Epic

When I sit down to write about the Lions, I don’t see it as a stand-alone kind of thing. And by that, I mean each post from me on this site is just a small piece in a larger story. Everything fits together and hopefully when it’s all over, there will be some sense of coherency to that story. In order to understand the end you must understand the beginning, and you must follow the journey from the beginning to that end. This is wildly ambitious and arrogant and stupid on my part, but this is just the way that I am wired. It doesn’t lend itself well to the occasional pop-in. I imagine that new readers probably just scan my posts and think “What in the hell . . .” and then they slowly back away from their computers. A few stick around and hey, I love you dudes and lady dudes, but I’ll admit, this isn’t for the faint of heart, the weak of mind or those bereft of spirit. This is a crazy place full of crazy people and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Fortunately, for me, by some cosmic miracle, the way I approach this is also the way I approach football and more specifically Detroit Lions football. To me it is an epic story. It’s not just a series of meaningless games, given shape and depth by stats and scores. It’s a battle between good and evil, between happiness and despair, between the parts of ourselves which are noble and good and powerful and the parts of ourselves that are callow and weak and afraid. It’s about pain and ecstasy, often living side by side. It’s about Hope and Fate and slaying powerful dragons which live only in the darkest parts of our hearts. It is utterly ridiculous and it is sublimely beautiful. It exists in both slow motion, with classical music playing, and in fast motion, with Yakety Sax playing in our heads. To understand the end, you must understand the beginning, and you must follow the journey from the beginning to that end. And the hope, the ultimate hope which keeps driving me forward, forward, forward, is that there will be vindication at that end, that it will somehow all make sense and that football won’t just be football but something glorious and meaningful and profound and that my fandom is worth something. And not just in that “Hey it’s just sports” way, but in a real, meaningful way that makes your insides feel warm and which causes you to smile as you drift off to sleep because even though the rest of the world might not make sense, on the football field it does.

All that is ridiculous and is probably symptomatic of a diseased and dangerous mind but like I said, this is just the way that I am wired and so you’ll get no apologies from me. The story of the Detroit Lions is to me a staggering epic. There is tragedy and there is triumph – albeit brief – and the triumphs are tinged with a pain and a regret that are so unique that they themselves become something of a tragedy. Barry Sanders is a heroic figure, slashing through the muck and the mire towards glory and honor. But he’s also a tragic figure, because he never could quite escape and he died in the forests of despair which we know all too well, where the trees are so thick that the light of Hope never manages to shine through. But, still, throughout that story, Hope remains. And not because we can see it but because it flickers – faintly, most of the time – inside of us, and it is that flicker, that tiny light of Hope that is the current which drives the whole damn story forward.

Today, it feels like a giant chunk of that story, a massive chapter which has consumed much of our lives as fans, is about to draw to a close. The Vikings are coming to town, exhausted, beaten up, broken in ways that mark them as the new wretched of the Earth, led by a legendary quarterback who is just as broken, just as sad and just as ruined, and they must be utterly destroyed in order for this chapter to truly draw to a close.

I am investing a lot of emotional currency into this game, which on the surface seems utterly absurd considering that one team is 6-9 and the other – my team – is only 5-10. There is nothing concrete to be gained here. It is nothing but the last act of another sorrowful season and when it is over, football will still be played between the powerful and the noble while our dudes listlessly disperse and wander back to their homes and their wives or stripper whores or meth labs or whatever the fuck they do in their off time. But that is all surface level bullshit, existing only in relativity to other teams and their fans. Take those other teams away, take the records away, the stats, the upcoming playoffs, and what we’re left with are two teams heading in opposite directions, and two stories which began at the same time, were divergent for so long, and which finally will both come to their ends at the same time in the same place.

This isn’t about the Vikings so much as it is about Favre, and his nearly 20 year rampage through our souls. One of the reasons Lions fans hate Favre so much is because when they see him, they see what was stolen from us. His legacy, his time with Green Bay, was supposed to be ours. We were the team of the future, coming off of a playoff triumph over the Cowboys with a transcendent player named Barry Sanders, a young blue chip Heisman winning quarterback named Andre Ware, a young phenom at wide receiver named Herman Moore, a defense led by Chris Spielman, Bennie Blades and Jerry Ball, and the world seemed open and beautiful in front of us. Anything and everything was possible and all we had to do was reach out and take it. But then a young heathen from the hell mouth of Mississippi showed up in Green Bay and before we knew it he was winning MVP’s while our blue chip quarterback faded into obscurity and our dreams and our fate slipped hopelessly through our panicked fingers. The world began to blur and we tried desperately to hang on but we blinked and it was somehow over, the heathen Favre and his Packers were winning the Super Bowl and the future was hidden from us behind a curtain of sadness which had fallen over our hearts.

Favre strutted into legend, a cocky smile on his face, his balls on the chin of every sportswriter and broadcaster in the land while we descended into self-parody and mockery. He was Favre, the Golden Child and we were “The Lions” and everything that phrase means when you speak it to your own heart. As fans, we know what it means. We know what everyone else means when they say it, and for too long it hasn’t been just the dark side of our once brilliant dreams chasing us down, which it was for much of the ‘90’s, but our terrible reality, stark and brutal. We have wandered in a daze wondering how and when it would all end. Much of the time, it has felt like it would never end and that we would all grow old and then wheeze on our death beds and rant incoherently about Lions Disease and curse the name Millen with our final breaths before our Spirit Horses showed up to gallop away with our souls to the Great Unknown.

Nothing made sense. Even Hope seemed like the cruel tip of a knife blade, turned around on us and driven deep into our already wounded hearts. Matthew Stafford, our Franchise, our Future, our Hope, was revealed to be a man made out of glass and defective shoulders. The Failure Demons which have haunted us for so long continued to follow us no matter how fast we ran from them and they always seemed to catch us just when it looked like we might elude them, like in that terrible game against the Jets. It finally reached a point where Hope faded and our fragile dreams died and we accepted, with bitter tears, that the world would never be ours and would never, ever make sense.

