This Is It

Aaron Rodgers was visited by the Ghost of Charles Rogers (no relation, because, well… obviously.  I mean, one of them has a “d” in his last name.  Wait… what did you think I meant?), and after Chuck’s ghost rummaged around Rodgers’ place looking for shit he could steal to sell, he remembered why he was there and shattered his collarbone with a tap of his magic bong wand.  This effectively knocks the Packers out of the race (hopefully, I mean I know I am putting the cart waaaaay before the horse here, especially since the Packers have famously overcome major injury issues in the past, but Rodgers was always the one constant, the dude holding everything together with perfect passes and general Aaron Rodgersness, but then again, we all remember the Matt Flynnapalooza, which… I’m just going to stop this line of thinking before I have a panic attack, but anyway, yeah, the Packers’ hopes took a major hit when Rodgers’ collarbone said fuck it and hung the gone fishin’ sign.  Incidentally, the Ghost of Charles Rogers also took a major hit, but an entirely different kind.)

This sets up this week’s game against the hated Bears, with both the Lions and the Bears sitting at 5-3.  The Bears themselves have a wounded quarterback, and there were some who said the team was better off once he was gone.  I don’t necessarily agree, but there does seem to be some smoke that their coach, Marc Trestman, and Jay Cutler aren’t on the same page to support that particular fire, and so, hey… maybe.  The point is that for all the Bears’ stubborn refusal to go away (and isn’t that usually how they end up grinding out these weird 12-4 seasons every few years?) they still seem to have some internal issues, and once a quarterback and a coach get on different pages, the whole book tends to fall apart and becomes a weird choose your own adventure in which one of them gets trapped in a dungeon and eaten by a dragon.  They are there, and they are always a pain in the ass, but they are significantly less scary than the Packers, and given that the Vikings rowed their sad little boat full of holes out to the middle of the sea and set fire to it really before the season even started, this means that it’s just the Lions and the Bears left standing.  And here’s the thing – the Lions have already beaten the Bears once this season, and if they win this game, they’ll be a game up in the standings, they’ll own the tiebreaker, and they’ll be facing down a pretty manageable schedule the rest of the way (Just look at it.  12-4 is not out of the question.)  This is really happening, y’all.  Win this week, and there’s a very, very good chance the Lions are winning this fucking thing.

Naturally, Lions fans are completely terrified.

Look, I don’t have to explain why.  You all know it, and yet another recitation of this Shakespearean tragedy known as our collective history isn’t what anybody needs right now.  It’s right there, screaming at us from inside our own brains with a goddamn megaphone made of Fear and cold, naked Terror. 

But the reason The Fear is currently squatting in our souls like a shiftless hobo, pooping in the corner and making a fort out of old newspapers, is because this game carries a weight to it that’s impossible to ignore.  This is it.  For better or worse, this feels like the moment when we’ll Know.  If the Lions win, then goddammit, we just might do this, and it could very well signal a turning-point for this insipid franchise.  If they lose, well… they will have blown their best shot at really changing things, and while that might not mean they won’t eventually somehow pull it together, this is the NFL, and these are the sorts of shots that don’t come along often.  There’s a sudden vacuum, and you’re either the team that fills it, or you’re the team that spends the late winter months fretting about draft position.

That’s perhaps overly stark and simplistic, but such is the weight of this game on our psyches.  It is pivotal in a way that truly defines the word.  It is a pivot point, for better or for worse, and we don’t get many of those.  And when we do, let’s face it, we know which way it usually goes.

Still, the Lions physically beat on the Bears the first time they played, and so there is every reason to believe they can pull this one out.  They are the better team.  Or at least they can be.  But let’s face it, the reason I immediately hedged there is because we have seen this team completely shit itself before, especially against these Bears and especially in Chicago.  Weird and terrible shit happens at Soldier Field, from our dudes becoming allergic to the football to Devin Hester or Hester Prynne or whoever the fuck dancing down the field at ludicrous speed while our dudes flail uselessly behind them to Matthew Stafford being taken apart like the black knight in the Holy Grail to Mike Pereira popping up to explain that there is something called The Process of the Catch.  Those are the sorts of things that happen in Chicago and Oh Lord…

Okay, get a grip.  Here’s the thing: I don’t think the Bears are that good.  Here’s the other thing, though: I don’t think the Lions are that good.  But, the Lions are coming off of that galvanizing win over the Cowboys in which Matthew Stafford and St. Calvin became the Maverick and Goose of our hearts once and for all, and… you know what?  That’s a bad reference.  I mean, Goose gets fucking killed in that movie, and now Calvin will end up hitting his head and breaking his neck on the goalpost after going up for a jump-ball, and… Jesus, you see?  I can’t hold it together.  This game is fucking with my head, and I know I’m not alone.

This is The Fear in all its naked and terrible glory, thrashing about because it knows that we’re standing at the edge of something.  And sure, that something might be more about what’s going on with other teams than the Lions at the moment, and yeah, I’d rather have the Lions just show up in Green Bay and beat an Aaron Rodgers led Packers team one of these days, and some would say this opportunity is more a technicality than a true potential passing of the torch, but fuck you, after what we’ve been through, I don’t care if the Lions win this division because every other QB slips and falls in the shower like an old woman, I’ll take it, and then I’ll jam that fucking torch up your ass.

Even if it is an unusual and unlooked for opportunity, it’s still an opportunity.  And there’s no telling what can happen once you find yourself sitting on that throne, what kind of confidence that can give you, what kind of subtle yet all too important changes in perception that can create.  Sure, if the Lions do pull this out, and do ride it to a division title, we know damn well that Aaron Rodgers and the Packers will be coming back next year for that throne, but fuck them, if they want it, they’ll have to come and take it.  That’s what being on the throne means.  It doesn’t really matter how you get there, it just matters that it’s sitting underneath your ass and not someone else’s.

But I am getting hilariously ahead of myself and taunting the football gods with my hubris, which is always a spectacularly stupid idea, especially given that I’m a fan of the team championed by Hades while Zeus just sits in the sky and hurls lightning bolts at us, laughing while we perpetually dive for cover in piles of pig shit.  There is still this goddamn game against the Bears to get through, and even if we make it through that, we have to somehow put aside what seems to be encoded in our very DNA and still finish the season strong, but all that is really just noise, thunder on the horizon.  Today, we’re staring face to face with that rare beast, opportunity, and there is nothing standing between it and us for the first time in ages.  It’s ours if we can just take it.

That’s a thought that almost makes you want to hyperventilate, doesn’t it?  Both for good reasons and for bad, but such is the yin and yang of Lions fandom, that perpetual push and pull between Hope and Fear.  But today, Hope doesn’t seem like such a crazy thing.  That’s what makes it so scary.  It’s real, and so are the Lions chances, both against the Bears this week and for the rest of the season.  There is a very good chance this is a playoff team, and somehow, unfathomably, if the Lions win today, there is a very good chance that it’s a division winner.  And if it’s a division winner, no matter the reason, whether it’s because the Lions are truly the best team or just because Aaron Rodgers’ died on his way to his home planet aka a commercial set, it means that it’s a successful team, and if it’s a successful team it means… well, you fill in the blank with whatever your heart wants to.  That’s what's on the line right now, and that’s why today’s game is both deliriously exciting and completely and utterly terrifying.  And if that’s the new normal, then I think I can live with that.  Because that will mean that the Lions win today, and you know what?  I think they will.