2009 Lions Season Review, Part 3: The Receivers

The one good thing we had coming into the season, the one thing that every other fan around the league was envious of, the one thing that made watching another loss somehow a little less painful, the one thing that allowed us to believe that hope was not just some cruel fantasy but a real and tantalizing possibility, was a man named Calvin Johnson. I dubbed the poor guy St. Calvin, shooting him into the stratosphere of Lions heroes that contains such luminaries as St. Barry Sanders, and, uh . . . well, that's about it.

Perhaps this was a bit unfair and a bit ridiculous. After all, St. Calvin has yet to make a Pro Bowl roster and he has done his best work for a team that has finished trapped under a garbage pile for the past couple of seasons. And yet, perhaps that accounts for my irrational exuberance. Here is a dude who is a legitimate blue chip player, a shiny diamond in a see of coal and turds. It is only natural that we would grab hold of that diamond and keep it near and dear to our hearts. It is precious, and it is the only good thing that we have.

Then again, perhaps my enthusiasm came from seeing a guy who is 6'5", can jump through the roof and who runs a 4.3 40. That will tend to get the blood going. I will not tell you where the blood is going because that would just frighten and disturb you, and because I am a man of utmost discretion and dignity.

Ahem. Anyway, my love for Calvin Johnson has been on display here too many times to count over the past couple of seasons. I have devolved into embarrassing and bizarre gibberish about Calvin being Dr. Manhattan and the real Shakespeare, rhapsodizing like a love struck retard in ways that should both sicken and confuse the normal folks out there. Thankfully, none of you are normal, and so you understand.(Insulting your readers is always a good idea, right?)

I predicted big things for Calvin before the season. Unlike my debaculous(yeah I just made up that word, and I don't give a fuck)Kevin Smith prediction, I wisely steered clear of making any concrete predictions about St. Calvin's statistics, but I did predict that he would take a step towards becoming the best receiver in the NFL. In retrospect, I should have just said "Johnson takes another step towards becoming the best receiver in the NFL", thus leaving it ambiguous. I could have claimed that I was talking about Andre Johnson and then fellated myself here, but that would have been dishonest and just plain wrong and I am a man of great integrity and so I have to live with the fact that I was clearly talking about Calvin Johnson, and that once again, I was terribly, terribly wrong.

In my defense, Johnson's relatively miserable year was more the result of freak circumstance than anything he did wrong. He is still a great player, and I think he will climb those steps towards the crown of the greatest receiver in the league sooner rather than later. It just didn't happen this past season. Johnson found himself beat up and injured almost from the moment he began practicing. A jammed finger limited his practice time in the preseason, throwing off his timing with Matthew Stafford almost before it could even be established. And then, once the season did start, Calvin found himself the recipient of a million minor injuries, breaking him down to the point where he was forced to miss two whole games - each sandwiched around the bye week - and chunks of several others. He was never one hundred percent, and aside from not being on the field during the games, he was missing a ton of practice too, further limiting his rapport with Stafford. I suppose the two of them could have struck up a real friendship in their adjoining hospital beds this past season, as they lay dying, but that is a depressing thought, and we have been through enough already and so we will not explore that possibility.

Johnson's numbers for the season weren't horrible, but they were nowhere close to what a top flight alpha dog receiver in the NFL should be putting up. For the season, St. Calvin caught 67 passes for 984 yards and 5 touchdowns. These numbers are depressed largely because Johnson missed two whole games, and large chunks of others, and so they shouldn't necessarily be construed as indicative of a decline in Johnson's ability or play. However - and isn't there always a however with this team? - there were stretches this season where it was obvious that Johnson was immensely frustrated, regardless of who the quarterback was. This is not a good sign.

I have written at length - yeah, when don't I write at length here? - about Lions Disease, that terrible affliction which grabs talented players by the throat and then sucks out their will to live until their withered and desiccated husks are shipped off to some other team or, worse, they just retire in a pool of tears and broken dreams. Its most famous victim is none other than St. Barry himself, who was martyred on the altar of Lions failure, but we have also seen it happen with Roy Williams and virtually every other highly talented player who has had the misfortune to land in Detroit. And so, I wrote this after the horrors of 0-16:

Catching 78 balls for 1331 yards and 12 TD's, with an average gain of 17.1 yards, Johnson became the all everything weapon that the Lions can build on. No matter how bad it got, and holy shit did it get bad, at least we had Calvin, and that's something we can take with us into next season. He's still young, he's headed into his third year and the sky's the limit. Sure, he still drops a few too many balls, but fuck it, I'm not gonna complain. That would be like a homeless dude bitching because his new free apartment didn't have air conditioning. The only thing that worries me, and really, I should say terrifies me, is the incredibly likely prospect of CJ getting beaten down by all the misery that comes with being a Detroit Lion and giving up. It's happened before, so it wouldn't shock me to see Calvin just say fuck it and go through the motions until he is traded. There have already been signs of it. There are times when the poor guy's body language looks like Andy Dufresne's in Shawshank. Again, it's happened before. I mean, this is a franchise that drove Barry Sanders to a tearful early retirement because he couldn't put up with all this ridiculous bullshit anymore. We broke one phenom's spirit, why not another?

Sure enough, there were signs this season that those hazy fears were materializing into a solid and terrible reality. Hopefully, Johnson can stay healthy and Matthew Stafford can keep him happy, because I don't know if I can take seeing another phenom ruined by Lions Disease. I've had enough of that bullshit. Thankfully, Johnson has what appears to be a legitimate quarterback here to throw him the ball for years and years and years to come. And if they both remain healthy and they both live up to their enormous potential, then the future here looks really, really exciting. Then again, this is the Detroit Lions we are talking about and so there is a very real chance that Stafford will break both his legs falling down a manhole while walking down the street and Calvin will have his legs eaten by wolves or rogue sewer alligators while out for a jog.

Also, one last thing. In that little excerpt up there, notice Calvin's numbers from the Year of Unnumbered Tears. You find them, yet? Okay. Just look at those numbers. Pretty damn great. And those came with ol' Noodle Arm, Dan Orlovsky, and the 300 pound Love Boat Captain, Daunte Culpepper, throwing him the ball! You can kinda understand where my ridiculous hope came from, right?

St. Calvin isn't the only receiver the Lions have - although it may often seem that way - and so I suppose we should look at the other turds, er I mean players, who the Lions threw on the field this past season.

Bryant Johnson was signed prior to the season in the hopes that he could be an effective complement to St. Calvin. I immediately dubbed him Johnson the Lesser, but that was not really a knock against Bryant Johnson so much as it was an affirmation of Calvin Johnson's greatness. After all, Johnson the Lesser was a former first round pick in his own right who had proven to be a fairly effective possession receiver during his six seasons in the league. He probably wasn't an ideal number two receiver, but what the hell, he was better than Keary Colbert, John Standeford, the bum from down the street, and everyone else the Lions had.

