Preseason Games Are Meaningless, But . . . Part II

Like a goddamn feeding frenzy

I already wrote the Hey The Preseason Is Meaningless But . . . article following the Lions beatdown of the Bengals so I really, really don’t feel like I should have to write it again but here we are. I’ve kind of realized that the better the Lions do, the more hysterical noise is going to come from certain quarters proclaiming that we are all a bunch of goddamn fools and that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be tricked by the Failure Demons yet again. This is because people are scared and the more the window that looks out on the great big world of the living opens, wider and wider, the more freaked out they will become by the fear that the window will just slam shut once again leaving them in the darkness. It’s easier for them to just look away and pretend that the light isn’t there than to risk the fear of losing it.

I understand that. I do. That is both my gift and my curse. I understand people. I know where they’re coming from and I know how their diseased minds work. I always have. That gives me a level of insight that I probably take for granted. It aids me greatly but it also drives me fucking nuts, because while I understand that mindset, it just feels so tired and banal and simple. It’s a bunch of reactionary nonsense driven by some animalistic need to protect oneself.

I’ve seen the following argument thrown out countless times already this preseason: “Hey, remember the Lions went 4-0 in the 2008 preseason and then went 0-16, so what happened against the Patriots was meaningless. I was fooled once before. Never again!”

Okay. Let’s break that whole thing down, piece by piece. First of all, drawing meaning from the 2008 preseason by declaring that it was meaningless is intuitively retarded. Anyone doing this is either being intellectually dishonest or is so wrapped up in the hysteria of their own fear and vicious self-loathing as a Lions fan that it’s impossible to take anything they say seriously. If the Lions going 4-0 in the 2008 preseason was meaningless, then it would have been equally meaningless to go 0-4. Once you establish that the record itself is meaningless, that the results, the wins and losses, add up to jack shit, you’re left with the subtext, which is that any meaning that can be taken from the preseason comes from the eyeball test, from actually watching the games, and that’s where this argument falls completely apart.

I mean, come on, does anybody reading this remember anything from that 4-0 preseason of yore? Anything at all? I don’t. All I remember is that the Lions went 4-0 and the only reason I remember that is because that 4-0 record serves as a sort of perverse and fucked up footnote to what followed in that season of unnumbered tears. I certainly don’t remember the Lions looking like a well-oiled machine. I don’t remember the Lions throwing the ball all over the field or smashing the shit out of opposing offenses. In my mind, all four of those games were 19-17 Lions “wins” that were back and forth affairs won by a field goal engineered by the 4^th team late in the game. Even if that’s not how they actually went down, in my head that’s what happened. They were meaningless not because of the result but because nothing happened worth remembering. They were played simply because they had to be played. There was no real excitement, no real “Hey, there’s something happening here . . .” They were just sort of there.

Compare that to this year. I’ll remember the Lions kicking the shit out of the Patriots because no matter what you tell me about the result being meaningless and none of it being real, what was real was the look of dismay and pants shitting “What the fuck is going on here?” written all over Tom Brady’s face. You’re right. The final score of the game didn’t matter. Ndamukong Suh, Corey Williams, Cliff Avril and the boys terrorizing a clearly overwhelmed Tom Brady like escaped vampire apes terrorizing a kitten did matter. So did Matthew Stafford looking like he had been sent from the future by Skynet to destroy John Connor and throw touchdown passes in his spare time. Those throws were all real. They happened. There were no throws like that in 2008. There were no moments when I went “Holy shit, this dude is the truth.” Matthew Stafford has a quarterback rating of 154 through the first three preseason games. He was perfect against the Patriots. That’s not even hyperbole. He was perfect. He was. Both incompletions – all two of them – were perfect throws that couldn’t have been placed any better. One was juggled and then dropped by Nate Burleson, the other was broken up on a great play by Kyle Arrington. That was it.

So it’s completely disingenuous to say that the game itself was meaningless. You’re using the correct argument that the final score was meaningless to justify and spread your own paranoid fears on a technicality, which is either hysterically stupid or willfully craven. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is more accurate.

And then there’s the second part of that argument, the whole “We were fooled before . . .” thing. Yeah, about that . . . the thing is, is that I wasn’t fooled in 2008. Not even a little bit. Go back and read my shit from back then. That was when I first started writing about the Lions here at Armchair Linebacker and I was brutally savage. I ripped those motherfuckers apart despite that 4-0 preseason. If you were fooled, that’s your own damn problem. Don’t sit there and tell me from your smug little perch that I should be afraid because you were fooled once before. If anything, I believe even more in this year’s team because I wasn’t fooled in 2008. You know what that season and preseason told me? That I know my shit and that I should feel confident in my ability to cut through all the dumb bullshit and see things for how they really are. I didn’t believe in the Lions in 2008 even though everyone was telling me I should and then they went out and laid the most historic of rotten eggs. I do believe in them this season. I’m gonna go ahead and trust that over your hysterical whining about being fooled because, brother, you were the fool back then, not me.

