Well, At Least They Won

The putrescence of my predictions has frozen him in perpetual pain. ALLITERATION~

I am just making myself look like an ass with these predictions, but I don't mind occasionally looking like an ass, especially when my team finally wins a game. I suppose I could be worried that it somehow kills my credibility, but only a great fool would think that he has any credibility at all when he writes about football on the internet, and only a greater fool would think he has any credibility when the stuff he writes includes frequent references to Hitler, werewolves, vampire apes and other assorted nonsense. I am just a dude, and let's see how terribly wrong this particular dude was this week.

PREDICTION #1

WHAT I SAID: Kevin Smith rushes for 80 hard earned yards on a lot of carries and ends up right around 100 total yards for the game. He'll also score a touchdown.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Smith ran for 101 yards on 16 carries and added 3 catches for 18 yards before leaving the game with an injured shoulder in the second half. He also failed to score. Well, okay. He did end up with around 100 total yards, finishing with 119, but the rest of this shit was just all wrong. I pictured a grinding sort of game where Smith would pick up three yards a carry, sort of like last week. Instead, he piled up over six yards a carry and would have probably ended up around the 150 yard mark in rushing if he wouldn't have been injured. When it comes to being wrong, these are the sort of things I like to be wrong on. It's certainly a change, to watch my guys do better than I expected, and so I will not bitch about this one.

PREDICTION #2

WHAT I SAID: Clinton Portis rushes for around 100 fairly nondescript yards. He never makes a really big play and the Lions do just enough to keep him from making a real difference.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Well, 12 carries for 42 yards is sort of like 100, right? RIGHT? No? Okay, fine. Portis was a complete non-factor, getting shut down by Detroit's surprisingly strong run defense. In the first half, Portis got his ass kicked and most of those 42 yards came in the second half, with the Redskins already trailing. He never did make a big play and he didn't make a difference, so to hell with it, I am invoking THE SPIRIT OF THE PREDICTION clause which states that even when I am wrong, I am right.

PREDICTION #3

WHAT I SAID: Matthew Stafford makes fewer mistakes this game and adds in one big play. The final result is a modest game, completing somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of his passes, which isn't really all that good, but it's better than nothing. He throws for 175 yards or so and a touchdown. He also throws an interception, but just the one. Progress!

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Okay, so the final numbers were a little off, but I feel like, again, I kind of got this one right. Stafford finished 21-36 for 241 yards and 1 touchdown with 0 interceptions. Stafford did indeed make fewer mistakes this week, and his completion percentage was 58.3, which falls in line with my prediction. He ended up throwing for a little more yardage, but I'm not about to bitch about that. Okay, so here is where I am going to whine and you will be disgusted with me. I didn't want to predict an interception, but I felt like I had to given the nature of the first couple of games and because I had become convinced that this would be an ugly game. So, I never really thought that he would throw an interception. Okay? OKAY? Yeah, I am weaseling my way out of this one. I don't care. I was right, damn it! Give this to me. COME ON. LOOK INTO YOUR HEARTS.

PREDICTION #4

WHAT I SAID: Chris Cooley catches 10 passes for 110 yards and is the single biggest headache the Lions face all day.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Well, uh, shit. Cooley caught 3 measly passes for 38 yards and was mostly invisible all day. This one was a big fat bomb. I can't even make some sort of bullshit argument like I got the spirit of the pick right or try to weasel my way out of it by saying I didn't really mean it. I meant this one and I was horribly wrong. Again, I'm glad that I was, but still, it's never fun to be made to look like a ridiculous ass. I know that is weird seeing as how I spend so much time here making myself look like a ridiculous ass, but I am a complicated man, okay? Anyway, in my defense, the Lions always seem to get burned by a tight end and when I made this prediction I kept thinking back to the preseason game where Dallas Clark unleashed his inner Ike Turner on the Lions' Tina. Plus, I have Chris Cooley in one of my fantasy football leagues and if he had a big day, at least it would help me there. Yes, I know that it is shameful that I made a prediction based on fantasy football, especially when it came at the expense of the team that I root for in real life, and yes, I know I just admitted for everyone to see that I am in multiple leagues. I should just stop talking right now, but that dignity train pulled away from the station loooong ago. I am a Lions fan after all. Besides, I won this week in that league anyway, so I'm glad Chris Cooley didn't do shit. SO THERE. I have no idea what I am even blathering on about or why I got so indignant there. I am just confused, and so let's move on before this gets really sad.

PREDICTION #5

WHAT I SAID: St. Calvin ends up north of 100 yards for the first time this season and scores a touchdown on a huge play at some point. He then ascends to heaven where he spends the rest of the week chilling with angels before coming back to work next weekend.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Okay, look, Calvin Johnson is going to break out one of these weeks. He just is. We all know it. So you can't really blame me for picking this to happen every week. Of course, this week, like the first two, I was wrong. St. Calvin caught 5 passes for a decidedly un-saint like 49 yards. He also added 1 rush for 9 yards. But, like last week, St. Calvin had a big play taken away when he was called for offensive pass interference on a deep bomb that he caught. Did he push off of the defender? Okay, sure, maybe a little. But he is a saint and how dare those filthy refs dishonor such a glorious man? If the play would have stood, it would have pushed St. Calvin to around the 100 yard mark and so to hell with everyone, I am calling this one a win. What's that? I can't do that? I don't care. The Lions won and I am delirious. Leave me alone. Also, I don't recall seeing St. Calvin after the game so I will assume that he did indeed ascend to heaven and has chilled with angels ever since.

Random Gibberish

Lost in the euphoria of the Lions victory on Sunday were lots of little things that were either sublime or profoundly stupid, worthy of praise or ripe to be mocked.

PLEASANT SURPRISE

When the Lizard King aka the Python King aka Cinnabon aka Ernie Sims' traitorous shoulder sold him out to the British(I'm not sure what it means either. I think there's a Benedict Arnold reference in there somewhere.), I was devastated. It's no secret that along with St. Calvin, my man with the monkey is one of the few players that I pretty much unconditionally revere. I have been excited as all hell to see him run wild in Gunther Cunningham's defense and while thus far he hasn't done a whole hell of a lot, I still hold out hope that he will break through and maul ball carriers, perhaps with secret moves picked up from his monkey. And so it sucked that he wasn't going to play in the game against the Redskins. So why is this labeled Pleasant Surprise?(By the way, now that I look at that, it sounds vaguely like a feminine hygiene product. What is the surprise? I don't know, but apparently it's pleasant. I am dangerously close to speculating, which I am afraid would horrify and offend even my most hardened readers. And by hardened, I mean . . . ah, forget it.) Anyway, this is labeled Pleasant Surprise because his replacement, DeAndre Levy looked pretty damn good.

When Levy was drafted in the third round, no one liked the pick. I pretty much shit on it, figuring that the Lions needed a middle linebacker, not some stiff who had only played the outside in college. But it turns out that, uh, I may have been mistaken. Levy looked like a playmaker against the Redskins, particularly coming up big on Washington's 4th and goal on their first possession, which completely swung the momentum of the game in the Lions favor, creating a wave that they rode all the way until halftime. Now the question becomes what do the Lions do when Sims comes back? I don't even want to think about the possibility of King Ernie being dethroned. This is supposed to be a happy thing, and it is threatening to make me sad and so we will move on.

PLEASANT SURPRISE PART DOS

Everyone knows about St. Calvin by now. He's an otherwordly animal. You can't look right at him without burning out your retinas. If you make eye contact with him your face will melt like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Unfortunately, because everyone knows this, opponent's do everything they can short of sticking a dude with a sniper rifle in the rafters to stop him. So it was imperative that the Lions find a secondary receiver, someone who they can go to when the opposition decides to attempt to chain the unchainable Calvin Johnson, and someone who can draw a little attention of his own so that St. Calvin can run free. Unfortunately, up until the game against the Redskins that hadn't happened. Enter Bryant Johnson.

Bryant Johnson, or Johnson the Lesser as he is known around here, was himself a former first round pick. Unfortunately, he was never more than the third receiver in Arizona, which isn't bad considering the presence of Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald, but still is not exactly what you expect out of a former first round pick. Thankfully, against the Redskins, Johnson the Lesser did his job and did it well, making a handful of tough catches and serving in many instances as Matthew Stafford's go to guy. His final numbers weren't overly impressive, only 4 catches for 73 yards, but that averages out to over 18 yards per catch, and it seemed like all of them were important catches, coming when the Lions needed them the most. And, of course, not included in those numbers is the deep ball late in the fourth quarter where BJ(giggle)drew a critical pass interference penalty, setting the Lions up on the doorstep for their final touchdown, which proved to be the game winner. Well done, Bryant Johnson. Well done.

A STRANGE FEELING

It is weird to feel sorry for a fan of another team. I am so used to getting a pat on the back and a sad "There, there" from opposing fans that I'm not sure how to process it when I feel bad for another fan. But during the game against the Redskins, I couldn't help but think of poor Raven Mack. I knew that this shit was killing my boy. I mean, I didn't feel bad enough that I actually wanted his shitheads to, you know, win or anything. But still, you know? Anyway, throughout the game I just kept remembering everything he has written about both Dan Snyder and Jim Zorn, and let me tell you dudes, Raven Mack knows what he is talking about. That shit is straight up depressing. It was so bad that I wonder if the Redskins management sent a bunch of volunteers or something into the locker room just before the game ended to make sure there were no sharp objects lying around. They probably had to confiscate Zorn's shoelaces, or take his belt away like my man Ty tweeted on Sunday. Just a terrible situation, awful really, and I feel for Raven Mack. And coming from me, you know that shit means something.

