Why Take The Chance?

                                                                       Don't worry, I'll explain later.

Well, Neil, welcome back to the Lions, I guess. Yes, after steeling myself to dive back into the insanity of the Detroit Lions, taking my Lions Disease booster shots and attending meetings with The Great Willie Young, the universe has decided to laugh in my face and raise me a rapist a head coach.

Okay fine, an alleged rapist head coach. That word is important, but . . . uh, folks, it don’t look good for your boy. I don’t want to get into the whole Discourse of it all and start referencing hashtag justice shit, which I generally despise (#FreeKony y’all!) or start arguing about the general culture and disappearing down a rabbit hole of tumblresque rantings and me tooing until we’re all a bunch of hateful wretches triggered to shaking tears by clowns and balloons or whatever weird bullshit gets us attention, but . . . yeah, we need to talk about this.

Matt Patricia probably raped a girl. I don’t know what else you want me to say. I suppose you probably want me to say “But he was never found guilty!” which is true, but that is not the same as being not guilty. Instead, Matt Patricia has spent the past 20+ years stuck in a sort of purgatory, and that sucks for him if he truly didn’t do that shit, but if he did – and I think he probably did – then he deserves far worse and feeling bad for him is a sucker’s game.

Matt Patricia wasn’t just accused of rape. This is not a “he said, she said” kind of thing. He was indicted by a grand jury for rape. That means that a jury of twelve people felt that the evidence – both physical evidence and witness accounts – meant that they believed he was guilty and should be brought to trial for rape. At least five people – a nurse, a doctor, two cops and the victim’s friend – were all set to testify that Matt Patricia and his friend raped her. That, uh, that’s not nothing. The nurse and the doctor are especially intriguing witnesses. Their presence tends to indicate that at least someone raped that girl.

The case went away, but not because Patricia was vindicated in any way, or because the victim “recanted”, which the Lions really, really want you to believe. The poor girl ended up not cooperating because she had just been fucking raped and was emotionally traumatized and didn’t want to deal with it anymore. If you can’t understand that, congratulations, you’re a fucked up human being.

The point is that far from being vindicated, Matt Patricia basically got a get out of jail free card thanks to a raped girl’s emotional trauma. That’s pretty fucking messed up. Of course, all of this assumes that she was right and that he did that shit, and this is where things threaten to tumble into The Discourse, but let me just say this: everyone ever accused of rape claims that they didn’t do it. Shit, Bill Cosby is still claiming he never did anything wrong. Do women lie sometimes? Yes. But generally cases with zero evidence just based on an accusation don’t lead to a fucking grand jury indictment. A lot of people thought Matt Patricia did this based on evidence that went beyond just what the girl said.

So, if you believe that Matt Patricia raped someone then he has to go. This is a no-brainer. We’re done here. But, let’s say you believe that he’s innocent, that you can convince yourself for whatever reason that Matt Patricia is just the innocent victim of a 22 year smear campaign. What then?

Well, even if you believe all of that, we’re left with a dude who has spent the last 22 years sitting on this shit, desperately hoping that it would never come out. That’s understandable. It could ruin his life and he knows that. But, it coming out like it has doesn’t just make him look bad. It makes the team he works for look bad. It makes the people he’s worked for look bad. It taints everyone involved with him. And in a high-stakes game like this, he has to know and understand that. At some point, he needed to be “hey look, this happened years ago, and it’s not a problem, but you need to know about it and be prepared in case some wild shit gets out.” Would it have messed with his chances for getting work? Probably, but that is a thing he needs to deal with. It’s his cross to bear. Again, this all assumes that he’s not guilty. He still has a responsibility to not let this mushroom cloud and take out everyone around him.

Look at it this way: your sister starts dating some dude. He seems like a decent enough guy. They get married and a couple of years into the marriage you find out that this dude was once indicted for rape. The case went away, but he was never quite vindicated. Do you think “hey, no big deal, I get why he never said anything” or do you think “get away from my sister you fucking creep! It’s fucked up that you never said anything!” Yeah.

At this level, the relationship between Matt Patricia and the Lions is basically a marriage. They needed to know all the bad shit in addition to the good in order to hire him. He owed it to them. But he didn’t and now everyone looks bad.

This is on the Lions too. At some point, they probably should have dug deep enough to find this. They didn’t, and whether they were technically required to is beside the point. They probably didn’t do anything wrong technically, but that is a coward’s argument that just indulges the flaws in the NFL’s interviewing system/background checks. After all, this is a league that’s pretty famous for looking the other way unless they’re forced to.

If Matt Patricia wasn’t going to say something, the Lions should have at least checked to see if, you know, their future head coach was ever indicted for raping someone. I mean, shit!

