So Tired

So tired . . .

2-32. That is the record of the Detroit Lions ever since I started writing about them here at Armchair Linebacker. 2-32! That means that where we are today is familiar, well covered territory. Frankly, it's hard to know what to say. Exhortations to embrace hope seem hollow and stupid. That's not to say that we shouldn't hope. We should. There is every reason to believe that this team will get over the hump in the relatively near future. After all, Jahvid Best looked like somebody spliced a ballerina's DNA with a cheetah's and we are all able to sigh with relief now that we know that our hopes and dreams for Young Master Best have not been in vain. (Also, I wouldn't advise getting involved in the gene splicing business. That's some serious shit and things will get messy. Yeah, yeah, it might seem fun to have a gorilla with wings, but it won't be so fun when you're running down the street in terror while he hovers above you, hooting and tossing his shit at you. On the other hand, it would be fun to get drunk and try to ride him. Would that get you a DUI? Someone needs to ask Tom Lewand about this. I bet he knows.)

Anyway, yeah, there is hope. And hope is, of course, a good thing. But hope is something reserved for the future. It gives our fandom shape and meaning. It saves us from having to look at the numbers 2 and 32 and then begging our gorilla with wings to fly us to a great height and then drop us into the sea. (By the way, it's just not right to involve your poor abomination of a winged gorilla in your suicide plots. Shame on you.) But hope is not real. It does not win games for us and does not keep us from having to stare at the television or sit in the stands with our hands on our heads with that sick feeling in our stomach over and over and over again.

The Failure Demon is a cruel son of a bitch. He keeps finding new and terrible ways to break our hearts. He has managed to use his accomplice Hope in his latest schemes and they have somehow been even more terrible as a duo than when the Failure Demon was working alone. Before, that asshole would just hold us down and stick us with red hot pokers and laugh and laugh at our agony. Now, though, he smiles at us and tells us everything will be all different and then Hope grabs our arms and restrains us while the Failure Demon beats the shit out of us yet again and then they laugh together at our idiot faith.

Last week it was the catch that wasn't. This week, we were allowed to believe. We were allowed to believe that even without Matthew Stafford that it was different, that the future had arrived and that future had a name: Jahvid Best. It didn't really matter that St. Calvin was once again disturbingly absent and it didn't matter that our defense still wasn't quite where we needed it to be. Jahvid Best was running wild and we were winning 17-7 even though we had given up some big plays and fuck everyone because here we come. And then Hope grabbed our arms and the Failure Demon began delivering some vicious body punches until we were left whimpering, dazed and stupid while the scoreboard read 35-17 Eagles.

But then Hope relented and told the Failure Demon to back off. He helped us to our feet and soothed us and encouraged us and made us believe in him yet again when we saw the scoreboard read 35-32. St. Calvin had just caught a touchdown pass and we had just recovered an onside kick and oh joy, we're gonna win this thing! We did it, Hope! We did it! And Hope smiled and laughed and celebrated with us and all was right with the world. And then Hope shrugged and kicked us in the balls. The Failure Demon leaped back out of the shadows and he and that bastard Hope stood above us pointing and laughing while we puked the remnants of our testicles up.

It is a familiar story, a sad and pathetic story, and frankly I am sick of it. I am in my third season of writing about the Lions for Armchair Linebacker and in that time I have been able to sit here after a game and celebrate it twice. Two fucking times. In three seasons. That's it. I remember both of them vividly. There was the win against the Redskins, which finally managed to free us from the grip of 0-16. I posted that absurd pic of the soldier kissing some random babe at the end of World War II. Then there was the win against the Browns, after which I rhapsodized about Matthew Stafford and acted the fool because I was too happy to be rational.

Those were great. The point is, is that in my third year of doing this, I shouldn't be able to instantly remember every time that the Lions won a game and every time that I was actually happy. I mean, that's kinda pathetic. There have been exactly two posts in that vein during my time here. And yet, this is the 32nd time I have sat down after a game to write a post like this one. I remember some of them, but not nearly all of them. They are all sad and filled with tears and dumb gibberish and they all have conspired to slowly drive me completely insane.

