It's Complicated

It’s complicated. How else do you describe Ndamukong Suh’s time with the Lions or his relationship with Lions fans? I decided to write something – I wasn’t sure what it would be, but I knew I had to write something – about all this. I figured I’d sit down and the words would just come flowing out, but the truth is, I’m sitting here and I still don’t know what to write about. That’s because Ndamukong Suh and the era in Lions history that he came to define, is the most schizophrenic, frustrating, bipolar goddamn thing.

It started before he even played a game with the Lions. He was drafted to much fanfare, everyone declared him the savior, a once in a generation kind of talent and all that kind of over-the-top trumpeting, and why not? After all, anyone who saw him absolutely wreck the world at Nebraska could see that this was something different. This was not just a good player, nor even just a dominant player, this was a force of nature, the sort of thing usually seen in disaster movies with little Japanese people screaming and running for a cover that can’t be found. Playing against actual human beings seemed unfair. Ndamukong Suh seemed like he should be off fighting Mothra. So naturally, Lions fans were excited and ready to love him in the way that only Detroit fans can love someone.

It is a love reflective of the city, the state, a sort of wounded love that is all-embracing, protective. We know hard times, and we will love – deeply – anyone who loves us, and is willing to go through it with us. We will fight for them, turn into insane idiots for them, bark like rabid dogs at anyone who dares to fuck with them, and we will hold them close as a symbol of hope, of light in a world that everyone insists is pitch black. It’s an us against the world mentality, a mentality that it would take an entire blog post (or 50) to really explain, so let’s just say this: if you are with us, you are fucking with us, and we are with you. And we really, really wanted – needed – to be with Ndamukong Suh.

You have to remember, when he was drafted, we were still in the early stages of digging out of the wreckage of 0-16, swatting at the Millen ghosts as they flitted around our heads, chasing the Marinelli demons out of every abandoned and ruined place in our hearts. We were in a fragile place, and we needed Superman. That’s not really fair, but that’s what we needed. We needed a goddamn alien Godzilla who would fight all of our enemies, lift our spirits and save little old ladies all at the same time. It’s sappy as hell and clichéd and I am actually wincing as I write this, but damn it, we needed a hero.

And then Ndamukong Suh held out. This is not the sort of thing that heroes do. It is the sort of thing that human beings do, though, especially dudes whose professional windows are roughly the lifespan of a sickly house-fly. I said all this then, implored everyone to recognize that Ndamukong Suh was doing what he had to do for himself and his future, and that we should respect that shit, but it was too late. Sports Radio Hee-Hawers had already decided he was a selfish monster, and that was that. They needed a hero and they got a man, and they weren’t having that shit.

But sports fandom is a fickle and ridiculous thing, and at the heart of it all are two twin emotions, the yin and yang of fandom: Hope and Fear. They are what drives everything else, and I have written extensively about both over the years. Fear drove people to condemn Suh for being a “traitor” before he had even played a down. We were a fanbase beaten down by Failure and Fear, and so any sign that we were just going to get more of the same was just too much for most people, especially since 0-16 had left us with absolutely nothing in the way of emotional defenses. This had to work. We couldn’t take it if it didn’t, and so our new savior holding out was just too goddamn much. Fans wanted a dude who would run to them, who would embrace them and the team before he even thought about money. This was ridiculous and childish, but that’s what fans are, ridiculous children, and Lions fans especially were scared, ridiculous children.

But Hope is always there alongside Fear. That’s what keeps fans going even when the Fear and the Failure becomes damn near apocalyptic, and even though Fear caused people to turn on Suh early, to even fight with his sister in the baby days of Twitter (I was there, and it was ridiculous and shameful.) Hope made even the saltiest fan bury that Fear, at least temporarily, and give Ndamukong Suh a chance to be that hero anyway.

