Rebuilding is hard and it is slow and it is ugly and the road behind it is littered with the dead and the dying. Perhaps that is too bleak, but 2-10 does not engender a whole hell of a lot of positive feelings. It just doesn't, and it would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise. It sucks watching your team lose game after game, and it would be utterly inhuman to just stand passively back from that and say that it doesn't bother you.
Of course, there are signs that things are on the upswing. That Matthew Stafford pass to Calvin Johnson for a touchdown made angel's weep and the choirs of heaven sing. It was astoundingly beautiful and it was better than anything else that has happened over the past decade of terrible torment. That is both an awesome thing and an unfathomably sad thing. One play was better than a decade of failure. The promise that one play held is enough to make me sigh and then smile when I think about the future. But it's also enough to make me glance back at the wreckage of the past and wonder why we couldn't have that, well, ever.
But the past is the past and we are all about rebuilding and moving forward now. In a lot of ways, watching the Lions this season is like watching a toddler careening through the house. Sometimes the kid walks in a straight line and smiles and says something shockingly profound and you can see that one day he will be a real live functioning human being. And then sometimes the kid falls down and shits his pants and starts to sob and nothing you can do can calm him down and the future just seems so far away.
There were other signs that this team is capable of walking and talking. The defense was shockingly decent against the Bengals. They only allowed one offensive touchdown, and although Cedric Benson topped the 100 yard mark he needed 36 carries to get there and ended the day averaging only 3.1 yards per carry. Meanwhile, they held Carson Palmer to 220 yards passing and only 1 touchdown against 2 interceptions. I know that doesn't seem like it's that great, but for the Lions defense, playing a first place team on the road, it was damn near heroic.
It was incredibly frustrating to see the Lions control the game, build a fragile lead and visibly start to gain confidence only to see it all obliterated on a fluke interception off of a deflected screen pass that was returned for a touchdown. It was utterly deflating, like watching a toddler take one step and then another and yet another until they were walking and smiling and excited only to then watch them face plant and bust their nose and cry and cry and cry. It was awful, just terrible and I didn't know whether to feel bad for my dudes or to scream and wonder about why it has to be so absurdly cruel to be a fan sometimes.
Still, even with that the Lions never quite went away. They fought, they clawed, even though they were undertalented and overmatched. Matthew Stafford played and chucked the ball and was hit and driven into the turf again and again and again and each time he got up until finally he couldn't get up anymore. His shoulder is fried, his body is betraying him but he wants to win so bad. You can see it on his face. It is agonizing to see the end, to see happy days on the horizon only to trip and fall or have your body tell you to fuck off every time you try to take a step or two towards it.
This game was both painful to watch and gave me hope for the future. I know I have ranted on and on and on and on about hope this season. It is the overriding theme that always manages to creep it's way into the schizophrenic funhouse of absurdity that is my corner of this blog. It doesn't exactly mesh all the time with the werewolves and the drain cleaner and the tears of blood, etc., but what the hell, that is pretty much this season in a nutshell. Hope and pain, pain and hope.
There is only a month left in this season and by my estimation the Lions could win one more game the rest of the way. It is ugly, it is brutal and in the end the cold stark reality is that this is still a terrible team with a long, long way to go. I don't care. I have been down the road with this team and seen the belly of the beast. I know it's awful, I know there is nothing but acid tipped flaming arrows waiting there for me and for all of us who keep on caring despite ourselves. Still, there is always the chance that one day we will snatch those horrible arrows out of the air and stab our enemies in the neck with them. I have never really believed that before. It's all just seemed too improbable, too absurd, and so achingly far away.
So, why, at 2-10, do I somehow feel different? Why, this time, do I actually believe? I don't know. I really don't. Maybe it's because for the first time I see that the people responsible for all this absurd hellfire actually understand what is going on and seem determined to get out of it before it consumes them. They seem to have a plan and I suppose all I can do is take a deep breath and follow them, because really, what else am I going to do? Then again, maybe 0-16 just wrecked me, broke me in ways that I can't even understand and this is the only way I know how to cope with it all. I have to hope because the alternative is just too horrible, too ridiculous.
This whole season and everything I have written about it is bipolar and vaguely ridiculous. One sentence it's stabbing our enemies in the neck with flaming arrows or some other weird bullshit, the next it's werewolves chugging Drano and spitting blood at terrified strangers. In a sense, I can't wait for it to be over. I just want there to be some idea of what's real, what we can point to and say that's what's right and that's why we're going to be okay, instead of whatever this season is. I'm hopeful, but it all feels like a giant leap of faith sometimes, a leap that frankly I have no business taking. And yet, I've jumped, and I keep jumping, week after week, and every time I fall and bash my head open and I cry as I watch my brains seep out and my blood stain the rocks underneath me. It's horrible, but somehow I keep getting back up and crawling back to the top of the cliff so I can jump again. Maybe that's why this whole thing will be okay and maybe that's what I really know, that everyone involved with this debacle of a franchise, from the front office to the coaches to the players to the fans wants it to change so bad that we are willing to die a million horrible deaths every week just so that we can get the chance to try again the next week.
I don't know. This whole post has veered into the theater of the ridiculous, but these are ridiculous times, I am a ridiculous man and I am a fan of a ridiculous team in a ridiculous season. But to hell with all that, the Lions are 2-10 and next week they will probably be 2-11 and then they will probably be 2-12, and at the end of the season they might be 2-14. I am probably an idiot and a fool for believing in anything beyond that - at least that terrible record is real, it's tangible - but I'm okay with that. It will all be okay. I think. I hope.
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