Against Washington, it looked like Johnson the Lesser would provide a capable number two for the Lions, developing a rapport with Matthew Stafford that hopefully presaged better days ahead. But after that, he did basically nothing the rest of the season. Seemingly every game, he would catch two passes and that was it. Seriously, check the game logs. The consistency of his mediocrity is almost astounding.

For the season, Johnson the Lesser caught 35 passes for 417 yards and 3 touchdowns, bad numbers for a number two receiver - horrible numbers for a number two receiver on a team that has to throw the ball all the time because they are constantly behind - and absolutely abominable numbers for a receiver who is the number one dude for a quarter of the season because the normal number one dude is hurt. Basically, Johnson the Lesser was much, much lesser, and the result was a passing game that completely atrophied as the year went on. Sure, sure, much of this is due to the premature death of Matthew Stafford's poor body, but at least part of the blame has to be put on the receivers, and especially Bryant Johnson, doesn't it? I mean, this was his chance to take the reins and show everyone that he could drive this motherfucker. But instead, he just crashed the son of a bitch and then wandered away in a daze while we all shielded our eyes in horror.

Aside from Johnson the Lesser, the Lions decided to bolster their ailing receiving corps by trading for Dennis Northcutt, who like Johnson the Lesser, had found a niche as a possession receiver. Northcutt was put in the same position when he arrived in Detroit and he responded by having one of the worst seasons of his career, catching 35 passes for 357 yards with one touchdown, and a paltry 22.3 yards per game. Again, Northcutt was saddled with many of the same issues that Johnson the Lesser had to face - inconsistency at quarterback, a general offensive malaise, etc. - but he compounded these issues by dropping too many passes and by not responding well at all when he was thrust into the position of the number two receiver when St. Calvin came up lame.

The Lions also drafted Derrick Williams before the season, and I - along with most others - immediately sniffed him out as a potential bust. Never a really natural receiver, and not a true speed burner, Williams had gotten by in college as an elusive possession receiver who knew how to make people miss. He had a fine career, albeit a slightly disappointing one given the hype that surrounded him as a freshman. I thought he had a chance to contribute a play here and there, as well as frustrate us with his inability to hang onto the ball. Of course, all that was contingent upon him seeing the field a lot, which, well . . . let's look at his stats. Williams only caught 6 passes for 52 yards, and was barely there for most of the season. It's hard to envision him taking a great leap forward in the future, and sadly, I think his future probably resides in selling carpet or making widgets or lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Who knows?

I would love to say that a surprise player stepped up in the midst of all that disappointment and gave us some hope for the future, but that's it man. There was no one else. Okay, there was Yamon Figurs and there was John Standeford, but I don't think their one catch each qualifies as exciting and/or hopeful. The receiver play this past season was shockingly bad, and not to sound like a broken cliché, but while a lot of that has to be on the general ineptitude of the offense and Stafford's traitorous body, a lot of it has to be laid at the feet of this gang of fools, doesn't it? I mean, at some point you just have to step up and make a fucking play, right? No one did, and that's the story of the season for our beloved receivers.

The tight end position was in a similar state of upheaval virtually the entire season, starting again before the season even started, when first round draft pick Brandon Pettigrew was injured during practice. This obviously set back his development, which was especially a problem because there were a lot of fans out there questioning his selection in the first place. Okay, to be perfectly honest, a lot of fans were outright pissed off that he was drafted over Michael Oher and Rey Maualuga.

When Pettigrew did get back on the field, however, he showed quite a bit. He looked exactly how he was described, as a player who could serve as an effective safety valve for Matthew Stafford, someone who would never be a down the seam deep burner, but someone who could move the chains when you needed him to. In only 11 games, as a rookie, Pettigrew caught 30 passes for 346 yards and 2 touchdowns, including the uber-memorable game winning catch against the Browns. I was encouraged by what I saw, and I think it presages better things to come.

Of course, this being the Lions, all that is contingent upon how well Pettigrew recovers from his knee exploding like that dude's head in Scanners. Indeed, Pettigrew's season was unceremoniously ended against the Packers in week 12, and his absence was felt throughout the rest of the miserable season.

And why was that? Because, well, the other tight ends the Lions had kinda, sorta sucked. Will Heller was brought in from Seattle to be the second tight end, a blocking dude who wouldn't figure into the passing game all that much. But with Pettigrew hurt, Heller found himself trying fill that safety valve role and it just didn't work out. For the year, Heller caught 29 passes for 296 yards and 3 touchdowns - not horrible numbers for a number two tight end - but what they don't show is his obvious lack of athleticism and his inability to be the chain moving weapon that Pettigrew appeared to be. Now, that's not necessarily Heller's fault. I mean, after all, he wasn't brought in to fulfill that role, but come on, if you're going to be a pass receiver in the NFL it's probably best that you don't have the stiffness and foot speed of Frankenstein's monster, you know?

Of course, Casey Fitzsimmons was also around, because Casey Fitzsimmons is always around. He did what he did every year, catching a few passes - 18 to be exact - and looking at times like he could be a weapon while reminding us most of the time that he would never live up to his apparent potential. It's one thing for a dude to be a prospect and a sleeper ready to break out as a rookie or second year player, it's quite another for this to be the case in his seventh season. That's right - SEVEN. Fitzsimmons has been here seven fucking years, and he has never caught more than 23 passes - which he did as a rookie by the way, thus sparking all this bullshit about him being a real prospect - a problem when his one skill is, you know, catching the ball.

With Pettigrew out, Heller trying futilely to replace him, and Fitzsimmons wandering around Fitzsimmonsing it up, the Lions were forced to activate seventh round pick Dan Gronkowski from the practice squad, a move which was soon followed by wishing Gronkowski well in his future endeavors. The team then brought in Jake Nordin, who finished out the season with the team, but didn't really do much to identify himself as anything more than a warm body, which is okay if you are trapped in the mountains, but not such a good thing in this case. I'll leave you fine people to write your own stories about being trapped in the mountains with Jake Nordin, because if I start down that road, thing will get, uh . . . well, I'm sure you can figure it out.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN FOR THE FUTURE?

I think the key pieces are in place for a solid passing attack. Getting Stafford, St. Calvin and Pettigrew healthy together for a whole season will go a long way towards assuaging a lot of the fears about this area of the team. All are obviously very, very talented, and the Stafford to St. Calvin hookup could be absolutely magical.(I mean in terms of the passing game, obviously, not a hookup in the sense that they, well, you know . . . never mind.)

Unfortunately, the situation beyond that trio is pretty wretched. Johnson the Lesser was pretty much a failure in his first season and everyone else was a dud too. The Lions need to find an effective complement to St. Calvin, someone who can make teams pay for double and triple teaming him. Johnson the Lesser does not appear to be that guy. Maybe the Lions can get lucky in free agency, or grab a gem somewhere in the draft, but given the extreme needs elsewhere, I'm not sure how high a draft pick they are willing to spend on a receiver. There's a good chance they take one somewhere in the draft, but there's a good chance it would be a developmental type prospect, and not someone who can step in and help right away.