And for a moment, it seemed like he would be that hero, that Superman Godzilla, who would keep us safe, fuck up our enemies, and help us rebuild it all – our faith, our confidence, even our city as ridiculous as it sounds. He was going to be the face of the resurrection.

But the thing is, is that trying to turn anyone into a Messiah is a huge mistake. It’s just too much. But again, that’s what we needed. Lions fans were in a position no other fanbase – in any sport – has ever been in. We were broken, shattered, and we had to create ridiculous heroes, invent Messiahs, magnificent futures that had little hope of actually existing, just to get through tomorrow as fans. You can’t truly understand it unless you were there, unless you felt the weight of 0-16 and Millen and the 50 fucking years of misery and failure that had preceded even that, constantly pulling, pulling, pulling. Messiahs and Supermen and crazy dreams were the only thing pulling us in the other direction.

Suh’s first season, the Lions went 6-10, which doesn’t sound like much, but it came on the heels of a 2-14 season which itself was the birthing pains after 0-16. And that 6-10 included 4 straight wins to close the season. It was the brightest stretch we’d had as fans in a long, long time, probably going back to the Barry Sanders years. It was the first time since then we had true, genuine Hope, a belief that the future might actually be something that we could love, that we could believe in. Jim Schwartz was a young, fiery head coach who dabbled in chess on the side, and Ndamukong Suh was his avatar on the field, our avatar, something beautiful and different than the misery we’d had to put up with far too long. It was too easy to turn Myth into Reality. It was what our hearts both wanted and needed.

And then that 2011 season started with 5 straight wins, a public execution of the Bears on Monday Night Football, and holy shit, this was actually happening. Ndamukong Suh had done it. He really was our Messianic Superman Godzilla.

Game 6 that season saw the Lions lose to the 49ers and their rookie head coach, a dude named Jim Harbaugh, and after the game, Jim Schwartz went crazy over a handshake gone awry, and even though there were some warning bells going off, most of us loved that shit at the time. This was a dude with fire, with passion, and his team, led by Suh, was the same way. They’d fucking fight you. They were ours and we were theirs, and we were gonna fight everyone gang-style if need be. The thing is, that all sounds great as a metaphor. Real life . . . well . . .

Things would never be that good again. Not really. The Schwartz era unraveled – even in that lone 2011 playoff season, the Lions finished the year 5-7 – and the biggest symbol of that, much to our horror, was our very own Jesus Superman, Ndamukong Suh.

We were all there. We all saw it, and we couldn’t do anything about it. He stomped on a dude here, threw Jay Cutler around like a rag-doll there, and pretty soon, he had a Reputation. We hated it, mostly because we all knew that it was mostly bullshit. Especially at the time. The Cutler thing in particular was ridiculous. Suh was essentially punished for being too good, for being too strong, too dominant. Sure, he stomped on that Packer, but . . . uh, that was just a weird one-off thing. Yeah.

But it wasn’t, and by then it was too late. Our Doom had essentially already been pronounced and the rest of the Schwartz era was essentially a futile battle against prejudices, misconceptions and the Lions – and Suh’s – own self-destructive nature.

It wasn’t fair, especially to Suh. He was picked on by refs, singled out by jackass announcers, harassed by Sheriff Goodell and his corrupt posse, but what really bothered us – or me, anyway, but I suspect a lot of you feel the same way deep down – is that there was a core of truth to all of it. The Lions were fuckups. Suh did do dumb shit at dumb times. Yes, he was picked on. Yes, much of it was bullshit. But he knew it. We all knew it. And he still did it anyway. It’s not fair, but he had to account for that bias and he didn’t. Game over.

Of course, that also meant that he never drew any holding calls, which decreased his effectiveness. He was still dominant, but refs let offensive linemen practically tackle him on play after play, which meant that he couldn’t get home as much as he had to, as much as we needed him to, as much as both the promise of his rookie season and the promise of our wild dreams demanded.