BITCHING AND MOANING

Okay, okay, so it isn't all candy and blowjobs. The Lions won, but that doesn't mean there weren't some things that pissed me off during the game. In particular, the Lions clock management at the ends of both halves bothered me. In the first, they clearly had enough time to comfortably make their way down the field and get a touchdown to make it 17-0. But, it was obvious almost from the beginning of the drive that they were playing for a field goal. They let the clock wind down and didn't seem in any sort of particular hurry to get down the field. All of that culminated in them having only one real shot at the end zone, a shot that was taken in the form of a little swing pass that didn't go anywhere. It was a glaring example of a team playing to minimize mistakes instead of playing to maximize opportunities, and it all harkened back to the ranting and raving I did last week about them not allowing Stafford to actually play. Look, I know he's young and I know he's made some mistakes so far, but the Lions simply aren't talented enough to tighten up like that during those types of drives. They have to take advantage of all the opportunities they get. They can't hope to play conservatively and simply out execute the opponent like they are Michigan or Ohio St. playing against Bumfuck University in the 1970's. If they keep doing that, it will cost them. (By the way, Bumfuck University is a fine school, renowned for it's Political Science Department. They simply have an unfortunate name. But I guess that's what happens when you are founded by George Bumfuck.)

Anyway, that is all a minor quibble when compared to their strategy at the end of the game, which was to retreat into a prevent, up by 12 with more than five minutes left to play. Of course, predictably, the Redskins marched right down the field and scored in only a couple of minutes, forcing the Lions to try to kill the clock with A.) their starting running back out for the remainder of the game, B.)the Redskins having all three of their timeouts, and C.)the two minute warning effectively acting as a fourth timeout. Admirably, they did try one pass play, which got them a first down and allowed them to burn some more time, but they then completely retreated into a shell, getting stuffed quickly and forcing them to hand the ball back to Washington with plenty of time still on the clock.

Okay, again, I can understand the desire to prevent big plays from happening, but by going to the prevent so early, they took the game out of their own hands. Rather than winning the game, they put the ball quite literally in the hands of Jason Campbell and the Redskins and gave them the opportunity to win it. I hate hate HATE when coaches do this. I used to watch Lloyd Carr do this shit all the time at Michigan and it drove me nuts. It also caused me to watch Michigan lose several games just like this one, where they had a two score lead in the fourth quarter, only to tighten up and blow it.

I have liked a lot of what Jim Schwartz has done so far. Like everyone, I am a big fan. But the tendency to be too conservative has bugged me more and more as the season has worn on. Perhaps this is on the coordinators more than Schwartz. Fine. Regardless, I am a little worried about this.

But still, we won, which is something that hasn't happened in a very, very long time and so I kind of feel like an ass for bitching about anything at all. It drove me nuts during the game, just like it drove me nuts last week when they didn't let Stafford do much of anything. But I will choose to believe that it will get better from here, that as Stafford matures and grows as a quarterback, so will the confidence of Jim Schwartz in his abilities, and this will all be a dead issue. Optimism is the word of the day. It just isn't blind, that's all.

Victory

Stand proud, stone Lion.

My first post on Armchair Linebacker is dated September 1, 2008. That is over one year ago. It was nine months before that long ago date that the Lions last won a game. So, yeah, it has been a long time. I have written over 100 absurd posts for this blog, weird, meandering things that have attempted to put into words what it means to be a Lions fan, and what it means to confront a culture of failure that exists on such a massive and ridiculous scale. This is the first time - ever - that I have gotten to write about the Detroit Lions, my favorite football team, winning a game.

Some players were driven to tears. Other players couldn't watch the final play. They, along with every Lions fan on the planet, have had their hearts broken too many times and have been on the other side after every game for almost two years, watching the other team and its fans celebrate. After the game, Jim Schwartz was given a bath - not with Gatorade, not with Champagne, but with a simple bottle of water. It was a fitting celebration for one lowly victory, and in some ways maybe it points out the perversity of the excitement over beating a team that, much to Raven Mack's dismay, appears to be a piece of shit. But the simple fact that they finally had something, anything, to celebrate after all this time is enough. It doesn't matter what it was, it doesn't matter that it was only against a shitty Redskins team, it was something real, and that's something that none of us - fans, players, coaches, ball boys, anyone having any sort of interest in the Lions - have had in a very, very long time.

After the tiny water bottle shower in the locker room, Schwartz sent his players out to celebrate with the fans. It was a nice gesture, and it is something that will stay with all of those fans for the rest of their lives. They finally won, and they celebrated with the same bunch of rich assholes who they have bitched about for so long. The Lions won and for one day and night at least, everything was okay, the fans loved the hell out of the players and the players loved the shit out of the fans. This team has let us down over and over and over again, in ways that other fans don't understand, can't understand, but fuck it, our team won this week.

As the game ended, every Lions fan had the same thought running through their head. Even with a 19-7 lead and five minutes left on the clock, we wondered how - not if, but how - they were going to blow it this time. And they almost did. There are things to bitch about here, decisions to criticize, coaches to complain about. But this is not the time for that shit. That can all come later, and really, for the first time in a long time, when we do bitch about these things, they will be the same things that every other fan gets to bitch about, real problems, human problems, not problems that exist on some absurd plane of the unreal, which, sadly, is all we have known as Lions fans for far too long.

When that clock finally showed zero and Ladell Betts was tackled harmlessly to the turf and everyone began to celebrate, it was tough to understand what it was I felt. Was it relief? I suppose. Happiness? Yeah, I guess so. But it was a happiness infused with terrible sadness, with the pain that comes from having been beaten up over and over and over again by this team. It was the happiness of a man reaching the end of the road after a journey down a path made of broken glass and snakes. It was the relief of a man when he finally plops down on his bed after having fire walked through hell. It's a tough feeling to describe. Perhaps it's akin to a soldier who has somehow survived the longest and ugliest battle in a terrible war. He's relieved and happy to have finally made it through, to find himself standing on the other side. But he still knows he has to fight again tomorrow and that battle will be hard and he will probably see some more of his friends killed and it's possible that he'll get his guts blown out too. But he also knows that it will never be as hard as what he just went through. It will never be that bad again, and so no matter what happens, he believes, deep down in his heart, that it will all be alright.

Okay, so that might be a tad melodramatic, and possibly even a little offensive, but you know what you're getting from me by now. Unless, of course, this is your first visit to this fucked up corner of the world, in which case, well, it is usually much, much worse. I haven't even blathered on about Hitler or werewolves or vampire apes or anything like that.

It's tough to know how to describe what this is like for me, what this like for all Lions fans. It's tough to find the right words, and I am probably failing miserably, but part of that is because the words don't really exist. You see, nothing like this has ever really happened before. This is all new. Sure, the Bucs had a longer losing streak, but that was when they were an expansion team. Their fans hadn't suffered for their whole miserable lives as fans of that team, or had their hearts ripped out over and over again by them from the time they were children. They saw failure, watched it and sort of understood it, but they didn't know failure. Not like this, not like us. No one has. This was unprecedented, an established football team bottoming out like this, losing like this. It was horrible and bizarre, strange and terrible, and it just never ended. Well, on Sunday afternoon, against the Redskins, it finally did.

It's not all sunshine and roses now. Not by any means. As happy as I was when that game ended, and as happy as I was to see the joy and the relief on the players faces, the camera cut to the Ford family celebrating in their luxury box, and it seemed like a scene from Arrested Development. Finally, the Bluth family had something to celebrate, but tomorrow, Buster will just get his hand eaten, GOB will be kicked out the magician's guild and Tobias will end up in a leather bar doing scenes from Cabaret. It's the nature of the beast. One victory, one moment of happiness, does not erase almost a half a century of terrible failure. It was a bittersweet moment watching them celebrate. On the one hand, you could feel for them. They were happy, genuinely so, and during a time when it seems like the world they both created and live right in the middle of seems to be in a constant state of decay and collapse, you couldn't begrudge them that happiness. On the other hand, they have beaten the shit out of this franchise and the fans for so long that it's tough to see them in any context and not feel at least a sliver of disgust. It's only human. Fans hate their owners. This is an almost universal truth. Sure, there are obvious exceptions, the Mike Ilitch's of the world for example, but for the most part fans see their owners as bumbling fools, meddling asses who just get in the way. There are a couple of dudes on this blog who, uh, feel pretty strongly about this in regards to their own owners. But at least there is usually a period of optimism when it comes to those owners. Al Davis used to be a genius before he became a vampire. Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys and won a handful of Super Bowls. Daniel Snyder . . . well, Daniel Snyder is rich and likes to throw around money so there is always the chance that, like Jones, he could get lucky. But the Fords? Well, shit, maybe there was a sense of optimism surrounding their ownership back in the 1870s or whenever the fuck it was they bought the soul of Detroit football. But it hasn't been there during the entirety of my life. I know that much. And so it's always hard to take complete joy when something does go right.

I don't know. Maybe that last paragraph was completely unnecessary, an ugly coda to a story of redemption and hard won happiness. But it is also reality and sometimes reality is ugly and it is brutal and it is cold and it is mean. It's the reality that we live inside of as Lions fans. I have hope that tomorrow's reality will be different, and Sunday's game was the first heartbeat for this new life that we so desperately want to have as Lions fans. Yesterday is brutal and terrible. It is also, finally, finished. We don't know for sure what the future will bring. We might be fools, stupid and broken, beaten and dumb, to believe that the future will be better. I mean, we haven't been given a lot of reasons to believe. But hope is all we have had to cling to, all we have had to lead us through this terrible and monstrous wilderness. The monsters are still there, they still haunt us, still come into our camp and drag away the innocent and the young. But on Sunday, we grabbed one of those biggest monsters by the throat and we throttled the shit out of him. Now, the other monsters don't seem so scary. It's a long road out of this valley of nightmares and tears, but with that superbeast of a monster out of the way, we can finally start to move forward. It's a new day. Smile. We won.