I’ve been kind of harsh here, but what the hell, I am sick of all the dumb noise and I just want to talk football for a change. I don’t want to spend the season putting out dumpster fires in the fanbase. That’s not my deal, you know? I just wanted to write this so everyone would know where I stand and so I wouldn’t have to come back to it throughout the season when the Failure Zombies rise from their graves and start gibbering on about how the team secretly sucks. If I think the Lions suck, I will say that shit. You know that. I won’t get seduced by candy cane wishes and unicorn dreams. I call it like I see it, and the way I see it, the Lions have every chance to be pretty damn good this season. Not perfect, but good and good is damn near a miracle given where we’ve been.

Now, with all that said, are there still concerns? Absolutely. The offensive line doesn’t seem like it can run block for shit, which is a distressing development. Hopefully, the Lions coaches realize this and play to their strengths on offense instead of serving as slaves to some bullshit Lombardiesque This Is How A Man Wins philosophy. Thankfully, from what I’ve seen so far, they realize this and are willing to find ways to creatively move the ball without much risk. The screen game has been terrific so far and if they continue to utilize that along with reverses and fake reverses and all that jazz – which is what allowed the run game to spring to life (well,”life” might be a bit strong but they were definitely reanimated, like little drunk Frankentsteins or something) late last season – they should be able to keep teams off balance enough so that their passing game can thrive. Do you need to be able to run the ball in the NFL? Yes. Definitely. But “run the ball” doesn’t always literally mean “run the ball”. That may sound strange, but what it really means is “move the ball safely and effectively, without much risk and so the defense is forced to play off the pass and closer to the line of scrimmage.” The way the Lions have moved the ball through the screen game and through reverses and fake reverses and all that shit effectively does that. Would it be ideal to just line our guys up and smash forward for 6-7 yards a pop? Hell yes. But this is not an ideal world. It is a flawed and harsh world and you have to do what you can to get ahead. Only great fools don’t understand this. Rod Marinelli didn’t understand that and it killed him. Being a slave to some bullshit philosophy is the quickest way to die in the NFL, and as we all should know, the most painful.

Aside from that, there aren’t a whole lot of other major issues to be concerned with. Sure, some people are bagging on the corners but I’m not that worried. They got burned on one play, a busted coverage by the second teamers that was as ugly as it was obscene. That sucked. It did. But the next time the Patriots tried to exploit the secondary, the Lions picked off Tom Brady. So . . . yeah, I don’t know where all the doom and gloom is coming from there. Is the secondary perfect? Hell no. Is it filled with Darrelle Revis types who can singlehandedly shut down an opposing passing game? Fuck no. But it doesn’t have to be either. The front four showed that it can be so fearsome that all the secondary has to do is hold their shit together. The front four will force turnovers through pressure. We’ve seen that already, multiple times. The corners don’t need to sit on an island for 18 years while the QB calmly surveys the field from his comfortable pocket. They just need to handle their business like professional football players and not drunken circus clowns on fire. And I think they’ve shown that they can do that, which is a far cry from the horror shows of the past.

Like I said, this team isn’t perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than anything any of us have seen in a long time, and for most of us, maybe ever. That’s something to get excited about and you should be ashamed of yourself if some part of you won’t let you do that. I know that some of you are just sitting around and waiting to crow, to stand up and scream “See, I told you so!” if things go badly, but how fucking sad is that? It’s ugly and pathetic and monstrous and so joyless that it makes me wonder why you’re even a fan at all. It’s fine to have reservations. I have my own reservations. Being honest about the situation is a good thing. Waiting like some ugly buzzard to pick at the bones of those willing to poke their heads into the light because they have the courage to actually imagine a world that isn’t perpetually dark isn’t being honest, though. It’s cowardly and parasitic and in the end, the only one you’re really devouring is yourself. If the Lions do fall apart, it’s going to suck. But your “I told you so” bullshit isn’t going to mean a damn thing. At least I’ll die in the light, after fighting on my own two feet while you’ll still be stuck in your own dark and rancid hell, and after you’re done cackling, you’ll just go back to getting reamed in the ass by a Failure Demon with a monstrous dick made of hatred, fire and your own dead heart.

The Lions being 3-0 in the preseason is meaningless. The Lions beating the shit of Tom Brady and the Patriots is meaningful. Recognize this distinction and recognize truth. Don’t let yourself be ruled by bullshit fear. I might be wrong about things. I might have made a fatal miscalculation. The Lions might go out and lay a huge turd. But so what? I don’t think that I am, but so what? None of that matters. None of your bullshit matters. None of my bullshit matters. All of it is just so much bullshit noise. What matters is Ndamukong Suh hunting down Tom Brady while Tom hyperventilates and squeals like a dying pig. That matters. That’s real. And that’s what I choose to believe in.