Through it all, Lions fans never really turned on Suh. If you’re with us, you’re with us, after all. But it is also hard to truly love someone who becomes a symbol of a culture of persecution, of someone who becomes a living, breathing reminder of failed potential, of the unraveling of a future that we unfairly demanded to atone for the assorted miseries of the past. I wrote earlier that Suh was an avatar for Jim Schwartz, and that was true right up to the day Schwartz was fired. Suh was the Jim Schwartz era. It was wild, it was ridiculous, it was filled with crazy Hope and broken dreams, and along the way there were adrenaline-spiking highs that left us shaking like junkies in our living rooms and in the stands, and there were absurd lows that left us sneering with disgust and bellowing at the gods. It was beautiful and it was awful, and Ndamukong Suh was the eye at the center of the storm.

Ndamukong Suh was a great player for the Lions. He was a dominant player. He was also a flawed player, fatally flawed as it turned out. There are people who will tell you that he underachieved with the Lions, and they’re not wrong. Suh was frustrating, if only because it always seemed like he was always just a fingertip away from touching paradise, and all he needed to do was reach out and we would all touch it together. In some ways, he was a victim of his own otherworldly ability. He was too strong, too freakishly dominant, and it cost him with refs, with the league, and ultimately with public opinion, and once that damns you, it’s almost impossible to come back. But it also meant that we wondered why he couldn’t be that Jesus Superman on every single play. It wasn’t enough for him to be dominant. He had to be, well, Jesus Superman. He wasn’t. He was just a man. An exceptional one, but still, just a man.

And that man was kind of strange, mercurial and almost impossible to truly know. He wasn’t a ready-made cookie-cutter hero. He was contradictory, passionate yet oddly aloof, profoundly decent and caring yet temperamental and prone to destructive outbursts. He wanted to win so badly it made him break down in tears after the Lions were robbed against the Cowboys in the last game he’d ever play in a Lions uniform, and yet when asked why he left and signed with the Dolphins, he said it was mostly about the money.

In the end, it was just complicated. He was complicated and so was our relationship with him, the era he came to define, and our own feelings in the aftermath. It’s all just so complicated. As a fan, you wait a lifetime for someone like Ndamukong Suh to come along. We’ve been absurdly lucky to have that happen three different times as Lions fans in the last 25 years. First there was Barry Sanders, then there was Calvin Johnson and finally, there was Suh. Hell, two of them played together. There are very, very few fanbases that have ever gotten to enjoy that level of transcendent beauty, that once in a lifetime mastery of skill and the “other” that we simply we can’t describe. We got it three times. And we have one playoff win to show for it.

Shrug.

Yeah. It’s complicated.

Today, Ndamukong Suh put on a cap as a member of the Miami Dolphins for the first time, and the era he defined is over. At least symbolically. But that’s all eras really are, anyway. Symbols. His was, well, let’s say it again, complicated. Now that it’s over, those two twins, Hope and Fear, have begun to wrestle again. I’m scared of a Lions team without Ndamukong Suh because how do you replace someone like him? You can’t. You can try. Haloti Ngata is an awesome start, but he’s still not Suh. He is not an avatar for our dreams. That’s what Suh was, and now that he’s over, we have to dream new dreams. Only this time, maybe we don’t channel all those dreams into one dude, into one Jesus Superman. Maybe that’s the better way, the healthier way. Maybe this is all what needed to happen in order for us to finally get over 0-16, to move on. I don’t know. I’m just starting to ramble now, but that’s because this is . . . yeah, it’s complicated.

I will miss Ndamukong Suh. I won’t really miss the Ndamukong Suh era. I hope that makes sense. I get it if it doesn’t. I’m ready to dream a new dream. I needed to dream the Suh dream. We all did. But now we need something else, and that’s okay, I think. That’s okay. I still don’t entirely know what to say about Suh, or how to properly eulogize him now that he’s effectively dead to us as a Lion, but that’s okay too. He’s gone and that’s that.