Well, I Was Half Right

Insert pithy comment here.

This week's predictions were a mixed bag. I missed on a couple - including one so horrifically that my license to predict anything should be revoked (Don't even ask me about the licensing process. It involves a pair of Komodo Dragons, the illegitimate great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandnephew of Nostradamus, a pair of rubber gloves and a bathtub filled with acid. I will say no more.) But I did hit a couple of my predictions so thoroughly that I feel as if this feature has been at least momentarily redeemed. Of course, one of these correct predictions was depressing and terrible and made me question the fabric of the universe. It would seem that I am only allowed to be right when it also crushes my soul. Anyway, before I get morose and possibly violent, let's just get on with it, shall we?

PREDICTION THE FIRST: Hill will complete 14 of 26 passes for 168 yards, 1 touchdown and 0 interceptions. He'll hardly ever take a shot down field and the ghost of Joey Harrington will slime us all. I'll be forced to call Harold Ramis because Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd are both too expensive and we'll be left with the indignity of watching Joey's ghost abuse Egon. No one wants to watch Harold Ramis' corpse getting dragged naked and beaten out of Ford Field, but I fear this is the savagery wrought by our friend Fate.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Hill complete 25-45 passes for 335 yards and 2 touchdowns to go along with 2 interceptions. Well, I would have been right if I would have doubled the stupid numbers.

Still, I don't feel entirely wrong here. Please! Please! There is no need to boo me and pelt me with garbage. Sigh. Okay, so I was very wrong, but I feel like those numbers are still very misleading. For starters, a lot of Hill's yardage came towards the end of the game when the Lions had to chuck the ball around in order to close the gap on the scoreboard. And second, 154 of those yards went to Jahvid Best on screens, including one 75 yard play. Those were little more than extended handoffs, short, safe passes that didn't exactly tax Hill. Meanwhile, Brandon Pettigrew caught another 7 passes for 108 yards, with many of those catches being little checkdowns that Pettigrew took and then rumbled for more yardage. The point is that Best and Pettigrew combined for 16 catches for 262 yards. Which means that most of Hill's yardage came thanks to the play of those two dudes rather than because of anything he really did.

In fact, Hill only completed 6 passes for a grand total of 58 yards to his wide receivers. That's shockingly bad, especially when one of those receivers is Calvin Johnson. I'm not sure whether that was because Hill lacks the ability to throw the ball downfield or if the playcalling was simply that conservative. Perhaps it's a little of both. The Lions seemed content to use Best and Pettigrew, particularly Best, and hope they could make something happen after the catch. I'm not sure if I can really knock Scott Linehan here for a couple of reasons, though. First of all, whenever Hill did throw the ball down the field, his passes appeared slow and/or wobbly, and they were often inaccurate. Clearly, playing in a vertical passing game is not Hill's strength. Second, when you've got a playmaker like Best, it makes sense to use him, especially when he's finding room like he was against the Eagles. This becomes doubly sensible when you're playing with your backup quarterback. And third, Calvin Johnson looked like he came down with a bad case of Lions Disease for much of the game. I will talk more about this a little later on.

So, really, what was Scott Linehan supposed to do? He had a limited quarterback, a running back who was making big play after big play and a star wide receiver who looked like he was getting ready to go on tour with Morrissey. He tailored the game plan accordingly and I can't really knock him for it.

As for Hill, well . . . it's obvious that he's limited but that doesn't mean he's bad either. I mean, there's a reason why he's the backup and not a starter in the NFL, you know? He made plays the best that he could, using the weapons that made the most sense for his talents and he displayed a grit that is commendable. I think you can win with Hill if you have a good defense and a back like Best who can make plays. Unfortunately, the Lions are still missing the "good defense" part of that equation, but shit, you can't really put that on Hill, can you?

The good thing is that, for the most part, the ghost of Joey Harrington stayed away from Ford Field. Hill generally made the right reads - and not just the safe reads, which was Joey's specialty - and I wasn't necessarily left frustrated when he would go to Best or Pettigrew. This is probably because I would always cringe whenever Hill had to throw the ball more than ten yards down the field - witness the final 4 and out for evidence of that horrid bullshit. Hill did what he had to do and therefore, Harold Ramis' life was spared and Egon can go back to jacking off to supernatural slime or whatever the fuck it was he did in the movies.

PREDICTION THE SECOND: The Eagles will key on Jahvid Best and he'll end up with 85 yards on 17 carries. 40 of those yards will come on one long run, meaning that for the rest of the game he'll only pick up 45 yards on 16 carries. He'll also catch 5 passes for 65 yards and a touchdown, and we'll be left both excited by his gamebreaking potential and worried by his inability to consistently gain quality yardage.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Best ran the ball 17 times for 78 yards and 2 touchdowns, with a long run of 33 yards, which meant that for the rest of the game he picked up 45 yards on 16 carries. In other words, I nailed this one almost exactly. Or at least the rushing part of the prediction. I should have just quit while I was ahead. But Best also caught 9 passes for 154 yards and 1 touchdown.