FINALLY

A little hyperbolic? Maybe, but who cares?

More later.

Idiot Hope and Savage Desperation

Yup.

Since 2002, the Detroit Lions are 31-99. I should just stop writing now, post this and go play in traffic for a while, but I have come this far and I will see this bitter journey across the desert of despair through until the (likely) bitter end.

Loss number 100 in this apocalyptic stretch will come, and it will come soon, and hopefully once it comes we can just close the door on this awful chapter and finally move on. The pieces are being put into place for that to happen and the demons which made that number a reality have mostly been exorcized. But right now we're kind of stuck in a strange place. We're ready to move forward, ready to celebrate the rebirth of Lions football after years of decay, but we just can't seem to get there.

I was on Yahoo's sports page, and on my page I have it set up so that there is a little capsule for each of my favorite teams in each sport. If there are any articles written about the Lions, they will show up in this capsule so that I know they are there without having to hunt for them. A few days ago, in my Lions capsule, there was a new article. It was just a kind of odds and ends, news and notes kind of article with no specific focus that sort of bounced around the league. I knew the Lions would be mentioned somewhere in the article by virtue of the article's appearance in my Lions capsule and so I patiently read until I saw the one time the Lions name appeared. It was in the power rankings, and of course, we were dead last. I kind of shook my head and told myself that I should have known better. I mean, of course the only mention the Lions would get would be one that would be in reference to their supreme futility. I kept reading, though, and was surprised to find at the end one last little piece that had relevance to Lions fans. What was it? An update on Matthew Stafford's progress? A gushing report on the physical wonder that is St. Calvin? Nope. It was a little note reminding everyone that Monte Clark, the Lions former coach, was dead.

That about sums it up, doesn't it? As much as we want to escape the past and start embracing the future, every time we open an article, it is all failure and dead coaches. The depressing reality that we have to face every game and every season is that when we read these articles, this is all we will find. There's simply nothing else to write about. Failure and dead people. The Detroit Lions.

And that's what makes the desperation to win and win now even more palpable. Every week that goes by that the Lions don't win even one measly game, more of us descend into brute savagery and begin grunting and hurling abuse at one another, cannibalizing one another in our own madness. Say you are hopeful and someone calls you a dumb motherfucker and questions whether or not you are a true fan. Say there is no hope and you are decried as a heretic and possibly a witch and whether or not you are a true fan is again brought into question. All that's left is a mushy middle full of misery and doubt, of vague hopefulness that never quite blooms. Instead misery comes flowing back down like a terrible ill wind from some shit pile over the hill and smothers that tiny bud of hope right the fuck out. Every week it gets tougher to believe that better times are ahead, and every week it's hard to not feel like a damn fool for cheering on these shitbirds. I mean, how many times can you watch the retarded kid fall of the bike and crack his head open before you have to shield your eyes? I mean, if you are an asshole you could point and laugh, and I suppose I have done plenty of that, but after a while even the thickest layer of cynicism isn't strong enough armor for warding off the misery and sadness of seeing that poor son of a bitch topple over and cry again and again and again.

And yet, the dumb and the faithful continue to pick that retard up, put him back on the bike and root for him to make it to the end of the street. Last year was an absurd year, terrible and ridiculous and in some ways it was easy to just stand back, hold my nose and point out the rank incompetence of everyone involved. There was no hope, no thought that they could turn it around and it was easy to just shit all over everything and fiddle my ass off while Rome burned. But then hope somehow crept into the equation and now it all feels that much more desperate, that much sadder. You can be a man stranded in the desert and know that you are going to die. You can accept that. You can understand that you will never get out and that some Bedouin will find you desiccated and alone, broken and ruined by something larger than you. But then there are those times when you're alone in that desert, dying and afraid and you see those palm trees in the distance, some green shrubbery, maybe some water. It's a goal, something to believe in. And so you work and you scratch and you claw and you allow yourself to believe that it's not over, that, in the end, you might make it after all. You can walk for hours, for days, and never reach that wonderland. And when you collapse in the sand, unable to move even an inch closer to what might be salvation or what could just be a terrible mirage conjured up by a broken brain incapable of accepting grim reality any longer, it's a terrible death, cruel and ugly. Up until that moment when your brain shuts down for good and melts under the terrible sun, you still hope, you still believe, you still want.

So why keep going? Because it's human nature. Because, in the end, you think that the world is good and right and fair, and that you will make it because of this. And it's because it's all you know, because you've been taught to move forward from the moment you first crawled off your belly and scooted a couple of inches across the floor.

I have been a fan of the Detroit Lions all my life. It's all I know. I have no choice in the matter. It is cruel and usually terrible. I could tell myself that I don't care anymore, but even if I just fuck it, threw my hands up and walked away, it wouldn't matter. One day I would be watching TV or reading the newspaper or whatever and I would come across the score from one of their games or I would see a highlight and if they lost I would feel disappointed. And if they won, I have a feeling I would find myself smiling. It's there and it's not going anywhere. Besides, that pesky motherfucker named hope keeps me in line, keeps me from coming to terms with the harsh reality of the situation. I am terrified that if I turned away now that the sweet rewards of the nirvana that my dumb optimistic self can't help but believe in would be lost for me. I believe because I am an idiot, and I believe because somewhere down deep, I believe that the day will come when we will all be smiling and laughing and high fiving and cheering our dumb drunk asses off for our Godzilla of a team. I can't help myself.

This weekend, the Lions play the Washington Redskins. Last weekend, I picked the Lions to upset the Vikings and ended up looking like a fool. And I did so because I couldn't help talking myself into a victory. My mind has become deluded and warped by the horrors of the last seven years, by the numbers 31-99, and by the parade of jackasses and simpletons who have called the shots over that span of time. It wants to win, it needs to win, and if it has to start inventing oases to keep itself going, then BY GOD that is what it is going to do.

Even while the Lions were losing to the Vikings, the score on the top of the screen for the Redskins game would pop up. I noticed that they were barely beating the lowly ass Rams - this year's Lions. Well, that is, unless the Lions are this year's Lions but that is too terrible a thought and makes me want to go bounding into the night like some degenerate werewolf, stealing chickens and eating babies. Or maybe it's stealing babies and eating chickens. I don't know. I am a vegetarian. Either version is odious to me. Anyway, as soon as I saw that, and then remembered that the Lions were playing the Redskins this week, I began to believe that we could take those fuckers. And then, I remembered Raven talking shit on his ass of a team, and I began to think YEAH THIS SHIT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. And then Raven flat out told me we had a good shot, and even though that is his own disillusionment with his shitbirds coming through, I don't care and I am running with that motherfucker.

The Lions defense has had one terrible game so far against a team that looks like it could put up 50 points on the '85 Bears, and they have had one pretty decent game against a team with the best running back in football and a hall of fame quarterback. Sure, that running back only carried the ball 15 times but I will attribute that to the Lions being able to contain him. And okay, that hall of fame quarterback might be 163 years old and be made out of dust and GRIT and smiles, but fuck it, he is still a hall of famer and I am grasping at whatever straws I can here.

Meanwhile, the Redskins offense is centered around Clinton Portis, who looks like he can see the glue factory looming on the horizon. If the Lions can contain him and force Jason Campbell to run wild on them, I think we've got a pretty decent shot of keeping them from running away with this thing. Santana Moss might break loose for a deep one, and Chris Cooley will probably drive us nuts because we can't ever seem to stop a decent tight end, but Jason Campbell is, well, Jason Campbell and if he has to win the game for his team then that shit looks pretty promising for us.

That means that our offense has to take care of business. Unfortunately, they have been somewhere between a hangover shit and a wet fart in terms of their overall rankness and so I'm not expecting big things. It looks like the coaches are determined to play it safe with Matthew Stafford, which I have, uh, expressed my disappointment in. Meanwhile, Kevin Smith was terrible against New Orleans and actually pretty decent against the Williams Wall and the Vikings, so who knows what he will do? St. Calvin will make a few plays because that's what he does, and if they can get him the ball deep at least once, that could spell the difference. This will be an ugly game, full of incompetence and gross buffoonery, and in the end it might come down to who has the best weapon, who has the guy who can rise above the stench of it all and make a big play. I think Calvin Johnson is the best player on the field, and in the end, that's why I think the Lions will finally win a fucking game.

FIVE PREDICTIONS

1. Kevin Smith rushes for 80 hard earned yards on a lot of carries and ends up right around 100 total yards for the game. He'll also score a touchdown.

2. Clinton Portis rushes for around 100 fairly nondescript yards. He never makes a really big play and the Lions do just enough to keep him from making a real difference.

3. Matthew Stafford makes fewer mistakes this game and adds in one big play. The final result is a modest game, completing somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of his passes, which isn't really all that good, but it's better than nothing. He throws for 175 yards or so and a touchdown. He also throws an interception, but just the one. Progress!

4. Chris Cooley catches 10 passes for 110 yards and is the single biggest headache the Lions face all day.

5. St. Calvin ends up north of 100 yards for the first time this season and scores a touchdown on a huge play at some point. He then ascends to heaven where he spends the rest of the week chilling with angels before coming back to work next weekend.

Predicted Final Score: Lions 17, Redskins 14.

Well, This Was Just Sad

I wonder if this dude ever saw visions of Matt Millen. I assume he would have just chalked them up to severe migraines and then drank until he forgot the disturbing images which had just haunted his weird ass brain. Who knows? Someone get the History Channel on this, or perhaps Ken Burns.

