Jason Fox

I am not feeling creative at all, so if this thing sucks, well . . . now you understand. Perhaps I am just shook up by the stunning news that Brian Cushing may have tested positive for a PED because he had just blown his load. Of course, this has already led to a stunning amount of jokes about Cushing being busted for jacking-off, but my favorite little note was from someone on Twitter who said that the only way the Ejaculation theory holds up was if Cushing pulled out literally seconds before pissing in the cup. I don't even really have a joke here. Just read that again. Right now, there is a serious controversy going on in the NFL in which it is speculated that a player either jacked off or boned someone mere moments before his drug test. This is such a ridiculous league sometimes.

Anyway, I think the news overwhelmed me, if only because my brain started searching for the best punch line to this whole thing because that's just kinda how my brain works. Now, writing about Jason Fox seems kind of prosaic and it's hard to write when you don't feel that interested about what you're writing about. Once again, this is probably just something that I should deal with on my own. I mean, not many writers or bloggers or whatever the fuck people are calling themselves these days will explain to you why their post or column or whatever sucks copious amounts of dick. They'll just write it and hope no one hates it too much. But that is some selfish bullshit, right there. We are in this together, you and me. I am the writer and you are the reader and I owe it to you to explain why things aren't going so well. I am secure enough that I am comfortable admitting when my shit stinks. Perhaps I should just wait until the mood strikes but I made the idiot mistake of promising my followers on Twitter a post today and I am nothing if not an honest gentleman. If I went back on my word now, then what would we have? Anarchy. That's what. There would be people killing each other in the streets and whipping dogs with chains made of hatred and broken dreams and I cannot be responsible for that. Sure, you might say that is all ridiculous and no one would give a shit whether I posted or not but I am a ridiculous man sometimes.

Okay, I'm not entirely sure what the hell I am even talking about anymore, so let's just get on with this thing before I end up writing 5,000 words about Jason Fox.(Well, 500 words about Jason Fox and 4,500 of utter gibberish. By the way, yeah these things have been kinda long, which is making me worried that my season preview posts will be mini-epics that will turn into Crime and Punishment, only with slightly less murder and more insanity. But what the hell, we are warriors in our hearts and champions of virtue and we can handle such things. I believe in you. I believe in us.)

Anyway, yeah, Jason Fox. If you ask most Lions fans what needs to be fixed in order for the team to be relevant again, you will get a bunch of foaming at the mouth dissertations about the offensive line. Seriously, if you want to see utter hatred, dark and without reason or pity, ask a Lions fan about Jeff Backus. You will think that the dude ate their children or got caught fucking their dog. It's unseemly.

So, naturally, Lions fans were eager to draft a young, stud offensive lineman in this draft if only because they are eager to draft a young, stud offensive lineman in every draft. It doesn't even matter who at this point, if he's not Backus then he's okay. Lions fans have gone utterly retarded when it comes to this point. They are completely incapable of reason and honestly, they should not be listened to anymore. Their endless braying has made their hideous noise forfeit. Seriously, you sound like a bunch of dumb assholes now, so stop it.

No, the offensive line is not perfect, nor is it very good. In fact, it still kinda sucks, but Jeff Backus is not really the problem. The problem is the twin holes known as guards that lineup next to the tackles. I have gone into this before and so I won't go too far deeply into it again, except to say that Backus would magically seem like a different, better player if he had anyone remotely competent lining up next to him at left guard. Thankfully, he seems to have that with Rob Sims coming into town. But that won't stop Lions fans. Backus could cause the entire defense to explode using only his mind like Dr. Manhattan and Lions fans would still say he needs to be replaced. The damage has already been done. It is a sadly unsalvageable relationship.