Maybe Derrick Williams can get it together, but even then, his destiny probably resides at the slot position and not at the number two spot. Maybe Aaron Brown can slide out to the slot and give the Lions some help here, but again, it doesn't fill the hole on the side of the field opposite St. Calvin. As the offseason unfolds, I am sure that options will open up and we'll get a vague idea of who will be that dude, but for now, I just don't know, and that kinda sucks.

At tight end, Pettigrew is obviously the man - if his knee heals, that is - but behind him, I wouldn't be surprised if the team brought in a whole new slew of bodies to compete for the backup job. Ideally, they would get someone who could provide some solid in-line blocking.

There is a long way to go before next season, and right now, the theme is unfortunately kind of the same as it was this time last season: Help us Calvin Johnson, you're our only hope.

2009 Lions Season Review, Part 2: The Running Backs

It's been a long time since Barry Sanders ran into our hearts and then left us heartbroken and sad when he decided that he just couldn't live with us anymore. I suppose we can't blame him. I mean, he tried, he really did, but after a decade of fighting, and constant disappointment, he was forced to conclude that we were too dumb and broken down, and that we were never going to change. He tried to love us, despite our many, many flaws, but it just wasn't working out, and so he did what so many dudes do in the same situation, and he got the fuck out of town. COME BACK BARRY WE'LL HAVE DINNER ON THE TABLE EVERY NIGHT AND WE'LL DO THAT THING YOU LIKE IN THE BEDROOM THAT WE SAID WE WOULDN'T DO. WE PROMISE WE'LL DO BETTER BABY! COME BACK!

Ahem. Sorry. Anyway, when Barry left, he took with him our hearts, our hopes and our dreams. More than a great running back, he was our franchise, our savior, the one man who made the laughter of other fans worthwhile. Fuck them, we had Barry. But then Barry left, and we have spent the last decade wandering in the wilderness, searching for even a trace of that same ephemeral feeling. We gave up on finding it at running back as a parade of disappointments marched through town, and we recalibrated our hopes for the position. Would it be too much to ask just to find someone who was, I don't know, competent?

It seemed like we had finally found our man when, as a rookie playing for an 0-16 team, Kevin Smith finished with numbers comparable to those put up by Emmitt Smith as a rookie. They weren't great, but they were good, certainly very encouraging, and the way he finished the season seemed to presage greater things on the horizon. For my part, I went completely insane and said things like this:

2. Kevin Smith accounts for 1,800 total yards from scrimmage, about 1,200 rushing and 600 receiving with, say, 12 touchdowns.

That is from a post prior to the season in which I laid out several predictions. Okay, now that you have stopped laughing, you cruel son of a bitch, I suppose it's time for me to hang my head and admit that I am a dumb asshole. It's okay, I am secure enough to admit that from time to time, I make a complete and utter ass out of myself, and this was one of those times. To say that I missed the mark here would be to say that Napoleon missed the mark when he thought that his soldiers would have fun sledding and ice skating in Russia.(What up, history fans!)

Okay, obviously I was wrong, and it speaks to the strange duality of my nature that despite all of the bizarre ranting and raving, the fucked up imagery, and the occasional threats of suicide, I could still be so blindly optimistic. It shows just how much I want to believe in something, anything really, that I am quick to take the slightest glimmer of hope, trap it in a bottle and horde it like that degenerate Gollum in his cave. Kevin Smith, myyyyy preeeeeeecccccioooooooussssssss.

I will apologize for the startling and hilarious inaccuracy of my prediction, but I won't apologize for the spirit in which it was delivered. Reality may have judo thrown me into a world of stupidity, but that's okay, the hopeful are often bludgeoned and left for dead by the wicked. But, in the end, hope is what will allow me to get back up and beat the holy hell out of my tormenters. I will continue to hope and I can just about guarantee you that I will predict something equally as preposterous about Matthew Stafford before next season. It will happen, I know it will happen, you know it will happen, everyone will laugh and we will all move on. But maybe, just maybe, I'll be right, and I can actually be happy instead of cloaking myself in some bullshit cynicism.

Okay, okay, I apologize. This has gone completely off the rails. I will stop screaming like some street corner junky preacher about hope and just get on with this thing.

Anyway, yeah, Kevin Smith. We've already seen the hilariously stupid prediction that I made before the season, so let's just check out the actual statistics put up by the director of Jersey Girl. That is the same guy, right? For the season, Smith ran the ball 217 times for 747 yards and 4 touchdowns. That's only 3.4 yards per carry, which, uh, well, that ain't good, you know? He also caught 41 passes for 415 yards and a touchdown. Which means he rushed for over 400 yards less than I predicted, ended up falling over 600 yards short of the total yardage I predicted, and missed the touchdown mark that I predicted by 7.

We must, of course, keep in mind that Smith missed three games due to injury. Based on the final numbers, let's project what Smith would have put up had he played those three games. If we do that, Smith's numbers project like this: 267-919-5, 50-510-1. Uh, that's still a great big old pile of shit, right?

The simple and undeniable reality is that Smith just wasn't very good this year. There are some mitigating factors certainly. One of which is that the offensive line he was running behind was a wall of flaming poop. It's hard to really be an effective running back when your left guard is flailing about like a drunk quadriplegic in a breakdancing competition, just flopping around, aimlessly, jerking his poor worthless body an inch at a time, hoping against hope that this time he will miraculously be able to do the robot or pop and lock. Okay, so that may have been the weirdest and possibly most offensive analogy I have broken out. To be honest with you, I soar so far beyond the pale when it comes to offensive bullshit that I don't even know where the line is anymore. But if you are reading this, then I assume that you have come to take such things with a grain of salt. If you are a quadriplegic, well, I don't know what to tell you. Just chill out, maybe have a seat. Sorry. That was terrible.

Anyway, while the line was awful, it certainly was no worse than the abomination of a line the Lions trotted out during the Year of Unnumbered Tears. In that shittastic season, Smith still managed to rush for 4.1 yards per carry, which was a hell of a lot better than anything anyone else was doing back there, and which is what ignited my stupid prediction in the first place. That 4.1 ypc average was not exactly spectacular, but given the situation, it was extraordinarily good. Conversely, to see how bad Smith really was this season, we must put his per carry average into that same context. Smith averaged 3.4 yards per carry this season. Meanwhile, his backups, Maurice Morris and Aaron Brown, combined to average 4.29 yards per carry, or almost a yard better every time they touched that ball. That is an astounding difference, and shows just how bad Smith was this past season. It's a stark and brutal number, naked and terrible, and after seeing it you should have a really, really hard time apologizing for Smith's play.

Ah, but there's another factor at play here. Smith was injured against Washington early in the season, in a game, where, perhaps not coincidentally, he was putting up his best numbers of the season. After that game, Smith was never 100%, and his numbers never really approached those that he put up against the Redskins. He kept playing, but he wasn't all there, until finally, his knee exploded in a million different directions in the terrible loss to Baltimore. After the season, we found out that Smith was playing with two fucked up shoulders for much of the season, which certainly helps to explain his generally shitty play. But just how much can be laid at the feet of these injuries?