But then we beat the Packers, 7-3, in a game in which Hope was absent. I was unsure how to take this, how to feel, and I lumbered through a tortured postgame piece that was neither positive nor negative. It was just sort of there, unsure of itself, which was the perfect reflection of my own fandom. We had already died and to the dead Hope is a pointless concept. But a couple of days later, I was reading about the Buccaneers and I realized that they were afraid of us – of Ndamukong Suh more specifically – and I realized that although we had died, it was not the end for us, but rather the beginning of the end of our own terrible and tragic story. It was a necessary evil. The Lions had to die so that they could live again. We had to have our hopes stripped away from us so that we could stand, grim soldiers of the damned, and haunt and destroy the living. It was necessary to take away our hopes because with it, our fear was also stripped away. We became a fell team with nothing to lose, deadly and vicious, and this is the only way these last few weeks could happen so that we could finally – finally – see this miserable story resolved.

You see, this is the only way that it can be resolved, with our pain, our failure visited upon those who still have hope. They must lose so that we can unburden ourselves. They must walk away with our sense of bewilderment, with our anger, with our bitter sense of loss. The Packers had to be wounded so that they could take our disappointment and so that we could know what it felt like to be the ones inflicting that sense of disappointment. The Buccaneers had to have their hopes crushed so that they could take our bitter sense of failure and so that we could understand what it felt like to ruin the hopes and dreams of another team and its fans. The Dolphins had to unravel completely and have their coach and quarterback blown apart so that they could take our hysterical and farcical failure, bewildering and strange as it is, and own it for themselves and so that we could understand what it looked and felt like to watch a team falling in the wrong direction. All of those games provided shape and texture to our own story. They allowed us to see our own progress, our own inexorable march towards something beautiful and glorious. We had to see all that, had to experience it, so that we could know that we were headed in the right direction and that our pain could be left behind for others to take up. It is theirs now, not ours, and we are free to write our own future.

Nearly. Because there is one more game to play, one more dragon to slay, and it is the most important game and the most important dragon of all. This is the end of Favre and with it, the end of his epic story. And when his story ends, so will ours. They began at the same time and they will end at the same time. Our future was stolen from us, but now that future is just the past and a whole new future, a whole new story waits for us on the horizon. All we need to do is close this book and leave Favre inside of it and leave our own tortured story inside with him. This is the tale of two stories that began at the same time, divergent for so long, finally coming together again at their end.

The Symmetry of Fate. I have blathered on and on and on about this lately, but that’s exactly what this is. It may sound ridiculous – hell, it may be ridiculous – but it makes sense to me. Finally, the whole stupid arc of my fandom makes sense, and I know – I just know – that this is how it was supposed to happen all along. I acknowledge the absurdity inherent in such a statement, but like I said at the beginning, this is just the way that I am wired.

What’s left is watching the final act play out. Naturally, Fate has decided to make things interesting by allowing the Vikings to beat the Eagles on Tuesday, giving them the appearance of a team still willing to fight, but prior to that game, it was clear that the Vikings were a team in free-fall. Their issues still have not been cleared up and at their core, they are a defeated team. What you saw on Tuesday was the last gasp of the doomed. It was a team playing hard and tough in a game against a team that didn’t want to be playing. The Vikings, for all their problems, are still an NFL team, and that means that if you don’t show up to play, they will still beat you. The Eagles wanted no part of that game. I think that was clear. It was cold, it was ugly, and they were coming off of that ridiculous comeback against the Giants and all the emotion that came with that. It was Tuesday – not Sunday – and so everyone’s internal clock was all fucked up, they were already locked into the playoffs, and hey, you can kinda see why they just wanted to get it over with. Meanwhile, the Vikings were playing for pride, to prove to everyone that they weren’t just the comical sideshow to be laughed and gawked at which has become their identity this season. And well, they proved that point. Good for them. But now what? It’s the last game of the season, they have proven their pride and now I’m guessing they just want to get this horror show of a season over with.

Meanwhile, the Lions are playing for something bigger than simple pride. They are playing for the resolution of 20 years of misery and pain. If they can win this game, if they can bury Favre once and for all, they can leave all of that behind and start fresh next September. I think they know this even if they don’t know it, if that makes any sense at all. They can feel it. They can taste it, can smell it, can hear it, see it, touch it. It’s right in front of them and all they have to do is grab it.

We have been here before, on the eve of that 1992 season which saw the rise of Favre and the betrayal of our Hope, and just like with everything else, it shows how symmetrical and mischievous Fate can be. This is a cosmic redo, a chance for redemption and resolution at the same time. All we have to do is reach out and grab it. It’s right there. It’s almost over. We just have to finish the journey and the arc, the great circle of Fate, will be complete.

There has been a lot of speculation about Favre and whether or not he will play. He’ll play. He has to. It’s his last game in the NFL. He knows that and he is not going to sit on the bench and watch his world die. This makes him dangerous but it also makes this that much sweeter. We will be getting the last desperate charge of Brett Favre and it is our destiny to slay him and watch him drop to the ground, lifeless and beaten, just as he has beaten us so many times throughout his career. It will be the final act of two epic stories and it is the only way either can end.

