Detroit Lions Preview Part 3: The Offense

Unlike the Lions defense, I feel pretty good about the offense this year. We know they’ll be able to move the ball thanks to Matthew Stafford and some pretty damn good receivers – getting Kenny Golladay for a full season should be huge – and now that the Lions have decided that running the ball effectively is actually, you know, a good idea, the potential is there for this to be a truly elite offense, one capable of carrying the entire team and propping up the defense.

Potential. That is the scary word here. Just like “should”, it is a seductive liar. You trust it at your own peril. But I’m gonna trust it this time, I think. This is because I am a goddamn fool, but in order to have Joy and Hope in your heart, you must be a fool from time to time, and be willing to risk the pain of Despair, the brutal chest-ripping of Betrayal.

Really, it comes down to two things: did the Lions really fix the running game this time? And can Stafford be what they truly need him to be? We can’t really answer the first until we see it happen, and as for the second? Well, that’s where people start to turn on each other and our hearts get ugly again. There is so much contention about just who Stafford is that it’s almost impossible to discuss anything without devoting a few thousand words to him alone. And so that’s what I’m gonna do – on Friday. Sound the Price’s Right Failure Horn.

Yeah, sorry. I need an entire post to talk about Stafford and Stafford alone. Unfortunately, that means that I have to find a way to preview the offense here without really analyzing Stafford. Does this make me a goddamn idiot? Almost certainly, but I’m gonna try anyway.

Let’s assume for now that Stafford is what the Lions need him to be – what they really need is for him to be a top five quarterback, which I think he can be, but for now . . . okay, fuck it, let’s talk about Stafford a little here. I’m still gonna write about him on Friday, but I have to at least talk about him a little bit here, right?

Okay. So, the Lions need Stafford to be a top five quarterback for their Grand Vision to truly work. They need him to be Brady or Rodgers or at least someone in that class. That is kind of insane, but that also shows how much faith they have in him.

The reality, at least right now, is that Stafford is closer to a top ten quarterback in the NFL. That’s fine. That’s great. But it isn’t top five. Then again, maybe he is? I don’t know. Brady, Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Drew Brees. I’d call them a pretty solid top four. But who’s number five? Matt Ryan? Probably. But who else would you take over Stafford right now? For this season and this season alone? I’m not even sure I’d take Ryan. Who else is there? Rapist Roethlisberger? Maybe Carson Wentz?

So, if Stafford isn’t top five, he’s at least close, right? But “close” might not be enough. That is the agony of it, and the agony of Stafford, which is what I’ll get into more on Friday. He’s not Brady. He’s not Rodgers. You know who else has been close for years? Who’s been riding that top ten for almost his entire career and yet it’s never been enough? Philip Rivers. That’s who Stafford reminds me of.

But I’m threatening to turn this into the Stafford piece and I’ll move on. That’s just a taste of Friday’s post.

The point is this: Stafford is close, but he’s not a given. The Lions need him to be a given for this to work. And by “given”, I mean he needs to be a definite, no questions asked, top five quarterback, not just a top ten quarterback. There needs to be no debate.

Really, it’s that simple. The Lions success, or lack thereof, hinges on this. It is The Story, just as it has been The Story for years now.

But at least some part of the Lions realize that he’s not Brady, and that’s good. It means they’re not totally deluding themselves here. They’ve tried to get by with the premise that he is Brady for too long now. This offseason, their far and away number one priority has been to finally rebuild a running game which has been a sea of despair since Barry Sanders had his inner Spirit Warrior fatally stricken with Lions Disease.

How bad was the running game last season? It was dead last, both in yardage, and in yards per carry. That’s, uh, that’s not good. That’s why Stafford needed to be Superman. The tragedy is that he’s Batman.

But Batman can win too with enough toys, and that’s what the Lions have tried to give Stafford this season. I’m having a really hard time not talking about keeping young boys named Robin in a cave, so let’s quickly abandon this Batman thing and move on.

I keep coming back to Stafford even though I said I’d put him off until Friday, but that just highlights how important he is. Actually, “highlights how important he is” doesn’t even cover it. It reveals that Stafford is the offense, or at least he’s what we know the offense to be, and maybe that’s part of the problem.

His success, and his image, is inextricably tied to the success and image of the Lions offense, and the Lions team as a whole. That is a dark place for anyone to be in. It’s also true of all quarterbacks, but it’s more true of Stafford thanks to the Lions completely non-existent running game, right?

This colors everything. It always has. And so, if the Lions have truly fixed the running game – drafting Frank Ragnow to block for LeGarrette Blount and fellow rookie Kerryon Johnson should work, it fucking better work – then we’ll finally be able to truly find out who Stafford is on his own merits. And that, in turn, should tell us exactly where we are, and where we need to go.