The Great Willie Young and the Real Gettysburg Address

On the night of November 18, 1863, Abraham Lincoln reportedly received a visitor at the White House who was described as “a large dusky skinned gentleman who radiated pure light” and whose presence was “accompanied by a chorus of angels.” According to observers, this mysterious visitor seemed to “float when he walks” and was long considered to be an angel. Finally, now, after the events of the last few weeks, we can safely deduce that this mysterious angel was none other than The Great Willie Young. The proof comes from this account of the following day’s events. It has been long since sanitized and cleaned up for the good of the general public – a misguided attempt to be sure since what is more pure and beautiful than truth? – but this is a true and accurate account, lovingly transcribed by my great, great, great, great grandfather and handed down through time until it landed in my hands. I have been entrusted with a great responsibility and I do not take this lightly, and so here now, for the first time, I present to all of you the real Gettysburg Address. Enjoy.

Four score and seven years ago, which is, like 87 years – who wrote this shit? - our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Except for Ohio. Those people are animals. Did you know that some of them poop in coolers during tailgates? Yeah, apparently, those degenerates are too uncivilized to use a proper latrine.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, as the people of Michigan and Ohio continue their ancient blood feud, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. Thankfully, a friend has told me that in the end, those degenerates from Ohio shall be humbled. Not only will their awful Cincinnati Bengals be profoundly beaten, but those vile degenerates from Cleveland will fall in defeat to the Detroit Lions.

(Holds for applause)

Yes, yes, a great day in our nation’s history indeed. Anyway, we are met on a great battle-field of that war. It’s true. Most people don’t know that on this field here in Gettysburg, my friend Willie personally slayed a legion of Cooler Poopers. He scalped those motherfuckers and left them rotting under the sun. I told him, “Willie, that wasn’t very Christian of you,” but he just scoffed and said “Abe, baby, those cocksuckers from Ohio were an affront to God. I was doin’ The Lord’s work.” Anyway, we have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live and so that everyone in that nation might understand that Ohio shall be forever subjugated to the might of the great state of Michigan, particularly through the game known as football.

(Crowd murmurs in confusion.)

Everybody, shut the fuck up! Listen! I’m talkin’ here! I’m the goddamn President!

(Abe pulls out a baseball bat and the crowd hushes.)

That’s better. Now, my friend Willie tells me that football is destined to be the Great American Game. To hell with baseball, he says and I believe him. He even showed me something he called a “tape” of the most recent game between his Detroit Lions and those despicable Cleveland Browns. He did this using a device attached to another device which showed moving pictures and was powered by electricity run through cables, and . . .

(Crowd begins to murmur. Someone shouts “He’s a witch! Burn him!” Abe makes a subtle motion with his head and the man is dragged off. His screams of pain can be heard throughout the rest of the speech.)

Anyone else have something smart to say? No? I’m the President, goddammit, you people have to trust me on this shit. Anyway, this game was pretty awesome. There were dudes smashing the shit out of each other, throwing oblong balls all over the place, and my friend Willie told me “Shit, Abe, this is nothin’. This is just the preseason. You should see it when shit really gets wild.” I don’t know if I could, to be honest with you. I mean, there was one fellow, who Willie informed me goes by the name of Nate Burleson, who caught a ridiculously thrown ball by a gentleman named Stafford, who Willie tells me is a reformed Confederate from Georgia. It was fuckin’ amazing, people. And you should have heard those assholes from Cleveland howl with displeasure. Their misery tasted delicious.

(Crowd cheers.)

I know. I know. Even though Willie tells me that it was only an exhibition game and therefore meaningless, is it ever really meaningless to whip up on those cocksuckers? I think not. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, therefore, because we should stop to dedicate this field to Willie and his friends, and remember that they are the warriors who keep the righteous natural order of things in place. Without them, all of our borders would be overrun by deranged Ohio hooligans, mouth breathing simpletons who spend their days jacking off in libraries and their nights buggering family pets before drowning them in Lake Erie.

(The crowd shouts in outrage.)

Indeed, my fellow Americans, they are a heinous people, and that is what makes the courage of Willie and his Detroit Lions that much more commendable, that much more worthy of praise and honor. And so we are here today, to honor them, to dedicate this great battlefield to their collective sacrifice.

(Holds for applause)

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. I mean, my God, Mikel LeShoure may never play football again. He gave his life – well, his knee, but fuck it, what’s the difference? – so that his brethren could be victorious. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, because the world is full of assholes who would rather watch shit like Whore Island or reality shows about midget hookers or Kardashians, who Willie informs me are a race of insatiable famewhores, closely related to the mysterious Yeti, than to pay attention to anything the fucking President has to say, but it can never forget what they did here. They can never forget the stand that was taken both on this field by my dude Willie or on that field in Cleveland by him and his compatriots. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. We all have to be vigilant. If you see a cooler, make sure it has not been shat in. If you see a library, make sure that is not infested with a swarm of Ohio degenerates, jacking off like zoo apes simply because the site of the written word frightens them terribly. If any of you encounter an Ohioan, pick up a book and open it. Begin reading and they will fall to their knees and weep, their brains turned to mush by the simple act of transcribing the written word. They will claim that you are a great sorcerer and will slink back to their hovels to hide in abject fear.