Meanwhile, the Lions are dealing with their own injury issues, but this is something that they have had to deal with all season long. They are down to a rusty can and a senile goat at cornerback, all of their quarterbacks are wounded, our Saint of a receiver, St. Calvin, might not rise from the dead in time to play and this last step, this last wounded march upon the gates of tomorrow might be the hardest of them all, but again, this is just the way it had to be. All of the injuries, all of the disappointments, all of the misery, the heartache, are just Fate’s way of telling us that we can get through anything. The last few weeks have proven that. Nothing and no one can stop us now. Brett Favre is just a name, a symbol of the past which must be destroyed before that past can be truly left behind. He has no power to hurt us anymore and whatever magic is left in him exists only to allow him to put up one more ceremonial fight. The forces of time and the future and the massive push of the Detroit Lions defensive line have doomed him to a singular fate, and although he may fight, it is a fate that is bigger than any one man, even one named Brett Favre and on Sunday, that fate will close in all around him and when it does, the last 20 years will rush together in a noisy blur and Favre and the Lions and all his fans and our fans will feel it all and then it will be over, he will be staggering off the field, beaten, dead, and our players will be celebrating and the future will be now and the past will be just a memory, sealed behind a wall made impenetrable by Time, Fate and the promise of tomorrow.

It’s time. In order to understand the end, you must understand the beginning. The beginning was a peak and a crash and a death and the rise of a supernova named Brett Favre. The end is the light from that supernova finally dying and a rebirth and the beginning of a new world for those who crashed. There is a new peak, far off in the distance, and it is up to us to climb it, but it is ours to climb and finally – finally – when we beat Favre and the Vikings on Sunday, we will be moving towards something instead of running away because we will finally understand that one irrefutable truth which has eluded us all this time, which has kept us from truly moving forward, and that is that in order to understand the beginning, you must understand the end of what came before.

FIVE NO DOUBT TERRIBLE PREDICTIONS

1. Shaun Hill will complete 22-34 passes for 265 yards and 2 touchdowns. He’ll also throw 1 interception.

2. The Lions running game will account for 120 yards and 1 touchdown. Again, no one back will exceed 15 carries. Maurice Morris will run for 55 yards to lead all backs while Jahvid Best will have one 15-20 yard run in between a bunch of nothing.

3. Calvin Johnson will play but he’ll only catch 4 passes for 65 yards and 1 touchdown.

4. Brett Favre will die as he lived: naked and without shame. Okay fine, throwing the ball. He’ll chuck and chuck and chuck and he’ll get the shit beaten out of him by the Lions defensive line. He’ll complete only 20 of 42 passes for 215 yards and he’ll throw 1 touchdown to go with 3 killer interceptions. After the game, The Great Willie Young, draped in the robes of the Grim Reaper, will drag him to hell. Peter King and Chris Berman will drive off a cliff together Thelma & Louise style once they realize they will have to live life without Favre’s balls bouncing against their chins.

5. Adrian Peterson will run for 95 yards on 17 carries. He’ll score 1 touchdown but he’ll also lose 1 fumble.

PREDICTED FINAL SCORE: LIONS 27, VIKINGS 17

Bow Down To The King

Bow down to the King

I originally planned to discuss some random thoughts that have been swirling around in my fucked up head today, but as you all well know that is a dangerous proposition. Chances are, I'd start talking about Dominic Raiola and I would end up gibbering about werewolf sex or writing really fucked up Back to the Future fan-fic again or describing the size and texture of a walrus penis and there are some things you just can't erase from your mind, you know? Oh hell, who am I kidding? We all know that I would probably just end up harpooning poor Drew Stanton again while my eyes went all glassy and foam began to seep from the corners of my mouth. And so, to spare you all another trip down the rabbit hole of insanity that is . . . well, whatever the fuck this is (Ty told me I should rename the blog Wonderland's Basement, which, uh, is actually kind of perfect.), and because it is the holiday season and everyone is just sort of half-assing their way into the new year, I have decided once again to turn things over to Matt S., who once again has graced us with these words of wisdom from The King of the Lions Fans. My inbox overfloweth with creative genius and thou hast saved mine ass yet again, noble Matt. Anyway, here it is, and as usual, it is pretty damn great:


DE-FROST THY NETHER-HOLES, YOU SHIVERING KNAVES!

FOR THE KING IS A'PLUNDERING, AND HE WILL TOLERATE NO ICE UPON HIS PURPLE PLOW!

FIRST AND FOREMOST, the King would like to declare this day, Eight-and-Twenty of December, to be a day of feast and dance for time immemorial! HUZZAH! May every hearth have a spiral ham, and every gullet a flagon of Rock N' Rye! This is to be done in remembrance of the King's brave hordes of crack-heads, hundreds of whom gave their lives to dig out the King's chariot this morn. One after another, they piled atop the snowy dune that entrapped the King's 1975 Buick LeSabre, using the last of their meager body heat to melt the snow, centimeter by centimeter, until Jack Frost gave up his death-grip upon those two-tons of hardened De-Troit Steel.

And another HUZZAH! for the second wave of crack-heads that were tasked with removing the bodies of the first, for they too were woefully under-shrouded, and met a similarly frozen end. If only they had access to the King's vast array of fleeced sweat-pants, so that they could have spared their ashen legs the vicious bite of...Lo, what am I saying. It would take a dozen crack-heads to fill the King's trousers. They died as they lived--huddled under my chariot wheels.

AS I WAS SAYING! Were it not for these wretched bum-cicles, the King would still be snow-bound within his castle, watching his blue-cheese vats deplete at rate that can be described only as "alarming". Their sacrifice will not be forgotten, nor shall this past Lord's day, which saw the King's armies hoist the gnarled ham-bones of victory for an unprecedented third consecutive campaign!

DOWN into the swampy depths of equatorial hell did venture the King's immortal legions! DOWN into the trenches did they march, with spears sharpened and shields glistening! DOWN into the taut, water-slicked blowholes of those turquoise-clad mermen did they thrust their barbed loin-rods, rending flesh and blubber alike with equal disregard for the laws of man and nature!

GATHER ROUND, MY FROST-CLAD SUBJECTS, FOR I HAVE A QUERY!