Well, let's look at how Smith performed before his body started to betray him. Against the Saints in week one, Smith rushed for only 20 yards on 15 carries. Not exactly a piece of evidence in his favor. The next week, against the Vikings, he ran for 83 yards on 24 carries. Not especially inspiring numbers, but given the historical beastliness of the Vikings run defense, that's actually a pretty good performance. The next game was the Redskins game, the one in which he was first injured. In that game he ran for 101 yards on only 16 carries and looked like he was on his way to breaking out. So . . . what does all of this mean?

Well, I think it shows that Smith would have had a bit more success had his body kept its end of the bargain. Of course, that's only based on one very good game against the Redskins and one okayish game against the Vikings following a miserable game against the Saints. I don't know. Really, I don't. There's just not enough info here to make the call. I will say that Smith didn't miss any games with the shoulder injury, playing the next week against the Bears, so apparently it wasn't too severe. Of course, in that game he only rushed for 30 yards on 19 carries, so maybe he should have taken a week or two off.

Frustratingly, whenever Smith was running well, like in the game against the Seahawks, the Lions were forced to abandon the run after falling behind, which further depressed Smith's statistics. It's hard to say how Smith's numbers would have looked had he played on a team that could run the ball throughout the game and if he had remained healthy throughout the season. All we are left with are two things: what the final numbers actually were, which weren't good, and our own impressions. Unfortunately, my impressions were that Smith was a running back who ran hard but simply didn't have that extra gear. I remember during the Thanksgiving game against the Packers, in particular, being frustrated by Smith repeatedly breaking loose only to be hauled down because he didn't have the speed to turn a decent gain into a big gain or a big gain into a touchdown.

My lasting impression of Smith from the 2009 season is of a running back who plays hard but isn't quite good enough to be a feature back in the NFL. That saddens me on a personal level, because Smith was one of the players who I found myself gravitating towards, a player who I began to place my hopes in, a player who I though represented one of the key building blocks in the future of the Lions success. It's also disappointing because it means that there is one more position that the Lions have to shore up. And that's even before taking into account the fact that Smith's knee malfunctioned like the poor Roto-Plooker in Joe's Garage. Of course, that poor bastard fell apart due to a freak golden shower mishap, so perhaps we shouldn't head down that road.

Anyway, weird Zappa references aside, we can't ignore the fact that Smith's knee was fucking destroyed in Baltimore, and while, yes, there have been many advances made by modern medicine in the repair and rehabilitation of ACL tears, Smith is by no means guaranteed to come back at the same level as before. There's a reason why, not long ago, these types of injuries were considered career enders, especially for running backs. An ACL injury tends to rob you of a lot of your lateral explosiveness and agility. It makes it hard to make those quick stops, and those turn on a dime moves necessary for all running backs. For a running back like Smith, who lacks the extra burst that would make some of those deficiencies a little less relevant, it's disastrous. Even if - and it's a big if - Smith is ready to go by the start of next season, there's a real chance that he won't be good enough anymore to carry the load full time. And as we saw this past season, and as I have beaten into the ground in this post, Smith might not have been good enough to begin with.

On that depressing note, we'll take our leave of poor Kevin Smith and focus on the other dudes tasked with running the ball this past season. Maurice Morris came over from Seattle before the season began, and promised to be a competent backup who could still give the Lions something when Smith needed a rest(or "a blow" as announcers often say, which may be the single most baffling phrasing fairly unique to sportscasts. I mean, how can they not understand how that sounds? That little phrase calls to mind, uh, something else, right? What is wrong with them? Or am I just a despicable degenerate? Wait . . . don't answer that.)

When Smith's knee went all Wounded Knee on him(get it, 'cause it was a massacre, and it was his knee, and see . . . see . . . okay fine, fuck you), Morris was forced into the starting lineup. This wasn't that much of a disaster because, well, Smith sucked for most of the year and when Morris had gotten a chance to play, he had generally outperformed Smith. In Morris' first start with the Lions, he ran for 126 yards on only 17 carries against Arizona and added a touchdown. The next week, he only ran for 37 yards on 18 carries against the Bears, but he rebounded in the season finale, rushing for 65 yards on only 16 carries. So, alright, we have one very good game, one shitty game and one mediocre game. Not bad, not great, perfectly acceptable football. Included in all that was one big run, a 64 yarder against the Cardinals which gave the Lions the big play they were missing from Smith.

For the season, Morris ran the ball 93 times for 384 yards and 2 touchdowns. That's a per carry average of 4.1 yards, which is far better than what Smith was able to put up. As a starter, Morris averaged 4.47 yards per carry, or a full yard better than Smith every time he touched the ball. That's probably not fair, due to such a small sample size, but fuck it, I am rolling with it. In addition, Morris proved a nifty little receiver out of the backfield. For the season, he only caught 26 passes for 210 yards, but for the three games he started, he caught 14 passes for 105 yards.

Morris played well when given the chance, and despite the fact that he was saddled with the Lords of Turdtown, Daunte Culpepper and Drew Stanton, during his starts, he still performed admirably and was a distinct asset. I felt confident with Morris in the game, and for a backup running back, you can't really ask for much more. Whether or not he has the ability to serve as a starter is another matter entirely, one that I'll touch on in a little bit.

Aaron Brown made the team as a rookie after I and everyone else had prematurely dismissed him as a bust after the draft. The scouting report said that he was fast but that he was terrible at dealing with contact. Not exactly what you want your weakness to be as an NFL running back. His one chance to make the team seemed to be as the new kick returner, but once the preseason got started, and Brown showed off his speed, we all quickly changed our tune. It was one thing to read that the guy was fast, it was another to see just how fast. He has the kind of electric speed and athleticism that makes a real difference, the special kind that doesn't come around too often, and after a huge touchdown and backflip in the endzone in one preseason game, we were all smitten and there was no way he wasn't going to make the team.

Still, Brown was a rookie and his weaknesses and limitations were still very real, which meant that he didn't see the field all that much. When he did, he was generally pretty effective, running the ball 27 times for 131 yards and adding 9 catches for 84 yards and a touchdown. His per carry average was a healthy 4.9 yards, and whenever he got out on the edge he was a real threat to do some damage. He probably will never be an effective between the tackles runner, but as a change of pace guy and as a weapon that can be moved all over the field, he has a bright future, hopefully with the Lions. I would love to see them stick Brown in the slot on occasion and get him the ball short and then let him make something happen.

At fullback, the Lions went with both Jerome Felton and Terrelle Smith. Smith, the veteran, was probably a slightly better blocker than Felton, but Felton was a better natural athlete and receiving threat out of the backfield. Occasionally, the Lions gave Felton a carry or two, but he didn't really do much with the opportunities. Still, it's nice to have a short yardage guy at fullback who can keep defenses guessing. He emerged as the starter and should remain there going forward.

