As Lions fans, there is precious little in our immediate past that can make us smile. That is a hysterical understatement. Really, for the last 50 years, Lions football has been a barren and uninhabitable wasteland. Only the truly insane and the masochistic would choose to live in such a world. Unfortunately, I - and many of you - did not choose to live in this wasteland. We were born here, and we have been forced to survive on a diet of shit and the bones of unsuspecting travelers. Wait . . . what? Never mind that last part.
But occasionally - very, very occasionally, we are allowed a modicum of joy on these hellish plains. They are not moments that would pass for joy in any other land, but we are like the child who has nothing and if he is given a couple of sticks and a marble, he gets embarrassingly excited. Everyone else has video games and iPods and concubines and all we have are a bunch of sticks wrapped in hay that we call a doll. Horrible, just horrible.
But they are our sticks and we love them for reasons that no one on the outside can understand. It is with that in mind that I have chosen my five favorite sticks, or to take this beyond the realm of dumb and tortured metaphor, my five favorite Lions seasons. Naturally, this will only cover the last 20 years or so. It wouldn't make much sense for me to rave about the 1983 team since I was three when that shit went down. And, strange and mystical as I am, the powerful Lions teams of the '50s are well before my time. No, this is about my own personal journey through this terrible world, and therefore, these are the five seasons that mean the most to me as a Lions fan. It is kinda sad - very, actually - and as usual, whenever I do something like this, it ends up strangely making me more depressed than when I discuss the bad shit, but what the hell, I am a warrior of light and a champion in my heart and I can take it. And besides, this is easy content, and there is nothing else to write about.(Well, there is Tim Toone, but even though he is by all accounts a very good guy, my procrastination when it comes to discussing him is so epic that it has given me a complex, and that complex has caused me to loathe him before he even gets a chance. So sad, but this is our reality and, after all, these are strange and terrible times and these things happen.) Okay, Jesus, enough rambling, let's just get on with this shit.
5. 2008
RECORD: 0-16
PLAYOFFS? UH . . .
KEY PLAYERS: DAN ORLOVSKY, DAUNTE CULPEPPER, KEVIN SMITH, CALVIN JOHNSON, THE FAILURE DEMON, THE HOUNDS OF HELL, LENNIE SMALL
HEAD COACH: ROD MARINELLI
Wait, what the fuck? I know this doesn't make any sense. This was 0-16, the Year of Unnumbered Tears, Hell on Earth. What the fuck am I talking about?
Okay. There is really no way that I can justify this, and it is a dark and shameful thing to admit, but 0-16 was indeed my fifth favorite season as a Lions fan. I will wait for you to stop rioting and throwing shit at your screen before I explain why.
Okay, done? Good. Also, you shouldn't throw shit at your screen. It just marks you as a barbarian, and besides, that is your monitor. Unless you are reading this at a friend's house or at the library or whatever. In that case, go nuts. Piss on the keyboard while you're at it. Fuck it.
But after you're done with all that, sit down, shut up and listen to me. 0-16 was not a good feeling. Let's just get that out of the way. Really, it was also my least favorite season as a Lions fan. So what the hell is it doing on this list? Well, you see, 2008 was when I began this absurd little adventure in blogging. The first game that I wrote about was the epic and terrible shitkicking the Lions received from the Falcons to start that season. Go back and look. My first post on this site came in August, on the eve of that terrible and savage season. And now, here I am, almost two years later, and I'm still writing about the Lions despite all reason.
In a way it was fun. That may sound heretical, but what the fuck, the rules are different for Lions fans. That is where everything began for me here, where all the weirdness, the fucked up imagery, the stupid nicknames, the irrational love for certain players, the unreasonable hatred for others, began. Through writing about the Lions, I became almost obsessed with them. They became a dragon I had to chase and then slay. I'm still chasing that fucking dragon and I'm still trying to drag it down and kill it. It opened up a whole world for me to explore, a whole story that is absurd and terrible and strange and fascinating and heart wrenching and complex and simple all at the same time. I love telling it, even as painful as it is to actually live it.
Perhaps that doesn't make sense to anyone else but me, but that's because I'm the one wrapped up inside of it. I make no apologies. Throughout the 2008 season, I felt like Slim Pickens riding the A-Bomb like a bucking bronco in Dr. Strangelove. If I had to sum up what that season felt like, that would be it. It was strange and dark and terrible and also bizarrely fun. It was a hell of a ride, and even though I knew we were all just hurtling towards certain and terrible doom, I rode that fucker to the bitter end and I am both proud and mortified by that fact.