Indeed, it is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead – for Mikel LeShoure and Mike Utley’s poor, poor legs, for Reggie Brown and Nick Fairley’s foot, for Erik Andolsek, who literally gave his life trying to stop a runaway truck which was rumored to have Ohio plates - we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, which is, of course, that Ohio is a cesspool of scum and villainy that must be stopped at all costs -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, that good shall triumph over evil, that Michigan shall forever remain superior to that terrible and godforsaken state known as Ohio -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, a government that righteously understands that the Detroit Lions are the team of the future and that when they win, we all win, shall not perish from the earth. Also, in closing, Ohio, you ain’t shit. Now let’s all get hammered.

(Wild applause)

Preseason Games Are Meaningless, But . . .

Jordan Palmer, world . . . meet The Great Willie Young

If there is one fanbase in this circus of a universe who knows better than to fall prey to the candied lure of meaningless preseason glory, it’s our twisted and scarred bunch. After all, none of us can ever forget the lessons of the 2008 preseason, which saw the Lions go 4-0, invited a bunch of dumb hype and made it that much crueler when the Lions shit their pants and were carried away by Failure Demons on a river of our tears, aided by sails made of horror and Rod Marinelli’s diapers, sails blown by an ill wind made up of our screams and sad, broken sighs, all the way to 0-16. So, uh, fuck the preseason. That’s been my enduring mantra ever since that fiasco, but . . . sigh. In the end, I’m just a damn fool.

And I’m a damn fool because despite all of the aforementioned gibberish, I find myself celebrating the Lions 34-3 shitkicking of the Bengals a little too much. Of course I should be happy that they won – a win is always better than a loss – but ultimately every preseason game, no matter what the outcome, is meaningless and forgettable. Still . . . still, there was something in the way that the Lions won that made it feel like it had meaning, the way that they came out and absolutely bumrushed the Bengals, the way that Matthew Stafford effortlessly sliced up their secondary, the way that the defense marauded like pirates on PCP, the way that Ndamukong Suh tried to eat Andy Dalton’s heart after separating his head from his body . . . it all felt like it mattered.

And maybe that’s the point. Maybe it felt like it mattered because we needed it to matter. We needed to have some sort of validation for the ridiculous mountain of hype we’ve climbed over the past several months. All of us are afraid that the mountain is made of shit and lies and that soon it will melt away and we’ll be left drowning in its rancid stink. At least on some level. Don’t deny it. And so more than anything, the result of this first exhibition game feels like a giant sigh of relief, like we can finally exhale because the mountain suddenly feels a little more firm and it feels like we might just survive this climb after all.

But again, it’s more than just the result. I mean, this wasn’t a 19-14 victory in which the game was decided by a group of camp rejects who will likely spend the real season digging ditches or pit fighting in Thailand. No, this game was decided by the first stringers, the dudes who really matter, and it was decided within the first five minutes of the game. Matt Stafford was perfect on the opening drive, found St. Calvin for a touchdown and looked like he’d been doing this for 150 years. Then Isaiah Ekejiuba killed a guy on the ensuing kick return, the Lions recovered his fumble, Matthew Stafford threw a gorgeous fade pass on a 4^th and 1 to Nate Burleson in the endzone and suddenly it was 14-0 Lions before the Bengals had even run a play. Of course, when they finally did run a play, it saw Andy Dalton get hunted by an escaped vampire ape flying through the line, and then chuck the ball up only for Chris Houston to come down with said ball. And that was it. Game over. The starters left, the Bengals never even came close to making a game out of it, and, well . . . shit, that was certainly reassuring.

And like I said, it was that reassurance which was the key thing we all took away from this game, why we have all clung to it a little too hard, why some of us went back and watched the game again or stayed up late to watch the highlights of a meaningless preseason game on ESPN. It was because it validated our hopes and dreams, made us feel for one long moment like this damned thing might work out after all.

We are a fanbase that constantly lives on a razor’s edge, a fanbase that desperately wants to believe in something – anything – but which is also constantly terrified that we’re going to slip, crotch ourselves on that razor’s blade and then spend the whole season howling in agony while our balls and lady balls bleed. And so we cling to anything that makes us feel like we can believe that everything will be okay and we freak out and wail like childish banshees whenever anything – say a Nick Fairley or Mikael LeShoure injury – goes wrong. We are overreactive and tightly wound, bipolar and volatile, but that’s what 50 plus years of hellfire and agony and one terrible 0-16 season will do to you.

In many ways, the preseason is just an excuse for people to solidify their preconceived notions. And because so many of us have spent so long hoping and have found ourselves daring to believe that this time is actually different, this first preseason game seemed like it was some sort of sign sent from on high, to tell us that everything will indeed be okay, that everything will be more than okay and that we have finally – finally – found some redemption at the end of this long, hard road out of hell.

But there are also people who still don’ believe, who think we’re making gigantic jackasses of ourselves yet again, who crow about that 4-0 preseason from 2008 and who will point out Cedric Benson gashing the Lions line before he was taken out of the game, who will point out the Lions giving up too many third down completions over the middle, who will point out the penalties, who will say that they indicate a lack of discipline, and who will say that the Lions got lucky, that the early turnovers were a fluke and that this was, in the end, just a game that will foolishly get our hopes up and make it that much more difficult to take when the Lions inevitably collapse once again.

