Can Vs. Will

When you’re bad, one of the lost souls of the earth, doomed to wandering in the desert of the damned for your 40 years (or 60 . . .) everything is a battle against the self. Sure, there are other things there to be survived, but the true battle is always against yourself, against your own Failure Demons, and so whatever else is there is just a part in that larger story. It almost hasn’t mattered who the Lions have played because it has really just all been about the Lions themselves, about the Failure Demons and the 60 years of misery and the ether huffing and the Drano smoothies and all the rest of the horror we’re all too familiar with.

There comes a point, though – or at least you hope it comes – where you can finally stop fighting yourself and start fighting the external problems. It would be absurd to say the Lions are there already – hell, for most of us, the Lions could win for the next 60 years and we’d still keep a gun trained on our inner Failure Demons, afraid that if we look away they’ll just move right back in. We’re never getting over this. It is molecularly part of who we are. That sucks, but at a certain point you just have to accept it and try to move. Keep that gun trained, but start looking outside yourself too.

In simple football terms, that means it becomes about the other team every week as much as it is about the Lions. Most weeks, I just sit here and gibber on, barely even mentioning the other team because it honestly never really feels like it matters. The story has always been about the Lions being the Lions and their quest to overcome that. But like I said, there comes a point when in order to take the next step, you have to stop trying to beat yourself every week and start focusing on beating the shit out of the other dude.

It is kind of remarkable that I’m even feeling this way. It’s a completely alien feeling to me. It’s even more absurd when you consider it was only a month or so ago that I was completely out on this team, ready to burn them before the gates of hell in an offering to the Dark Lord in the hopes that he would let me go free. I mean, how do you get from there to here in such a short time?

I don’t know. I can’t really explain it. It’s just something you feel. It’s an observable phenomenon, but not one that you can really quantify with numbers or even a halfway decent explanation. It’s a copout for sure, but all I can tell you is this: watching the Lions the past few weeks has just felt different. They seem like grown-ups, in control of themselves and increasingly the other team. Maybe it’s Kerryon Johnson. Maybe it’s Frank Ragnow opening holes for him. Maybe it’s the idea that there is something coherent coming together here, an actual plan that seems to be – gulp – working.

Trading for Damon Harrison just makes it feel all the more real. This is not something a team that feels like it’s a million miles away does. It’s a move a team that thinks that it can win right now does. Despite all the obvious and rapid improvement, the Lions have had one unfixable weakness – they can’t stop anyone from running on them. Enter an 800 pound behemoth whose entire planetoid existence is devoted to sitting on the other team at the line and not allowing them any room to run.

It’s not just that the Lions traded for a dude who was an All Pro only two seasons ago and who is still playing at a high level, it’s that they somehow managed to trade – in the middle of the season no less – for the one dude in the entire NFL who could best fix their biggest weakness and who fits perfectly with Matt Patricia’s defensive philosophy of gap soundness and space integrity. And they only had to give up a 5^th round pick to do it. That is incredible. That is almost miraculous. That is the sort of thing that never happens to the Lions. It is the sort of things the Lions never make happen for themselves.

But they did this time, and that is another piece of evidence that this is different, that maybe they’re ready to move on from fighting themselves, from trying to fix themselves, to fighting everyone else.

So . . . I guess I should actually focus on the mysterious Other for a change. The Seahawks are not the team that won a Super Bowl and should have won a second. Richard Sherman is gone, Earl Thomas was last seen flipping off his own team as he was carted into oblivion, and Russell Wilson has been left running for his life behind a shitty offensive line with no receivers to throw to. So, there’s that.

The thing is, is that given all the above the Seahawks should probably be worse than they are. They’re 3-3, they’ve won 3 out of their last 4 and even though their offense does suck, their defense is still really good thanks to the presence of dudes like Bobby Wagner and Frank Clark. Their only loss in that stretch is to the Rams, and the Seahawks nearly pulled that one out too. So . . . yeah, they’re still the Seahawks in some ineffable way. Maybe it’s Pete Carroll. Maybe it’s Russell Wilson. Maybe it’s something almost the reverse of what the Lions are going through. The Seahawks have been self-actualized for long enough that the Failure Demons are gonna take some time to catch up to them.

