It's Saturday afternoon, and it's been raining all day, and right now, a couple of hours away from me, the Lions are practicing and a legion of fans are tweeting away about every mundane detail, breathlessly racing one another to be the first to report that some third string defensive tackle has a hangnail or that a backup cornerback had his pants fall down on the fifty yard line or that after dropping a pass a receiver was beaten with a cane and then taken back to where no one could see him, where God only knows what went on, but the screams, oh the horrible screams of the suffering and the dying drifted to every dark corner of Ford Field, horrifying the innocent, terrorizing the impressionable youth. Holy shit, was that ever a run on sentence.

But, we are used to horrible wails and dying moans, and Ford Field is filled with the whispers and echoes of the ghosts of beaten players and tortured fans. This is a new day though, and we have been told that the exorcism performed by Father Schwartz and his crew of rabid monks has cleansed the collective soul of this beaten and fucked up franchise. The good thing is that most everybody seems to be buying into this new dawn. Sure, there is still the requisite hair pulling, gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts, but this is as much a reflexive act as anything else, a defensive measure intended to protect what's left of our fragile and battered psyches from the ravages of Lions fandom.

There is hope, real and genuine, but that just makes it all the more curious that there is still a large section of the fanbase who think that Daunte Culpepper should start the season at quarterback instead of Matthew Stafford. For a fanbase so eager to erase the horrors of the past so that we can finally move on as fans of a real, live football team, why would we want to revisit that past, even for a few weeks?

Daunte Culpepper is a ghost, a reminder of that horrible thing called 0-16. Every time we hear him rattling in the attic, a shiver will go down our spines and we'll start having horrible flashbacks to wild coaches duck walking down the sideline, opposing players waltzing free through our defense, laughing like children on their way to the endzone, and to quarterbacks being crushed under the weight of an opposing defensive line, or heaving shitty pass after shitty pass that either fall to the turf or are snagged by a giddy defensive back. Why would we want that?

Look, the Lions are going to struggle this year. Again. But this is the struggling of the toddler learning how to walk. Soon, we'll be able to run. In the past, the struggling has been that of a senile old man stumbling into irrelevance, falling down and shitting himself. Daunte Culpepper is merely a symbol of that old man. Matthew Stafford is the new, and he's not going to learn to walk by sitting on the bench and chucking some out routes during practice.

Much of this CULPEPPER MUST START gibberish seems to be just a kowtowing to conventional wisdom, which says that you don't want your young, inexperienced quarterback to be ruined by the horrors of a National Football League defense. But I have always found this curious, curious and stupid. If your quarterback is such a fragile entity that he can't handle getting beat on a bit when he starts out, then do you really want that guy being at the helm of your franchise? I'd rather find out what the dude is made of now, rather than waiting a year from now or two years from now and then realizing that we have to start all over yet again because the quarterback is terrified of playing, you know, football.

The good news is that so far during camp, Stafford has looked impressive. He doesn't seem like a rookie learning at the feet of the wise sage veteran quarterback. Instead, he's out there competing with him, besting him in most respects. So, again, given all that, why would we want Daunte Culpepper to start? Because he's older? Because, once, half a decade ago, he led a horde of fantasy football teams (including mine) to championship glory? Well hell, why not sign up Jeff Garcia again? I wonder what Randall Cunningham is up to? His magic season was only five or six years before Culpepper's. That's not that long ago. And while we're talking to Randall, maybe we can try again to convince Steve Young to come out of retirement. Sure, his brain is currently owned by Campbell's Soup, but fuck it, he's a Hall of Famer.

The past is the past, both the horrible and the sublime, and to revisit it would be to take a monstrous step back from any progress that we are so desperate to make. As Lions fans, we want change, and we want it badly. Well, here it is. Embrace it. Quit trying to look for safety, because it's just not there. We went 0-16 last season. There is nothing to build upon, no foundation. Except for the one that's being built right now. And that has to have all new bricks, whole and unblemished, not bricks made from the rubble of old buildings that were dynamited. Matthew Stafford is our future, and Daunte Culpepper is part of our past. Embrace the future and fuck the past.

Well, Here We Go

Training camp is underway, and with it, a legion of die hard fans are trying to unearth any nugget of information they can find that has anything to do with their lousy football team, poor half mad degenerates trying to conceal their football boner during the work day, trying not to accost and beat upon some poor old secretary or door man who happens to be wearing the colors of their arch rival. Ah yes, August. We have been quality football free for about half a year now, and although during that time there are brief little stopovers like the draft, these are like methadone for the heroin addict. They kinda have the same effect as the real thing, but in the end, they are just a sorry substitute that only remind you that you don't have the real thing.

But, as I said, those dog days are coming to end, and now, a nation full of football geeks and degenerate gamblers can do something about the raging erection which threatens to explode . . . Jesus, you know what, I'm sorry, this is getting out of hand. I didn't mean to turn this into some weird porn writing, or excuse me, erotica as the professionals like to call it. But the level of excitement which starts to build around this time of year for football(Excuse, me, ahem, WOOOOOOOOOO FOOOOOOOOOTBALLLLLLLL for those who are already in full facepaint, a glazed far off look in their eyes and the faded uniform of some player who retired ten years ago on their backs)borders on the obscene, what with breathless reports on the hour every hour about the state of a prized rookie's tender thigh or the progress the aging vet is making with his inflamed groin. We lap this shit up, this football foreplay that gets us all hot and bothered. By the time September comes around, they will have to spray us off with fire hoses.