Not only did I live through 0-16, but I feel like I comprehensively told the story of that season better than anyone else out there. That is a powerful statement to make, bold and egotistical as all hell, but fuck it, I don't pat myself on the back often, and I feel like it's true and I don't mind saying it. 0-16 was unique, singular in its notoriety, and I told that story while the world burned. If you were here then and you came along with me on the journey, then you know. If you didn't - and most of you probably weren't here yet - you missed out on something that was both terrible and oddly enjoyable. I was on fire. Again, this probably all sounds like the ravings of an ego driven asshole, but fuck, I never do this so hopefully you'll indulge me here a bit. 0-16 was unique and strange and terrible and utterly without redemption. And somehow, someway, in the midst of all of that, whatever this is that I do here was born. And that's not nothing, you know?
4. 1999
RECORD: 8-8
PLAYOFFS? YES
KEY PLAYERS: GUS FREROTTE, CHARLIE BATCH, GREG HILL, GERMANE CROWELL, JOHNNIE MORTON, DAVID SLOAN, STEPHEN BOYD, ROBERT PORCHER, LUTHER ELLIS, JEFF HARTINGS, RON RICE
HEAD COACH: BOBBY ROSS
The 1999 season was a strange one, an oddly noble last stand before the world collapsed. The Lions had gone 5-11 the season before, and St. Barry floated out of town on a river of tears, riding a raft made of broken dreams. The mood was decidedly grim. On top of St. Barry's untimely demise, Herman Moore also chose the 1999 season to fall apart. With the Lions two iconic weapons of the '90s dead and dying respectively, it seemed fitting that the decade would come to a close with a funeral for the team that never quite made it over the hump.
But then a funny thing happened. The Lions went out and they fought their asses off. They played hard all season, despite a lack of star talent, and they didn't stop fighting until they were finally dropped by the Redskins in the first round of the playoffs. It wasn't a great season - hell, it was very, very average - but everyone involved with the Lions knew that death was at hand, that the day was coming, and coming soon, the day when the world would cave in on itself and the only thing that would remain would be the stench of death and the buzzards picking the scraps of the corpses of the fallen. It was unavoidable. It was going to happen, but these dudes stood up anyway, and every week they marched onto the field and in the twilight of hope, they stood on the precipice of doom and they lived another day.
Gus Frerotte and Charlie Batch were both adequate at quarterback. Neither was spectacular but they survived, and that was all anybody on the team could do that season. Germane Crowell came out of nowhere to replace Herman Moore and for a brief moment, he stood proud and tall in the sun before he was dragged into the shadows and forgotten once again. The few blue chip talents still on the team, like Robert Porcher and Luther Elliss, helped will the team to remain relevant against all odds, while Stephen Boyd played like an absolute warrior in the middle of the defense. He was overmatched and undertalented, a shadow of the great he replaced, Chris Spielman, but that made him the perfect avatar for this team. He managed to overcome all of that, and in the face of overwhelming darkness, a darkness which would finally descend two years later, an inevitability which could have paralyzed the entire Lions world, which could have - which should have - beaten everyone, he and the Lions survived, and with that survival came a grim sort of pride. And that's something that we can look at today, and although it won't make us smile, it will let us lift our heads high and remember that there is worth in fighting, even when there is no hope.
3. 1989
RECORD: 7-9
PLAYOFFS? NO.
KEY PLAYERS: BARRY SANDERS, BOB GAGLIANO, BARRY SANDERS, RODNEY PEETE, BARRY SANDERS, RICHARD JOHNSON, BARRY SANDERS, CHRIS SPIELMAN, BARRY SANDERS, JERRY BALL, BARRY SANDERS, BENNIE BLADES, BARRY SANDERS, LOMAS BROWN, BARRY SANDERS, KEVIN GLOVER, BARRY SANDERS, ERIK ANDOLSEK, BARRY SANDERS, HOPE, BARRY SANDERS
HEAD COACH: WAYNE FONTES
From the end of an era to the beginning. The Lions only finished 7-9 in the 1989 season, but it was the first season where I really started to understand the bigger picture, where I started to pay attention to how the Lions fit into the overall picture of the NFL. This was also Barry Sanders' first season, and with him came a knew emotion: hope. It was the first time, as a young Lions fan, where I felt that twinge, that "maybe we can do this" feeling. It was the first time that I really invested myself emotionally in the team, a time when I stopped being a fan of the Lions simply because I was born into it and started being a fan of the Lions because my heart made me.
It was a bad season, really. The Lions started an atrocious 2-9, but behind St. Barry, they won their last five games of the season to finish 7-9. I remember thinking that they were on their way, that no one could stop my favorite team and that the next year they would surely kill everyone and become the best team in the league. After all, they were my team, and so they had to win, right? And they had the most exciting player in football, Barry Sanders, St. Barry, the player who was so good that he almost seemed like an alien. He was quiet, humble, so outrageously good that as a rookie he had to pull himself out of the last game of the season so he wouldn't win the rushing title, which would have embarrassed him. Who does that? I mean, really? In a way, Barry's humility only made him seem even more badass. He was the gunfighter who would draw before his opponent could even move his hand. And then Barry would stalk his opponent down, stick the gun in his face and then turn around and walk off while his opponent stood there with piss running down his legs. In a way, Barry's humility was almost arrogant. He was so good that he embarrassed other people by letting up. He beat them, made them think they were going to die and then just walked away, leaving them to live with their own shame. That shit is fucking cold.