Those people kinda suck. I shouldn’t be too hard on them because, honestly, their words are basically the same as mine were leading up to that 2008 debacle of a season. But the circumstances are completely different. People got suckered into the 2008 season because they wanted to believe so badly and they were willing to overlook all the signs of disaster that should have been obvious, and then they were further blinded by that mirage of a preseason. Their hopes were being held together by faerie wishes, unicorn dreams and chicken wire. The Lions were woefully untalented and people were down to gibbering clichéd nonsense about toughness and pad level and grit and all those things that people cling to in the absence of talent.

People aren’t talking about those things this year because they don’t have to. Our hope, our belief, is validated by the fact that, well, this is a team with some serious talent. We can just point to a Ndamukong Suh or a Calvin Johnson or a healthy Louis Delmas or a Matthew Stafford rebuilt with cyborg parts or a Jahvid Best with functioning toes or a rampaging Corey Williams or a tackle machine like Stephen Tulloch or . . . you get the point. There are real, genuine honest reasons to believe and that’s what makes this different from the past, what makes it different from 2008.

But people will believe what they want. They’ll see what they want and they won’t admit that the reality might be different until they are forced to, and by then it’s usually too late. The Lions could win a shitload of games right away and there will be people saying that it won’t last and these people will miss out on all the joy that comes from jumping aboard a rocket ride into the heavens. They’ll be left behind to scramble for seats on a bandwagon which will just look like a donkey cart compared to the luxury rocket the rest of us enjoy. But, let’s face it, the Lions could fall apart completely and a bunch of us will sit here and make excuse after excuse and we’ll contort ourselves in hideous ways, embarrass ourselves with dumb arguments and shitty logic until we finally collapse under the weight of it all and wave a white flag in utter exhaustion and defeat. Look, I understand this, I’m a Michigan fan. I’ve been through this shit already.

And that’s why this first preseason game actually felt like it mattered. Because it was validation, a shred of proof that we’re not just dreamy moon-eyed idiots, gibbering and blathering about Hope because we’ve lost our damned minds. And it was the decisiveness of it all that made it matter. There wasn’t any room for delusion in that win. The Lions kicked the shit out of the Bengals and that was that. People will see what they want to see but sometimes the truth is naked and raw and unavoidable. The Lions were clearly – clearly – the better team, and while that might not be saying much given the fact that the Bengals appear to be on their own highway to hell, when’s the last time that you could honestly say something like that? When was the last time that the Lions could just simply outclass another team by virtue of sheer talent, and do so in a way that was so stark, so obvious, so, so . . . overwhelming?

The game left little in the way of interpretation and I think that, collectively, that’s what we needed as a fanbase. People will see what they want to see, but sometimes the world holds your eyes open and forces you to watch.

Look, this may all sound absurdly ridiculous to an outsider, something incomprehensibly dumb and sad, but they just don’t understand. We have to take joy when we can. When you spend your whole life as a fan getting whipped by the Failure Demons, you learn to savor every moment that those fuckers rest and quit bringing that lash down on your back. You learn to covet and adore every sliver of light that slips through the cracks of hell. We are a people that have been savaged and left for dead but we have a unique kind of warrior spirit that never quite leaves us dead and ruined. 0-16 couldn’t do it. It left us scarred and twisted and damaged beyond repair, but we curled up amidst the madness and protected that tiny core of pure light which lies at the center of our being and now we nurture that light and we try to let it heal us. People don’t understand that when you’ve lost everything, the only thing you can do is keep moving forward, to keep walking, even if it’s mindless and dazed and goofy looking. You just keep staggering forward and you look for reasons to keep going. You look for preseason wins and you look for highlights on ESPN and you look for practice reports that say that Matthew Stafford to St. Calvin is an unstoppable combination.

So, yeah, we would have embarrassed ourselves with excessive hooting and joy after a win like this even if there was no real hope. I admit this and it’s important to understand that if you want to understand who we are as fans. But I don’t feel like I’m trudging. I don’t feel like I’m just staggering forward because there’s nothing else to do. I feel like a man, and I feel like I’m marching towards something and if you want to laugh at me and tell me that I’m overreacting and that this is all just some dumb fever dream, brought on by madness and despair, then so be it, man, I can’t stop you.

One last note before I wrap this shit up: THE GREAT WILLIE YOUNG! Nothing – nothing – brought me more joy in that game than seeing my man, The Great Willie Young, raising hell and kicking ass. Seriously, I felt like a proud father. It was ridiculous. I loved seeing him bear down on the quarterback, loved seeing him get after the running back, loved – absolutely fucking adored – seeing him chase down Jordan Palmer like Palmer stole something from him, forcing Palmer to throw up a shitball which was picked off by the Lions. There were a couple of plays where my dude just completely wrecked the whole damned play by himself. I may be overstating things here a bit, but to hell with all that. The Great Willie Young has come to play and woe unto anyone who tries to deny him. I have tried to tell everyone. Even the shitty TV announcers have no choice but to chuckle and talk about The Great Willie Young: Shark Hunter. It has begun.