The problem here is that thanks to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” kind of bullshit that’s gone on is that not only does Matt Patricia look bad here, the Lions do too. That’s because they’ve predictably decided to ride or die with Patricia and have made themselves look like fools here. Rod Wood has said that the girl “recanted numerous times,” which, uh, isn’t true. At least not that we know. There is nothing in the public record that indicates that this girl took back her accusation. She chose not to testify because she was emotionally ruined. That’s a pretty big fucking difference. Not exactly subtle.

And then you have the Lions statement on the matter, which defensively pointed out that Patricia was young and on spring break, as if that could possibly matter. I mean what the fuck? “He didn’t do it, but even if he did, he was young and on spring break, boys will be boys y’all!” That is basically what that means and it’s heinously fucked up. That alone is enough to envelop everyone in a fireable storm of controversy and it all starts with neither side being willing to deal with closet skeletons.

If, somehow, you’re able to convince yourself that Matt Patricia is innocent and that everyone has handled things the right way, congratulations, you are a deluded dupe. But I get it. I mean, on a base level, I understand the compulsion. This is your team. This is your team’s coach. Your instinct based on years and years of learned tribal behavior is to defend defend defend and never let anyone say shit about your boys. It’s all well and good to believe a girl, but as soon as it touches your life, your enjoyment, it becomes all too easy to call her a liar, if only to protect yourself.

Just look at the hideous mess going on at Michigan State. When that whole debacle was confined to Larry Nassar even staunch Sparties were willing to “graciously” demand that the school handle its business and burn him at the stake. As soon as it touched the school itself and, more importantly, its basketball and football programs, those same “gracious” Sparties turned into persecuted truthers who blamed it all on a media conspiracy. As soon as it touches something people love they go right into defend at all costs mode.

You see it too with Ben Roethlisberger and Steelers fans. Everyone forgets that he was accused of rape and there are dark rumors that he’s pretty much a shitbag degenerate, but it’s impossible for Steelers fans to face that because it conflicts with their own fandom. So it’s easier for them just to dismiss it, blindly defend him no matter how ludicrous or horrible it makes them look, and continue to cheer for their team with a clean conscience.

And then there’s Penn State, which has seen an entire fanbase go completely off the rails because it can’t handle the idea that the school’s entire identity is ruined by the Sandusy/Paterno scandal. People make strange and terrible deals with their own minds. They twist reality, they twist truth, their own moral code, in order to protect their own sense of belonging, of community. To have that destroyed is unthinkable to them. It would call their own beliefs, their own connections, their own hearts into question. It would implicate them.

So . . . I get it. I think its cowardly, but I get it. I understand the impulse. But here’s the thing – and it’s fucked up that we even need to discuss it on this level because this isn’t what it should be about, but here we are – even if you believe that Matt Patricia is innocent, and even if you believe that everyone has handled everything the right way, is Matt Patricia really someone you’re willing to ride or die for? I mean, is this really a guy who you feel like is worth risking our honor, our dignity, our fucking soul for?

There’s a scene in the movie Casino – and here’s where I finally explain that image up top – where mob boss Remo sits at the head of a table of indicted mob bosses. He’s the boss of bosses. They’re discussing what they need to do to get out of their legal hell, and naturally, talk turns to bumping off all the witnesses. They come to Andy Stone, their head union fixer, and the bosses all agree that he’s a good kid who’s done nothing wrong and wouldn’t rat them out. But not Remo. Remo shrugs. He has nothing against poor Andy Stone, but as Remo says “why take the chance? At least that’s the way I feel about it.” The next scene is poor Andy Stone getting capped in a parking lot. They liked him, but he wasn’t really one of them.

Why take the chance? Again, it’s fucked up that we’re even talking about it on this level, but even if you believe that Matt Patricia is innocent, and even if you believe that he nor the Lions did anything wrong here, why take the chance? Matt Patricia has never coached a game for the Lions. We’re not really invested in him in any emotional way yet. This is Bob Quinn’s team, not Patricia’s, and from a philosophical standpoint, losing Patricia really doesn’t mean much. He’s just Quinn’s boy, hired to execute Quinn’s vision. Quinn could hire someone else and nothing would really change.

Why take the chance? It’s fucked up, but there you have it. It’s brutal and it’s cruel, but no matter how you look at it, Matt Patricia can’t remain as the Lions head coach. He just can’t. Just walk it back, step by step, and even at its most impersonal, purely rational level, it doesn’t make sense to keep him. This shouldn’t be about that, but even when it’s about that, that’s how it shakes out.

Matt Patricia probably raped that poor girl. And even if he didn’t, he and the Lions have fucked up the response so egregiously, and fucked up in the hiring process, that he should go. And even if they handled it right and he didn’t do anything wrong, why take the chance on Matt Patricia? Even on that cold and cruel level, it’s just not worth it. He’s not worth it. Why take the chance? At least that’s the way I feel about it.