Detroit Lions 2018 Season Preview, Part The End

We’ve come to the point in this infernal preview in which I am supposed to make some conclusions, maybe tell you that everything will be alright and send you into the season rabid and baying for the blood of your enemies. Let’s face it, you already know there’s a but coming (lol butt cumming)

Butttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt . . . you feel it too, right? I think we were all worried – hopeful, but worried – about what this team would look like in Year 1 of the Matt Patricia era, and this lifeless preseason, when it looked like the entire team was on a walkabout of the soul, getting ruined by backups and trash, has made everyone terrified of what’s to come.

This does not look like a good NFL team. It doesn’t even look like a functional NFL team. I already told you that I thought the defense would be trash, but shit, I did not expect it to appear this bad. The defensive line may as well not even be there, and the linebackers look like they’d struggle in a YMCA flag football league. This is a bad, bad defense, and given that is Matt Patricia’s supposed area of expertise, I feel like the howling scream at the beginning of a Pink Floyd song. Breathe . . . breathe in the air, because once the season starts we’re all gonna be suffocated by cruel Failure Demons.

The caveat, of course, is that the preseason is meaningless and forgettable, but only to a point, man. There are certain things which are just immutable. The final score, the actual result, of preseason games is meaningless. Seeing our dudes get wrecked like tissues on the set of a gangbang is real. You can’t hide that shit or explain it away.

We’re starving. I mean . . . come on. There is no way to say that without it being an understatement. We’re like North Korean peasants showing up at the border looking like zombies, begging for nourishment. But instead of being fed, we’re gonna be told to be patient, to wait until next year’s crops are grown. But by then, we’ll probably be dead.

We don’t have time to wait for whatever grand plan Bob Quinn and Patricia have cooked up. We need the Lions to win now. The sad reality, though, is that this is true every other year too, isn’t it? But at least most years we’re able to delude ourselves that there’s hope. Whatever actually happens on the field once the season starts, when fate usually conspires with failure demons and the NFL itself to fuck us in ways too innumerable to count, there’s usually at least talent available, a vague idea that the Lions could win. This season, defensively at least, that doesn’t even seem true.

There are things that I wish I could tell you, signs that I wish I could see, but Bubba, they ain’t there. This has the look of a team about to get steamrolled. But perhaps more importantly, it has that feel, doesn’t it? There is a spiritual rot hanging over the whole thing, a perpetual stink that has grown with each preseason snap, with each sad day that passes. Robert Ayers showed up and then left like Grandpa Simpson visiting the whorehouse and everyone laughed because of course he did. Things are already grim, gallows humor prevails, and the fucking season hasn’t even started yet! More importantly, the Matt Patricia era hasn’t even started yet.

And that’s what most terrifying here, I think. The sort of spiritual rot I’m talking about usually shows up after a few years, when it’s obvious things aren’t working and everyone is just waiting for a change. Well, it’s already here and they haven’t even played a game. I mean, what the fuck?

There are things we’re used to dealing with as Lions fans, oh so many things, but I don’t think any of us are used to that. I mean, this is a whole new animal, rabid and deranged, chewing on our souls. At least let us hope for a few weeks. Christ!

I’ve already entered the recriminations phase and nothing has actually happened yet. This is bad. Of course, there is always the chance that I end up looking like an idiot once the lights come on, but for right now, the energy is too ugly to ignore.

But then, of course, there’s Matthew Stafford. And there is a plan, a plan which I have tried to find and thread throughout this preview, but each time I’ve talked about it, the more I’ve found myself working harder and harder for it to make any sense. In the end, I suppose, I decided that it’s a coherent plan, but it’s utterly insane.

The Lions want to be the Patriots. That much is obvious, I think. They’re trying to model every aspect of the organization on the Patriot Way. The only problem with that is that they aren’t trying to build the Patriots the way the Patriots themselves were built, on a strong defense and a reliable quarterback who stunningly turned out to be the greatest quarterback in NFL history, which itself was kind of dumb luck rather than any sort of organizational genius, but instead on the Patriots today, a stripped bare team with a shitty defense being held together by the greatest player of all time. That is fucking insane.

The Lions are trying to be the Patriots, but they’re trying to be the Patriots of 2017, not the Patriots of 2002, and that’s where things are getting fucked up. The hope, the only hope really, is that Stafford somehow turns into the greatest player who ever lived and wins this fucking thing himself. Well, I mean, it’s a strategy, but so is setting yourself on fire and running screaming into a pile of cops after they surround your house.

It’s a hard thing, to break before the assault even comes, but it’s also a hard thing to live with 60 years of failure, a multi-generational rot which has left us all broken in ways that defy description. Nobody likes what I’m writing. I don’t like what I’m writing, but what the fuck else am I supposed to say here? The Lions look like a team that’s flatlined before they even lived. That baby is dead in the womb and all that’s left is for the lady to shit it out or whatever.

Jesus. I’m sorry. That was rough even for me. But these are rough times, strange and terrible, and these things happen. I want to hope, I fucking need to hope, but hope in what? I don’t know. I just don’t fucking know.