The good news for Backus is that his coaches are in his corner. The bad news for Backus is that this means that the coaches ignore the caterwauling of the fans year after year, which only makes them even angrier at Backus when the team passes up a Russell Okung or a Michael Oher. It has passed the point of reasoned desire for change into utter madness. No one really gives a shit if the dude who replaces Backus is actually any good or not. They just want to see Backus hauled down and beaten like that statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad a few years ago. They want to see him dragged through the streets and tossed in the Detroit River and floated off to Canada. This is not a movement that embraces hope or that is looking to the future. Instead, it is a movement motivated purely by hatred and vile revenge. It is mean, it is stupid and it is pointless.

Look, I have also at times said foul words about Backus. I do not deny this. And it's not like he's a great player. He isn't. But he's a serviceable player, and while that may not be inspiring, it's certainly not deserving of the incredible vitriol which dominates any discussion about him. This is a matter of perspective. I don't really care all that much if you think that the Lions could do better than Backus. There are a lot of days where I'd actually agree with you. It's just that the argument against Backus has passed over into the realm of the absurd and so I'm forced to sit here and defend the dude like he's Lomas Brown. It makes fools and assholes of us all and it has to stop. Let us all try to be reasonable about Backus from now on. Let us recognize his limitations while also acknowledging the things that he's actually good at.

See how this shit gets out of hand? This post isn't even about Jeff Backus. Well, not directly anyway, and yet it is threatening to turn into a post wherein I break down all of Backus' strengths and weaknesses. If I had an editor here, he would be screaming at me right now, telling me to get to the point, but fuck that, he wouldn't understand what it's like to be a Lions fan, the insane madness that it causes and the crazy paths we are pulled down because of it. This is what anger and hatred and The Fear do to us. They make us rant and rave about shit that isn't even material to the point. They make us weak and foolish, gibbering and lost in a wilderness of stupid noise and tangled malice. It isn't even about football anymore. It becomes a dumb war that we fight within ourselves, screaming and fighting with each other, slandering one another just because we have so much anger and disappointment and stupid sports rage. It becomes a pissing contest, a way of forcing one another to acknowledge that we are fans of a horrible team. This post somehow got caught up in the middle of all that and while it has made this a wildly unfocused screed that I should probably delete, I won't, because it is honest and it is important to acknowledge. It may be clunky and it may mar the rest of the post, it is still all too real, and it is something that must be understood if we are to understand our own pain, our own sports anger, and we must come to terms with that if we are going to move on.

Okay. I sorta turned into an insane Jedi there, didn't I? I was like Yoda if Yoda had finally just cracked and started shit talking everyone and then shit on the floor or something. I apologize, and let's just move on.

Okay, Jason Fox. All of the above gibberish is important to understand if you want to understand why it is that Jason Fox doesn't just seem like an ordinary fourth rounder to a lot of Lions fans. He is a fresh start, a new hope, someone who can one day take over for Backus and heal these violent riffs that lead to such epic craziness as the weird bullshit above. It's a lot to ask from a fourth round pick. Too much. And it has already skewed his career before it has started. That is the poison of The Fear, of venom run amok. Hating Jeff Backus like many fans do has made it so that even the people who could potentially replace him are tainted by it. They suddenly are drawn into a whole stupid maelstrom of desperation and weird anger. Jason Fox is no longer Jason Fox. He's Jason Fox who could one day supplant Jeff Backus. That's his identity in the mind of a lot of Lions fans and it's unfair.

But just who is Jason Fox? Who is he independent of Jeff Backus, independent of the whole stupid drama his name has already been pulled into? Well, I'll tell you.

Jason Fox was a four year starter at Miami. That, by itself, says a lot. Sure, Miami hasn't quite been Miami for a few years, but they still haul in an incredible amount of talent year after year and for Fox to step in and be the man for four straight years is impressive. You don't get to start for four years at Miami without having some obvious gifts.

What are those gifts? Well, Fox is a very good athlete, a former tight end turned tackle. He has the ability get out on the corner and take on pass rushers, and he also has the ability to get up the field in a hurry, getting out to the second level to make blocks to spring a running back. He has good footwork and should be able to handle edge rushers better than your average stiff.