Start with the offensive line. Drafting Ragnow was huge. He should be the centerpiece of this whole thing for a decade. That is a comforting thought. Then again, there’s that word “should” again. Hopefully, he can bring together an offensive line which has plenty of individual talent but has struggled to find a cohesive identity. Part of that is probably chemistry, but part of that is because Taylor Decker was injured for half the season and it’s impossible to develop chemistry if you never actually play together. And the thing about offensive lines is that chemistry is probably the most important thing. It is a unit that has to think and then play as one mind.

Hopefully, Ragnow can tie all that together like Jeff Lebowski’s rug. My big concern is this: the Lions are sticking him at guard, where I’m sure he’ll be fine, but that means that Graham Glasgow will have to be play center. Glasgow is a better guard than center, so it seemed obvious, to me at least, that Ragnow, an All-American center in college, would play there while Glasgow remained at guard. But what the fuck do I know? I’m just a degenerate dope fiend.

But if Ragnow can be the final piece of the puzzle, and if Blount and Kerryon Johnson can form a thunder and lightning inside/outside combo, then shit baby, we gotta a stew goin’!

If. If. If. Too many ifs. These terrify me. They should terrify you too. How could they not? Even when we’ve had transcendent perfect angels like Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson we’ve had our hearts broken. If we couldn’t win with them . . .

I’ll leave that unsaid, both because it’s obvious and too painful. The point is this: we can never truly believe until we’ve seen it, until we’ve lived it. Until then, all we have is “If”, scary as it is. It’s especially ominous given that we’ve been promised answers before, but they’ve always just turned into more questions as we scrambled naked in the dark before laughing Failure Demons.

Kerryon Johnson is the new answer, the new Jahvid Best, the new Ameer Abdullah. What’s different about him that we should believe? Don’t know. Can’t tell you. That’s the Fear talking, but it’s also Reality. But that’s also the nature of Hope. Hope is the yang to Fear’s yin. Hope doesn’t exist without Fear. It’s what allows us to cope with The Fear, because it’s what keeps us going, keeps us moving towards a future that may not even exist, that doesn’t exist, because there is no future. It is not a real thing. It is only an idea born of the mind in order to cope with The Fear, to make the Now a bearable thing. Kerryon Johnson is Hope because Hope makes the future Real to us, and that’s what everyone has to have. There is no point is dismissing it, because it is a necessity, like water, like air. Even if it wasn’t there, people would have to invent something in its place, something to believe in. And so, yes, right now, Kerryon Johnson is nothing more than Hope. But that is a necessary thing, a good thing.

I could shit all over Hope right now, but what’s the point? I could tell you that Kerryon Johnson could just be another Jahvid Best, another Ameer Abdullah, but how would that be satisfying? What would any of us get out of that? The satisfaction of being right when it comes to pass? Congrats, you’re now miserable right away instead of being miserable later. Who cares?

I let myself destroy Hope for the last few seasons, and it sucked. I got nothing out of it, just a sense of frustrated alienation. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to go all Pie in the Sky defensive bullshit Hope, though. Balance is important. I want to Hope because I need to Hope. I need to Hope because what else is there?

This is getting weirdly grim and I didn’t really mean it to, but these are the things that happen here at Armchair Linebacker. You start out trying to analyze a running game and end up gibbering about the natures of Hope and Fear instead. But at least Hope is there again. For me, anyway. I want to believe in Kerryon Johnson. I want to believe in Frank Ragnow. And really, isn’t that the point? That is the essence of fandom right there. It is not Belief in itself, but wanting to Believe. It is that willingness to give yourself over to the seductive presence of Hope.

So . . . uh, anyway, let’s work with the assumption that Stafford is at least close to being a top five quarterback, at the very least a top ten quarterback, and that the running game and offensive line are at least finally heading in the right direction. What else is there? The Lions have the dudes at receiver. We know that. I’m not sure if either Golden Tate or Marvin Jones is The Man, but together they maybe constitute The Men. Does that work? Sure, let’s go with that. The X-Factor, the Hope I guess you could call it, is that Kenny Golladay has potential to be The Man. If he progresses like we want him to, then Jesus Christ, this could be wildly explosive.

Again, what else is there? I guess I could complain about tight end. There’s no one proven there, but is it really that hard to replace Eric Ebron dropping every important pass thrown to him? I mean, I could do that too. Hopefully, someone steps up here. I’m not necessarily counting on it, but the Lions have enough receiving threats without it being a critical necessity.

Hope. That’s what this whole thing comes down to, doesn’t it? This entire preview is built on it. I can see it working, I believe that it can work. It all has to go right, though, and when has that ever happened for us? And yet, here I am, here we all are, waiting and watching with Hope in our idiot hearts, because that is what it means to be a fan. That is what it means, what it has always meant, to be a fan of the Detroit Lions.