Well, as predictions go, these certainly were, well, some predictions, I suppose. The one key lesson that we can learn from all of this is that I am an idiot and not to be trusted when it comes to these sorts of things, especially when they come in the midst of a full on desperation fever dream or whatever the hell it was that caused me to hallucinate and spew out these idiot predictions. As always, I blame the Lions and the years of torment that go along with being a fan of that shameful team. You would think that I would learn, but, well, here we are and here we go.

Prediction #1

What I Said: Kevin Smith is largely ineffective running the ball. He still manages to gain around 100 yards total thanks to screen passes and he scores a touchdown.

What Actually Happened: Miraculously, Smith somehow managed to run the ball against the Williams Wall better than just about anyone has over the last few seasons. He carried the ball 24 times for 83 yards and added 2 catches for 10 yards. He also failed to score and had a costly fumble which led to a Vikings touchdown immediately after. So, I pretty much bombed on this one. Smith was fairly effective running the ball, which is kind of amazing given that he managed 20 yards last week and was going up against the top rushing defense in all the land this week. Maybe Manny Ramirez kicked ass at left guard in place of Daniel Loper. I don't know. What I do know is that the only part of this terrible prediction that I got even nearly right was the yardage. I mean, 93 is close enough to 100. We'll forget all about the part where I said he would get most of that on screen passes and move on, okay?

Prediction #2

What I Said: Adrian Peterson runs for 150 yards and a touchdown. He also fumbles once.

What Actually Happened: Peterson ran for 92 yards on only 15 carries and scored a touchdown. He also fumbled once. Okay, so I was a little off on the yardage. But, man, I feel like I kind of called this one. The Lions mostly kept Peterson in check, stuffing him up the middle all game long. He managed to break a few to the outside on bounce outs thanks to shitty containment and poor tackling, but he did lose a fumble, which was a costly one near the beginning of the game. And, yeah, he did score a touchdown, so, fuck it, break out the party hats and the booze, it's candy and blowjobs for everyone! Okay, maybe not, but as a Lions fan I get so little, let me bask in kind of getting a stupid little prediction half right.

Prediction #3

What I Said: Matthew Stafford calms down and throws for two touchdowns, around 300 yards and one interception.

What Actually Happened: Okay, put away the party hats. Keep the booze though. So, uh, I kind of fucked this one up, yeah? Stafford threw for 152 yards along with a touchdown and 2 interceptions. And, let's be honest here, he had to throw the shit out of the ball after the game was basically over just to get above 100 yards. To be fair, though, I still put a lot of the blame for this fiasco on the coaches for their game plan. See my post immediately following the game for more detailed ranting and raving.

Prediction #4

What I Said: Brett Favre continues to struggle, but still manages around 200 yards thanks to a couple of big plays, throws two touchdowns and also two interceptions.

What Actually Happened: Jesus. This is just getting stupid now. (Yeah, yeah, I can almost hear you saying to yourself "Now?" Why must you say such things? Are you trying to hurt me?) Anyway, Favre went 23-27 for 155 yards, 2 touchdowns and 0 interceptions. WELL I GOT THE NUMBER OF TOUCHDOWNS RIGHT, DIDN'T I??? Ahem, sorry. This was hilariously wrong on just about every count. Favre played well and extremely efficiently. He never had one big play but he didn't really make any mistakes either. He just dinked his way down the field and the Lions sat there and missed tackles after little four yard hitches and we all wept and cast greedy eyes towards the spot under the sink where the drain cleaner sits. A horrible thing, just horrible.
Prediction #5

What I Said: Calvin Johnson has around 150 yards receiving and a touchdown. After the game Brad Childress kneels before him and kisses his hand, begging forgiveness for daring to oppose his magnificence.

What Actually Happened: I laughed, I cried, and then I contemplated joining a traveling circus. Oh, you mean in the game? Well, CJ caught 5 passes for 51 yards and a touchdown. So, I was off by just a hair, a hair being the accepted equivalent of a hundred yards. St. Calvin did score a touchdown though, and should have had closer to 100 yards if that bullshit illegal cut block call wasn't made on that one long pass where he and Matt Stafford both looked like genius giants in the land of the retarded midgets.(You don't know how dangerously close you were to being subjected just now to a whole weird thing with Smurfs and that degenerate Gargamel. Just be thankful I thought better of it and let's move on.) It was a less than saint like game from CJ, but again, this was not his fault. The coaches apparently felt it appropriate to never throw the ball deep and to send Calvin on intermediate routes for the majority of the game. Look, I understand the need to get the ball into his hands as often as possible, and it's easier to do that the closer he is to the quarterback. But, you've got a quarterback with a bazooka for an arm and an 8 foot tall receiver who runs a 2.6 40 and once choked out Superman at a house party when Superman got drunk and pissed in the pool. Not cool, Superman. Not cool. Anyway, maybe it would be a good idea to try to throw it to that guy deep at least once. It's just a thought. Revolutionary, I know, but the forward pass is indeed a viable weapon these days. It's true. As for the last part of the prediction, I can't say for sure whether or not Brad Childress genuflected in front of St. Calvin after the game was over, but we will assume that this happened because we are optimists and because, really, how could he not?

Random Gibberish

This poor son of a bitch has clearly been infected with Lions Disease

I am not entirely sure what this post is about or if it has a point, or if I will do it as a fairly regular thing, but to hell with all that, there were a few things in the Lions game against the Vikings that I didn't mention that I kind of wanted to that didn't really fit into whatever idiotic narrative I was trying to spin in my initial post about the game, and so here we go - as soon as I end this ridiculous run on sentence.

FAVORITE SUBPLOT

Last season, when the Lions and Vikings met, Gosder Cherilus infamously tried to take out Jared Allen's knees, leading Allen to jump up and chase after Cherilus like an irate vampire ape, which I have recounted several times on this blog. So, naturally, I laughed when Cherilus snuck up on Allen, who was battling in a pile, and dragged him out of there, and then flopped on his ass when one of Allen's teammates came to his defense and shoved Gosder. Cherilus drew a fifteen yard penalty which, if I recall, set the Lions up for their only touchdown of the game. Good show, Gosder. Good show. I imagine that Jared Allen has a picture of Cherilus taped up in his locker and he just stares at it before and after every practice. The next time these two teams meet, Allen might just charge out of the tunnel and start wailing on Gosder.

HE'S JUST A SMILIN' FOOL

Hey, did you hear that Brett Favre just loves to play football? He's just out there havin' fun, smilin', laughin', dreamin' about Wranglers and vicodin. I think it was in the second quarter before the announcers broke down and began gushing about Favre, tossing out all those clichés that used to make John Madden need to change his panties. In a sense, I admire their restraint. I mean, you know it had to be hard for them not to start speaking in tongues and genuflecting as soon as he took the field. On the other hand, perhaps their Favrelust was sated by the bizarre pre-game clip of Favre, wearing a microphone, assing around with his teammates, who all seemed vaguely uncomfortable with Favre's vaguely homoerotic playfulness. The highlight was Favre slapping his teammates repeatedly on the ass. These weren't little love taps either. No, these were some hard slaps, real stinging, punishing kinds of smacks. It was all very, very weird.

BEST MOMENT

This game didn't have a lot of memorably good moments for the Lions. The one that stands out the most was Calvin Johnson taking a pass and then turning it up field, almost breaking away completely before being hauled down after a long gain. It was quintessential St. Calvin, displaying his terrific hands, his ridiculous speed and his phenomenal power. He's the complete package. He can do anything he wants and when he gets the ball with just a little bit of room he can destroy you. Of course, the play was called back because of a bullshit illegal cut block call, but CJ is a Detroit Lion, and, well, these things happen.

WORST MOMENT

There was a moment late in the game when my man Ernie Sims appeared to be hurt. It was terrible. The poor dude was writhing around on the sideline. It didn't look good and I began to prepare myself for a season sans the Lizard King, but Sims eventually walked off the field under his own power and everything seems to be okay. I am sure that he just went home and got a deep tissue massage from his monkey or something.

WHO HAS THE MARQUAND MANUEL VOODOO DOLL?

Seriously. Come on. Manuel limped off the field with the help of the trainers after injuring his knee early in the game. So I was surprised to see him back out there not that much later. And then he went down again and had to be helped off the field by the trainers once more. I figured he must have rushed back into the game and that his knee was too fucked up and he restrained it or whatever. Then, as they were going to commercial, you could hear one of the trainers say "It's his other knee." Come on. I mean, that's just ridiculous, right? The poor guy survives a scary twist of the knee, or whatever the hell happened to him the first time, only to have the same thing happen to the other knee. I was even more surprised when he was back in the game AGAIN. He either has the worst luck or the best luck. I'm not sure which. He is a Lion, so probably the worst.

Hope is a Good Thing. It is Also Cruel.

You and me both, brother.

They tried. For a while, they actually seemed like a different football team. They ran the ball pretty well, they were incredibly aggressive on defense and they weren't making mistakes. And it was enough. They were actually going to pull this off, everyone would be excited, change had finally come, and . . . no.

This game began with me feeling improbably optimistic. I had no real reason to. It was simply the irrational exuberance of a fan who clings to hope like a life raft because he has spent so much time drowning in the bitter sea of failure. And then, as the first half wore on, that irrational optimism began to give way to cautious belief. Even though I was hopeful, even though I predicted victory in my last post, a large part of me - the rational and reasonably intelligent side - knew that the odds were long, that there were simply too many factors, too many match ups, working against us. But then Kevin Smith slashed through the Williams Wall, St. Calvin streaked with the ball for a couple of first downs and the defense decided to play like a bunch of vampire apes on PCP.

