Let's Do It

Me, this season.

Tomorrow, I'll write my first game preview post of the year. There will be a lot of weird bullshit, a bare minimum of actual facts and a wild bipolar current running through the whole thing, which really, will run through everything I write this season.

There will be times when I seem like Hercules ready to strangle the whole world with my arrogance and hubris, when I am claiming that St. Calvin is some sort of mystical Terminator with angel wings and Andre the Giant sized hands or that Jahvid Best has the legs of a cheetah grafted on to his body or that Matthew Stafford is the Swagger King and pilots F-14's in the offseason and has the call sign Iceman. And then there will be times when I threaten to drink bleach and start yammering on about being beaten to death by rabid vampire apes and start hollering at sky and insult Drew Stanton just because he's there. All of these things will happen and many of them will happen within the scope of the same post.

Yes, that's how schizophrenic this season should be and it's how schizophrenic I feel right about now. Last season was supposed to be the crazy one, the one where The Hope intermingled with The Fear, and in some ways it did - especially in that game against the Browns, which was the quintessential Hope/Fear game. But really, everything was delayed just a little bit thanks to the mountain of injuries which derailed the Lions season. Matthew Stafford was healthy for only a fraction of the season and after getting his knee torched against the Bears we never really got a chance to see him take off like we hoped. By the time he did get healthy, he ran absolutely wild on the Browns but then his shoulder got nuked and that was that. So there were glimpses, tantalizing and wonderful, but they were just glimpses and we were left to wonder what if? Which is where we are today.

Unfortunately, I had hoped that the what ifs would be left behind as soon as the final gun went off on last season's shit storm, but here we are still asking ourselves those same questions we did a year ago. We just don't know what to expect. Not really anyway. We have our hopes and we have our dreams and on some level we know what it possible - refer back to my post from earlier in the week in which I waxed retarded about that very thing - but we're still not sure what's going to happen.

That's not a very happy place to be, but unfortunately that's about all we have going for us as Lions fans. Every year we get ourselves all excited and tell ourselves and anyone who will listen that this year will be different. And then the season starts, Yakety Sax starts playing in our heads and we mentally check out once again. It's terrible, but it's true.

The past few months, I have felt as optimistic about the Lions as I have in a long time. After all, the pieces seem to be in place for a strong and kick ass core that could dominate for the next decade. Matthew Stafford, Calvin Johnson, Jahvid Best, Ndamukong Suh and Louis Delmas all make me feel something that I have rarely felt as a Lions fan: confident. I speak often of hope, but I rarely speak of confidence and that's because, honestly, I've never had any as a Lions fan. There was Barry Sanders and that was it. But even Barry would let me down at times (Heresy!) Yeah, I know, I know, Barry was Barry and he is a martyr and our Patron Saint blah, blah, blah, but don't forget those -2 yard games at Lambeau Field in the playoffs in January. Even our wildest hopes and dreams have had a ceiling, a cold frozen ceiling, over the course of the last twenty or so years.

But this core seems different. It feels like if they get enough players filled in around them that they will be able to do anything. Matthew Stafford has it. He just does. I know, I know, that's some ambiguous bullshit and I'm sure a bunch of nerds could swoop in here with a bunch of stats proving that I'm an idiot and that Stafford will be popping pills with Ryan Leaf five years from now, but fuck all that. You see, I am kind of an expert when it comes to shitty Quarterbacks. I have spent my whole life studying them as a Lions fan. I have seen everyone from Chuck Long to Andre Ware to Joey Harrington to Fat Daunte and I know the difference between them and Matthew Stafford. Matthew Stafford is the only Quarterback the Lions have had in my lifetime who I've felt had it, who I've felt confident in, who I've believed in, who at the end of the day I felt could march a team down the field and win the damn game whether his shoulder was in tact or blown into a million pieces. He's it. He's the man, and I feel 100% confident that he will make it. I do and you're not going to convince me otherwise.

Perhaps I've just gone insane. Perhaps my own brain has forced me to embrace The Hope in order to escape the cruel talons of The Fear. But I actually do believe that things are different this time, that we will make it and in the end that we will get to experience the joy that has eluded us our whole lives as Lions fans.

But that's all in the future and our core is still young and there is still not enough talent around them to believe in our wildest dreams this season. Still, just like every season I started to tell myself "Maybe . . ." and began doing the what ifs and started imagining crazy scenarios in which the Lions surged to glory. Then, just like I have the last couple of seasons, I sat down and did my season preview for this site and, well . . . let's all welcome back The Fear, ladies and gentlemen.

Indeed. By the time I reached my preview of the defense I once again felt like that dude in Hellraiser who gets his flesh torn apart by a bunch of hooks. There are just too many holes, too many problems, for this team to do anything other than occasionally tantalize us with its potential. The future is wonderful, but the future is also still a long ways off and we still have to fight our way out of hell.

It's important to remember that, but it's also important to savor the good moments too. It's okay to get excited when the Lions pull out a huge win, when the offense clicks and they upset someone who they weren't supposed to beat. It will happen this season and when it does we should all celebrate and tell the rest of the world to fuck off. They will all laugh at us and tell us it doesn't matter and that the Lions will still be losers but who cares about them? This is our world and we must make the best of it that we can.

Still, while we celebrate it's important to keep those moments in their proper context. They will be heralds of that wonderful future but that's it. They won't somehow signal that we're ready for the Super Bowl this season. I mean, the Lions have Aaron Berry ready to start this season as the Nickelback and he's an undrafted free agent rookie who missed most of the preseason. I mean, come on.

There will be a lot of crazy bullshit this season and I will be responsible for a lot of it. There will be laughter, there will be tears, there will be celebratory whoops and there will be the gnashing of teeth, the tearing of clothes and the beating of breasts and when it's all over we'll look back, just like we always do and wonder how we survived the whole infernal thing. And then we'll get ready to do it again. I'm ready, finally, recharged and on top of the world. It's gonna be a hell of a ride and I plan on riding the whole way without a seatbelt, naked and wild, my middle fingers up and screaming, my heart open and my hair on fire. The Lions are ready to take the field. Let's do this thing.


PREDICTED FINAL RECORD: 7-9. I couldn't justify going higher than that, but lower than that just felt depressing and I for one have had enough of being depressed. The Lions will finally unload their guns this season and they will likely die in the streets, but at least this year they'll get off some shots of their own and take a few dudes down with them.