Where the Hell Are We? Part 1: The Defensive Line

(I’ve decided to do a pre-draft series taking a look at the Lions position by position while I’m still upbeat and motivated and before being a Lions fan leaves me feeling depressed and incapable of stringing words together besides “fuck” and “this”. Each section will take a brief (lol sure) look at the team’s history at the position/notable players/etc., a look at more recent years and, finally, the situation as it stands today on the eve of the draft. I’ll do something like two a week, starting with the defensive line and ending with quarterback. Consider this a quasi-draft preview/history lesson/idiot gibberish. Cool? Cool.)

Ancient History Because I Believe In Psychic Karma: Any discussion of the Lions defensive line begins with Alex Karras, who came along at the tail-end of the team’s glory days and was a Pro-Bowl/All-Pro caliber player for a decade. Of course, he also missed an entire season after being suspended for being a degenerate gambler and is best known as Mongo from Blazing Saddles, wherein he punched out a horse. Needless to say, Mongo is one of the few psychic victories for the Lions in their long death march of a history.

Aside from Mongo, the Lions have had several quality defensive linemen. Jerry Ball was a big fat guy who when he wasn’t stealing turkey legs during the Thanksgiving game managed to plug up the middle for the Lions best team of the last 60 years, that 1991 team that actually won a goddamn playoff game. Robert Porcher was the team’s best pass rusher for a decade, picking up a couple of Pro Bowls in the process. He is best known, however, for being an irrational object of my mom’s contempt.

You see, my dad didn’t give a fuck about football. He is not a sports guy, so I wasn’t raised with him in front of the TV yelling at the Lions. That was my mom. Her and my aunt were the ones who exposed me to my sports fandom, and naturally, my mother is a deranged nut. She can’t even watch the games these days because they give her too much anxiety and she is convinced at all times that something terrible will happen. Like have me for a son. Ahem. Anyway, when Robert Porcher was a young cub he had a tendency to get a little overexcited and jump offsides. Naturally, Mom never forgave him and throughout his career she sneered at him and bitched “he always jumps offsides, he’s no good,” which is some quality grudge-holding. Not exactly a psychic victory here, but fuck it, we are who we are.

Anyway, the Lions have had some other quality dudes over the years: Doug English was an early 80s All-Pro, Roger Brown was actually maybe better than Alex Karras during the 60s, as he went to 6 straight Pro-Bowls and had a monster 1962. William Gay, Darris McCord, Luther Elliss . . . I could go on naming names but frankly we’ve already run out of All-Pro types. It’s a decent history. Not too spectacular, but I mean . . . Mongo.

But wait! What about The Great Willie Young? He transcends such petty discussions and there’s no way I could even get into it without just pointing you towards the entire ridiculous saga, so . . . yeah, if you have 800 years and are as weird and fucked up as me, dive into the deep end of the pool. I’ll be waiting with a sheet of acid and a bottle of ether when you come up for air. (To be honest, I'm not sure if that's the entire saga because I am a disorganized piece of shit and I don't label everything correctly. So . . . yeah, there might be a few Tales of the Great Willie Young missing from that link. So, if you're completely insane and want to make sure you get the whole thing, they're probably here.)

Recent History: This section was supposed to be epic, and for a time, there were flashes that it might happen. From the moment Ndamukong Suh was drafted, we anticipated a new era of savage dominance, of clubbing ogre attacks from the middle of the line leaving NFC North quarterbacks begging on their knees like Ric Flair for mercy. The Lions then drafted Nick Fairley and it looked like the team’s identity was fixed: a gang of brute assholes unconcerned for mercy or for the dictates of the cowardly NFL and their Gestapo Sheriff Goodell. Naturally, the whole thing went to shit.

It turns out Suh and Fairly were brute assholes, but perhaps more importantly, they were also stupid assholes. They did dumb shit that both cost the Lions at key times and caused the NFL and Sheriff Goodell to send a corrupt posse after them, forever hectoring Suh until he was a loathed enemy and broken of spirit. I wrote awhole thing about Suh when he left. So read that for more. Or don’t. Fuck it, I’m not your boss.