Smith, meanwhile, was sent packing after an opponent bitched that he was playing dirty. Whatever. He was a dude, and little more than that, and now he is gone.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN FOR THE FUTURE?

Well, it's kind of murky, both in the short term and the long term. Smith's injury makes it tough to say what will happen. If he returns at full speed, he'll get a shot to prove that he's the main dude, and show that his poor performance was the result of injury more than anything else. However, I'm not so sure that will happen, which means that the Lions might be in the position to find a starting running back before the season starts.

The good news is that Morris is still here, which means that the Lions should have at least one reliable running back option. I'm not sold on him as the starter, if only because he's never really done it before. He's seen a lot of time over the years, first spelling Shaun Alexander in Seattle, and then Smith in Detroit this past season, but he's never been The Man, you know? I wouldn't be that upset if the Lions gave him the shot to be The Man, but again, that's all contingent upon whether or not Smith recovers.

Brown should see his role expand a little as a big play option out of the backfield, and the more ways they find to get him the ball in open space the better. I wouldn't be surprised to see his role evolve over the next couple of years into sort of a running back/receiver hybrid, similar to someone like, say, Eric Metcalf. I like his upside, and I think he's someone who can be a difference maker in the future.

The long term reality is that the Lions need a feature running back. It's looking less and less likely that Smith is that guy, whether he fully recovers from his knee injury or not. Ideally, they would uncover someone in the draft, but again, there are just so many holes to fill that it's probably a mistake to grab someone in this year's draft who is capable of making a difference at running back. Grabbing someone like C.J. Spiller would only mean leaving another dilapidated position untended and rotting for another year. There is simply too much to fix and too little time to do it in. If they can get by for another year with Morris and hopefully Smith, and maybe a cheap veteran free agent, then that's what they will probably do.

At fullback, I like Felton. I think he's a good athlete who brings a lot of things to the table. He can run the ball a little, he can catch it and he's an adequate blocker. I would love it if he became a kick ass lead blocker, but I'm not sure if that will ever happen. More likely, the Lions will try to grab another cheap veteran free agent and hope that he works out better than Terrelle Smith. Hopefully, the combination of Felton and Random Cheap Veteran will result in a solid fullback.

WHAT I SAID BEFORE THE SEASON:

The Lions have a good collection of talent here for the first time since St. Barry's spirit was broken by Lions Disease. I believe that Smith will make a leap this season, and hopefully he can outrun that terrible failure demon before it drags him down and makes him weep bitter tears. Morris is a proven and capable backup and Aaron Brown is the young cheetah that every team loves to have waiting in the wings. Meanwhile, Felton and Smith form a capable and versatile pair of fullbacks. It's a nice cocktail of talent, and, gulp, these dudes might actually be . . . actively . . . good?

GRADE: B+. This could be higher if Smith does indeed take the leap I expect him to. It could also sink drastically lower if Smith doesn't build on the end of his rookie season and if Brown flames out completely. But we are optimists and champions in our hearts and so we won't think that way.

FINAL GRADE: D. I was hilariously wrong about Smith making the leap. Morris was dependable and Brown was indeed a young cheetah, but like I said, this grade would sink drastically lower if Smith couldn't build on his rookie season. He couldn't, and the result is a big fat D, a billion tears, two fucked up shoulders and a knee that ended up looking like it just got off the boat on D-Day. This is what we get for being optimists and champions in our hearts, I guess. Oh well.

2009 Lions Season Review, Part 1: The Quarterbacks

The Future

Okay, settle in, this post is obscenely long, and I apologize in advance. I wrote it in chunks, here and there, and in retrospect, perhaps I should have broken it up into multiple posts, but fuck all that, it is what it is, which is over 4,000 words of dumb bullshit for your enjoyment and perhaps even edification. The other positional reviews won't be as long - this one kind of serves as a general overview for the season too, in a sense - and I swear I am not some autistic robot, just a damn fool, and well, here we go.

If there was one group of players on this team that caused the most violent and schizophrenic mood swings, it was the quarterbacks. Whether it was celebratory delirium in the wake of Matthew Stafford's Terminator performance against the Browns, or whether it was loping through the streets, angry, afraid and confused, following an apocalyptically bad performance by Daunte Culpepper, the emotions that were inspired by the three dudes who took snaps for the Lions this past season largely set the tone for how we viewed the rest of the team.

That is probably a bit unfair, but it is reflective of two undeniable realities. First, the quarterback is by far the most visible member of the team, and so how he performs stands out a lot more than anyone else. If say, Calvin Johnson has a bad game, he can disappear from the action and while we might notice this, we can't actively say that he is fucking up. He's just not there. A quarterback does not have this luxury. If he's struggling, he still has to take the snaps. There's nowhere for him to hide, nowhere for him to go, no one there to pick up the slack. The quarterback is the one player on the field who, fairly or unfairly, is never allowed to have an off day. And second, because the quarterback is in a unique position to handle the ball on every offensive play, how he plays will inevitably have a much, much more significant impact on the outcome of a game than any other player.

Okay, with that all said, perhaps we can put the schizophrenia of the Lions season in focus. At least a little bit. I mean the kaleidoscopic array of bizarre feelings inspired by this team can never be truly explained - witness this funhouse of a blog - but I suppose we can try. And by examining each quarterback, and how they played this season, we can begin to see how and why this team either made us smile or made us weep tears of blood.

When the season started, there was a lot of controversy regarding who should be the starting quarterback for the Lions. I was in the camp that said we should start Matthew Stafford immediately. I have stated the reasons many times, and in an effort to keep this from ballooning into War and Peace, I'll just refer you to here. The Culpepper backers apparently felt that Daunte gave the Lions the best chance to win immediately, and that Matthew Stafford's development would be hindered by starting right away for such a lousy team. Obviously, I disagreed with both of those assessments.

Unfortunately for me, and everyone else who wanted to put this controversy to bed, Stafford struggled a bit in the first game of the season against the Saints, and that predictably led to indignant howling from the pro-Culpepper contingent of the fanbase. Thankfully, Schwartz stuck with Stafford and as the season progressed, he began to show the signs of a franchise quarterback, piloting the Lions to their first win in a billion years against the Redskins in Week 3. He played efficiently and smartly in that game and for the first time in a long time, it felt like we finally had a quarterback who wouldn't shit all over himself in the clutch. It was a nice feeling. It was like we were a bunch of beleaguered teachers who had spent their lives trying to teach a gaggle of retards how to tie their shoes without pissing their pants and breaking down in tears only to be transferred to a school for the gifted. It was disorienting and kind of confusing, and while we weren't quite sure how to feel yet, and while we weren't quite comfortable, we knew that it was a good thing.

The next week, Stafford came out against the Bears in Chicago and had his best game of his young career to that point. Of course, the game ended with his knee betraying him, which made our fragile sense of happiness and optimism wither away and crumble into dust. All we could do is sit back and watch it blow away on an ill wind and hope that Stafford would be back sooner rather than later.