And it was enough. For a while anyway. It's a gigantic cliche to say that there is a thin line between success and failure. It's the sort of worthless shit sportswriters like to trot out in order to add bullshit drama to a shitty game(Whoa, I just used three different variants of the word shit in one sentence. I am so proud right now.) I hate saying stuff like that, and yet, in this game, it felt true. At least to an extent. The Lions lost, and the final score was sort of sad and sort of ugly, just like it has been for a long, long time. But what was different this time was that the Vikings never really exerted their will on the Lions, never pushed them around, never dominated them like we have seen far too many times. Every time Adrian Peterson tried to run it up the middle, he was stuffed. He is simply so good an athlete, so freakish a player, that sometimes when that happened he would just bounce it outside and break off a run that most players wouldn't have been able to make.

Kevin Smith ran the ball about as well as anyone has in the last couple of years against the Williams Wall. And as a whole, the Lions managed to push the line of scrimmage forward at a fairly consistent pace, using nothing but hard, grinding running and play action rollouts and screens. Both the offense and the defense looked up to the task for large stretches of the game. But then there were the other parts, the little glitches that blew up all that other bullshit, the fuckups and mistakes which made the brief flight of competence seem almost painful. It was there, we could see it, and then it wasn't, that was that, and we were sitting in front of our televisions doing whippets and punching kittens or sitting in the stands and weeping. It was awful, to be given a fleeting sense of hope and then to have to watch it be dashed on the rocks, and then find ourselves drifting off to that bitter and terrible sea once more, surrounded by the wreckage, accompanied by only the tears in our eyes and the anguish in our hearts.

Matthew Stafford wasn't any good. He sucked. It was a maddening thing, awful and frustrating to watch, and while much of the blame goes to him, some of it has to be placed on the coaches as well. A couple of years ago, I watched a true freshman quarterback at Michigan named Ryan Mallett. He was a super prospect, a five star Godzilla recruit, but he was still a freshman, set to back up Chad Henne. But then Henne got hurt and Mallett was forced to start. Lloyd Carr, Michigan's head coach at the time, was not exactly a proponent of the ride or die school of thought when it came to his freshman quarterback, and so Michigan played it conservatively, running Mike Hart out there over and over again. When the defense would stop Hart, then Carr would turn to Mallett, but never before. The problem with that strategy is that you're not exactly putting your quarterback in a position to succeed if you only let him try to make plays when you absolutely need him to and when everyone - including the defense - is expecting it. Predictably, Mallett struggled. It's a terrible mistake to make, and you see it all the time. All it does is actually make things more difficult for your young quarterback, rather than easier. The point to all this gibberish? Well, today I watched the Lions game against the Vikings and I suffered through some terrible flashbacks.

I agreed with the decision to start Matthew Stafford. About a billion words have been thrown around the internet on the subject, and so I won't rehash the argument in its entirety, but I thought - and I still do - that starting Stafford right away would help his development in the long run. And, perhaps more importantly for this season, he is no worse than Daunte Culpepper. It's not like Culpepper has made a career out of avoiding mistakes and winning games. Culpepper has been basically a non-entity for five seasons. That's a looooooooooong time in athlete years. And before that, even when he was at the height of his statistical bonanza, his teams were rarely better than mediocre. So I didn't see a whole lot of point in starting Culpepper over Stafford even if the sole goal was to win this season.

The thing is, though, is that I expected them to allow Stafford to actually, you know, play quarterback. He made a couple of critical mistakes against the Saints. That sucked. I know. But, we have to expect those kinds of things to happen. It's the only way that he'll get better, if he learns what he can and what he can't do during an actual game. I was okay with all of that, because at least they let him go out there and do it. This game, though? Well, I was seeing Ryan Mallett over and over and over again. It looked like they were terrified to actually let Stafford do anything. It was a very conservative game plan, too conservative, and when they finally took the handcuffs off, late in the game, it was too late. There was too much ground to make up, and by then the Vikings were sitting back, ready for it.

If Matthew Stafford is going to be the Lions starting quarterback, he needs to actually be a quarterback. That means letting him make his mistakes. Because in between those crippling mistakes, he will make some big plays for you too, big plays that were sorely needed today. Sure, those mistakes suck, and they are going to cost us some games. But once he makes them, he should be able to learn from them. You could already see it in this game. There was one play where he desperately wanted to make something happen. But it wasn't there and so he threw it away. Earlier in the game, on the same sort of play, he tried to fit the ball in there and was intercepted. That showed growth, and that's the only way he's really going to get better when it comes to those sorts of things.

But that is all one long digression - one in which Lions fans are becoming increasingly wrapped up, as maddening and horrible as it all is - and it takes away from the point of this whole ridiculous post, which is that the Lions were there, they had their chances, and they were either too afraid to take a shot, or they blew them entirely and handed the Vikings their own chances on a cliched silver platter. What's the difference between a cliched silver platter and a regular silver platter? I don't know, but I do know that I am sort of ashamed at having used the phrase "silver platter." I blame the Lions for robbing me of both creativity and spirit.

The Lions lost, again, and this one was kind of heartbreaking. But, we are used to heartbreak and sadness. You could see the cliched light at the end of the cliched tunnel, but then we were run over - not by a train, but by some dipshit on one of those little hand carts. When you are 0-a billion, you need to grab that motherfucker by the throat, toss him onto the tracks and start pumping your dumb ass on out of that tunnel. Instead, our team behaved like a bunch of Lennie Smalls, were run over and now have to live with the shame and indignity of that. The Vikings are a good team. That is true, and I suppose there is some solace to be found there, but it was the little things that killed us this time, the inability to tackle in space, the poor pursuit angles on the bounce outs by Peterson, the fumble by Smith deep in our own territory, the interceptions, and the too conservative game plan that never allowed Stafford a chance to make a big play when the Vikings weren't expecting it. We stuffed Adrian Peterson over and over again, and Brett Favre never made a big play down the field, but when the day was over, Peterson had 92 yards and a touchdown on only 15 carries, and Favre was 23-27 for 2 touchdowns. Incredibly, he only threw for 155 yards, and all of those numbers point to the Lions fucking up the little things, again and again. Oh well, at least Stafford didn't run out the back of his own end zone.

This post has been sponsored by the National Ennui Council. When life's got you down, you've got to stand up, and . . . eh, fuck it.

Senseless Hope

oh you poor bastard

The season just started and already everyone seems to be all freaked out, worried that we'll never win another game again. It's a sad thing to watch go down. It's understandable, given the fact that we've won, uh, let's see here, carry the one, multiply by x, some bullshit about a cosine, quadratic equation, and . . . ah, yes, 1 game in the last 25. Yeah. As bad and as monstrous as 0-16 is, and holy shit is it ever, 1-24 in some ways looks even more frightening. We've won one game in over a season and a half worth of football. And it's really easy to look at that and start to see 1-30, at which point we will all be scrambling, stepping on one another, screaming horrible things, to escape being drowned in a sea of vomit, shit and blood. It will be awful, the weak will perish, and the lucky(unlucky?)few who straggle from that terrible sea will stagger, haggard and naked, afraid and broken, towards higher ground and the promise of having to do it all again and again and again and again with each passing week. So, yeah, I understand the tendency to panic and begin hording the drain cleaner, the nooses and the razor blades.

But that is all a long way off and we cannot become degenerate animals because of our fear, screaming gibberish at one another like half retarded apes and cursing rookie quarterbacks because they had a bad game in their very first start. No, instead we have to hope. It's all we have, and I said it even in the midst of 0-16. We cannot assume ridiculous failure every week. Even if that does make us great fools. I recognize that picking the Lions to win this week makes me look like a jackass. But fuck it, they are my team, and while that by itself probably confirms that I am indeed a jackass, there are times when I just have to stop wallowing in the dumb muck, suck it up, close my eyes real tight, and believe. It's a stupid thing, completely nonsensical, but we are nonsensical beings, prone to stupid beliefs and outlandish ideas, and even though most of the time the other half of my brain laughs at me and tells me that these idiots are going to lose most of the time, occasionally the other half, the hopeful half, says "Self, you are going to be a dumb asshole today," and on those days, all I can do is nod my head, say okay and believe, if only for a few fleeting moments.

This week's game against the Vikings happens to be one of those fleeting moments. It's inexplicable, it's strange, and I don't quite understand why sometimes I become a hippy cheerleader and why other times I descend into ogreish gibberish, blathering on about rivers of blood and Hitler and all that, but the mind of a true fan is both stupid and complicated, worn down by years of failure, propped up by the very nature of fandom itself, which I suppose is inherently hopeful. It's all twisted and weird and trying to puzzle it all out would make even the best of us go mad.(Some would say I am already there, but fuck it, it is what it is.)

I think the Lions will beat the Vikings on Sunday. I know, I know, I am just setting myself up for epic disappointment and even more terrible sorrow. Adrian Peterson should be able to run for a billion yards against Detroit's nonexistent line and Brett Favre should be able to rain down a few bombs to Bernard Berrian or Percy Harvin. Meanwhile, Kevin Smith will be buried before the Williams Wall and Matthew Stafford is in only his second game, making his first home start in front of an anxious crowd. But funny things happen when we play the Vikings, things like quarterbacks waltzing out of the back of their own end zones, things like Adrian Peterson almost fumbling the game away, things like the Lions defense having the ability to at least hold Peterson in check and keep the game close. That's what happened in both games against the Vikings last season. Of course, our defense is completely different now, with different schemes and a lot of different players, but hope is irrational. Perhaps my brain has finally broken, but I don't care.

I think that Matthew Stafford will be able to make some plays against the Vikings pass defense, especially since they won't likely be stuck in catch up mode from the word go like they were last week against the Saints. The Vikings have some weapons, but they are not the sort of weapons that cause a team to fly out to a two touchdown lead within five minutes of the opening kickoff. That should allow the Lions to stick to their game plan offensively, and allow Stafford to calm down and look for his safety valves, whether it's Kevin Smith on screens out of the backfield, or Brandon Pettigrew over the middle. Stafford shouldn't have to force as many passes as he did last week, and if he can just slow down a bit, play his game, and make the throws that are there, the Lions should be able to score some points.