Anyway, that all fell apart like everything else always has for us, Suh fled to Miami, Fairley was sold to a circus and it was time to start over. The Lions switched their focus to the outside with freak athlete Ezekiel Ansah, who has managed to flash frightening dominance in between times of injury and spiritual emptiness, and who fucking knows what we’re gonna get from him. In the middle, the Lions drafted A’Shawn Robinson, who emerged in his second season as a decent if not upper-tier starter, and paired him with Ravens legend Haloti Ngata. Of course, Ngata was ready for the glue factory by the time he arrived (I was really close to making a “Not A good player anymore” pun, but I’m above such things and frankly so are you.) and ended up getting hurt last year, forcing the Lions to turn to Akeem Spence, who really isn’t anything more than Just A Guy, everyone ran all over the Lions middle, the end.

Where We Are Right Now: A few weeks from the draft, the Lions aren’t exactly in the best position here. Ansah is the featured dude, but like I said, no one really knows what we’re gonna get from him, he’s probably disgruntled thanks to contract shenanigans, he’s only a year away from 30, and he can’t possibly get this done by himself.

Anthony Zettel emerged as a quality player last year on the other side, but he’s not really the edge rushing terror every team needs 10 of these days, and he’s more of a try-hard type who could come crashing back to earth this season. Or not. I think he’s genuinely a good player, but we don’t really know, do we? Which just adds another layer of uncertainty to this whole fucked up cake, which for all we know, might be laced with poison and regret instead of, uh, cake.

On the inside, Robinson is in kind of the same boat as Zettel. He emerged last season as an okay starter type, but he’s not exactly a Force of Nature, and it’s possible he just fades away, which would be a disaster because, right now, he’s all we’ve got.

Okay, okay, so Akeem Spence is still here after Ngata left town to shrugs, but like I said, he’s just a guy. The Lions did sign Sylvester Williams, who has teetered throughout his career between being Just A Guy and a Robinson/Zettelesque Solid Starter type, but even that might be a little too optimistic take. Last season, with Tennessee, he was empathically Just A Guy, and usually teams don’t shrug their shoulders and wish you well in your future endeavors after only a season, so . . . yeah, I wouldn’t pin my hopes on him.

An Ansah-Robinson-Williams-Zettel line isn’t terrible, but it isn’t exactly inspiring either. And let’s face it, the potential for it to be terrible is pretty high. Worse, there’s really no one else to pin our hopes on. Akeem Spence? Are you high? If you are, can you hook me up? Ahem. Anyway, it’s clear that the Lions need a lot of help here, hence the number of Mock Drafts choosing an edge rusher for them in the first round. Really, they need a couple. They also need help inside, and both a disruptive type like Maurice Hurst (let me pimp my boy for Tribal Reasons) and a vast planetoid nose tackle type would be nice, especially because we don’t really know what the Lions new scheme will look like for sure.

That’s the hidden story here: how Matt Patricia and Paul Pasqualoni decide to deploy these dudes will go a long way in deciding who can do what and what we still need. The guys we have might suddenly become monsters in a new scheme, or they might find themselves at the circus with Nick Fairley. Who knows? And that’s really both the allure and the terror that this new season holds.

Regardless, the Lions need help in the draft, probably early, and they also need to probably get more aggressive in free agency. They need help here, but Lord knows they’ve always needed help anywhere and we’ve never gotten it except for the cruel tricks granted by Genie Wishes like Suh and Fairley. Even if it looks beautiful, it will probably be rotten on the inside. We’ll get our million dollars, but it will turn out to be stolen or the result of Blood Diamonds or some shit and we’ll be left spending all that money on incompetent lawyers in front of an international tribunal at The Hague ready to condemn us for Crimes Against Humanity while that genie laughs his ass off. Fuckin’ Bobby Layne.