It has begun. That’s what it all comes down to, for The Great Willie Young, for the Lions as a whole and for all of us as fans. It has begun, and even though this was just one preseason game, and preseason games are indeed meaningless, meaning is a relative term. Did this game matter in terms of the standings, in terms of wins and losses? Not at all. But it mattered – it absolutely mattered – in terms of convincing ourselves, for a day, a week, or if only for a few short blissful hours, that we’re right to believe, right to hope and that the world might just have something left to offer us poor, downtrodden Lions fans after all. For a moment, we lived like we wanted to live, like we have dreamed of living for so long, and while that moment has come and gone and the world will just remember it as a blip in time, we were there, we felt it, and that matters. That matters.

At Least Wait Until The Season Starts Before You Panic You Ninnies, Part II

“I’ve already swam the River Styx and I have already had red hot pokers shoved up my ass by the Failure Demons. I’ve seen 0-16. What else can they do to the football fan in me? (I know, I know, famous last words, right?)”

I don’t know how many posts I’m going to have to lead with that infernal quote, but I knew as soon as I wrote it that it would haunt me like the ghost of a deranged stalker. Indeed, the football gods apparently read the post that originally appeared in, smiled mischievously at one another and then started sending lightning bolts from the sky to zap our players and giant Thunder Birds with wings made of fire and hate to swoop down and carry their charred corpses off to Valhalla while we all wept and begged for mercy. Terrible, terrible.

The latest atrocity, of course, came yesterday when Mikael LeShoure’s Achilles was murdered with a single arrow shot by Paris (Lenon?) We can only hope that, like in that famous story of the fall of Troy, this one ends with LeShoure’s Achilles being avenged and our side being ultimately victorious. Hopefully, we don’t have to resort to shameful trickery like those degenerate Greeks and hopefully this doesn’t result in Matthew Stafford wandering the seas like poor, doomed Odysseus in its aftermath, but . . . this Homeric gibberish has gone on long enough. Just count yourself lucky that I didn’t find a way to tie Virgil and the Aeneid into this, which would have no doubt just led me to ranting and raving about Dante and his Inferno and none of us wants to travel back into that hell.

Anyway, anyway . . . sigh. So, yeah, Mikael LeShoure is hurt, his career might be over before it began, and naturally this caused the world of Lions fans everywhere to explode. Immediately, everyone went into hysterics over the news with people gibbering on about curses, others throwing their hands up like medieval doomsayers, screaming at the sky, hands outstretched, wailing that the end was surely at hand. Still others actually found a way to turn this into a bitchfest about Matt Millen, which I’ve gotta admit, is some impressive twisting of the facts, while many inscrutably managed to use it as a platform to revisit their fearful disdain of the Lions drafting strategy. For my part, on Twitter, I threatened to get drunk and try to ride a lion at the zoo, fight an ape in hand to hand combat whilst riding said lion, and then to steal that same lion, and ride naked onto the Lions practice field in order to quell our collective fears. So, yeah, it was a weird day.

Really, though, this wasn’t so much about a single injury as it was about our collective fragility, about the all too breakable paper hearts of this fanbase. It was just too much too soon for people to handle. Nick Fairley got hurt, the offensive tackles are going down like [choose your own obscene metaphor], Titus Young has been banged up and hasn’t been practicing, and now . . . this. Look, I get it. I understand that we’re all walking on eggshells, wide eyed and terrified, too scared to truly believe that everything is going to be okay. We are like a herd of easily spooked animals, slowly wobbling out of the Forest of Doom which has been our home for so long, and every little noise sends more and more of us scrambling back into its terrible but familiar canopy of sadness. Every time something has happened – injuries, assorted bad news, etc. - since the lockout finally ended and everything became suddenly all too real, people have turned and fled, with more and more running with each bit of bad news. But the core of our fanbase seemed like it was holding together. We decided to stay brave, to face the wild unknown and to march away from that terrible hell forest together. But then this news about LeShoure came down, and it was like a dragon swooped in with a shotgun and started firing indiscriminately into the herd. The whole goddamn thing broke and now there is mass fleeing. It is awful and sad and bloody and strange and I hate it. Meanwhile, there are a handful of intrepid shepherds standing their ground and screaming “All is well!” at the top of their lungs like Kevin Bacon in Animal House.

When shit like this happens, when people take a cosmic gut shot, they tend to retreat to polar opposite positions based on pure emotion. There is no room for reason or thoughtful honesty. You have people governed completely by Fear, who fall apart and start ranting and raving about all the shit that they rant and rave about. We’re far, far too familiar with these types and the things they bitch about. Then there are the others, who are completely governed by Hope, who start burying their fingers in their ears and whistling a happy tune of their own making in order to drown out the screams of the dead and the dying. We cannot afford to be either if we’re going to survive this season.

These injuries suck. They hurt. They make me angry and they make me sad and they make me shake my fist in a sort of empty, dumb rage. They make me mutter about Failure Demons and the wrath of the football gods and they make me at least consider the idea of digging up the corpse of Bobby Layne and setting it on fire. It’s probably still soaked with enough booze that the damn thing will burn pretty easily. To deny any of that would be dishonest and wrongheaded. That sort of swallowing of my fan feelings would just lead to a supersonic breakdown later.