Meanwhile, the Vikings do have Peterson, and 100 yards plus from him is basically a given. But if they can slow him down just enough, like they did in both games last season, and make Brett Favre beat them, then the defense has a shot of keeping the score down so that Stafford and the offense can do their thing. Favre is 100 years old, he has no timing with his receivers and he will make bad throws that an aggressive defense can turn into interceptions. The Lions pass defense sucks, so they will probably give up a couple of big plays, but frankly, I think Favre kind of sucks right now too, and a couple of turnovers could spell the difference.

We're all idiots for caring about such things, but we are idiots who cannot help ourselves, and sometimes that idiocy manifests itself in fanciful predictions and bullshit projections which stand only the slimmest chance of coming true. So be it, man. I mean, this whole post might make me look like a jackass and a rube, but I don't really give a fuck.

FIVE PREDICTIONS

1. Kevin Smith is largely ineffective running the ball. He still manages to gain around 100 yards total thanks to screen passes and he scores a touchdown.

2. Peterson runs for 150 yards and a touchdown. He also fumbles once.

3. Stafford calms down and throws for two touchdowns, around 300 yards and one interception.

4. Favre continues to struggle, but still manages around 200 yards thanks to a couple of big plays, throws two touchdowns and also two interceptions.

5. Calvin Johnson has around 150 yards receiving and a touchdown. After the game Brad Childress kneels before him and kisses his hand, begging forgiveness for daring to oppose his magnificence.

Predicted Final Score: Lions 27, Vikings 24. Yeah, laugh it up. Either the Lions win and I'm happy(and really, you should be to, but I understand that the majority of people reading this are likely assholes and misanthropes. It is also my understanding that insulting your readers is step one in creating a successful blog.)or the Lions lose and you get a couple of posts in which I hilariously bemoan my failed predictions and wallow in the mucky waters of failure as I have done so many times before. Either way, it should at least be entertaining, if not dignified.

Nostralameass

If this dude ever saw the Lions play, he would have wept tears of blood. And he predicted the END OF THE WORLD. Think about THAT.

So, I thought I would look at the five predictions I made before the Saints game and see how close I came to hitting the mark or how hilariously wrong I was. This is potentially a stupid idea but hey, fuck it, writing about football is itself a pretty stupid thing, and writing about football the way I write about football is absurdly stupid and so, hey, why not this nonsense?

Prediction #1
What I Said: Drew Brees throws for almost 400 yards and 4 touchdowns

What Actually Happened: Brees threw for 358 yards and 6 touchdowns. It turns out that I didn't give Brees enough credit or perhaps I gave the Lions pass defense too much credit, which is really saying something since I anticipated them getting blown apart like you see in the movies when they show people getting turned into a fine powder in nuclear blasts. I figured it would just be sort of sad, like those scenes where a family is caught flat footed and maybe the dad tries to cover his kids or something to protect them from the blast but they get wasted anyway. Instead, it was like that scene in Terminator 2 where Sarah Connor has that dream about the holocaust and she gets her flesh blown off and then her skeleton just sort of flails about in tortured pain and you get the sense that she feels it all, and it's worse because it just never ends. Oh well, at least Brees threw an interception too.

Prediction #2

What I Said: Matthew Stafford throws for almost 300 yards and a couple of touchdowns . . . and a few interceptions.

What Actually Happened: Stafford threw for 205 yards, no touchdowns and 3 interceptions. Well, hey, I GOT PART OF IT RIGHT, DIDN'T I??? Oh, and he should have had at least one touchdown pass if the refs didn't behave like they had all been raised alongside Lennie Small, eating lead paint chips and snorting asbestos. No, I don't know what that means either, but fuck it, St. Calvin scored that touchdown and if the denial of such an event forces me to descend into wild gibberish, then so be it. I feel like one of the early Christians must have felt when that one dude was denying Jesus every time that rooster crowed. Wait, that is a real story, right? I'm not just making this up, am I? Did I just compare St. Calvin to Jesus? It would appear so. Why isn't Mel Gibson doing something about this?

Prediction #3

What I Said: Calvin Johnson has 150 yards or so receiving and a touchdown or two.

What Actually Happened: Sigh. Officially, St. Calvin caught 3 passes for 90 yards and zero touchdowns, but we already established that was all bullshit in the possibly offensive ridiculousness above. I was mildly disappointed in the Lions inability to get the wonder child the ball more consistently, but it was a game full of disappointments and to linger on any one of them is to invite madness and despair and so we will move on.

Prediction #4

What I Said: Kevin Smith has a decent game, but much of his yardage will come through the air on screen passes. He will only see around 15 carries because the Lions will be forced to throw to keep up.

What Actually Happened: Smith had 15 carries for 20 yards and a touchdown. He caught 7 passes for 52 yards. I was sort of right on this one. Well, at least about the number of carries. Nailed that one. And the majority of his yards did come through the air on screen passes. The decent game part? Well, we'll forget I said that, even if it was the basic thrust of the prediction. Fuck it, just let me have this, alright?

Prediction #5

What I Said: The Saints won't run the ball much either. Pierre Thomas might not play, and they will probably keep the Lions off balance with the occasional draw or screen pass to Reggie Bush who will pile up anywhere from 8-10 catches for 90-100 yards as the Saints exploit linebacker blitzes.

What Actually Happened: Wellllllllllllllllll . . . Mike Bell ran the ball 28 times for 143 yards, so, hey, looks like this one was a big fat bust. Then again, Pierre Thomas didn't play, although that was more of a fact than a prediction so I probably can't claim that as a point in my favor here. Meanwhile, Bush only had 7 carries for 14 yards and caught 5 passes for 55 yards. If it wasn't for Mike Bell I would have been mostly right with this prediction. Okay, so maybe Bush didn't have quite as big a game through the air as I expected, but I should have foreseen that Drew Brees would be able to throw down field all day and that they wouldn't need Bush all that much. Also, Gunther Cunningham hardly blitzed the linebackers at all. Whatever. I will claim that I was half right with this one, even if again, the basic thrust of the prediction was completely wrong. Heh heh, you said thrust, Butthead. Yes, Beavis, I most certainly did.

Predicted Final Score: Saints 38, Lions 24.

Actual Final Score: Saints 45, Lions 27. Close enough, unfortunately. Excuse me while I fiddle with this razor here . . .

Death From Above 2009

uh, we were the other guys

I said in my little game preview that I thought the game between the Lions and the Saints would be a shootout. And when the game started, that's exactly how it looked - that is if one of the gunmen was crippled, in a wheelchair, and didn't, you know, have a gun. That's a familiar sight for Lions fans, familiar and terrible, and if it was last season, we would have fallen out of the wheelchair and then been riddled with bullets while everyone laughed and held their noses at the same time. This time though was different. This time, we were blown out of the chair and instead of just lying there and getting shot to death, we crawled to our knees, grabbed a gun and fired back. It was a noble effort. Of course, our bullets were largely off target and then we were just shot to death anyway, but what the hell, it's better to be shot to death on your knees than to be shot lying face down in a pool of your own piss and vomit, right? Maybe one of these days we will actually get to stand there and get shot like men, in an honest to goodness duel. Or maybe, just maybe, we'll get to shoot some terrible motherfucker first and actually ride off into the sunset with all the town's whiskey and whores in tow, and then hire ourselves out as mercenaries, maybe do some cattle rustling, and . . . okay, perhaps I have gotten carried away with this whole old west shootout theme.

Drew Brees was awesome. That was expected. Maybe not six touchdowns worth of awesome, but we knew we were probably going to be in for a day of bombs dropping and women and children screaming in the face of the horror of it all. I predicted around 400 yards and 4 touchdowns for Brees, so clearly, I wasn't all that optimistic about the Lions ability to stop him. I'm not that upset, really I'm not, because honestly, it could have been worse.

I know that sounds absurd, but last year, too many times we saw our team get the shit kicked out of it within moments of the opening kickoff and then our guys said fuck it and went home. At least this time they kept fighting, kept trying to win. Every time the Saints would put it away, the Lions would try like hell to try to get back into the damn thing. Not very well, but come on, you have to look at these dudes like a gang of retarded kids. They will try their dumb little hearts out and you can't really get mad at them. At least no one shit their pants or lost their asthma inhaler or flipped out and ran amok like little mini hulks. That's something, I guess.

Okay, look, I'm trying really hard here to be optimistic and positive and all that shit, but you know, 6 touchdown passes. 6 TOUCHDOWN PASSES. I mean, it's nice to have hope for the future, and I do, and it's nice to be positive and support your team no matter what, but man, at some point you have to have a little self respect and say you know what, I kind of look like a chump right now. Because this game sucked. Maybe not on the level of last season, but we can't continue to use that as some sort of horrible barometer for the future. If we do, we're pretty much doomed. I mean, that is not a high bar to jump over, or low bar to scoot under or some other bullshit involving a bar. I don't know, I forgot halfway through that sentence whether I was going for a hurdle reference or tying to make you picture a limbo pole. Fuck it, you get the point.

Last season sucked. It did. But it has to stand on its own. Sure, we can look at it and say that's why we're still so fucking bad, and I've done plenty of that. But we can't just sit back and say well, at least it went better than last year, because, well, no shit. The point is, is that we're still lying there in the dirt, shot to death while the other dude celebrates. It's a terrible place to be, no matter how you got there. Is there a certain pride in showing a little more fight? Of course. But in the end, that's a dangerous slope to go slip sliding around on, and pretty soon you are in Marinelliville gibbering on about the right way to play the game and all that bullshit.

