I'm Not Thankful

Another game, another loss. Another Thanksgiving, another loss. Another year, another lost year. Another . . . fuck, man. Just fuck. We’re so beyond the horizon line when it comes to this shit that there is no way to contextualize it, no way to really analyze it other than to do some Looney Tunes shit where I just flash a whacky sign to the camera and then plummet to my death on the canyon floor below. I mean, I’ll try, but I can pretty much guarantee it will just end in gibberish and tears.

There a lot of ways the Lions lose football games. You know this. I know this. We collectively know this the same way we collectively know how to breathe. It is knowledge so deep, so inherent to our very lives as Lions fans that it’s not even a conscious thing, it is involuntary knowledge. We could hold our breath, but then we’d die. Maybe that’s better, I don’t know. But, anyway, this is Version #9,638, in which the other team doesn’t win the game so much as the Lions just lose the fucking thing.

The Lions defense only gave up 16 points, which should be enough in any game, but then Matthew Stafford almost literally gave the game away and, well, here we are. In the aftermath, the arguments about Stafford have begun, the endless infighting and backbiting amongst Lions fans has unhinged its unholy jaw and swallowed us all anew and we’ve all seen this before, every last miserable part of it, and what is left to say or do? This is Lions football, 60 years running, and there is no escape.

I guess I could talk about Stafford, since that is all the rage. It’s been ten years. When he got here, I was still in my 20’s (barely, but shut up) Twitter wasn’t a thing, there were still people clinging to myspace, Obama had yet to be thanked, Donald Trump was a reality show host, the Red Wings were still good, and people still read shit instead of just watching videos all goddamn day. This was a long time ago.

To put it another way, Stafford has been the Lions quarterback for roughly 17% of those 60 years of wandering in the desert. That’s a lot of wandering.

And the thing is, is that he’s obviously not doing the damn thing this season, and next season isn’t gonna happen either. At that point, he’s what? 12, 13 years into a career with nothing to show for it? And that’s even assuming that this somehow all works out in the end, which is lunatic gibberish kind of shit. So, what then? Does a 42 year old Stafford finally drag the Lions across the finish line and then ride off into the sunset in a robot google car?

This is the reality we live in, and it sucks. But here’s the other side of that reality, and I don’t know if this makes things better or worse: we’re not gonna do any better than Stafford, at least for the foreseeable future. Leaving aside his monster contract, which makes him basically untradeable without completely crippling the cap, what would this look like if we dumped him and started over at QB? Say we get the new rookie hotshot QB – who doesn’t exist in this draft by the way – what then? Wait 3 or 4 years before he’s even ready to do anything beyond waddling in his diaper? No thanks. So then we’re what, into 2022 or 2023 and by then Matt Patricia surely hasn’t survived, literally thanks to a spaghetti heart attack and metaphorically thanks to years of losing, and so we’ll have a new coach with a new plan and maybe he starts looking for his quarterback and then we’re starting over again and then it’s a new five year plan or whatever and then we’re all old and then we’re all dead and our children are bitching about the Lions and 100 years of failure or whatever the fuck.

We’re stuck with Stafford. This is the reality we live in. There are no options even worth considering here. We just nervously hold this goddamn gun to our head and hope that we have the strength not to pull the trigger. Or the strength to pull it. Whichever works for you.

Matthew Stafford is Philip Rivers and that’s okay. I mean, I guess. Sure, it just puts you in some sort of Phantom Zone of fandom, but in that zone maybe you can convince yourself that this year will be the year, that if one or two things break the right way then ol’ Phil Stafford can overcome that slight defect in his makeup and fool the gods for once.

That is the shittiest thing about this, really. Stafford is 99% of a Real Deal Franchise Quarterback. The problem is that the 1% that’s missing makes all the difference in the world. To be so close, to live in a world of constant Almost, is agonizing. We’re all Tantalus only an inch away from that fruit or from that drink of water, but we can never quite get there.

But, I mean, it’s not like we have a choice. This is It. This is what we have, this is who we have. We can’t abandon it. We can’t start over because we’re out of time. I mean, I guess we could. Time is a relative concept to Lions fans, but you know what I mean. To us, here today, the desperation of Time is so acute, so terrible, that to have to suck it up for another decade or whatever is just too much to bear. I can’t deal with that shit and neither can you.

So . . . it’s Matthew Stafford until it obviously isn’t. That is ridiculously grim when you put it like that, but it’s the only way we’re gonna even be able to delude ourselves into Hope anytime in the near future. After all, the Chargers are 8-3 and I’m sure at least 1 or 2 of their 6 fans thinks that this is finally the year for Philip Rivers.

Throwing away a single game in the shadow of all that almost seems trivial, but somehow the goddamn losses never are for us, are they? They all have their own unique flavor. This will always be the Thanksgiving game that Matthew Stafford threw away and gave to Chase fucking Daniel and the Bears. It is its own thing in our diseased minds, both singular and all too familiar at the same time. That is the sick paradox of Lions fandom – it all feels brand new and awful while it’s happening and yet disgustingly familiar at the same time. This is both version #9,638 and The Time Stafford Ruined Thanksgiving.

There are other things, of course. There is the whole Chase Daniel of it all, and there is Michael Roberts quitting on a route as Stafford throws a hissy fit after that last interception. But mostly, it’s about Matthew Stafford throwing it all away because we eternally live in that 1% that’s missing, because he should be something else and so should we, and yet we’re not, and his very existence has become a sick metaphor for our entire struggle. It’s unfair and it’s fucked up, but welcome to the Detroit Lions.

I have no answers. There are no answers. Next year, Matthew Stafford will be the quarterback of the Lions, and we’ll all take a deep breath and allow ourselves to hope that the 1% will magically show up. And then we’ll do the same thing the next year, and the one after that until one day, one season, Matthew Stafford isn’t the Lions quarterback anymore. And then we’ll start concocting elaborate fantasies about the new guy and then 10 more years will pass and this is how 60 years happens, and it is how 60 will become 70 and how 70 will become 80 and how misery is really a thing without end, without bottom. Tantalus is a goddamn Lions fan.