Who among you would stand between a thundering herd of jungle cats and a freshly-laid spread of buffaloed wings?

None?

Well HUZZAH for you, for in staying your hand you have shown more sense than the King's last three conquests. Why do these fools insist on battling the King? What are they teaching in the schools of Green-Bay, if not Studies in Self-Immolation? What constitutes a normal Sun-day morning in the Bay of Tampa, if not vigorous ass-love with a broken bottle of E&J? What goes through the mind of the mucus-slicked porpoise-men of Miami, if not a paralyzing desire to be flayed and served raw with a side of creamed horse-radish? Why do they rush to die? If these hapless whelps continue to draw swords with the King's men, one can only gasp in horror at the twisted impulses that drive them.

HARK, on this frozen 'morn in the gilded realms of De-Troit, there exists not a soul who isn't clothed in the robes of victory. The symbolic robes of victory, of course. There are actually quite a few leprous curs within mine borders who haven't felt the warming embrace of clothing in many a harvest. But spare them not a thought, and certainly not a pair of fuzzy socks, for they would only use them as kindling 'neath their glass pipes. Indeed, the celebration shall penetrate long and deep into the virginal night! The King's armies are unvanquishable, and in half a fortnight's time, the bearded ass-pillagers of Minnetonka shall come a-knocking! And when they do, the King shall extend to them his customary greeting--a frozen sword driven right through their purple hearts.

All hail the King.

These Are More Fun To Do When The Lions Win

Well, here we are again, old friend. It's been a long season, but we're still here. We're still here.

A little bit of a mixed bag this week, but I got the big one right, which is that the Lions beat the Dolphins. It feels good to put your nuts on the table week after week and not have them be smashed into a pulp by some maniac with a giant sledgehammer who looks like a methed out version of Gallagher, which I guess isn’t that much different than the actual Gallagher now that I think about it. How did I end up talking about Gallagher in only the second sentence of this thing? Jesus, that might be a new record: Quickest Devolution into Weird Gibberish. Also, I’m not sure why “I put my nuts on the table” has become my standard way of saying “Oh yeah, I predicted that.” It’s a disturbing image and I apologize. I mean, I don’t make a habit of teabagging random tables although I did make love to a fine mahogany dining room table on a hot summer’s day once. It was the sort of day when everything is sticky and I could just smell the wood and it smelled so sweet and I knew it was calling to me and so I took a deep breath and I . . . where am I? What’s going on? Oh well, enough gibberish. Let’s just get to the breakdown of this week’s predictions and I promise not to mention the name Drew Stanton. Oh shit . . . too late I guess. Okay, okay, I promise not to talk about tables anymore. I’m pretty sure I can keep that promise. Wait . . . it is the table that was the disturbing part of that story, right? I was just a victim, led on by that sultry villain, and . . . great, now tonight I am going to dream about Gallagher making hot, sweaty love to Drew Stanton on top of a mahogany dining table, their flesh slapping and sticking in the humidity of a late August day while I stand, lonely and confused with my nuts on some lowly plastic coffee table, watching, watching, watching . . .

The most horrible thing I’ve written here at Armchair Linebacker? Maybe. Maybe. But these are strange and terrible times and . . . okay, fine, I’ll just get on with it.

PREDICTION THE FIRST: Hill starts and is a little rusty, but not nearly as rusty as he was against the Bills. He completes 25 of 37 passes for 265 yards, with 2 touchdowns and 1 interception.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: As Scott Stapp would say, Welllllllllllllllll (insert sound of a donkey braying), I was sorta right? Hill completed 14-26 passes for 222 yards with 2 touchdowns and perhaps most importantly, 0 interceptions. He was a little rusty, but he wasn’t as bad as he was in the game against Buffalo and the result was . . . just enough.

Yes, just enough. Hill wasn’t actively good or anything but he wasn’t bad either. Aside from a couple of misplaced balls, he managed to find his receivers much of the day. He was hurt by a couple of drops (Hey, Brian Clark? Yeah, you can collect your things outside of the locker room. They’re in that box right over there. Those guards? They’re just here to make sure you get to your car safely. After all, this is Detroit.), and a couple of idiot plays by his receivers – most notably the one in the 4^th quarter that saw Brandon Pettigrew just quit on a play – and had they made those plays, Hill’s numbers would look downright good.

It is telling that I can come away feeling somewhat disappointed, though, by Hill’s game because if his name was Drew Stanton everyone would probably be raving about how he’s a gamer and about how he Gritted his way to a Lions victory. The expectations for Hill are a bit higher than for Stanton and really, that’s the point. An average, or a slightly subpar day for him, is the equivalent to a revelatory game from Stanton. Hill was not particularly good against the Dolphins and yet his performance was pretty much right in line with what Stanton did against the Buccaneers last week.

Indeed, when it looked like the Lions were going to lose the game against Miami, I was already dreading the cascade of dumb THIS NEVER WOULDA HAPPENED IF THEY STARTED STANTON bullshit gibberish that was going to flow down from every corner of the fanbase. I was already prepared to point out how the difference in the games was not the play of the quarterback but the play of the defense and the running game. In fact, I was all prepared to point out that Hill’s game was actually more impressive than Stanton’s Bucs game because he had to play without the benefit of a functional running game. This meant that he was forced to make plays with his arm and throw the ball when the Dolphins knew that he was going to throw. Given those same conditions, I almost guarantee Stanton would have imploded.

Man, I’m sorry. I am self-aware enough to realize that I am behaving shamefully and that Stanton has become my white whale. It seems like all I do these days is chase him down with a harpoon in my hand, foaming at the mouth, and it is unseemly and vaguely pathetic. It’s just that every time I think I’m done with him, I hear or read some gibberish about how he gives the Lions the best chance to win and about how we need him to stay in Detroit and I become unhinged and I reach for my harpoon and it’s back to the open seas, boys and everyone groans and thinks “Jesus, not again,” but I am wild eyed and unreasonable because this is what Drew Stanton does to me. I cannot help myself. I just want him to go away. Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop!

