Ancient History
Because I Believe in Psychic Energies and Dear God Especially Here: I can
barely even handle writing this section because . . . JESUS CHRIST! The story
of the Detroit Lions at quarterback is the story of the franchise itself, just
full of failed hopes and misery and failure demons and every other kind of
demon in hell, just constantly gnawing at our souls, punishing us for something
truly heinous we must have done in another life. Maybe Lions fans are the
collective souls of the entire Nazi party reincarnated. Who knows? You could be
Hitler.
Anyway, shit, we’ve already veered into wild ranting and
idiot gibberish, so clearly this is going to go well. It all starts, of course,
with Bobby Layne. If you just read that in the voice of Vincent Price, I don’t
blame you because there’s no bigger spectral ghoul in our absurd history than
Bobby Layne.
It has nothing to do with Bobby Layne as a player. Well it
does, and it doesn’t. It does because he’s the one Hall of Fame quarterback we
have in our history, the leader of those 1950s teams that stand as the high-water
mark in Lions history, just before the crest broke and a great tidal wave of
misery washed back on us all. Horrible, horrible. And it doesn’t, because despite
all of that, despite what should stand forever in our minds as a perpetual
reminder of glory, Bobby Layne’s name to us is dark and full of terrors because
he’s the one who infamously cursed the Lions to a half century of failure when
they traded him to the Steelers.
Naturally, this is kind of absurd. I mean, Christ, nattering
about ancient curses is something none of us should allow to happen, and yet .
. . and yet . . . 50 years of misery and failure has stretched to 60, and how
long, Bobby? How long must we endure for your hissy fit?
And it was a hissy fit. That’s because the whole legend of
Bobby Layne has kind of been twisted to the point where everyone believes the
Lions ineptly traded away their franchise player in his prime, and thus
deserved everything that befell them. To most people, the whole Bobby Layne
saga is just example number one of the Lions being the Same Ol’ Lions lol
amirite that we’ve all heard so many fucking times in our lives. But the truth
is that Bobby Layne was already on the decline when the Lions traded him away
and within a couple of years he was basically finished. Did they trade him too
soon? Eh. Maybe a year too early. But that is hardly GUILTY YOUR HONOR kind of
evidence worthy of a 60-year curse.
Still, Bobby Layne was a Hall of Fame quarterback for the
Lions, and he deserves to be remembered as such. Unfortunately, he’ll always be
remembered as the genesis for everything we know and loathe about this goddamn
team. That is a hell of a legacy to leave, but it shouldn’t really be that
surprising. I mean, after all, this is a franchise in which it is practically a
requirement to leave a legacy tinged with tragedy and deep psychic scars for all
its Hall of Famers.
It’s sad that, for the most part, Bobby Layne’s very name
has been reduced to something of a psychic bogeyman, a dirty word people barely
dare to even whisper when they talk about the Lions. It is insane and it is
ridiculous, but “insane” and “ridiculous” pretty much sum up being a fan of
this goddamn team.
After Bobby Layne and before Matthew Stafford was literally
50 years of absurd failure, the sort of thing that Browns fans are only beginning
to understand. Every single quarterback who the Lions threw out there failed,
some more tragically and ridiculously than others. Instead of talking about all
of them one by one like Arya Stark reciting her death list, I’ll just focus on
five tragedies in particular.
After nearly 30 years of wandering in the desert, relying on
names like Jeff Komlo and Gary Danielson to combat Bobby Layne’s psychic five
finger death touch, the Lions said fuck it and went big, drafting Chuck Long in
the first round in 1986. He was supposed to be the Answer. Finally. Naturally,
he basically played one horrible season and then flamed out of the league.
Next!