You win or you lose. That's it. It's stark and it's unfair, but that's still it. Are there good signs for the future? Sure. The kick return game looked like it had life for the first time since Eddie Drummond was thrown out of town, and the defense, while still absurdly shitty, actually produced a couple of turnovers. The offense was mostly disappointing though. The run game was terrible. It's not Kevin Smith's fault. There were usually dudes waiting to tackle him before he even got the damn ball. Meanwhile, Matthew Stafford was, well, Matthew Stafford was a rookie starting his first game in the NFL for a team that is still pretty damn bad.

He made mistakes, killer mistakes really, but the truth is that the Lions were going to lose this game no matter who started at quarterback. And that's the sad reality we face this year. We are going to suck this year, and if we are, we might as well get our future golden boy a shot at reading NFL defenses instead of reading the contents of a clipboard. Did Stafford suck? Yeah, pretty much. Was it kind of a disappointment? Yeah, it was. Do I want Daunte Culpepper to start? Fuck you for even asking that question. Wait, who am I talking to? Talking to yourself is either a sign of insanity or genius, perhaps both. I'll leave it for you to decide. And by you I mean the reader, not the other me who I'm apparently talking to. What?

Okay, okay. I'm not going to get into fake arguments with imagined inquisitors over this Stafford issue every week. He's the guy, I want him to be the guy, and that's that. I've written a gazillion words on the subject already, and fuck it, I hate the subject already.

So, where do we go from here? We lost, again, and it's possible that we're going to keep losing. Honestly, we don't look that much better, and that's, uh, discouraging, but there was enough fight there, enough little things that were different that let me know that this shit will get turned around eventually. It's just going to take a while. For this season, I think there's enough there to scrape together a few wins. I mean, we're not going to be facing the New Orleans offense with perhaps our top cover corner out for the game and a rookie starting his first game for us at quarterback again. That's probably as bad as it will get. Hopefully.(OH GOD IT BETTER BE)And so we will likely have to make do with mere sorrowful ineptitude, which is a step up from apocalyptic hell I suppose. Again, I am trying to stay positive here, you know?

This post is probably an unfortunate glimpse into what you're going to get from me this season, a bunch of schizophrenic gibberish that is at times self contradictory, but these are terrible times, and they do terrible things to a man. 0-16 has long lasting repercussions, and as much as I might not want to accept that, they are there, for me and for all Lions fans, just like they are there for this team, and until we win at least one stinking game, they're going to hang there like a horrible hangover fart in a hot tool shed. It will be awful. But we all should have known that coming in, and it is our own damn fault for trying to pretend like it would all just magically go away. Just like a fucking hangover. There is no magic pill. Just time. Who knows, maybe all the time we need is one more week. Then again, maybe it will last all season long. But again, we are optimists and champions and gentlemen in our hearts and we will not think that way. Vaya con dios.

And So it Begins

Well, here we are. After the apocalyptic nightmare that was 0-16 and all the talk and bullshit gibberish of the last 8 or 9 months, we are finally here. I thought of doing a really fucked up baby analogy due to the whole 9 months thing, but it was too weird even for me and I was vaguely disturbed by the whole thing. And so, just like last season, we will leave that in the past and start fresh.

0-0. It doesn't matter what happened before and it doesn't matter what happens next. Right now, we are 0-0. We could be terrible, we could be awesome. One is drastically more probable than the other - I shouldn't have to tell you which - but we still don't know for sure exactly how this thing is going to go. It's exciting and strange and terrifying all at the same time. But the one thing we are all sure of as Lions fans is that so long as that first number is anything other than 0, we're doing okay.

The New Orleans Saints are the first test on this road back to life, and they will probably bomb the shit out of us. I don't say that to whine and mope and bitch. I'm just saying it because, well, it's very likely the truth. Our defense still isn't very good and Drew Brees will likely pick them apart like they were soldiers struggling off the boats at Normandy. It won't be pretty, and there will be vast stretches of time when it seems like last year's apocalypse never quite ended.

The offense should be able to move the ball fairly effectively though, which is a hell of a lot different than last year's debacle. Matthew Stafford should be able to find enough open receivers to keep the game somewhat interesting. I'm guessing that he'll find St. Calvin deep at least a couple of times. And Kevin Smith should be able to move the ball effectively on the ground. Then again, if the Saints jump out to a big lead early, the Lions will probably be forced to throw all the time in an attempt to catch up.

That's really the key here. If the Saints get ahead by a couple of touchdowns early, they can key on the pass, and since this will be Matthew Stafford's first game in the NFL, chances are good they will force him into at least a couple costly mistakes, and then a couple of touchdown lead is suddenly 28-0 and the ghost of Matt Millen descends onto the sideline and we all begin to weep bitter tears of blood.

This could very well happen. But I think the Lions will be able to match the Saints - at least for a little while. I foresee a shootout for much of the first half that unravels for the Lions in the third quarter when Stafford throws a rookie interception. That's what it will come down to, which quarterback makes the fewest mistakes, especially since both defenses are geared towards causing turnovers. For some strange reason, I think Drew Brees and his astronomical numbers and loads of experience will be better equipped to handle this than Matthew Stafford.

Ty did a breakdown over at The Lions in Winter, showing what has happened when these coaching staffs have opposed one another in the past on different teams. It's interesting at the very least, and kind of backs up what I think will happen, and I like to give him a shout out and perhaps some miniscule traffic whenever I can.

The Lions will probably lose this game, and they will probably lose it in a way that is all too familiar. But there will probably be several plays where we can see the future(without stealing Doc Brown's DeLorean even, although that shit would probably be fun as hell), and when we do we can all take a deep breath and realize that better times are ahead. They just aren't here yet.

FIVE PREDICTIONS FOR THIS GAME

1. Drew Brees throws for almost 400 yards and 4 touchdowns
2. Matthew Stafford throws for almost 300 yards and a couple of touchdowns . . . and a few interceptions.
3. Calvin Johnson has 150 yards or so receiving and a touchdown or two.
4. Kevin Smith has a decent game, but much of his yardage will come through the air on screen passes. He will only see around 15 carries because the Lions will be forced to throw to keep up.
5. The Saints won't run the ball much either. Pierre Thomas might not play, and they will probably keep the Lions off balance with the occasional draw or screen pass to Reggie Bush who will pile up anywhere from 8-10 catches for 90-100 yards as the Saints exploit linebacker blitzes.

PREDICTED FINAL SCORE: Saints 38, Lions 24

Lions Season Preview 2009, Part X: GOOD LORD IT'S FINALLY DONE

The Lions will be better this season. Then again, that is like saying that a retard who has lived his whole life in diapers, shitting himself, has learned to use the toilet occasionally. It will still be messy as hell, but every once in a while that dumb son of a bitch will do something that everyone else takes for granted, and when he does it will be the cause of great joy and wonderment. The poor fool will likely start clapping his hands and hooting and hollering in raucous celebration while everyone else wonders what the big deal is. And even though he probably won't understand how to properly wipe and the end result will likely just be a turd floating in the toilet, he still did it, and goddamn it, he's going be proud of it.

That is an awful analogy, disgusting and ultimately unnecessary, but what the hell, I suppose it gets the point across. There are going to be terrible times this season, times when we are flung back in Doc Brown's DeLorean to the horrible past, times that will make us begin to tremble and shake like frustrated junkies, times that will make us curse the television screen and want to go to the zoo and scissors kick a lion. But there will also be those times when we manage to make it to the toilet and shit like normal people, and when we do we will feel like everything is going to be okay even while everyone else still makes fun of us.

The final record will probably be very bad this year. That's okay. We have seen the truly horrible, and 3-13 and 4-12 doesn't even begin to compare to 0-16. We can take it.

The offense actually looks like it has a pulse after bottoming out so thoroughly a year ago. Everyone wants to talk about how terrible the defense was, and man, was it ever, but the offense was no great shakes either. Whether it was quarterbacks taking scenic jaunts out of the backs of opponent's end zones, or whether it was star receivers dropping balls and moping their way out of town, the Lions offense was a sloppy mess last season, talent deficient and sad.

This season things look a little different. We have a robot armed quarterback with tons of swagger along with perhaps the best wide receiver in the league and a running back who appears on the cusp of stardom. The offensive line is still shaky, but what the hell, we can't expect miracles. The future looks exceptionally bright, which I suppose, given the horrors of a year ago, is kind of a miracle all by itself.

There will probably be a lot of mistakes, frustrating shit that reminds us how young these guys still are, and a lot of big plays that make us smile and start gushing about the future. There is optimism here, and even if right now some it is blind, that is a hell of a lot better than the alternative, which is something we all experienced a year ago.

The defense on the other hand, well . . . the defense is going to suck. I just don't see any way that they can be vastly improved with the obvious talent deficiencies that still plague this team. Schematically, things look to be much, much better thanks to Gunther Cunningham's blitz happy agro tear their fucking head off approach, but they just don't have the players yet. The linebackers look solid. Everywhere else, well, doesn't.

There are some young players - at least a couple anyway - who should be difference makers defensively. Just not this year. Sammie Lee Hill has a ton of potential but he is raw as hell and he'll probably get pushed around a lot this season. Cliff Avril and Louis Delmas look like building blocks, but they are also both young and just don't have the talent around them to be forces yet.

The special teams should be mostly solid. Jason Hanson is awesome, and Nick Harris is mostly solid and dependable. If Yamon Figurs eventually ends up returning kicks and punts then we should have some explosiveness there that we haven't had in a while.