But that is all very weird, and we'll move on. The Lions have begun practicing in earnest, and like every year, there is a mixture of crippling fear and wild eyed hope which accompanies the beginning of camp. This year, there is probably a little more of the wild eyed hope, especially since this year we have grown men, truckers and factory workers, tossing their panties and cooing like school girls wherever Jim Schwartz happens to find himself. The fear of utter failure and bitter misery is still there, but it's lessened this year, partly because of the optimism surrounding the cult of the new and partly because, well, what the fuck is there to be afraid of coming off of an 0-16 season? I mean, we've been to the bottom of that horrible trench, that place where nobody else has been before, and no matter how bad it gets, it's never going to get worse than that. There is a bizarre sort of comfort in that, the knowledge that the world has whipped your ass so savagely, so completely, that anything else that comes along can just be laughed at and told to run along. Lions fans can't be hurt by failure anymore because we have experienced the ultimate failure. Still, winning would be really, really nice.

The first couple of days of training camp have caused Lions fans to both break into song and sigh with knowing contempt at that familiar son of a bitch known as failure. So far, by all accounts, the defense has looked shockingly good. I say shocking only because last year's defense had the resolve of a retarded jellyfish. If they somehow don't look better than last year's edition, then something is seriously wrong. The early star of the show has been backup defensive tackle Landon Cohen, who apparently has transformed himself into King Kong, capable of lifting a semi truck filled with sumo wrestlers over his head at will. Apparently, Cohen's offseason regimen of eating babies(they are high in protein)and bench pressing bears has paid dividends. The fact that all this comes at a position of extreme need, defensive tackle, makes the story all the more delightful and has Lions fans furiously mastur . . . okay, I said I would stop that nonsense and so I will. Of course, the beginning of August is a hell of a lot different than the beginning of September in the football world and when the season rolls around, if Cohen can be an adequate situational player, then his offseason will have been a success. Expecting him to turn into a 300 pound Bruce Lee on PCP is probably a mistake.

The offense meanwhile, well . . . see last year's edition. These guys have so far been routinely beaten by the defense in drills. That's good news for the beleaguered secondary, home of such luminaries as Chris Roberson and Kalvin Pearson, but for a team trying to establish an identity on the offensive side of the football other than running out the back of their own endzone it's probably not too good. But it's still early, and while the quarterbacks haven't looked as sharp as we would all like and the receivers are dropping too many balls, there is still time for that to turn around. In the early days of camp, the defense probably has a bit of a natural advantage anyway, as all they really need to do is fly around and let their athleticism make the difference. Sure, they have to do it all within the context of the dreaded scheme, but they don't have to do the things that require quite the amount of hand eye coordination that the offense must do. As time goes on, and the quarterbacks and receivers get into a rhythm, this will all probably change. At least a little bit.

Good signs and bad signs. They are all there in full bloom, being picked apart and obsessed over by diehard fans desperate for anything real to talk about - well, real in the context of football anyway - and the din from the millions of football nerds and aficionados all over the country will only grow louder and more obnoxious as the summer draws to a close. Soon, they will be playing the games for real, and soon, all this wild eyed hope will either bear fruit or give way to more bitter tears, and the Landon Cohens of the summer will likely be mostly forgotten, but we can still hope and wish and pray that come winter, they will be names that everyone will know. Vaya con dios, my fellow football freaks, and take a cold shower.

Golf Carts are Serious Business

So, apparently, according to Tom Kowalski, Bryant Johnson was injured last month in a freak golf cart accident.

I'll let that sink in for a minute. Okay. I saw this and just nodded like a zombie buffoon for a couple of seconds, completely unsurprised that this would happen to a Lion. I mean, this is the same franchise that saw one running back steal his replacement's underwear on his way out the door. Weird shit happens to this team, and so this is really not that big of a surprise.

Golf carts aren't something to fuck around with either. Once upon a time, I mildly sprained my wrist when I jumped out of a moving golf cart when the cart failed to slow down as it passed my golf ball. I still blame the driver for not slowing down, but this is what happens when you let someone else make important decisions such as who hits what golf ball first. It was a dumb thing to do, but fuck it, we are all dumb sometimes and we all do stupid things. But let's just say that it taught me a valuable lesson when it came to respecting the power of the mighty golf cart. Sure, those things are fun as fuck to screw around in, but you start diving off of them and well, shit's gonna hurt. I'm not sure what caused poor Bryant Johnson to end up tipping one of those beasts, but I will not speculate or judge him. We live in terrible times, ridiculous and strange, and there are times when you crash a golf cart, or jump out of one.

The only thing I can say about this incident for sure is that it makes me feel connected somehow to Bryant Johnson, and in this age of robotic, almost alien athletes, separated from the humble masses by a vast chasm of wealth and athletic ability, isn't that a heartwarming thing? I share something real with a member of the Detroit Lions and even if that thing is getting hurt in a freak golf cart accident, it means something to me, and it means that Bryant Johnson has become a favorite of mine without playing a down.