Only a few years after drafting Long – and a year after
drafting Barry Sanders – the Lions decided to try to take a spiritual
flamethrower to Bobby Layne by drafting Heisman winner Andre Ware. The idea was
to pair him with fellow Heisman winner Barry Sanders and create an unstoppable
run-and-shoot offensive juggernaut. It turns out, though, that Andre Ware was
just a product of a crazy Houston offense in college, the sort of dude we’d
dismiss as a “system quarterback” if he came out today, like one of those Texas
Tech quarterbacks who throws for 5,000 yards and doesn’t even get drafted. Back
then, nobody knew better, and so of course the Lions were the team that got to
learn the lesson. Andre Ware played a total of 14 games over 4 years, starting
only 6. Next!
Nearly a decade went by before the Lions tried to draft
their next franchise quarterback. His name? Joey Harrington. Next!!!
Okay fine, “next” was named Matthew Stafford, and that’s
worked out pretty well. Finally. But we’re not done with the tragedies and there’s
a couple more I want to talk about, a couple of players who weren’t horrible
busts but still contributed their own painful psychic wounds to our collective
psyche.
We’ll start with Greg Landry, who arrived only about a
decade after Bobby Layne left and before anyone really even understood the hell
that was about to come down on this team and its fans. Landry was legit good, a
true double threat passer/runner who was headed for legit stardom. He might
have even been the best player in the entire league in 1971. Things could have
been much, much different for us, but then Greg Landry ruined his knee, he
never quite came back, and he hung around for years as just a ghost of himself,
a cruel mockery of what we might have had. The Lions spent so much time, and
wasted so many years, trying to chase that ghost, that it’s Greg Landry’s ghost
who might actually be responsible for our misery, not Bobby Layne’s. If the
Lions had just mercilessly tossed Landry aside and started over as soon as his
knee was doomed to hell, maybe, just maybe, they could have pulled out of their
tailspin. But they didn’t, they kept deluding themselves into believing Landry
could come back, and by the time they finally decided to give up the ghost it
was too late and the Forever Rot had already set in. Bobby Layne is a dick.
And finally, there is Scott Mitchell, who I’m including
because he taunted us like a cruel desert mirage in that crazy 1995 season,
which saw him put up huge numbers and convince us that our search had finally
ended. Naturally, he melted down so hideously in the playoff game that year
against the Eagles (spoiler alert: the Lions lost) that he never recovered,
neither did the Lions, and we were left eating sand again and weeping blood
tears in our spiritual Sahara.
This parade of failure demons is not a legacy that anyone
should have to deal with, and so it’s honestly no surprise that so many of us
have had such a hard time trusting in Matthew Stafford. We’re like a dog that’s
been beaten since he was a puppy. Our new owners seem like they might be nice.
Hell, they’ve treated us pretty well for years now. But all it takes is one bad
thing, one raised voice, one rolled up newspaper, one interception or offseason
weight gain, and we’re pissing ourselves and baring our teeth. It’s just
monstrous, it’s not fair, and we can’t help it. It’s not our fault. It’s not our
fault. It’s not our fault.
Recent History: I
already mentioned Joey Blue Skies or Joey Sunshine or whatever the fuck his
stupid nickname was, and let’s face it, his particular scar still burns bright
on our flesh so there’s no need to reopen that wound.
After him, Jon Kitna was at least tolerable for a year or
two, but then he got caught up in The Horror of 2008 and died during the Bataan
Death March of 0-16. Dan Orlovsky and Daunte Culpepper died with him, and when
it was all over we were left with the number one pick in the draft, which was
spent – wisely, for the first goddamn time – on Matthew Stafford.
I’ve already used the beaten dog analogy to describe our
relationship with Matthew Stafford. But it’s deeper than that. We’re so beaten,
so fucking afraid, that nobody can discuss Matthew Stafford rationally. He’s a
flashpoint for Lions fans. You either give into The Fear and irrationally curse
him, riding him unfairly and making him die for all of the Lions sins – and god
knows that’s a lot – or you reflexively get defensive and refuse to consider
even the mildest criticism of him. It’s a shitty discourse that has no winners.
It’s like nuclear fucking war. The only way to win is not to play, which
perhaps helps to explain why I threw up my hands for several years and refused
to take part.