Then again, maybe not. I mean, the Failure Demons are already there. You could see them riding on Earl Thomas’ shoulder, cackling in his ear, whispering horrible things to him, raising that middle finger with invisible demon pullies. This is a team on the brink of total destruction mentally, spiritually, and in all the ways that are so horribly familiar to Lions fans. It is only a matter of time.

There is a real chance that the Seahawks completely melt down here, that the trajectories of these two teams cause a violent explosion when they collide in opposite directions, leading to a ridiculous rout and Lions fans stroking obscene boners as they race through the streets, hooting with a sort of savage joy that defies language while Seahawks fans Cobain themselves.

Or the Seahawks could hold it together long enough to blunt the Lions own march to bonerville. I don’t know. But that’s what’s fun now. It’s actually a battle between two teams instead of the Lions fighting themselves with another team just incidentally helping wedgy them into the anus of hell.

The Seahawks can’t pass the ball really, which is more a function of them not having any real receivers and no pass blocking than anything having to do with Russell Wilson. He’s still Russell Wilson, and he can probably will himself to winning games on his own. But, since the Seahawks passing attack is less an attack and more the feeble slapfighting of an anorexic junkie, they try to run the ball a lot. That would sound bad if the Lions hadn’t just traded for an ogre nicknamed Snacks whose entire raison d’etre is eating opposing running games. But the Lions did trade for him, and if he’s ready to go – professionals should always be ready to go – then it’s hard to see how the Seahawks reliably move the ball on the Lions.

That is fucking crazy to say, to even dare to think, after how this season started, but here we are. Such is the absurdity of life.

Like I said, the Seahawks defense is another story. They’re still good even if they aren’t as wildly intimidating as in years past. But I don’t really worry that much about that when it comes to the Lions offense. Or at least I shouldn’t. Matthew Stafford is at least in Russell Wilson’s league when it comes to Dude Who Can Win It On His Own status, Kerryon Johnson and Frank Ragnow have completely transformed the running game, giving us something we haven’t see in at least 20 years, and Kenny Golladay looks like he’s heading to monster status while Golden Tate and Marvin Jones are still terrific A- options. That is a ton of firepower for any defense to have to deal with.

Add it all up, and I see no reason why the Lions can’t beat the Seahawks. That feels good to say. Shit, it feels amazing to say. And that’s where the transformation lies. It’s no longer a matter of “can they?”, it’s a matter of “will they?” This is a necessary step that all good teams have to take. It is not the final step, but it’s one step closer.

The Lions could never beat teams like the Seahawks before. That was the dirty underbelly of the whole Caldwell era. It was never a matter of “will they?” even when it seemed like it should be. It was simply a Fact that the Lions wouldn’t beat these teams. Or teams like the Packers. Or the fucking Patriots. But they’ve already beaten the Packers and the Patriots this season. “Can they?” has finally been answered. It’s been obliterated and replaced by “Will they?”

It’s kind of funny that throughout my infernal NFL preview, I kept referencing the Patriots, the Packers and the Seahawks in the same breath as teams that have degenerated around great quarterbacks. It almost feels serendipitous that these three teams have become so literally crucial to the Lions development and to the Lions season. My boy Raven Mack and I have a thing we say to each other, and that’s that we “write the future.” By that, we mean that inside of all the gibberish, we somehow find something profound, something True. That is our secret. Maybe this is one of those things. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’m sitting here and I’m believing. A month ago, I was slitting throats and threating to hold Matt Patricia down and shave him. Only a week ago, I was still saying that this wasn’t a good team that would do anything this season even if I was now hopeful about the future. Today, I’m saying that the Lions can win, and I don’t just mean this week. I mean this entire season. It’s there for the taking and the Lions actually seem, somehow, like a team that can do it.

Again, “will they?” is the question now. Making a move for Damon Harrison tells me that they at least think they can. Beat the Seahawks this week and this becomes a full-blown hysteria. This is partly because Lions fans overreact about everything. I do it too. I’ve explained the whys of that over and over again. But it’s also because this just “feels” different. It feels True, and I can’t remember the last time I felt like that as a Lions fan. Maybe not ever.

This probably means more wild overreactions in the weeks to come, but fuck it, that is part of the masochistic “fun” of being a sports fan. And for the first time in a long time, I can allow myself to get caught up in it all. I will allow myself to get caught up in it all.

Prediction: Lions 24 Seahawks 14