And Now For Something Completely Different . . .

Sometimes I struggle to know what to write. Lately that’s because I haven’t felt like I had anything to say I haven’t already said a billion times before. Right now, I’m struggling because I feel like I have too much to say. This is a good thing.

I was wrong. I mean, of course I was. I am just a degenerate idiot who tries to get at the heart of how it feels to be a Lions fan. In that sense, I suppose, I wasn’t wrong – I’m never wrong damn it! – because it did feel like shit. It did. But I was wrong in the, you know, factual sense, which is maybe kind of important. The Lions beat the Patriots, and didn’t just beat them, beat them in a way that was utterly convincing, calmly and ruthlessly. It is such a break, not just from what we’ve already seen and felt this season, but from what we have seen and felt for so many goddamn ridiculous years, that it’s hard to do anything but sit here and flap my lips with my index finger like a fucking Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Look, I’m not sure what this says about the Lions. We won’t know until the next game is played, and the next game after that, but what matters is this: for today, there is Hope again, and that is enough.

This might just be a case of the Patriots fulfilling that Fall of Rome metaphor I gibbered about in the game preview. At least I saw that coming. On twitter last night, I said maybe this is just the Fall of Rome and we’re just the barbarians scurrying through the walls, but fuck, I’ll take it. This might be more about Them than about Us, but you have to remember, those barbarians who scurried through the walls eventually became the kings of Europe.

But this isn’t just about the Patriots. Fuck that. I touched on it already, but the way the Lions won is as big a deal here as the fact that they won. This wasn’t a wild coin flip game that saw Matthew Stafford successfully race against the clock yet again to win a game that could have gone either way. This was a game the Lions won from start to finish, and they didn’t do it by getting overexcited and jumping around like buffoons, relying on passion and crazed heat to carry them. They were cool, professional, just men about their business. And when is the last time you can honestly say you saw that from these dudes?

Even when they were “winning” during the Caldwell years, it was always that ridiculous coin flip thing. That’s why I put “winning” in quotes. It was winning only in the most technical of senses. It never really felt satisfying, felt earned, and that’s why Jim Caldwell was fired even though he had the best winning percentage of any Lions coach since the Eisenhower administration.

Hell, go back to the Jim Schwartz years. The Lions would do something well, but then some idiot would get overexcited and blow out his own ACL celebrating or Ndamukong Suh would stomp a dude’s nuts or some shit. It has always been a team of dumb little boys doing dumb little boy things.

All of that was absent against the Patriots. All of that was different. It just felt completely different, and it honestly felt like a revelation. You don’t know what it is until you feel it yourself. So yeah, this might have been about the Patriots suddenly imploding, or about the Patriots missing a bunch of starters or whatever, but it felt so different and felt so good that it’s hard not to also feel like everything’s changed.

That is almost certainly a ridiculous overreaction in the same way that the loss to the Jets was. But these are the things that happen when you are only used to one thing and have no idea what the other thing feels like until it actually happens.

A lot has been made about Matt Patricia and Bob Quinn wanting to change the culture and all that shit blah blah blah, and when you’re poor and broken down and some dude shows up and tells you to work harder and to clean your bullshit up, it’s hard not to tell that guy to go fuck himself, especially when you just end up poorer and even more broken down. It always feels like a con when you’ve spent your whole life being conned.

But shit, two weeks or three weeks or whatever is not that long to wait, and if the Lions are already showing signs of being tougher or smarter or cooler or whatever cliched bullshit word you want to throw out, then . . .

I’m getting ahead of myself. But again, that’s hard not to do when you’re a fan of this godforsaken team. I got ahead of myself once already this season, started panicking because even the hint of failure – let alone whatever the fuck that was against the Jets – is enough to make Lions fans fall to pieces. We’ve earned the right to do that, though. The Lions have done that to us, and when you’re in the nuthouse, you can’t suddenly start judging dudes when they lose their shit and start clawing at the walls and themselves, smearing everything in their own feces and claiming they’re Napoleon. We’re all in there for a reason and it isn’t because we’ve had an easy life.

So yeah, shit will happen. People will freak out. I did. And I’m probably not done. At some point, this is all going to go sideways again, and I’ll be clawing at those walls again. Then again, I might remember this game and that might be enough to calm me down. At least for a while.

That’s what this game really represents, I think. It is less about this season – it would be nice if it was, though, wouldn’t it? – and more about giving us all a lot more space to breath, to calm the fuck down and let this thing play out.