I'm sick of losing. That is a hilarious understatement but it is still one that needs to be made. I'm sick of it. That doesn't mean that I'm pessimistic or without hope or ready to scream UNACCEPTABLE or anything so dumb and reactionary as that. I'm just tired. It's personal. I'm not mad. I don't blame the dudes who are there right now. This mess isn't their fault. I'm just tired.

Hope is a good thing. Hope sustains us and keeps us from winged gorilla time. But today is not about hope. Today is not about the future. Today is about today and today the Detroit Lions lost again.

Why did they lose? For the same reasons they always lose: they're not good enough, the offensive line breaks down too often, the defensive backs suck, the linebackers aren't very good and St. Calvin was absent.

It's that last part that leaves the worst taste in my mouth. It has become routine to bemoan the lack of Calvin Johnson during a game. Enough so that I fear that it is part of a trend and not a series of one off events. At some point, you have to look at the situation and ask "What the hell is going on?" Did Calvin score a touchdown near the end of the game? Yes. He did last week too, no matter what anyone says. But still, those felt like the desperate last resorts of desperate men. It almost feels like Calvin is the A-Bomb. "Alright men, we're losing the war and we'll all be dead soon. Let's just push the button . . ." He's the ultimate weapon and yet he doesn't show up until the very end, when we have no choice.

Still, we could have won that game even without St. Calvin's heavenly presence. We probably should have. Jahvid Best saw to that. He was magnificent/electric/whatever hyperbolic adjective you want to throw out there. But our offense lacked consistency. It lacked that extra gear, that backup plan. When the Eagles smartened up and started to take Best out of the game, we couldn't counter.

Meanwhile, our defense was . . . our defense, with all that entails. I know, I know, not the most specific of breakdowns, but you've all seen our defense. You know there will be both good things and bad things. I thought the defensive line looked okay. Not great, but okay. They managed to pressure Vick and were on the verge of crushing several of the Eagles drives, but then Vick would dance away and toss a first down. It's tough to really say whether or not the Lions would have won if Kevin Kolb had played instead. On the one hand, Michael Vick was under heavy pressure but the Lions couldn't finish him off consistently due to his athleticism. The natural tendency is to think that if that were Kolb then the Lions would have been crushing him all day. But the reality is that Vick often puts himself into those situations. He hangs onto the ball so damn long that the defense has time to put great pressure on him. Kolb probably would have chucked the ball before the Lions got anywhere near him on a lot of those plays.

Michael Vick is a hard player to read because his skill set is so unique. On the one hand, it looks like he's always in trouble. That's partly his fault. On the other, he can get away with it both because of his athleticism and because the coverage inevitably breaks down in the secondary. It's hard to read anything into what the defense did against Vick because he changes the way the game is played so drastically. Defenses are designed to pressure a quarterback and hold their coverages for four or five seconds. Either the QB gets sacked or he throws an incompletion or an interception. With Vick, you pressure him and hope you can contain him, otherwise he's gonna dance around and your secondary has to hold their coverage for an extra three or four seconds, which in the football world is an eternity. You can't ask your defensive backs to be supermen.

Then again, a few of the Eagles big plays - like the early TD pass to DeSean Jackson - came not because of Vick's creativity but just because the Lions defense really, really sucked. Futhermore, the run defense broke down, especially in the second half and that's what really broke the Lions back. Vick was Vick and all that entails, both the good and the bad. In this game, I think the good outweighed the bad. Still, that's containable if he doesn't get help, either from his running backs or from the defense. But LeSean McCoy did his job, the defense didn't do theirs and, well, there you have it.

I will continue to hope, if for no other reason than I have no choice. Hope is all we have. We must take comfort in the fact that it seems to be founded in something real here. But I don't want to worship Hope either. I don't want to ignore reality for a dream. I want the dream to become real and until it does, I won't be satisfied with a promise. Not anymore, and maybe, just maybe, that is the real sign that we've made some progress.