This is how impressive Best's performance was: his 154 yards receiving was the most by a rookie running back in the NFL in the entire Super Bowl era. (Pause for wide eyed freakouts and the requisite "Whoa's") I know!

It's tough to say that I was frustrated in any way by that performance, which was kind of the key point in that prediction. I guess I could say that it was frustrating that the Eagles bottled him up on the ground for much of the second half, but the dude ended up with 232 total yards and 3 touchdowns. Those are crazy numbers, number one fantasy football running back numbers, numbers that we haven't seen around here in a very, very long time. And they came in Jahvid Best's second professional game. If I say that I am frustrated by that in any way, then I am a complete idiot and should be stripped naked by all of you, tied to a post and horsewhipped.

Even though I was eerily accurate on the rushing numbers, I can't really celebrate this one because the tone of the prediction was all wrong. Maybe that makes sense and maybe it doesn't but to hell with all that, it makes sense in my own head and even though my head is a strange playground not fit for mortal man, it is still my head and I have learned to coexist with it and so should you.

PREDICTION THE THIRD: Calvin Johnson will be frustratingly absent for much of the game, catching only 4 passes for 48 yards and 0 touchdowns. We'll all watch in horror as his body language deteriorates and after the game I will rant and rave about Lions Disease and will curse Scott Linehan. And thus, my first whipping boy of the Schwartz era will be born. Joy!

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Calvin caught 4 passes for 50 yards and 1 touchdown. I feel absolutely horrible that I got this one right. Just devastated. I am so annoyed in fact, that I am stripping Calvin of his sainthood until he earns it back. That's right, it has come to that. Shit.

From the moment I first started writing about the Lions here, I openly worried about Calvin Johnson coming down with the dreaded Lions Disease. I noticed that he dropped too many passes, loafed a bit too much at times and generally looked like he would rather be anywhere else than on the football field. I had seen it happen to Roy Williams and I was terrified that it would happen to Calvin, especially because Calvin was a once in a decade kind of talent. Roy Williams could be replaced. Calvin can't. We need him to be St. Calvin.

By the way, in case you're wondering, I won't even acknowledge that Transformers shit. When it first happened and all that Optimus Prime and Megatron gibberish came out, I said that it was a bad sign. In fact, this is what I wrote way back in 2008:

" But what I really want to talk about is something that no one wants to acknowledge and why the Lions will never win with these two goofs as their receivers. You see, last season Roy Williams and Calvin Johnson dubbed each other Optimus Prime and Megatron in a stunning bit of nerdery usually only seen between pale fifteen year old, pudgy white kids. I mean, come on, really guys? Look, Detroit is a city that likes its athletes hard and raw as fuck. Think the Bad Boys teams of the Pistons. Those dudes would stab you if you weren't careful enough. And the fans themselves aren't afraid to wander out of the stands and throw hands if they feel compelled. It's mayor is facing multiple criminal charges, including assaulting an officer. This is not a city that has time for Transformers nonsense. The only way to transcend this is to be great with machine like consistency, like Stevie Yzerman or Barry Sanders. There is no room for fucking around like a little kid if you aren't fucking everyone else up on the field at the same time. I mean, can you imagine Jerry Rice and John Taylor pulling this shit? How about Art Monk and Gary Clark? Or better yet, try to imagine Michael Irvin and Alvin Harper calling each other Voltron or some such shit. You can't, and the reason is because in order to be a great you need to be competitive to the point of insanity or a coked out raging beast. You don't talk about your love for cartoons while playing grab ass with your fellow receivers. This is a real problem here my friends."

I meant every damn word of that and I still do. That is why you will never see me refer to Calvin Johnson as Megatron.

There, mini-rant over. Or is it? No. You see, that whole little diatribe actually digs to the heart of the matter, which is that Calvin Johnson appears to not have "it". And by "it", I mean that insane competitive fire that causes a man to thrive even though he's being constantly double teamed. I mean that desire to be the best to the point of mania. That's what all the great ones have. That's what separates Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant from Vince Carter. It's not ability. It's not talent. It's that near sociopathic desire to destroy everyone else. And it just seems to me like Calvin Johnson doesn't have it. And I knew that the moment he started calling himself Megatron.

That doesn't mean he isn't a good dude. It just means that he's an incredibly talented and gifted man who is content to be very, very good. That might be okay if it wasn't for three reasons. Number one, the Lions need him to be exceptional. They can't settle for very, very good. They are simply too far in the hole and the only way to climb out is with exceptional effort, not a very, very good effort. Number two, other teams know that if they take away Calvin, they take away the Lions big play passing game. Maybe this will change with the emergence of Best, but for now, Calvin is still the man, and as the man, he needs to be exceptional in order to overcome this. Teams can stop a very, very good receiver with constant double teams. An exceptional receiver can overcome that kind of harassment. And third, and probably most importantly, the Lions are a terrible team and a terrible franchise. You have to have an iron will to survive in the midst of all that. You have to have that manic desire to be great no matter the cost. You have to hate losing so much that you force yourself to win simply because it's the only alternative. If you don't have that mindset, the losing will get to you, it will destroy you and you will become a listless shell, just robotically going through the motions. In other words, you will have contracted Lions Disease. And this is where I fear we are with Calvin Johnson right now.