It was with that in mind that I thought the next season was ours for the taking. Hope was born in my heart. Of course, the Lions ended up going 6-10 the next season and the young me learned my first lesson in Lions fandom and the nature of hope. But the seeds were planted, and for the next decade, it always seemed like it was possible, it always felt like we were so close to turning the corner. That's what made the 1999 season so grim and yet so noble - that hope had finally died - but in 1989 that hope was born, and it sustained me for a full decade as a Lions fan.
2. 1995
RECORD: 10-6
PLAYOFFS? YES.
KEY PLAYERS: BARRY SANDERS, SCOTT MITCHELL, HERMAN MOORE, BRETT PERRIMAN, CHRIS SPIELMAN, BENNIE BLADES, WILLIAM CLAY, LOMAS BROWN, KEVIN GLOVER
HEAD COACH: WAYNE FONTES
1995 was arguably the height of the Barry Sanders era, a season where the Lions, for the first time, emerged as legitimate Super Bowl contenders, a season where the promise of the past had finally ripened into present possibility.
The season actually started off kind of shitty. The Lions lost their first three games. But then, on Monday night, against the badass 49ers, the Lions won 27-24, hinting at what was to come. The 49ers managed to shut down St. Barry, but for the first time since Barry had been in Detroit, the Lions were able to respond. Scott Mitchell threw the ball all over the field, to a receiving corps led by Herman Moore, who set the NFL's all time single season reception record with 123, and Brett Perriman, who caught 108 passes of his own. It was the first time that the Lions made people pay for ganging up on Barry Sanders.
The Lions continued to stumble after that game though, and after nine games were only 3-6. It seemed like a typically frustrating Lions season under Wayne Fontes. But then the Lions went crazy, winning their final seven games, and winning them in a way that made them suddenly seem like they were destroyers of the world. They just started whipping on everyone. They weren't just winning, they were beating teams. There's a difference. The last two games of the season, the Lions combined for 84 points and gave up only 10. They beat Jacksonville 44-0, a game that was so lopsided that Fontes ordered his team to start taking a knee with several minutes left to go in the game so that the score wouldn't be even worse. It humiliated the Jaguars. They bitched after the game, saying that what Fontes did was even more embarrassing to them than if he had run up the score. I loved it. This was my team, just playing with people.
It was our moment. We were there. We had arrived and now it was time for us to kick down the door and finally ascend to the throne that had been waiting for us from the day that St. Barry arrived. The playoffs started, the Lions played the Eagles, and . . . lost, 58-37. Whoops. Well, shit. It turns out that Scott Mitchell was, well, Scott Mitchell. His implosion in the first round was spectacular, and so utterly Lionsesque, that it has become a part of the team's legend. It is ingrained in our collective psyche, imprinted on our brains forever. Scott Mitchell is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to believe.
Still, after the playoffs were over, and the Cowboys had won the Super Bowl, I remember an analyst on ESPN talking about how the Cowboys had gotten lucky, about how some were questioning whether they really were the best team in the league. After all, in the playoffs, that didn't have to play the 49ers and they didn't have to play the Lions. Wait . . . what? The Detroit Lions? Indeed. It is the only time, in my entire life as a fan, that the Lions were put in that category, the one time that they were treated as anything other than a punch line to a bad joke. I'll never, ever, forget that moment. It didn't happen on the football field, and really, it was just a throwaway line by some dude in a studio in Connecticut, but for the briefest of moments, a moment so brief that it never even translated to the actual field of play, the Lions lived in that world, that strange and beautiful place that has always seemed so unreachable, so unknowable. The Lions were winners in spirit, were winners for a moment so ephemeral that it barely existed, a moment that sparked to life, flickered and then died before even a second had passed. And yet, it existed. There is both a lingering sense of pride and a terrible sort of wrenching pain caused by that moment, and it is in that, that mixture of pride and pain, of hope and sorrow, that the story of the Detroit Lions in my lifetime becomes all too clear.
1. 1991
RECORD: 12-4
PLAYOFFS? YES. THEY EVEN WON A GAME!