Okay. Okay. Shaun Hill. Let’s talk more about him. Hill played okay. He wasn’t good, but he wasn’t bad either. The most impressive play I thought he made all day actually came on an incompletion on third down in the 4^th quarter. The Lions were driving, they were in Miami territory, they were ten points down and they absolutely needed to make something happen or the game was as good as over. Hill dropped back to pass on third down and immediately, he was under siege. There were Dolphins everywhere. The play was doomed, he was going to get sacked and oh well, at least we won two in a row, but then Hill spun out of trouble, looked down field, scrambled and then tossed up a floater to an open part of the field. There was no one there. Not a Lion, not a Dolphin, no one. But Hill saw Brandon Pettigrew and when he threw that ball, he did so believing that Pettigrew would keep running and would go out and get it. It was a beautiful play by Hill at the most crucial point in the game. All Pettigrew had to do was keep running. But he didn’t, the ball dropped to the ground and the Lions punted. People will forget this play. They will remember the Lions furious comeback and all they will remember will be the interceptions and the implosion of Chad Henne. But what I’ll remember is that when the Lions desperately needed a play, Shaun Hill made something happen out of nothing. That play was dead, crushed, finished. But he MacGyvered his way out and he saw something that requires vision and foresight and all those things that a quarterback needs to be successful mentally. He saw possibility and if Brandon Pettigrew would have just kept running, the Lions would have converted a crucial third down. Shaun Hill doesn’t have the arm or the physical tools to be a big time NFL quarterback. In this, he and Stanton (Oh, Jesus, here we go again. . .) are very similar. But that one play highlighted the difference between the two. Hill can see possibilities. He gets the mental part of the game. I don’t think Drew Stanton does. He runs around and he leaves trails of grit behind him as he goes, but for all his furious scrambling and Pluck and OH MAN HE’S JUST A PLAYMAKER, there’s nothing really there. It ends up looking like panic, like he’s running around and scrambling and tossing random bags of grit because he doesn’t know what else to do. It doesn’t look like he’s making plays. It looks like he doesn’t see where the play is to be made. That’s a key distinction, and it’s that that is the biggest difference between Hill and Stanton. Hill is in control and when he scrambles, it’s to open up possibilities. When Stanton scrambles, it’s all just a bunch of noise signifying nothing. That’s right, I’m going to quote Shakespeare here. I’ve lost my mind and I can’t stop and even though I said this was about Hill it has once again turned into a vicious harpooning of Stanton and Goddammit, I’m gonna get me that whale!

I say this every week – hell, lately, every day – but this is the last thing I’m going to say about Stanton. I am going to use Shakespeare against him. I think it sums up both Stanton and my own toxic hate boner for him and what he represents. It is a condemnation of us both. Here it is, and damn it all, I mean it this time.

Drew Stanton: a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

PREDICTION THE SECOND: The Lions again manage to run the ball fairly effectively, picking up 150 yards total. Again, no one ball carrier will exceed 15 carries and Maurice Morris will lead the way with 75 yards.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: In the words of that noted sage, Al Bundy . . . uh, no, Peg. The Lions ran for a grand total of 67 yards on 21 carries, reverting back to the parade of rancid shit which was the running game for much of the season before that little three week oasis in the middle of our desert of despair where we actually had a thriving running game. Was that oasis just a mirage? I don’t know. It’s hard to say whether those games were all just fluky or whether the Lions had found a way to run the ball creatively, which caught their opponents off balance but which has now been caught onto by the rest of the league or whether the Dolphins have just a really, really good run defense. Perhaps it’s a combination of all of the above. I think that’s the most likely answer.

You can’t deny that the Lions were able to run the ball there for a few weeks. That can’t be entirely a fluke. One game, yes, maybe, but three is a trend. But it’s not like the Lions were just lining up and running the ball down people’s throats either. The offensive line wasn’t exactly blowing defenses off the ball or anything. Instead, the Lions got creative – really creative – and that caused defenses to become unbalanced enough that there was always just enough of a crack for a ball carrier to run through. Everybody was running the ball in those few weeks – Maurice Morris, Jahvid Best, St. Calvin, Nate Burleson, Stefan Logan – and defenses could never just sit back and key on one guy. Hell, Stanton even ran the option a couple of times. That’s all great and Scott Linehan deserves a pat on the back for making it happen. But the NFL is loaded with athletes capable of making plays all over the field and so all it takes is a little adjustment here, a little adjustment there, and whatever advantages gained by that imbalance can be neutralized much, much easier than they can at the college or high school levels, in which entire offenses are built around the concepts of misdirection and spreading the defense out. And when that imbalance is corrected by a coach who’s on the ball – like Mike Nolan, the Dolphins defensive coordinator – it comes down to execution and brute strength and that’s where the Lions can’t quite get it done.

The Lions want to have a power rushing attack. Right now they lack the offensive linemen to do that. Everyone bitches about the offensive line because of Stafford’s injuries and most people want to lynch Jeff Backus but the reality is that the line has done an admirable job in pass protection this season. The Lions quarterbacks have not had to eat too many sacks and that's helped keep them in games even though those quarterbacks have been backups. They can be successful as long as they’re not asked to win the games on their own and make ridiculous plays in long yardage situations. Because the Lions offensive line has kept them clean, they have been able to play within themselves and make safe throws on 2^nd and 6 or 3^rd and 4 rather than chucking the ball up for grabs on 2^nd and 17 or 3^rd and 22. The line hasn’t gotten nearly the credit they deserve for that this season, Backus especially.