But they aren’t the end of the world either. I mean, come on, settle the fuck down, you animals. LeShoure’s is the only injury which seems like it will have any long term effects, both for this season and beyond. By itself, it’s a brutal blow and we should mourn it. We should. But, it’s not part of some terrible, cosmic pattern wrought by invisible forces buried deep in the earth who inexplicably hate us either. At least, I don’t think so. (Insert nervous laughter here.) All these other injuries are relatively minor, things that should heal relatively quickly. Nick Fairley should be back at some point either prior to the season or early in it. Does it suck losing him for practice? Of course. But let’s not forget, it’s not like we’re relying on him like we were Ndamukong Suh last year. Titus Young’s injuries are more frustrating than anything else, minor little nags which should heal and ensure that he’s good to go by the time the starting gun goes off. The most important thing to remember about all three of these injuries? None of these players is a starter. They were all expected to be – and Fairley and Young still are – contributors, but they weren’t expected to be the last line of defense or anything like that. Their injuries suck. They aren’t crippling, either literally or metaphorically. Finding the truth in that is critically important if we’re going to maintain our sanity as fans.

Like I said in the post about Nick Fairley last week, injuries happen and injuries heal. This feels worse than it is. Trust me on this. The only one that is a true gut shot is the Mikael LeShoure injury. That one sucks. That one honestly hurts. Go ahead. Feel that shit. And then calm the fuck down.

Honestly, the more worrisome thing as far as its impact on the team this season is the situation at left tackle, where our dudes seem to be being hunted Final Destination style. We can’t afford to go into the season without these dudes getting healthy. We can afford to go into the season with Fairley and Titus Young banged up. Such is the magical nature of depth. But the offensive tackles, while not as flashy, while not as loaded with promise and not as emblematic of our grandiose dreams, are more important. At least right now. The good news is that none of these injuries seem to be all that severe and that by the time the season starts, they should be good to go.

So here’s the reality: Mikael LeShoure is done. At least for this season. Maybe beyond. Who knows? And that sucks. It’s disappointing and it makes me want to throw a mini hissy fit. Everyone else has injuries that should heal relatively soon, so that when the season starts we’ll be minus LeShoure and relatively healthy everywhere else. And, hell, today the Lions went out and signed Jerome Harrison and Mike Bell so, honestly, the loss of LeShoure really shouldn’t be felt that deeply. Both of those guys have shown they can produce and one of them should turn out to be an effective complement to Jahvid Best.

So, really, when the season starts, what’s changed? What’s all that different from a few weeks ago, when we were all puffed up, drunk on our collective hopes and dreams, carrying on like wild eyed fools about Super Bowls and parades and all that shit? Not much. The thing that’s taken the biggest hit is our fragile and all too delicate sense of belief. It feels worse than it is. And it feels worse than it is because we’re predisposed to freaking the fuck out and crying and shaking like retarded baby deer whenever the slightest bit of noise comes along to startle us. But the good news is that when it comes to winning and losing and what actually happens on that football field all that shit doesn’t really mean a damn thing. This is about us and our own battle with ourselves and the past more than it is about anything on that field.

On some level, I think most of us know this. I’m not mad at the people freaking out right now. I get it. I understand. We can’t turn on each other like dumb and uncivilized cannibals. We’ve had enough grief as fans without whipping on each other and making it all worse. It’s okay to feel bad about all this. What’s not okay is how some people have cravenly turned this into an infomercial about SAME OL’ LIONS AMIRITE?

Fuck those people. Honestly. Fuck. Them. The people gibbering on about this somehow being related to Matt Millen are being fucking absurd. These people are already lost and we’ll never get them back and so just ignore their bullshit. Don’t even bother arguing with them about it. Their belief that somehow this is proof that the Lions drafted poorly this past year and that Martin Mayhew is just an extension of the same ol’ same ol’ Millen bullshit is so cosmically stupid that I don’t even know how to argue with it. It would be like arguing about Shakespeare with an illiterate circus bear with a brain rotted by syphilis and despair. Like arguing about fine art with a drunk vampire ape. You’re sitting there making compelling and logical points and they’re just sitting there hooting and growling, spitting dumb rage bullets and wondering what your face tastes like. There’s no fucking point.

Honestly, the idea that somehow these freak injuries validate any criticism of the Lions drafting is the most ridiculous and outlandish bullshit I’ve heard since I went back and reread some of my posts about The Great Willie Young. I could sit here and write several more thousand words just picking apart and wading through that insipid bullshit, but why bother? It would just irritate me and make me crazy and the people who actually believe it, who have been so mutilated and ruined by Fear and Failure, wouldn’t even be capable of understanding it anyway.