Matt Patricia said before the season that fans need to have patience and trust the plan. The problem was that he had never done anything – this fucking team had never done anything – to earn any of that. It was like a drunk breaking into your home and then telling you to trust him. Get the fuck out of here, you bum! Oh, and leave the liquor.

But this game changes that. It earns Patricia and this team some trust. He wanted it, but that meant he had to go out there and earn that shit. This is a hard world, and you get shit on in all manner of ways. I owe you nothing. We owe you nothing. If you want something from us, if you want more from us than what has already been taken, well fuck you. You’re gonna need to give us a damn good reason for giving it to you. Beating the Patriots in prime time on national TV, and beating them in a way that was utterly convincing, is a hell of a good reason.

The Lions had to have this. Matt Patricia had to have this. We had to have this. That just makes this feel all the more miraculous. This is the sort of game that years from now everyone will remember, will point to and say “There. That was the moment it all changed.”

Or not. I mean, this could just be a weird thing that happens because the NFL is weird and unpredictable, now more than ever. It is hard to get a read on things right now. It is hard to know who is good, who is bad, what matters, what doesn’t. The Lions won, but so did the Browns. So did the Bills. It was like the NFL version of Revenge of the Nerds. I don’t know what any of it means because the NFL is so goddamn inscrutable.

But that is all big picture shit. What truly matters is that for right now, we have Hope. For a Lions fan, that is all you can ask for. Day to day, week to week, we just try to survive, just try to get by, and to do that, you sometimes need to feel like maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay. I feel like that today, and that’s all that really matters. Everything else is just noise.

I suppose I should talk about the actual game some. I’ve already touched on how calm, how commanding, the Lions seemed. They forced three 3-and-outs to start the game, just ruthlessly and coolly humbling Tom fucking Brady of all people in the process. Meanwhile, Matthew Stafford was in command, Frank Ragnow was bullying dudes all over the field like they were 4^th graders, and Kerryon Johnson ran for, yes, 100 yards. It was total. It was beautiful.

Naturally, there was always the lingering fear that Tom Brady would Tom Brady it and tear our hearts out, and naturally, Matthew Stafford threw an interception to start the second half and Brady immediately went down and cut the Lions lead to three. It almost seems serendipitous, though, because it gave us a chance to really see, to really understand, how different this game was.

The Lions could have imploded right then. They should have imploded. That’s who they are. Or at least that’s who they were. Instead, they answered right back and Brady and the Patriots never really threatened again. It was weird, because as much as Tom Brady should have put the fear of god, or the devil or whoever the fuck, in everyone’s heart, it really didn’t feel like that. It was like “yeah, he’s Tom Brady, remember what he can do . . .” but you had to keep reminding yourself of that rather than feeling the dread of it in your heart. It was fucking bizarre. It felt like even with Tom Brady, the game could have continued for another half, another game’s worth, and it still wouldn’t have mattered. That’s how completely the Lions won that game. They made Tom Brady Not Matter.

And they did that because everything was different, because they won by controlling the game. They made it theirs, not his, and that was the difference. And they did it because they finally were able to run the fucking ball. Frank Ragnow . . . I mean, holy shit. There were moments where he just obliterated dudes, took them and bullied down the field like geeks.

This is all still hard to process, to understand. How the fuck did they do this? Maybe it was just a case of the Patriots collapsing. Maybe the Patriots just had too many dudes out. I don’t know. But even with that being the case, it should have felt like two incompetent teams slapping it out. It didn’t feel like that. It felt like one team was a total wreck, while the other was composed of professionals who just calmly went about their business and broke the weak. It’s even more amazing that the first team was the New England Patriots and the second was the Detroit Lions. This felt like something sustainable, something real, and that defies the particulars of the game, it defies the whole Fall of Rome narrative. It felt real, and that wasn’t about the Patriots, that was about us. That was about the Detroit Lions.

You take everything else and throw that shit out the window. That’s the only thing that really matters here. I hope it means good things for this season, but what it really means, what it will always mean, is that the Lions finally found something real, something good, something that we can lean on when things aren’t going our way. This game is a touchstone and it buys Matt Patricia and it buys this team and it buys us so much.

The Lions might Jets it up again next week. That might happen. But even if it does, we’ll remember that this also happened, and it changes everything. It changes the shape and the structure of this season. It changes our hearts, our minds. It changes everything. And so in every practical way, this game could end up meaning nothing. The Lions might not replicate it this season. The Lions might finish last. Matt Patricia might spill his spaghetti all over himself in front of us again and again. But in all the ways that really matter, in the ways that go beyond the practical, that are the ways that become the spiritual, that are the ways that govern our hearts, this game means everything. And that’s all that matters.