Last week, I bitched about Scott Linehan. This is because I have been making excuses for Calvin. I have known all along that this could happen, but I continually ignored all the warning signs because I so desperately needed Calvin to be different. And that continued in the first game. I thought that Calvin wasn't getting the ball because the team wasn't making it a point to get him the ball. And perhaps there is some truth to that, but the reality is that Calvin isn't putting himself in a position to get the ball. He's just coasting along, double teamed into oblivion and he isn't doing anything about it. And he can. Don't tell me he can't. The dude has more ability than any wide receiver who's ever played the game. That is an incredible statement, hyperbolic and bold, and yet it's also completely true. No one has - or has ever had - the combination of size, speed and hands that Calvin has. He should be able to transcend the conventional means that teams use to shut down a number one receiver. That is his destiny. Instead, he's content to allow himself to be shut down and then for all of us to make excuses about why he can't get open.

Perhaps that is a little unfair. So be it. But as Tila Tequila so famously said to Spiderman before giving him herpes, "With great power comes great responsibility." Calvin Johnson has the opportunity to be great (I have to break in here to note that when I wrote the word "opportunity", I became temporarily dyslexic and wrote the word as "pooprtunity". I just felt this needed to be shared.) and seeing his career through that lens, very, very good suddenly becomes tragic.

PREDICTION THE FOURTH: Vick will struggle to throw the ball, completing only 15 of 33 passes, but those 15 completions will go for 235 yards thanks to at least one long touchdown strike to DeSean Jackson. Vick will run for 65 yards on 15 attempts, and the Lions will alternate between bottling him up and letting him frustratingly run free after losing contain. After the game, Vick will eat a box full of puppies on live television. The Eagles fans will embrace him wholeheartedly, their respect for utter degeneracy outweighing their latent racism.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Vick completed 21 of 34 passes for 284 yards and 2 touchdowns. He also ran the ball 7 times for 37 yards.

Okay. Vick actually ran the ball with less frequency than I expected and generally looked better throwing the ball. These are both due to the same factor: the contemptible horror show that is the Lions secondary. Vick was not particularly sharp - Lions DB's dropped two sure interceptions, and he should have been sacked with far more frequency then even the 6 times Lions defenders managed to drop him. But he was able to complete pass after pass to wide open receivers thanks to the stunning ineptitude of the Lions gang of Special Olympians and C.C. Brown. (Really, C.C. deserves his own category here. Those noble Special Olympians don't deserve the indignity of being compared to him.)

Vick did complete one long touchdown strike to DeSean Jackson in the first quarter. Jackson was frustratingly open and then Louis Delmas of all people took a hilariously bad angle on the tackle and Jackson sprinted into the endzone.

I can't say for sure that Vick ate a box of live puppies but he probably did because he was in a good mood, a celebratory mood, and well, that is just the way he gets down.

PREDICTION THE FIFTH: LeSean McCoy won't do a damn thing. He'll only rush for 10 yards on 12 carries and we will all cling to Ndamukong Suh as a source of hope in these dark and trying times.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Uh . . . well . . . McCoy ran for 120 yards on 16 carries and 3 touchdowns. This was quite possibly the most wrong I have ever been with one of these predictions.

The truth is that McCoy was probably the difference in the game. The Lions couldn't stop him when it mattered the most and his three touchdowns all felt like backbreakers. Still, it didn't necessarily feel like the Eagles were methodically wearing down the Lions with the run game. There were no sequences of run after run of 5-7 yards, those kinds of runs that just erode your soul and leave you longing for grim death. No, instead the Lions managed to alternate closing off all running lanes with making mistakes and letting McCoy break a long one. It was frustrating as hell, but it wasn't quite as awful as the alternative.

Again, that might not make sense, but to me, the worst thing in the world is to watch your defense get slowly picked apart. That is the sign of a truly wretched defense. A defense that gets beaten by big plays can be fixed. A defense that consistently gets gashed on the other hand is doomed. By the way, the 0-16 defense somehow managed to be both. They gave up big plays and were gashed for 5-7 yards. Somehow they had their heads blown off and slowly bled to death. I'm not sure why I just felt the need to mention that, but well, these are strange and terrible times and these things happen.

PREDICTION THE, UH, BONUSETH: Willie Young will rise from the earth surrounded by a cloud of great smoke and trip up Michael Vick just as it appears Vick is about to break a long run. The announcers will make jokes about the turf monster but we'll know the real story.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: This happened and you cannot tell me otherwise. Well, you could, but you would be a heretic. Know Willie Young and know peace. No Willie Young and no peace. And that's that.