But, for Culpepper backers, and Culpepper himself, this was the chance to show everyone that he was indeed worthy of a starting job once again in the NFL. It was a strange time, because if I am being honest with myself, I really didn't want Culpepper to do that well. I know, I know, that sounds absolutely horrible, but I am a man of the future, and I believed, with all of my heart that Matthew Stafford needed to be the man now if he was going to be a king of men in the future. The last thing I wanted was for Culpepper to be just competent enough to keep Stafford on the bench for the rest of the season and for next season to start with Stafford a relative unknown quantity while Culpepper fled for a billion dollar contract to quarterback some shithole team to a 6-10 record.

Still, I wanted the team to do well, regardless of the quarterback situation, and that created a sort of weird internal melodrama that had me both rooting for and against Culpepper. I wanted the team to win, but I also wanted it to be clear that they needed Stafford, if that makes any sense. It probably doesn't, but what the hell, this whole season made little sense and so that is probably appropriate.

Culpepper came out against the Steelers and actually played reasonably well - for a while anyway - keeping the Lions close enough that they had the chance to tie the game on a final drive late in the fourth quarter against the defending Super Bowl champs. It was pretty much exactly how I wanted it to go down. Culpepper played well enough that it didn't hurt the team, but not well enough that he was creating any sort of real quarterback controversy. Of course, on that final drive, Culpepper was sacked three times in a row, effectively destroying any chance the Lions had at coming back. It was a stark and brutal reminder of Culpepper's deficiencies - he's not good under pressure, makes terrible decisions, etc. - and I recall being left with the impression that the team was getting better but that Stafford was probably still the man.

Then the Lions took a little trip across Lake Michigan and everything went straight to hell. Culpepper played like a man who would be run off of a sandlot pickup game and the Lions were destroyed. Quarterback controversy? Uh . . . no. Unfortunately, this wasn't because both quarterbacks had played out of their minds and Stafford gave the coaching staff no choice but to anoint him Matthew the Great, King of Detroit, but because Culpepper had played so horrifically that the idea of him as a starting quarterback going forward was so brutally depressing. It was an awful thought, just horrible, and it made us all remember that we were still perilously close to the hellmouth that had swallowed us up the season before.

So, with Culpepper having committed suicide against the Packers, the Lions desperately turned to Stafford even though the poor dude was still probably too banged up to play effectively. I will note that this whole time, Ol' Plucky, Drew Stanton, was still hanging out on the sideline, ready and waiting for his chance to step in and lead the Lions to glory. It says a lot about the coaches' opinion of his abilities that they felt like they had no choice but to either play a physical cripple or a mental cripple.

So, Stafford was back in, and with him, a sense of hope returned. There was the belief that now that Culpepper was dead and buried, we could move forward once and for all. The old was dead and gone, its corpse burned and tossed into the Detroit River, and we could finally celebrate a new age. It was okay that for the first few games back, Stafford struggled. It sucked, we wanted both him and the team to do better, but it was somehow okay because at least they were growing together, and that one day, hopefully soon, they would have that breakout performance and then we would be off and running.

And then Cleveland came to town, and Matthew Stafford became the Terminator. It was the kind of performance that had me rhapsodizing like a love struck retard. It was embarrassing and vaguely pathetic, sad in a kind of pitiful way. It was just such an alien feeling, that feeling of uncontrollable hope, and for once it was nice to babble on about how good it felt to be a Lions fan. I had forgotten that feeling, and while it was disorienting and difficult to really express that feeling without devolving into inane gibberish, it was wonderful and it was because of Stafford.

After throwing for over 400 yards and 5 touchdowns, there was little doubt that this dude could get it done in the NFL. But even more than the gaudy final numbers was the incredible toughness, both physical and mental, that Stafford displayed. Caught in a shootout, the 21 year old whose public persona prior to the season was best captured by the famous shots of him getting shitfaced with coeds, showed that he was a natural leader who could rally and inspire his teammates to keep fighting every time they fell behind. That's a rare gift, and combined with his obvious physical talents, it signaled that the future for both Stafford and the Lions was filled with sunshine and blowjobs.

It almost didn't matter that Stafford's shoulder was ground into hamburger meat on the second to last play of the game. By breaking free of the grasp of the trainers and staggering back onto the field to throw the game winning touchdown with no time left on the clock, Stafford became a hero and provided us all with the one indelible moment that we will always remember from this past season. We knew that he was hurt and that it probably meant that he would miss some time, but fuck it, we got what we wanted, Stafford was the man, totally and completely, without question or reservation, and whatever came next would be worth it.

Unfortunately, we are Lions fans and we should have known better. There was an undeniable sense of pride and giddy happiness when Stafford trotted out onto the field only four days later to start against the Packers on Thanksgiving. Daunte Culpepper threw a hissy fit on the sideline when he was told he wouldn't start, but that was just a shameful sideshow to the main story, which was that Matthew Stafford was tough as nails, and that he was already making himself a legend. Sadly, though, real life intervened, as it often does, and it was clear that Stafford was too hurt to be truly effective. He started one more game, against the Bengals, and after getting smoked once again by a pass rusher, his shoulder cried mercy and that was it for him for the season.

Sadly, and cruelly, there were still four games left to play. And with Stafford stuck inside of a plastic bubble for the rest of the season with a team of Ninja Monks with Bazookas standing guard over him, the Lions had to finish things off with Daunte the Lame. Predictably enough, Culpepper was terrible, just atrocious really, and a sense of ennui settled over Lions fans everywhere. The excitement and promise in the wake of the Browns game was all gone, trapped in that bubble with Stafford. There was the sense that none of it mattered, that the rest of the season was just a cruel death march with no point or reason.

The fanbase perked up a little bit when Culpepper became so bad that the coaches had no choice but to put him down like a lame horse and insert Ol' Plucky into the starting lineup. A fan favorite, both because of his local ties and because there was the perception that he had never been given a fair shot, Drew Stanton finally had his chance to show that he could be a viable NFL quarterback. With every Lions fan but one desperately hoping that he would steal the show, Stanton utterly shit the bed, playing so poorly that Jim Schwartz was forced to drag Culpepper back from the glue factory and stick him back in the game. And with that, the Lions season died an ignoble and cruel death.

Alright, so the season is over, the ugly details have been vomited back up, and now we have to figure out what we're left with. Let's take a closer look at the stats.

Stafford was 201-377 for 2267 yards, with 13 touchdowns and 20 interceptions. That's only a completion percentage of 53.7%, which is not all that good. In fact, the numbers as a whole don't look so hot, but this is partially because Stafford was put in a position where he was forced to throw over and over and over again because the defense was getting destroyed like Germany circa 1945. This meant that he didn't have the luxury of being all that efficient with the ball. He had to throw a lot when everyone in the building knew he was going to throw. That's going to lead to a lot of incomplete passes and a lot of interceptions, especially for a 21 year old who's missed a lot of practice time and whose only playmaker has also been banged up.