KEY PLAYERS: BARRY SANDERS, ERIK KRAMER, RODNEY PEETE, BRETT PERRIMAN, ROBERT CLARK, WILLIE GREEN, MEL GRAY, CHRIS SPIELMAN, BENNIE BLADES, JERRY BALL, RAY CROCKETT, LOMAS BROWN, ERIK ANDOLSEK, KEVIN GLOVER, MIKE UTLEY, MIKE UTLEY'S WHEELCHAIR, MIKE UTLEY'S THUMB
HEAD COACH: WAYNE FONTES
Well, here it is, my favorite season as a Lions fan. 1991. The Lions had finished 6-10 the year before, but this was only Barry's third season, and hope was still young and still fresh. The Lions lost their first game 45-0 to the Redskins, which foreshadowed the disappointing end to the season, but in between, the Lions won and they won often, finishing 12-4 thanks to both the amazing grace of Barry Sanders and the emotion spawned by the crippling of Mike Utley and his famous thumbs up from the stretcher. That grace and that emotion combined into one overwhelming wave, a wave which crested with the Lions winning the NFC Central division and serving notice that they planned to be the new lords of the league, the team of the '90s.
Of course, that all turned out to be wishful thinking, an illusion spawned by that cruel trickster known as Hope, but for a season at least, anything and everything seemed possible. There wasn't rampant cynicism, no feeling that death was imminent, no lingering suspicion that the whole thing was a fraud. Even in that 1995 season, people were well aware that Scott Mitchell was in fact Scott Mitchell and we had already been burned by hope enough times by then to not fully trust it. But in 1991, hope was a new thing, a beautiful and pure and innocent and wonderful thing and we embraced it wholeheartedly.
It all culminated on January 5, 1992, in Pontiac Michigan, at the fabled Silverdome, where the Lions dismantled the young Dallas Cowboys, 38-6, in the NFC playoffs. The Lions had earned a bye thanks to their record, which was the second best in the NFC. They awaited the winner of the Wildcard game in the second round, which turned out to be the Cowboys. It was a match-up of young teams, of two teams with star running backs, Barry and Emmitt Smith, It was the battle for the future of the NFL, a battle which promised to tell us, once it was over, who was for real and who was just a pretender.
It was an awesome game, a game which is the apex of my fandom. I was there. I was at the game, and I remember the unbridled excitement in the crowd, the feeling that we had arrived, that the future was ours, that our fandom in the Detroit Lions had finally paid off. I remember watching Barry disappear completely into a pile, only to reemerge like some sort of magician on the other side. He was stopped, the play was over, and then there he was, running wild and free towards the endzone. He was amazing, and he was ours. Fuck Emmitt Smith. That grinder wasn't special. He wasn't a magician like our Barry. Barry was mystical. Barry was on loan from heaven. He wasn't a football player, he was St. Barry, our patron saint, our savior.
That is how we felt, watching him and the Lions on that day. The question was answered. The Lions were the real deal, the Cowboys were the pretenders. The future was ours. As always, reality ended up laughing at us and then punting us in the balls over and over and over again. A week later, the Lions went into Washington for the NFC Championship game and were annihilated, losing 41-10. At the time, it just seemed like a blip, a stumble on a long and beautiful road to glory. After all, we were young, we were good and our time would still come.
Of course, it never did, but such is the tragedy of the Lions in my lifetime. The story is long and complex, but these five seasons were all important chapters in that story, necessary to understand if anyone has any hope of comprehending the larger story. They are seasons that all affected me deeply as a fan, seasons that are burned into my brain, for good or for bad. I called this my five favorite seasons, but in retrospect, perhaps I should have called this the five most important seasons in my Lions fandom.
This post ended up being long, full of heartache and pain, and in many ways, like I said at the outset, it is infinitely more depressing to do something like this than it is to point out all the bad. The sheer mediocrity of the so called good does a better job of anything else of telling the story, of explaining just why things have been so horrible for us over the years. I mean, the combined record of the five teams above is 37-43. That's fucking horrible. True, the 0-16 season does skew things a bit, but two of my other favorite seasons include an 8-8 campaign and a 7-9 season. That means that there are only two winning seasons in my entire lifetime that stand out to me as memorable. That's depressing as all hell, right?
In any event, I actually enjoyed writing this post. Once it got going anyway. It was meant to be a filler post, something to throw up here in lieu of anything substantive. But, I think, in its own way, it ended up being an important post to write. That may sound absurd, but to hell with all that, being a fan is in itself an absurd thing most of the time. Really, this post explains a lot of what it means to be a Lions fan. I am surprised by this. But as this post has shown, I am often surprised by the Lions, in ways both good and bad. Maybe what we should take away from all of this is that sometimes, when it seems like the future is shining bright, there is a horde of failure demons waiting just over the horizon to ambush us. And sometimes, when the world seems utterly black, light can emerge from the strangest of places.
Oh well. Vaya con dios, mi amigos. The journey is still ongoing, and while it may be strange and terrible, at least we are all in it together.
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