I understand that not everybody is going to agree with me on this. That’s fine. But to throw your hands up and declare this draft class ruined and completely without promise is utterly absurd. Everyone is acting like Nick Fairley and Titus Young will never contribute a thing because they’ve each suffered a minor injury in training camp. Jesus Christ, would you people please calm the fuck down? You’re like hysterical old ladies. I feel like I need to splash you in the face with water, and slap you a few times to bring you back to your senses. Nick Fairley and Titus Young both have their whole careers ahead of them. Nothing about that has changed. The Mikael LeShoure injury is another issue, but even he is just one player. If you’re willing to slit your wrists because one rookie running back was grievously hurt, then I suggest digging around in your pants for that missing set of balls. (Lady dudes, I’m not sure what to tell you to do. Uh, dig around for that missing set of ovaries? No, that doesn’t work. Dig around in that [redacted for gross indecency.])

I’m not going to minimize the loss of LeShoure. It hurts. He was drafted to be the complement to Jahvid Best, but more than that, he represented another bullet, another chance for greatness. There was the possibility that he could break out and finally be the answer at running back. Now, that bullet has fallen out of the gun before it could even be fired and disappeared into a deep, dark pool and we’ll likely never find it again. (Or not. The truth is that no one knows how LeShoure comes back from all this.) That fucking sucks. But I won’t overstate his loss either. The Lions were not relying on him to carry the load, either for the offense as a whole or for the running game. Jahvid Best is still the guy here and he’s still a dude who showed a shitload of promise before his toes betrayed him early last year. Let’s not forget, this was a dude that had 5 touchdowns by the time Week 3 rolled around and he had already implanted the memory of a bunch of awesome runs into our brains. Behind him, Maurice Morris is still there and he’s always been more effective than people want to give him credit for. And now Jerome Harrison and Mike Bell have joined the fray, the same Jerome Harrison who once rushed for 286 yards in a game –which is the third highest total of all time – and the same Mike Bell who ripped us apart in the 2009 season opener. We should be fine at running back.

Once again, it’s our collectively fragile sense of belief which is the thing that has taken the biggest hit this past week. I can’t stress that enough. We’re just feeding off each other’s panic, each other’s fears. Everybody chill the fuck out. There is no use – absolutely none – in trying to retroactively claim that this is some sort of evidence that Martin Mayhew messed up. That is so much needless noise, dumb and willfully negative and destructive, that the people saying it should be ashamed of themselves. We have enough bullshit to deal with as Lions fans without you assholes making shit up. I understand that you want to start talking about “opportunity costs” and all that, trying to act like this is somehow about losing three players rather than one (because, remember, we traded up for LeShoure and therefore, somehow, we can now retroactively claim that this means that we’ve also lost the hypothetical players in the form of draft picks that we traded for him.) but again, that is so much speculative bullshit that has no real meaning other than as a way to channel disappointment and sadness and fan rage into some petty argument.

It’s basically the cousin of the whole “Hey, guess who’s not in a walking boot? That’s right, Prince Amukamara” bullshit argument that I tore into last week. And hey, by the way, guess who is in a walking boot now? That’s right, Prince Amukamara, who broke his foot during practice with the Giants. The whole point is that the whole thing is speculative and therefore dumb and inane and utterly without merit. Nobody knows when a guy is going to get hurt. That goes for Nick Fairley, for Prince Amukamara and for Mikael LeShoure. To listen to you jackanapes, the responsible General Manager would never draft anyone at all for fear that that player might suffer an injury one day. Hindsight is not 20/20. Hindsight is pointless and dumb and as blind as it is stupid. I mean, sure, it would be great to get ahold of a Sports Almanac from 60 years in the future like fucking Biff in Back to the Future II, but unless you’ve got a DeLorean, a whole shitload of extra Plutonium lying around and a crazy scientist with an unhealthy interest in the lives of teenaged boys ready to put that shit to use, then I’m afraid you must deal with reality just like the rest of us, and in this reality you do the best you can with the information you have and sometimes you get unlucky and a dude gets hurt or flames out or whatever, but that doesn’t mean that you stop trying, or that you stop reaching for greatness. That’s some cowardly shit right there.

Matt Millen’s drafts were failures because the dudes he drafted failed on the football field. If you can’t see the difference between that and a dude suffering a freak injury, well . . . please, crawl back in your miserable little hole because you’re just in the way and some of us actually want to move on.

I hate these sorts of posts. I hate it when everybody gets all hysterical and dumb and starts hooting like deranged chimps and I feel the need to hoot back. It’s so much worthless noise. I can’t wait for the season to get here, for there to be actual football to be played. This is some shameful shit. We look ridiculous, like a bunch of whinnying ninnies with our panties shoved a mile up our ass cracks. And before you start accusing me of having rose colored glasses or of being drunk on Kool-Aid or whatever other dumb bullshit cliché you can think of, just remember that I have always – always – called it exactly how I see it. Go back to my posts from 2008. I absolutely savage Rod Marinelli. And right from the start too, back when everyone else was calling for ten wins and a spot in the playoffs. I have never – never – been one to mindlessly cheerlead. But I’ve also never been one to just mindlessly bitch either. I am neither a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of guy. I just see a glass and I see that there’s still some water left and I see that some is missing. See both. See the good and the bad. Think, damn you. Think. And when you do, I think you’ll take a deep breath and you’ll see that we’re still okay. We’re still okay.