Stafford actually threw for 226.7 yards per game, and if you extrapolate that over the whole season, pretend that he was healthy and all that, that means that he would have thrown for north of 3600 yards as a rookie for a shitty football team. That's not bad, right? And we have to take into account the fact that he was hurt for a lot of the games that he ended up playing. I think that the chances are good that he would have thrown for even more yardage had he been healthy for those games. And on top of all that, we have to remember, again, that he was missing practice and couldn't develop a rhythm with any of his receivers, which is paramount for any quarterback. For a 21 year old rookie, it's not just important, it's a requisite for even the barest of competence. The fact that Stafford did what he was able to do given all of the above is pretty astounding when you think about it. If he had been allowed to progress linearly, without interruption, there is a chance he would have made an assault on the 4,000 yard mark. Of course, if we continue to extrapolate the numbers, we see that he would have ended up throwing 32 interceptions, which . . . okay, that shit is bad. But again, there are some extenuating circumstances, and if he was given the ability to regularly practice with his receivers, and given a chance to progress week to week, I think that number would have come down.

Of course, I recognize that I am just reaching for something - anything, really - to make me feel good about this season, and my liberal massaging of the numbers is something you would probably ordinarily only find in a seedy Asian whorehouse, but I really do feel good about Stafford. You have to remember that in the great rookie QB battle, between Stafford and Mark Sanchez, that their final numbers ended up being fairly similar. Then if you take into account the fact that Sanchez was healthy and played six more games for a playoff team that didn't ask him to do anything other than not fuck up too much, it makes Stafford look all the better. If you flipped those two quarterbacks, put Stafford on the Jets and Sanchez on the Lions, I think Stafford would have been the Rookie of the Year without question and we would all be sobbing and comparing Sanchez to Joey Harrington.

Okay, okay, I have contorted myself and the numbers so much that I feel like either a despicable street performer or some Thai whore, although I suppose those two things are fairly synonymous. But I am willing to do just about anything to make Stafford look good in the wake of what was an otherwise disaster of a season, and really, isn't that kind of the point? That for once, there is a player who makes me want to stand up and defend him? Most of the time, as you will see in the rest of this post, I am all too willing to savage and cannibalize some poor fool for the sin of suckage, but with Stafford, I am willing to excuse the mistakes and point a stream of light at the positives because he gives me hope. It's that simple.

Daunte Culpepper, in 8 games this season, completed 89 of 157 passes for 945 yards, with 3 touchdowns and 6 interceptions, further cementing the perception that his future doesn't reside under center, but at the helm of a, uh, let's say a Loveboat. Sure, Culpepper's completion percentage of 56.7% was a bit better than Stafford's, but that is more reflective of Culpepper's devolution into what my man Ty termed a human checkdown. Culpepper didn't throw the ball downfield nearly as much as Stafford, as evidenced by his paltry 118 yards per game, and when he did it often resulted in comical interceptions and badly underthrown balls, which is baffling when you consider that Culpepper's only real asset is his arm strength. It was like someone managed to combine the worst traits of Culpepper and Dan Orlovsky, and, well, there you go.

Of course, Culpepper is delusional enough to believe that he can be a quality starting quarterback in the NFL, something that we had beaten into our brains by idiot announcers week after week after week. Well, let's take a look at just how ridiculous that is, shall we? Culpepper's last good season was in 2004, or five years ago, or in football terms, 50 years ago. Since that Fantasy Football Championship Season of Culpepper's in '04, he has played 31 games, thrown for just over 5,000 yards, 20 touchdowns and 32 interceptions. That, uh, that isn't good, you know? What in any of that mess suggests that Culpepper will ever be a decent NFL quarterback again? It took him FIVE YEARS just to match the yardage total he put up in 2004, and he has thrown for half the amount of touchdowns in FIVE YEARS that he threw for in '04. The dude is done and he's been done for a loooooong time.

But, you say, there is another. Indeed. Ol' Plucky, Drew Stanton, also saw time at quarterback this season, and let's see what he did with that time. In four games, only one of which he started, Stanton completed 26 of 51 passes for 259 yards, along with 0 touchdowns and 6 interceptions. Yikes. Look, my position on Stanton has been beaten into the dirt, exhumed and then defiled way too many times already, so I won't launch into a screed here, and I will just say that the dude isn't a very good quarterback. Do I think he has a chance to be a viable backup somewhere? Maybe. But I still haven't seen anything that shows me even that. Maybe he's a decent third string type, but honestly there really is no such thing. You have your starters, your backups, and your carpet salesmen, and chances are good that Stanton will be doing something other than playing football within the next couple of years.

Okay, okay, so in this fractured season, it's tough to get a sense of how the quarterbacks performed as a whole just from looking at their individual statistics. So, let's look at them all added up. This should be fun(He says as he secures the noose around his neck).

For the season, Lions quarterbacks completed 316 of 585 passes for 3471 yards, along with 16 touchdowns and 32 interceptions. They were also sacked 43 times, and well, uh, there you go. Draw your own conclusions, because I have drawn enough - both obvious and convoluted - in this post, and those numbers really do speak for themselves.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN FOR THE FUTURE?

Well, because I am a gentleman and I do not feel like carjacking poor Doc Brown, I can't be entirely sure, but I will do my best to speculate, because if nothing else, that is the essence of blogging in these strange and terrible times.

Anyway, it's clear that Stafford is the man. This point is indisputable. At least I hope. There are always a few blathering idiots out there, so who knows? But what is a bit more hazy is whether or not he will ever amount to, well, the Superman that we so desperately need. I think he will. I have said it multiple times, and I truly believe it, that Stafford is a star. He has all the physical tools and he showed this season that he obviously has the toughness, both mental and physical, to be not only a starting NFL quarterback, but that rare quarterback who can transform an entire team into a winner. That's a hell of a bold statement to make, but I stand by it. Matthew Stafford will be a star in the NFL and I have no doubt about it.

As for what languishes behind him on the bench, well, Daunte the Lame's days in Detroit are thankfully and mercifully almost definitely over. I wouldn't have qualified that with the word 'almost', but Martin Mayhew, in a recent brief comment, terrifyingly said that he wouldn't rule out leaving the door open for Culpepper to return. If this happens I think my face might melt like those Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Hopefully, Culpepper's delusions of grandeur will keep him hunting for a starting job for some other poor team, and we can eventually try to put these trying times behind us.

Stanton, on the other hand, is an interesting case. Not so much because he is any good - obviously, I don't think he is - but because so many fans still see him as a dude who has never been given a fair shot. I think that we'll see a lot of clamor by Lions fans to keep Stanton as the number two behind Stafford, but honestly, I hope this doesn't happen. It says a lot about Stanton's ability that not one but two different coaching staffs and front offices have deemed him unworthy of even a chance despite the dumpster fire going on. I mean, the dude couldn't even see the field when Dan Orlovsky was chasing fireflies or whatever the fuck he was doing in the back of the Metrodome endzone, or when Daunte the Lame waddled onto the field after playing Mr. Mom last year. That's bad. And then this season, he still couldn't see the field, until Culpepper became so bad that I'm pretty sure they would have yanked him even if they didn't have a backup. They would have just stuck Jason Hanson back there and kneeled down the rest of the game. Needless to say, that doesn't exactly speak well for Ol' Plucky. And when he did get his shot, he completely shit the bed. It was horrible.

