Magic Beans, Calvin Johnson and Some Gibberish About a Ferrari

It's that time of year when everyone starts poring over the roster, looking for ways for their team to get better, and I wish I could say I was a better man and that I was willing to just let this shit slide for the next several months, but, well, you have seen the 10,000 or so words I have already written in my season review and that shit is only, like, a third of the way done. So, obviously, I can claim no moral high ground here. But that's cool. We are all football obsessed idiots, and sometimes when there is no news we do what obsessed idiots do best and start making up the news, jabbering on idly in the hopes that we will somehow stumble upon the key that will open the lock to our team's fortune.

Sometimes, this speculation is actually interesting and productive - such as my man Ty's piece for Mlive.com's Highlight Reel blog that explored some trade ideas. Obviously, the thought of losing The Lizard King via trade saddens me greatly, mostly because I won't be able to use him and his monkey as a crutch whenever I write about the Lions. But these are terrible times, full of tragedy, and we must remain strong. Therefore, I can be a gentleman and concede that trading Ernie Sims for something useful might not be the worst idea. There, see, idle speculation, but it's reasonable, and really that's the key word here, reasonable. REASONABLE.

You see, I can't really stress that word enough because it stands in stark contrast to the idiot bellowing of a number of Lions fans, reporters and other bloggers who apparently have decided that the Lions' best move this offseason would be to trade Calvin Johnson for a handful of magic beans.

I'll just let you look that over again, maybe think about it a little bit, and then when you are done laughing/vomiting/hurling a brick through your computer screen, we can continue. Well, unless you actually did hurl a brick through your computer screen, in which case, what the fuck is the matter with you? Then again, if you did, then you are not reading this and I am just talking to myself and rambling on for no reason in particular, but what the hell, these are the things that happen when I am confronted with such obvious lunacy.

Trading Calvin Johnson is utterly retarded. There. That should be the end of the argument, but sadly, I am sure there are still a lot of people who will still want to argue this bullshit. Let's break down the inanity, shall we?

There seems to be a growing movement that says that you shouldn't build around a wide receiver, and that's why Calvin Johnson should be traded. This is dumb for a couple of reasons. First of all, Calvin Johnson is no ordinary receiver. The dude is the physical prototype of a wide receiver, a perfect specimen, capable of doing anything and everything you would ever want a wide receiver to do. For fuck's sake, every scouting report about Calvin begins to come across like a letter to Penthouse: "Dear Penthouse, I was watching practice the other day, when this long, lean and supple thoroughbred took the field. His hands were huge, two gigantic mitts which extended to caress the pigskin. Oooooooh, and when he runs, he glides like a dancer, his graceful and tender movements belying a strong and manly frame, and . . ." I mean, GOOD LORD. This is not just some dude who can be swapped out for another receiver. You aren't going to find anyone like him no matter how hard you look. Also, I apologize for that. It was disturbing, I know.

Second of all, who says that the Lions are building around Johnson? From my own humble vantage point, it seems like they're pretty set upon building around Matthew Stafford, with Calvin as the ultimate complementary piece. How well do you think Stafford is going to do with Bryant Johnson as his number one receiver for the entire season? This is just asinine. The best thing you can do to help your young franchise quarterback is to surround him with guys who can actually, you know, play.

This leads us into argument number two, which says that the Lions do need to surround Matthew Stafford with better talent, but that they need to do so up front, along the offensive line. This is all well and good, but I don't care how much time your offensive line gives you, if you don't have anyone to throw to, you're still going to get hit. A lot. The Lions have been woefully devoid of playmakers for too long now, and you want to take away the only one that they have so that Matthew Stafford can sit in the pocket for an extra second and then throw it out of bounds when he can't find anybody open anyway? Huh?

Then there is the magic beans argument, which is the most impatient sort of bullshit you can imagine. Because the Lions are so bad, and have been for so long, there seems to be this tendency to look at anything worth value and then look for ways to get a bunch of lesser parts in exchange for it. I mean, sure, if you have a Ferrari and you are homeless, I guess it makes sense to trade that son of a bitch for some clothes, maybe some soap, some booze and a few cans of food, but I guarantee you that one day you will look back and think what the fuck have I done? The thing is, is that no one will ever give you something of equal value back, so why bother? Sure, to continue this tortured analogy further(seriously this is getting so bad, I think someone is going to start waving the Geneva Convention in my face), it doesn't do you a whole lot of good to ride around in that Ferrari if you don't have anywhere to go, but fuck man, just be patient. Collect some cans, get an apartment, sell some fucking blood, I don't know. But one day you will get back on your feet and when that day comes, I bet you will wish you still had that fucking Ferrari.

God, that was terrible. Anyway, the point is, is that those magic beans might be good to eat, and they might have some fiber and they might get you through the night, but guess what? When you wake up the next morning, you'll still be homeless and then you won't have a Ferrari, you won't have any beans, and you're shit out of luck. Idiot. No wonder you're homeless.

Look, I like beans. They're good for you. But to constantly settle for them instead of hanging onto the one good thing you have is typical of the mindset of a lifetime loser. Now, perhaps that's appropriate given the history of this shitbag of a franchise, but isn't the point to dream big? Isn't the point to want to get better, and not to just give up whatever good things you have in exchange for a quick patch that will make the shitty night a little less shitty? To bring it back around to the football world(oh thank GOD), I would much rather be 2-14 now with the hope that we can be 11-5 in a few years than to panic, throw away Calvin Johnson, be 6-10 now with the hope that we can be, well, 6-10 in a few years.

Hell, why not trade everybody? Hey, DeAndre Levy, sorry, but you look too good, we need to get some value from you now. So we're going to trade you for a fifth round pick and a seventh round pick. Hey, that's like getting two instant lottery tickets! Scratch your ass off motherfuckers, and when you end up winning two dollars after having spent twenty, perhaps you'll realize that maybe you should have just, you know, hung onto what you had in the first place and then built on that.

The people who want to trade Calvin Johnson have no idea how to build anything. They want to essentially build on quick sand, just one panicked move after the other, never letting anything grow, never building on any sort of firm foundation. It's just tossing brick after brick into the sand and watching it get swallowed up while you stand there looking dumb. Haven't we seen enough dumb shit over the years? Do we really need to be exposed to any more of that nonsense? Calvin Johnson is one of the very, very few pieces worth anything that we have. He is a brick. We have to work to build on top of that foundation. It takes some time, but fuck, that's real life. There's no fairy dust, no magic beans to be had. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but well, these are strange and terrible times and none of us can afford to be foolish and naive.

Calvin Johnson is the best thing we have going for us as Lions fans. If you want to trade him, you are a sadist and should be ashamed of yourself. We have suffered enough. Take your magic beans, plant your beanstalk and start climbing because your gibberish is too much for the rest of us to take.