But . . . and you knew there was a but here, the Lions offensive line has utterly failed in the running game this season. One of the biggest reasons why Scott Linehan had to put on his wizard hat is because the line was opening zero holes in the conventional run game. When it comes down to just bearing down and driving the other team off the ball, Dominic Raiola and company have been just awful. I mentioned Raiola specifically because he’s the biggest culprit here. For a dude who likes to bitch everyone out from the fans to his own teammates and pretend like he’s some sort of He-Man warrior, Raiola consistently gets his ass kicked in the running game. He’s a finesse player, and that’s fine if that’s what you’re trying to do offensively, but he’s not big enough or, at least in my opinion, tough enough to take on defensive tackles in the run game. Scouts love him because he’s agile and he barks a lot and he gives off the aura of a dude who’s playing tough and he comes to work every day but he can’t hold up at the point of attack in the run game and really, that makes everything else irrelevant.

The irony is that for all the shit Backus gets, he’s probably the Lions best run blocker. That’s not really saying much given the absolute putrescence of Gosder Cherilus on the other side of the line, Raiola’s inability to hold up in the middle and the staggering mediocrity of Stephen Peterman and Rob Sims, but what the hell, that doesn’t make it any less true. The reality is that the Lions run game will likely continue to struggle – absent the occasional wizardry by Linehan anyway – without an upgrade at several positions along the line. Raiola needs to be replaced. So do Cherilus and Peterman. I think you can live with Backus and Sims but they’re not exactly going to cover the rest of the line’s ass, you know?

The running backs are good enough, I think. All they need is a combination of good health and good blocking and they’ll be fine – better than fine if Jahvid Best manages to get that combination. Best is the explosive runner capable of taking it to the house every time he touches the ball. We saw that against Miami, and while it wasn’t a run, it was a little swing pass that still required him to make a play in the open field. It was a play that didn’t require a lot of blocking and therefore served as an effective glimpse of what Best can do with blocking. By that, I mean that as long as he’s given room to move – either in the open field or via good blocking – he can end up in the end zone on virtually any play. Meanwhile, Maurice Morris has shown throughout his career and again this season that he can be a dependable move the chains kind of running back when given the opportunity. Sure, he only gained 22 yards on 12 carries against Miami (For the record, his 12 carries led the team, while Best’s 24 yards were tops.), but again, I blame that more on the subpar blocking and the Dolphins ability to make the Lions running attack fairly one dimensional. Add in Kevin Smith’s return next year and the Lions have a stable of running backs who have proven that they can be highly effective given adequate help.

PREDICTION THE THIRD: St. Calvin will catch 6 passes for 95 yards and 1 touchdown. Just another day at the office. (Jesus, did I really just type the phrase “Just another day at the office”? The next thing you know, I’ll be gibbering about “Having a case of the Mondays” or some such bullshit. I’m so, so sorry.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: In the words of . . . fuck this, I’m not doing a dumb cutesy quote for each one of these. St. Calvin caught 4 passes for 52 yards and failed to score a touchdown.

There’s not a lot to say here. St. Calvin didn’t really break out at all, but when the Lions needed him, he came through, particularly on the Lions second touchdown drive of the game, when they trailed by seven and needed to make something happen. The Lions leaned on St. Calvin again and again on third down and he came down with the ball every time. Should they have looked for him more throughout the game? Probably, but I didn’t really have a problem with the Lions game plan. For the most part, the receivers Shaun Hill did look for were in position to catch the damn ball and keep the drive moving. Sometimes they did and sometimes they maddeningly dropped the ball. I’d rather the Lions target open receivers – receivers who are made open by the over reaction of the defense to St. Calvin and their subsequent double and triple teaming of him by the way – than ask their backup quarterbacks to try to force the ball into a covered St. Calvin. Again, even when he’s not catching the ball, he’s affecting the game.

Further, St. Calvin’s numbers were depressed by the fact that he sat out the end of the game after being martyred. Had he played, the Lions almost surely would have gone to him, just like they did on that critical drive earlier in the game. But he didn’t and the result is 4 catches for 52 yards. Really, there’s not a whole lot else to say and thank God for that because these things are getting longer and longer every week.

PREDICTION THE FOURTH: Chad Henne will complete 27 of 42 passes for 270 yards with 1 touchdown and 2 interceptions. He’ll be sacked 5 times.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: In the words of Socrates . . . BOOM, MOTHERFUCKER! Henne completed 29 of 44 passes for 278 yards with 1 touchdown and 2 interceptions. Even Nostradamus is high-fiving me because I nailed that shit so epically. Of course, Henne was only sacked twice instead of the 5 times I predicted but we’ll let that slide even if that was kinda the meat of the prediction. Okay? Just give me this, damn it.

Henne was able to find receivers open much of the day because the Lions were playing with the functional equivalent of a narcoleptic goat and a broken toaster in the secondary thanks to the hilarious cavalcade of stupid injuries which have taken all of our defensive backs this season. Hell, at this point, Nathan Vasher is probably like one of those retarded degenerate kids in those Final Destination movies. He sees death everywhere and he’s talking to mystics and creepy Tony Todd looking motherfuckers trying to come up with a way to escape his fate.

So yeah, Chad Henne was able to find open receivers against the Lions. This also managed to allow him to avoid sacks for much of the day because he was able to just drop back and throw, drop back and throw, over and over and over again. I mean, you don’t have to sit in the pocket for too long when Brandon Marshall is 8 yards away from Vasher, you know? I said in the preview that the Dolphins would likely be able to move the ball through the air by going to a lot of short, quick passes which would neutralize the Lions pass rush. This is exactly what they did on their first drive. I also said that the field would then compress and they would lose much of the advantages that were gained by quick throws. This is also what happened for the most part and Henne’s numbers bear this out. I said this would be an example of a team being forced to play a bend but don’t break defense and, well . . . yeah. Eventually, Henne hanged himself with the rope he was given by the Lions defense.