Basically, what I want to see is this: Stafford stays and starts, obviously. Then I want the Lions to bring in a veteran on the cheap to back up this season - Patrick Ramsey is already hanging around, why not him? - and then bring in a young dude to develop as Stafford's backup for the future. I would advocate spending a late round pick on a dude like Tony Pike out of Cincinnati, but honestly, there are just too many holes to fill already, and so if the Lions can grab some other team's late round castoff off of the waiver wire, then that would be great.

In any event, the future at quarterback is bright for the Lions. That is the first time I have ever been able to say that. Not just in my time writing here, but in my entire life. That is unfathomably sad and kind of obscene in a way. But to hell with all that, the past is the past, and the future is Matthew Stafford, and that's a good thing.

WHAT I SAID BEFORE THE SEASON: Grade: C. I expect a lot of mistakes mixed in with some big plays, some throws from Stafford that make you go HOLY SHIT and get all hot and bothered and then some throws that make you have flashbacks to that smilin' fool tickling the ivories. C for competence, which is a hell of a lot better than we are used to.

FINAL GRADE: Okay, I'm not going to give a final grade here, because really, the season was too fractured. I was impressed with Stafford and I think my assessment above was pretty on target - if anything, I was a bit happier than that with Stafford's performance, but largely because of what it presaged more than what it meant right in the moment, if that makes any sense. It probably doesn't, but what the hell, neither does anything else in this post. Both Culpepper and Stanton get obvious F's, just for you vampires who need to see their failure interpreted in such a way.

Vaya Con Dios, Stan Kwan. Vaya Con Dios.

Well . . . bye.

Indeed. The long awaited news that Stan Kwan had been dragged to the gallows and hung from the neck until dead came on Friday, and hopefully that means that the Lions are serious about finally turning around the dumpster fire that has been the special teams play over the last several seasons.

It's been a while since the Lions were any good at either returning kicks or covering them, but believe it or not, once upon a time this was the one area of the team we had to be proud of year in and year out. Whether it was the steady punting of Jim Arnold or the almost unfathomably long kicking career of Jason Hanson, the kicking game always thrived. That hasn't fallen off all that much since Kwan replaced the dearly departed Chuck Priefer, but the kick return and coverage games certainly have. Ohhhhhhh LORD, have they ever.

We used to take an absurd amount of pride in our kick returners, from Mel Gray to Desmond Howard to Eddie Drummond. It was sort of sad really, but we don't have much to get excited about as Lions fans, and so we held these dudes up as one of the few things that we got right. They were ours, they were better than your dudes, and everyone else could go to hell. It was easy to take that for granted, the same way we have done for years and years and centuries and centuries with Hanson, but Stan Kwan wasn't having any of that shit. Hell no! Excellence is overrated and gaudy, flashy and the sure mark of a prima donna. We would win with Aveion Cason and rejects from The Lennie Small Memorial School for the Retarded. And win we did . . . not.

I know, shocking, right? It's hard to win a race when you downgrade from a Ferrari to a goat pulling a wagon missing its wheels, and that probably mitigates Kwan's tomfoolery a bit. But, you've got to remember, he was the one who hooked that goat up to that dilapidated wagon, slapped it on the ass and told it to run. He may not have been the biggest problem, but he sure as hell wasn't the solution either.

But aside from the lack of explosiveness in the return game (And really, let's be honest, a lot of times, these dudes weren't even competent. Remember that game a few weeks ago when Brian Witherspoon bobbled the ball, went back and grabbed it in the end zone and started running around like a confused and frightened gerbil before finally just taking a knee, and for a second everyone was terrified that the dude just took a safety? Yeah. I haven't mentioned that before because, honestly, I think elves sensed my pain and delved into my brain and mined that fucker out. I am guessing that an evil elf, let's call him Clyde, decided to torture me by sticking that image back in my head just now. Fuckin' Clyde. What an asshole. Wait . . . where am I? What's going on? Whoa, are you serious? This is all taking place within a parenthetical digression that has completely destroyed the flow of this sentence? Who am I talking to? Clyde, is that you, you sneaky bastard?), the kick coverage teams were also routinely terrible, running around aimlessly while opposing kick returners danced their way to six. It was an awful situation, and again, even if the talent wasn't really there - let's not forget that because the Lions have sucked so egregiously that a lot of their special teams gunners like Paris Lenon have been yanked off of the special teams and forced to start on defense - Kwan certainly wasn't doing anything to make the situation actively better, and really, isn't that kind of the point of a special teams coach?

Okay, one last memory and then we'll get the hell out of here. The Lions lost to the Rams this season. You know the Rams, the one team with a shittier record than the Lions? The one team with only one fucking win? Yeah, those dudes. Does anyone remember how they beat the Lions? On a fake field goal - a play which their players said after the game they knew would work because they studied the Lions tendencies all week long and knew that that side of the field would be wide open - they scored a touchdown that was really the difference in the game. That has nothing to do with personnel. That's all on Kwan, may he rest in peace.

Okay, so Stan's dead. Where do we go from here? Well, the popular and obvious choice would be to throw tons of money, whores and booze at Buffalo's recently departed super-coach, Bobby April. April is responsible for turning Buffalo's special teams into world beaters season after season. He's the top dude in the league at what he does, and really, this is pretty much a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the Lions haven't exactly shown over the past fifty years or so that they actually have a brain, so who knows what will happen? Perhaps things really are different now with Mayhew, Schwartz and Co. calling the shots at Ford Field. And perhaps they will do what I, along with many of my esteemed blogging colleagues, like Steve over at Detroit Lions Weblog or the dudes at The Church of Schwartz, really, really want them to do, and hire April.

Of course, April is coveted by every other team in the league, and when you realize that in the dating pool known as the NFL, we are the equivalent of a 350 pound shut-in with cheesecake smeared all over her face, the idea of April ending up in Detroit starts to feel a little far-fetched. Still, we have other things going for us. I mean, obviously we make a hell of a cheesecake and our slam poetry is hot shit. Sure, we might disappear for a couple of hours into our rooms where we will sob and cut ourselves, but we will be devoted and really, you can't put a price tag on that, right? RIGHT???

Anyway, vaya con dios, Stan Kwan. May you have a coin to pay the boatman before he ferries your shameful ass out of this world. And look here, Bobby April. You see us batting our eyes? That's for you, my man. Ignore all those other sexy ladies. They are all whores and will give you The Clap. We are clean, and need a good man to steer us in the right direction. I know, we can be a little strange, but these are strange times, and our love will rock your world.

Well, That's That, I Guess

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