I suppose I could break down the schedule, start looking for winnable games and whatnot, but that is always pointless and meaningless. No one ever gets that right. You don’t know which games are winnable until you start playing them. Bad teams are suddenly good, good teams are suddenly ruined, new heroes are born, old heroes have their legs blown off.

I guess that’s where I have to try to find hope, in the idea that as much as I think I know, I really don’t. None of us do. Weird shit happens in the NFL, and, well, nothing would be weirder than the Detroit Lions suddenly shucking off 60 years of pain, especially this year, which somehow feels like both a rebuilding year and The End. That is a wretched situation.

Matthew Stafford. Matthew Stafford. Matthew Stafford. I have to keep repeating that and reminding myself that a top tier quarterback is a powerful thing, no matter what other bullshit is going on. He’s still here, and he has weapons. He does. By himself, he should be able to drag this team to at least mediocrity and then who knows what can happen? What weird breaks and crazy NFL nonsense can go down? We’re so used to it all breaking against us, but what if it somehow breaks the other way this time? I mean . . .

Okay, so that is desperate talk. But really, what else do we have? This just feels so wretched right now, a listless wreck of a team whose starters have been pushed around and humiliated all preseason. It would be one thing if those starters were all dudes we expected to be good once the music starts, but I think we were all already holding our breath, with the defense especially. Their humiliation is really the only data point we have to work with.

Matthew Stafford. Matthew Stafford. Matthew Stafford. The offense will be fine. I have to believe that because it’s sort of the inverse of the defensive situation I just talked about. I know the offense has good players. I have more data points there than just this preseason. I know Matthew Stafford will produce, that at the very least he will give the Lions a chance every week. I know this. I know this. I know this.

And yet, right now, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. A lifetime of failure has made me an expert on the issue. I have a sixth sense for it. I can smell that shit in the air. And right now, it’s fucking asphyxiating me.

It’s not just the players, though, right? There is a palpable sense that Quinn and Patricia are charlatans. I don’t want to believe it, and until just this past week or so, I didn’t believe it. I think this is because I so badly wanted to believe in a plan, in something, anything, that I was able to convince myself that they knew what the fuck they were doing. I could see it. I could see the idea. But ideas aren’t always good ideas and to be honest I’m just sort of repeating myself now and am badly in need of an editor before I start talking about dudes running out of their house on fire again, but shit, I don’t know what else to say.

What else can I tell you? I suppose I could hold to the belief that Patricia’s defenses in New England always started out bad and then improved as the season went on, but is that even true? They didn’t look like they could even stop a Pee-Wee team in the Super Bowl. And as I have already said in the defensive preview, it’s my contention that the Patriots strongest defense was Tom Brady himself, that the defense wasn’t a complete tire fire only because he managed to keep the ball longer than any other team in the league, and when he did have to give it up, he did so giving the Patriots defense the best starting field position of any team in the league. Matt Patricia was a terrible defensive coordinator and he has bad ideas about what makes a good defense. Fuck him.

I am already getting carried away, already condemning dudes to the lake of fire before they’ve even coached a real game. That is insane, but this is the only conclusion I can come to. I really, really don’t want it to be true. I want to stress that because I don’t want you sitting there thinking I’m being negative just for its own sake. I am not that guy. I am a dude who is able to convince himself that Michigan will go 12-0 every single season. Shit, I remember looking at Michigan’s schedule going into 2009 and telling myself “hey, there’s no reason they can’t go undefeated.” This was when Rich Rodriguez was the coach and after they had just gone 3-9. I am an absurdly, unreasonably optimistic person. Nobody ever sees that, though, because the world we actually live in, is so unbearably wretched and because I’M A FUCKING LIONS FAN. Even the most optimistic man in the world will look like a cynical doomsayer if he has to write about this fucking team.

Matthew Stafford. Matthew Stafford. Matthew Stafford.

I feel compelled to call this a 4-12 team, but I can’t do that because of Matthew Stafford. He is the Hope, the one thing keeping me moving forward here. I just can’t see a team with him at quarterback being that bad. Well, I mean, the team probably will be that bad, but Stafford will mask a lot of it. I can’t see him losing to other bad teams, especially at home. The Lions won’t finish 4-12, but that should come with an asterisk because it’s really Matthew Stafford that won’t finish 4-12. The rest of the team could finish 1-15. Fuck.

But that’s sort of the point, I guess. The Lions have done this on purpose because it’s what Papa Belichick does. But take Brady away 10 years ago, and the Patriots were still a decent team. Take Brady away today and Belichick goes 1-15. Fuck Bill Belichick and fuck anyone crazy enough to build a team modeled on the 2017 Patriots instead of the 2002 or even 2008 Patriots.

But again, I’m repeating myself. I suppose I’m desperately looking for a way to convince myself that this will all be alright, that these ideas are Good Ideas, and so I find my brain trying to follow the same paths over and over and over again in the hope that somehow the conclusion will be different this time. But it never is. No matter how I try to break this down, I end up in the same place: hopeless panic.

The Lions look like a team that will be utter shit. The only hope is that Matthew Stafford somehow transcends it all, hell that he transcends himself, but is that really hope? That is insanity, and that is where I’m afraid we find ourselves. Again.

Final Prediction: 7-9, with all 7 wins thanks to Stafford