I still thought the Lions defensive line would get to Henne more than they did, but that is where Vasher getting fooled over and over and over again by Marshall came into play. But, late in the game, Vasher tightened up his coverage. This was how he managed to pick Henne off. After getting fooled over and over again by Marshall, Vasher learned his lesson and nearly came up with a pick six in the fourth quarter. Later, he did pick off a pass. This tightening in coverage made all the difference as Henne became rattled and was forced to take an extra second or two every time he dropped back to pass. This didn’t result in any sacks, but it did result in the Lions flushing Henne out of the pocket several times and dragging him down after a one or two yard wounded buffalo scramble. That then caused Henne to get rid of the ball earlier, and try to force some things which led to his meltdown, Vasher’s interception, DeAndre Levy’s pick six, and . . . ballgame.

PREDICTION THE FIFTH: The Dolphins will run for a combined 110 yards, but neither Ronnie Brown nor Ricky Williams will look all that effective. One of them will break one frustrating run which sees busted tackles and poor tackling angles by the Lions secondary. Louis Delmas won’t play.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: The Dolphins ran for a combined 154 yards, but honestly, neither Ronnie Brown nor Ricky Williams looked all that effective. Williams looked the best, running for 71 yards on 14 carries, but one of those was a 28 yarder, a frustrating run out of the Wildcat which saw a couple of missed arm tackles and a generally frustrating effort by the Lions linebackers and safeties. Take that run away and Williams would have only run for 43 yards on 13 carries. Brown, meanwhile, ran for only 37 yards on 12 carries. So, aside from that one Wildcat run, the Dolphins two stud running backs ran for 80 yards on 25 carries. So, honestly, I think I kinda got this one right.

I also was right about Delmas not playing. His absence was felt in both the run and the pass defense. He was replaced in the lineup at free safety by C.C. Brown and since C.C.’s nickname is “Can’t Cover”, well . . . yeah. Meanwhile, Brown’s 28 yard scamper, which at that point felt like a dagger since it came late in the game and set the Dolphins up for a critical score, probably wouldn’t have been so bad with Delmas in the lineup. Fortunately, that was really the only one really bad run the Lions gave up – well, other than a 16 yard reverse to Marlon Moore, but shit, those things happen – and I think that’s because the coaches knew that they couldn’t get away with John Wendling in the starting lineup. He was the culprit on several of Tampa Bay’s biggest runs last week. This week, like I said, the Lions went with C.C. Brown at free safety. C.C. might not be able to cover but he generally does pretty well against the run. Amari Spievey played strong safety, much like he has for much of the second half of the season and so that was the one position in the secondary where we got the standard performance. It was probably a tandem that hurt the pass defense a bit, but for the most part it was the right call because it was more effective against the run than a Wendling and either Brown or Spievey tandem would have been.

In looking at this, it’s actually kind of amazing that the Lions didn’t just get run out of the stadium with the collection of retreads they were forced to throw out there in the secondary against the Dolphins. At the end of the game, they were down to Vasher as their number one cornerback, and let’s not forget that for much of the season he was behind Jonathan fucking Wade on the depth chart. Aside from him, the options were Tye Hill, the recently resurrected Eric King, Prince Miller and Ernie Sims’ monkey. I would have loved to seen Monkey Sims finally get his opportunity, but Vasher and Hill held it together just enough to force Chad Henne to self-immolate and the result was a 34-27 Lions win. I’m not sure who’s going to be back there next season but what this recent run has taught me is that Gunther Cunningham and Jim Schwartz could coach the shit out of a rusty can if they needed to. I’m confident that with a healthy Delmas, maybe a key free agent signing and a decent draft pick, the Lions secondary can at least be good enough to give the defensive line time to consume souls and gnaw on the bones of the wicked. And maybe, just maybe, they can actually be pretty damn good. If that happens, then this defense – and this team, with a healthy Matthew Stafford and Jahvid Best – can do anything.

WHAT I PREDICTED FOR THE FINAL SCORE: LIONS 24, DOLPHINS 20

ACTUAL FINAL SCORE: LIONS 34, DOLPHINS 27. CLOSE ENOUGH, DAMN IT.

The End Of Yesterday And The Beginning Of Tomorrow

Detroit Sunrise

Things like that don’t happen to the Detroit Lions. They just don’t. We know this better than anybody and so as the game clock wound down to zero and the Dolphins all looked around for a ball that wasn’t there, you’ll forgive me if I was behaving like some coked up getaway driver after a heist. “Get in the damn car and let’s get the fuck out of here!” Indeed. The Lions flat out stole that game. Like I said, things like that just don’t happen to us and so that part of my brain which has known unfathomable horror raced with ridiculous possibilities while the rest of me furiously tried to fight off the demons. Sure, both teams were on the field and the coaches were shaking hands and to every reasonable eye out there the game was over, but my brain envisioned Mike Pereira appearing in a puff of black, acrid smoke with orders from Sheriff Goodell to give the Dolphins one more play from the Lions five yard line after assessing some random arcane penalty found in the NFL’s Necronomicon. Obviously, that is ridiculous, but again, things like what happened at the end of the game just don’t happen to the Lions and so I had no idea how to process it. Actually, let me rephrase that. Things like that do happen to the Lions. All the damn time. The echoes of our horrible wails throughout the years are still reverberating through time and will probably be heard until the year 4868 when Emperor Zygork of the Lizard People has enslaved all mankind. We have known tremendous pain and we are intimately familiar with the awful concepts of pain and failure at the ends of games. And by intimately familiar, I mean we have been fucked in the ass over and over and over again. It’s just that things like that don’t happen for the Lions. That is a wholly unfamiliar concept and feeling and so you’ll forgive me if I have no idea how to react.