But here I am, and I’m struggling to find the best way to
talk about Matthew Stafford. And so I’m going to do the cowardly thing and punt
here. I’m going to do a positional season preview – again! – just before the
season starts, when everything is settled and we know who’s actually on the
team, and I promise I’ll deal with it all then. I might even devote an entire
piece to just untangling this whole mess. Because there’s a lot to say about
Matthew Stafford, and before I can do that, I have to be able to rationally
sort out my own feelings about him. And those feelings are complicated. They
are. And that’s okay to admit. That’s the first step for all of us, I think,
the only way forward. We have to be willing to acknowledge, if only to
ourselves, that we’re all both right and wrong about Matthew Stafford, that the
past has fucked us up so much that it’s nearly impossible for us to treat him
the way he deserves to be treated, on his own merits. Matthew Stafford belongs
to something far bigger and far deeper than just himself. That’s unfair. It
really is, but it’s also reality. How do we untangle him from that? Can we?
Should we even try? I don’t know, and that’s one of the biggest things we all
need to deal with. I look forward – kind of – to trying to help us do it.
Where We Are Right
Now: This is the easiest part of this whole damn preview or overview or
whatever the hell you want to call it. Matthew Stafford is The Guy, and that’s
that. There’s no point in even speculating about anything else. He’s the
franchise, for better or worse, he’s paid like it, and that’s not going to
change anytime soon.
The only intrigue here lies in the backup. I like Jake
Rudock. I can also admit that I like him mostly for tribal reasons and for fond
memories of his one year in Ann Arbor. Believe me, about halfway through that
one season I never believed in a million years I would say that because he was
awful. That owed more than anything to his unfamiliarity with a new system and
a new complicated playbook which he only began to learn literally a month or
two before the start of the season.
The second half of that season, though, saw Rudock explode
and by the time Michigan finished whipping up on Florida in their bowl game, he
was arguably the team’s MVP and had played himself into an NFL draft pick. He’s
not the most physically talented, but he’s smart as hell, he has an almost
supernatural sense of calm, and he’s in many ways the ideal NFL backup. But he’s
also not an NFL starter, and through that lens, it doesn’t really make sense to
call him “the ideal NFL backup.” I mean, if he can’t be The Man, then what’s
the point? Either he never plays or he’s forced into action and we’re all calling
our priests for our last confession. How is any of that ideal?
Still, I might be underselling him, especially because he
seems to be a valued trade asset, which means at least somebody out there
thinks he can be The Man, or at least The Temporary Man, which I guess is like
a gigolo or something? I don’t know. All I know is that’s where his real value
to the Lions lies. They know they can get something for him, and so I expect
them to do just that, and soon. Probably on draft day itself.
That’s also why the Lions just signed Matt Cassel, who’s
pretty much an old man at this point, but he’s an old man that’s also had a
least the idea of success in the NFL, which makes him the ideal NFL backup in a
completely different way than Rudock and shit, I’m not making sense anymore.
But anyway, to hell with all that. Cassel was the dude who
took over for Tom Brady that one year when Brady was lost for the season. He
led the Patriots to an 11-5 record. They missed the playoffs that year, but you
can see from the record that was more a weird fluke than anything. 11-5 teams
don’t miss the playoffs. That season made Cassel a hot commodity, and he signed
with the Chiefs, where he briefly tantalized with a single Pro Bowl season
before retreating back into the world of backup and part time starter. He’ll be
36 this season, which makes this a purely temporary situation, and if the Lions
want to develop someone like Rudock, then Cassel isn’t the dude. But they’re
also all-in with Stafford, which means there’s not a whole lot of sense in
developing anyone behind him right now. They just need a capable veteran who
can step in if disaster strikes. That’s Matt Cassel. Of course, if disaster
strikes, it really won’t matter and the only quarterback we’ll be talking about
is Bobby Layne again and his damn ghost. Would somebody please call a fucking
exorcist?
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