It will be a hell of a season, exciting and new - at least until the first losing streak kicks in, at which point everyone will probably revert to depressed moaning and shit flinging which accompanies virtually every Lions season. But for now, the Lions are 0-0, and that beats the fuck out of 0-16.

FIVE(OKAY, SIX)PREDICTIONS FOR THE SEASON

1. Calvin Johnson takes yet another step towards becoming the best receiver in the NFL.
2. Kevin Smith accounts for 1,800 total yards from scrimmage, about 1,200 rushing and 600 receiving with, say, 12 touchdowns.
3. Matthew Stafford throws 20 touchdown passes . . . and about 25 interceptions. He starts every game.
4. The run defense is surprisingly improved from a year ago, thanks to the linebackers and Gunther Cunningham's aggressive schemes.
5. The pass defense is terrible once again and the Lions overall defensive numbers are again near the bottom of the league.
6. I rant like a damn lunatic multiple times throughout the year and in the process set records for the most references to Hitler, werewolves on PCP, vampire apes, and for the use of the word gibberish.

FINAL PREDICTED RECORD: The floor for this team is, well, we've seen the floor, or fuck, what's beneath the floor, and it is horrible. Still, I think the worst this particular team can do is somewhere around 3-13. Watch, now they will somehow end up with a negative win total. I don't know how, but fuck it, maybe Roger Goodell will be so disgusted by the Lions that he will issue a statement making it happen, citing the embarrassment they have caused the league as a whole. Shit, maybe he will just suspend the franchise for the whole season. The ceiling for this team is probably somewhere around 7-9, perfectly mediocre but still deeply flawed. I'll go right in the middle, and go 5-11.

Lions Season Preview, Part 9: The Coaches and Front Office

A BRIEF HISTORY LESSON

I contemplated just posting a picture of an atomic bomb here, and maybe I should do that instead of subjecting myself to the horrors of what lies inside behind this terrible door. GOOD LORD. I am already starting to feel my humanity slip away while images of coaches past pass through my beleaguered brain. OH GOD DARRYL RODGERS' GHOST IS RATTLING HIS CHAINS HE'S COMING FOR ME HEEEEEEELLLLLPPPPPP.

Okay, okay, I think I've got my shit together. I have my puke bucket next to me and I have locked the door. I'm sure I will claw at it like some deranged werewolf, but hopefully in my frenzy I will forget how to unlock it and thus won't escape into polite society, loping on all fours through the streets, sniffing strange asses and growling at kittens, rooting around in strange garbage cans and licking myself while good, honest people look on, horrified and afraid.

Okay, enough with this gibberish. Damn fool. It may be too much, this journey into the savage and the terrible, and it may break me, but fuck it, I am a Lions fan. I know pain. We will get through this.

When I first became aware of the Detroit Lions, Darryl Rodgers was patrolling the sidelines. Darryl Rodgers was not so good with the coaching of the football but because he had the generous Ford Family as his employers he was allowed to coach for several seasons before the stink became too much for even Ford the Elder to bear. Rodgers was sent packing and replaced with the most successful coach the Lions have had during the length of my fandom. Yes, that's right, the immortal Wayne Fontes. Excuse me while I slam my head against the wall for a while.

Okay, I'm back. We all remember Wayne Fontes. No one liked him. I mean, I'm sure he was a decent guy, but as a football coach, no one liked him. And yet, he stayed around for years, alternating good seasons with seasons where Yakety Sax played on an endless loop. Some will point to the good seasons as a reason for his continued employment. I will point to Barry Sanders, Herman Moore, Lomas Brown, Jerry Ball, Chris Spielman, Bennie Blades, Kevin Glover, Brett Perriman, Robert Porcher, and . . . okay, I think I've made my point. The Lions couldn't avoid being at least functional and at times decent with that kind of talent. It is almost inexplicable that they were as bad as they were at times with those kinds of players. Thank you Wayne.

Still, Fontes remains the highpoint as far as Lions coaches go, and really, that is . . . that is just . . . uh . . . excuse me, I just zoned out for a moment. This is hard. Anyway, Fontes was finally exiled following the 1996 season and the Lions brought in a real live football coach in Bobby Ross. Ross did what he could, but by this point the stink of decay was all over the Lions, and it was in the middle of this slow collapse that Barry Sanders said fuck it and rode home on a river of tears. Ross followed along not long after, and the Lions and their new hot young executive, a fine fellow by the name of Matt Millen, were in search of a new headman.

Enter Marty "ALWAYS TAKE THE WIND" Mornhinweg. Marty, uh, well, Marty didn't do so well. I mean, I'm pretty sure that a 5-27 record isn't very good. Maybe it's just me, I don't know. Marty will forever be remembered for winning the coin toss before overtime against the Bears and electing to kickoff so his team could take the wind. The Bears of course went right down the field, kicked a field goal and won the game and we all wept bitter tears and swallowed our tongues.

Even the Fords and Matt Millen could see that the Marty Mornhinweg experiment was a grand disaster, and so they turned to another M, Steve Mariucci. Only this time, we were getting a dude who had won at the NFL level before. Mariucci had been the heir to the great 49ers empire begun by Bill Walsh and so we were all naturally excited that he was going to be our head coach. Yeah, about that . . .

Mariucci ended up crushed beneath the wheel, just like Marty had been, and his story in Detroit ended about as happily as the novel of the same name.(Yeah, a Herman Hesse joke. I feel like Dennis Miller right now.)

Thankfully, it couldn't get any worse though, and the Lions brought in Rod Marinelli, whose . . . adgkHFBKLCKJLNCKJLqhjdfefhkefhefjefklfklfklefklf . . . what time is it? Where am I? WHO AM I? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? All I know is that I just woke up with my face on the keyboard. There is blood and vomit everywhere, and . . . wait, I recognize that name. Rod Marinelli.

Okay. I just wept and then went through a couple of days of intensive therapy. I'm back now, and I think I can handle this. Both my therapist and I agree that I should just say that I have written more than enough about those horrible years and that I should just move on. I will just say this: 10-38. That was Marinelli's record with the Lions. I am on the verge of more tears and I am getting all twitchy so let's just get the fuck out of here while we still can.

So, those are the coaches. At least we have had a capable front office to offset their . . . wait, who? Matt Millen? No, I've never heard that name before. He was what? What happened? Really? I don't remember that. Well, surely it couldn't have been that bad. I mean, come on . . . oh, oh really? 31-97. Huh. That's, well, that's AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

THE CURRENT SITUATION

Well okay, we survived. We are still here, and we can finally start to move on. Martin Mayhew and Tom Lewand both served in the apocalyptic Matt Millen regime. That right there is enough for most sane people to want to hide underneath their covers and pretend that they are space cowboys or ninjas or some other weird shit. But, the thing is, is that neither Mayhew or Lewand seem to have been Millen yes men. In fact, everything that has come out since they have gotten the job seems to indicate that they did their best to survive in the Lions front office even though they knew their boss was a buffoon.

They have done an admirable job thus far of separating themselves from that terrible past and have shown a remarkable acumen for making quick, decisive personnel decisions in concert with the goals and vision of their coaching staff. It is radically different than the Millen days, when the front office and coaching staff were often at odds over what should be happening. Everyone had their own agenda and everything was, well, 31-97. Mayhew and Lewand on the other hand have done a great job of making sure that everyone involved in the organization are on the same page. Everyone understands what the goals are and everyone understands how they need to get there. It is a unified front, a team with a plan, and for right now anyway, it seems like we are finally moving forward.

The new head coach, Jim Schwartz, has had a billion words written about him the past several months by a fanbase who is embarrassingly in love with him. I will admit to being a part of this mad stampede of adoration. He's a smart, down to earth kind of coach who both understands the subtle nuances that go into being a good football team, the Football Outsiders and Smart Football kind of stuff and all that, and the psychological complexities that go along with dealing with 53 highly talented millionaires whose chosen profession is smacking into other young millionaires very hard. He is smart without being nerdy, tough without being a meathead, and perhaps most importantly, he seems to understand what the Detroit Lions and their fans have been through. He gets it. He gets it all, in a way that none of us could have even hoped for, and even though the possibility exists that we could end up getting clobbered, just like we have for years and years and years, we're willing to trust this dude right now. And really, given our history, that says a whole hell of a lot.

Gunther Cunningham is the new defensive coordinator. He gained his reputation in Kansas City many moons ago, orchestrating the fearsome attack led by Derrick Thomas and Neal Smith. His defenses were always ultra-aggressive and mean and physical and what's not to love about that? Cunningham flopped as a head coach, but he is a proven coordinator in the NFL, and if the Lions can get some talent on the defense, he should be able to make it work.

Scott Linehan is the new offensive coordinator. He made his name running the explosive offensive show in Minnesota featuring Randy Moss, Cris Carter, Robert Smith and, yes, Daunte Culpepper. Linehan likes to have a strong armed quarterback who can get the ball deep to a playmaking receiver while mixing in a strong running game. It's a balanced approach and the Lions seem to have the perfect pieces for what he likes to run.

FINAL THOUGHTS

We have suffered for years as Lions fans with a parade of buffoons and incompetents both on the sidelines and in the front office. We have never had any faith that the guys running the show could lead us to glory. Maybe that is why we have fallen so hard for Jim Schwartz and company. For the first time, we have a dude who treats us right, who holds the door open for us, buys us flowers, smiles at us and tells us we look pretty. It's a nice change, a welcome change, and even though it results in embarrassing paragraphs like this one, I'll take it. We have a chance. For the first time since I have been a Lions fan, we have a chance to be great some day. It won't be the season, and it probably won't be the next, but I have hope. And for a Lions fan, that is absolutely amazing.

GRADE: I'm not going to grade this, because, really, there is nothing to grade yet. My hope is that it is a resounding A.