All that sounds pretty good, so why did Fox fall into the fourth round? Well, he had some injury issues, particularly a nagging knee injury that he finally had fixed a few months ago and even scarier, an irregular heartbeat.

Thankfully, doctors told him the irregular heartbeat was likely a one time thing and the knee has healed up enough so that he's considered ready to go, so I'm not sure if we should really be worried about those. All things considered, it feels like we kind of got a steal here.

Of course, none of this means that Fox is a perfect player. He doesn't seem to be the sort of player who's going to beat anyone up. He might not have that bit of nasty to him that all great linemen have. He'll want to use his athleticism to redirect defenders rather than bashing them backwards. That's fine, but the problem is that in the NFL almost everyone is a great athlete, which means that the edge will go to the person who's willing to kick the other guy's ass. I'm not so sure that Fox is willing to do that.

Fox seems like the sort of player who has all the tools to succeed but he might not have the attitude. He might be too delicate, too unwilling to latch onto a guy and just beat him up for four quarters. I am this close to making a clichéd It Ain't Ballet comment here so I'll just stop. You get the point.

All in all, I love Fox as a fourth round pick. He's a talented player with a ton of experience at a big time program who fell simply because of bad timing with an injury. He's someone who you can either choose to develop as your left tackle of the future or he's someone who can probably step in and play right away without getting completely overwhelmed. His technical and athletic ability will allow him to survive and perhaps even eventually thrive, but I fear that he'll never be as good as he could be unless he develops a meanness to him that, from just about every scouting report I've seen, he just doesn't seem to have. I like Fox. I do. But to be honest with you, I think there is a good chance that he washes out of the league. On the bright side, though, I think there is just as good a chance that he becomes a starter down the road. But this is what you get with a fourth round pick.

HOW HE FITS WITH THE LIONS/WHAT IT MEANS FOR THIS SEASON

The team has already said that it plans on using Fox as their third offensive tackle, meaning that he will slide between the left and right side depending on where the team needs help. It's possible that he could steal the right tackle job away from Gosder Cherilus if Cherilus doesn't step up his game or if his recently revealed knee injury isn't healed up.

Backus is the starting left tackle. Let's just get that out of the way right now. And I think that the team likes Backus enough that he'll be the left tackle for a few more years. They aren't looking to replace him so we might as well make our peace with that.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE FUTURE

Well, it means that Fox is likely primed to be Backus' successor when Backus finally does get the boot. Of course, that's all contingent upon Fox actually making it as a viable NFL offensive tackle.

In the meantime, I wouldn't be surprised to see Fox push Cherilus. I have a feeling the team would like to replace Cherilus and if they can get away with sticking Fox there for a few years, then I think they'd like to do that. That way, when Backus finally does leave, they can either slide Fox over to left tackle or keep him on the right side and take another stab at an elite prospect on the left side. Either way, if Fox works out, the Lions are well positioned for when Backus does finally leave town.

Of course, there is always the possibility that Fox doesn't make it, in which case the team needs Cherilus to make it and then they need to start searching for Backus' eventual replacement all over again.

This post was weird. I will admit that, but I warned you up front. I didn't expect it to turn out quite like this. The first half or so was fairly volatile, all charged up but unfocused. The second part, the Fox part, was listless and half-assed. I will admit this. I was on auto-pilot and should have given more to it, but fuck it, even the best of us are beaten sometimes. Perhaps it is weird that I have essentially critiqued my own post, but it is important to be self critical. It is the only way to stay on top of things in an ever changing and absurd world. I think I hate this post, and yet there is enough in it that I think it is still worthwhile. That may not be an inspiring statement, but like with Jeff Backus, sometimes, you just to have accept the situation for what it is and not get all pissed of because it's not what you want it to be. This post is my Jeff Backus. Hopefully, the next one will be better but for now, I suppose this is good enough. Blah.