But it’s over now. Over an hour has gone by and they are still saying that the Lions won the game and so I guess I can exhale and celebrate whatever . . . well, whatever the fuck that was. It is weird to get all the breaks like that as a Lions fan. It doesn’t make any damn sense. It is like the Earth’s polarity has changed and now everything is backwards and pretty soon some Morlock will dig through the ground and tell me that he has come to eat me because the surface belongs to him now. I have very little idea what I am babbling about, but to hell with all that, the Lions won, and . . . wait, the Lions won?

Yes. Yes they did. I have to keep reminding myself of this because, yet again, things like that just do not happen to the Detroit Lions. I shouldn’t be groping around blindly like this because this is what I envisioned. Well, not exactly this, but I predicted a win and I said that Fate had turned in our favor and that everything was different and I blathered on about symmetry and how this was the perfect resolution to our years and years of pain and sadness. This is how the arc gets closed, how Fate becomes a circle and how the story ends before a new, happier, glorious story can begin. I wrote all of this and yet, I still can’t quite believe it. The Lions won and they did so with the help of Fate.

It had to happen like this. I keep saying that and yet I am surprised whenever it plays out the way that it does. Of course all of our defensive backs had to die horrible deaths and Chris Houston had to get his face stepped on and the idea of a functional secondary had to be ludicrous and ugly and mean because that’s what needed to happen in order for the Lions to come up with two critical interceptions late in the 4^th quarter and for Nathan Vasher to be alive and somehow on the field so he could powerslam Ronnie Brown to effectively end the game. We had to be brought low and have hope stripped away from us. We had to die before we could rise again. Of course. That is the story of this whole fucked up, crazy season.

St. Calvin had to be martyred and had to float up to heaven so Brian Clark (Who?) could drop a pass on third down which forced the Lions to kick the game tying field goal which set up the Dolphins drive which led to a pick six by DeAndre Levy. The world and Fate are bizarre and unfathomable and quirky and mischievous and this is just the way these things work. Wait, hang on a second . . . okay, good. I was just checking to make sure the Lions had still won the game.

People will laugh at me. The Lions are still only 5-10, going nowhere, and much of this season has felt like a complete disaster. But fuck them. The Lions have won 3 in a row for the first time in 6 years, they just won their second straight game on the road after not having won one in approximately a billion games over a span of a billion years, the three teams that they beat were all .500 or better teams and the arc is coming to a close. I can see the end. I can the see resolution to this terrible story and it is playing out exactly like it needed to. I wrote about this in my post previewing the game and it’s actually happening. Our pain, our misery, is being reflected by these teams. We can see our own pain, our own tortured history in their failure and this is what needed to happen in order for us to be able to move on.

We are leaving our past behind us with each week, with each win, and we are forcing other teams to take it and keep it as their own. This is the only way to move on. Our pain, our past, cannot ever die. It cannot truly ever go away. It will always be here. But that doesn’t mean we have to let it burden us. Let it fuck up the lives of some other shitbird team. We have carried this burden for long enough.

I can’t finish this up without thanking Chad Henne. For whatever reason, that dude decided to climb up on that pyre and light that fucker while thousands of Dolphins fans stared in slackjawed horror at the utter lunacy on display. His spectacular self-immolation was brutal and it would have been hard to watch, but again, this is what needed to happen in order for us to move on. In hindsight, it makes such perfect sense that it almost makes me start laughing like a man who’s utterly lost his mind, finally broken by the hilarious quirkiness of Fate. This had to happen to Chad Henne because this is what we have had to put up with as Lions fans for 50 fucking years. He had to meltdown in such spectacular fashion because it was the only way for us to be rid of whatever disease, whatever terrible curse, has been following around our quarterbacks for all this time. I like to think that the drunken spirit of Bobby Layne staggered out of Shaun Hill and passed into the body of Chad Henne sometime in the fourth quarter. Ridiculous? Of course, but fuck it, I don’t care. Let Bobby Layne and his curses haunt someone else. Chad Henne, I’m sorry it had to be you. I really am. You’re my boy from way back. But your sacrifice was necessary. These are strange and terrible times and I’m afraid these things must happen. It will not be forgotten and I’ll even watch Youtube videos of your comebacks against Michigan St. in ’04 and ’07 in your honor.

The Lions won. The Lions won. The Lions won. They played like shit for most of the game and they won. They didn’t deserve to win but they won. And really, that’s all bullshit because who honestly deserves this more than us? I don’t give a shit that the Lions didn’t play well and completely stole that game from the Dolphins. We deserve it. This is some straight up Robin Hood shit. Steal from the rich to give to the poor. Well, nobody’s been poorer than us and we aren’t going to apologize for splashing around in a huge pile of the rich man’s gold.

There is one game left to play this season and I am already giddy at the thought of Ndamukong Suh ceremonially butchering Brett Favre and ending two long stories at the same time. One week from today, we will be celebrating the end of our own tragic story of woe and the end of Favre’s ridiculous story. They are two stories with roots that are almost twenty years old. In 1992, the Lions were expecting to rule the world after blowing the Cowboys away in the playoffs in 1991 and the Packers were preparing to turn to an unknown wild man with a strange last name. 18 years later – the lifespan of a man who can go to war for his country – those twin stories, divergent for so long, will finally come to an end, together, inside of Ford Field. I know I am getting ahead of myself, but this is bigger than me, bigger than you, bigger than Favre, bigger than the Detroit Lions. This is about Fate. This is about all the things that just don’t happen for us. This is about resolution and moving on. This is about the end of yesterday and the beginning of tomorrow.

The Detroit Lions beat the Miami Dolphins in Miami. It happened. I watched it happen. And that part of my brain that is ruled by The Fear and which has slept in The Void and which has known The Desolation has been told to shut the fuck up and I believe. Things like that just don’t happen to the Detroit Lions. Well, they do now.