It's Not Our Fault

When you’re winning, everything you do is held up as an example of your stunning genius. When you’re losing, everything you do is help us as an example of your grotesque buffoonery. It is ridiculous and unfair, but that is life in the big city, bubba.

Yesterday, I read something about how Matt Patricia is making the Lions practice in the snow and cold outdoors even though the Lions next few games are all indoors, and it struck me as the perfect example of what I just talked about. If he wins and somehow turns this whole thing around people will talk about how it just shows how “tough” he is, and that making the team practice outdoors was an ingenious way to break them down and then build them back up like some Bear Bryant Junction Boys shit. Lose, though, and you just look like a jackass playing “tough” because you watched Junction Boys one time.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Patricia wore shorts in the snow and cold, which just comes across like a ridiculous and transparent affectation, the sort of thing infamous Michigan failure Brady Hoke liked to do. He would always wear short-sleeves even in November and when he was winning (all one year of it) it came across like good ol’ fashioned meathead toughness, the sort of throwback thing inherent to “real” football. As soon as he began losing, though, it was just one more thing people could mock him for. Instead of making him look strong, it just made him look weak. I mean, dude couldn’t even put on a jacket because he had backed himself into a corner with his affectations. That isn’t “tough”, it’s just fake swagger, and it was embarrassing.

But again, it all came down to perspective. Win and you can eat babies. Lose, and you get mocked for feeding the homeless.

Of course, this is where the impossibility of being a Lions fan comes front and center. We have no perspective. How can we? 60 years of absurdity has left us shivering and shaking like junkies. Everything hurts. You can’t reasonably expect us to have faith or believe that things will get better, or trust the process or whatever buzzwords we’re being hit with because we have nothing to give you. I’ve said all this before, but goddammit, it needs to be said again.

As for the buzzwords themselves . . . real dudes don’t use buzzwords. They just go out and do it. They don’t try to sell people on it. That’s conman shit. It just comes across like one more Snake Oil Salesman trying to take advantage of us because we’re poor and desperate and Grandma has the Rickets or some weird shit. You can’t do that to us. Sure, we’re desperate to believe and we’ll give you a chance despite ourselves, but as soon as shit starts to look shady, we just remember all the other times we’ve been conned and “Trust the Process” goes into the same vast Indiana Jones Nazi vault as “Pad Level” and “Take the Wind.”

There’s kind of a semi-famous anecdote that no Lions coach has gone on to coach another team after being fired by the Lions. It’s only semi-true, but somehow the exceptions just highlight the spiritual truth of it all. Dick Jauron is the only coach in recent memory who’s gone on to coach another team. Don’t really remember Dick Jauron? That’s because he was only the interim coach for 5 games in 2005 after Steve Mariucci got fired in the midst of the Millencaust. He went 1-4 as a Lions coach and somehow got hired by the Bills. He was fired after four seasons, all four of which saw the Bills have losing records.

I mean, does Dick Jauron even count? At best he’s an asterisk on Lions history. Well, let’s go back further. To find the next Lions coach who ever coached again, we have to go all the way back to George Wilson, who was the head coach the last time the Lions won the title. Yes, we have to go all the way back to the beginning of those 60 years of insanity to find someone. And even he never coached in the NFL again. He coached in the AFL after leaving the Lions. I guess this counts, but again, it somehow just makes the whole thing that much more obvious and absurd, the anecdote all the more true, right? I mean, George Wilson has been dead for 40 fucking years.

To find the last Lions fulltime coach, a dude hired by the Lions to be the head coach - no Dick Jaurons here - who then went on to be the head coach of another NFL team, you have to go all the way back to Buddy Parker, who coached the Lions in the early 1950’s. Yes, that is pre-60 years of chaos and pain. He’s so old that his profile pic on pro-football-reference.com shows him wearing one of those old-timey hats that, like, Humphrey Bogart or some old ass dude would have worn. I mean . . . this is fucking absurd.

So that’s it. That’s the list. Dick Jauron, who shouldn’t really count, George Wilson, who coached an AFL team and died before I was even born and I’m old as shit now, and Buddy Parker, who was too old to fight in World War II.

I mean . . . that’s our context. You want us to believe? You want us to Trust the Process? Then you have to understand that this is our context, this is what we know. Words are meaningless and forgettable. You want to be tough? Start with understanding that you are going to be damned by us until you prove yourself otherwise. Understand that and fucking live with it. Don’t whine at us. Don’t sneer and act like we’re the problem. Don’t condescend and hector beat reporters at press conferences, dudes whose fucking jobs are to immerse themselves in the maelstrom of misery year after year. Just get on with it, and hope like hell that you actually know what you’re doing so that one day you can earn this shit. Because no one else who has come before has.

Anyway . . . yeah. Talking about the game against the Panthers seems incidental when placed beside the sheer enormity of all that shit. One game is nothing. Win, and you still haven’t done shit. You’re still 4-6, still in last place, and still just another asshole waiting to be filed away in that massive Indiana Jones Nazi warehouse next to some shit that will literally melt your face. This is who you are until proven otherwise, and baby, it’s gonna take a while to prove it.

That is the world Matt Patricia chose to live in. He has to understand this. He has to get this before anything can change. Not understanding it, not respecting it, is just a recipe for failure. Losing is one thing . . . we’re all too used to that, but losing along with bullshit hubris and unearned arrogance is the sort of thing that makes Lions fans hate you. It is the sort of thing that every other asshole has done. That is when things get toxic.

If the Lions lose to the Panthers – and let’s face it, this is the most likely outcome given the past few weeks, the fact that everyone is hurt, and, well, given the last 60 years – it’s 3-7, and it’s on you to rebuild this thing from the ground up. Believe it or not, Lions fans are out here sucking it up and giving you the chance to do that. That is unbelievable given all that we’ve been through, but here we are. No half measures. Just do it, man. You already broke it up, now finish the job. Break us down to nothing and then prove yourself. That’s all that’s left to do.

The Lions will likely be cucked by Cam Newton this weekend. I accept that. I will even grit my teeth and accept Matt Patricia’s stupid tough-guy stunts. It’s hard, but what else can I do? Does this make me a hostage to my own misery? Maybe. Probably. I should just say fuck this and fuck you and head for the hills, but I came back to this resolved to give the Lions another chance. They’ve fucked me. They always fuck me. But part of me is terrified that one day, they’ll actually change and I won’t be around to enjoy it, and then what were the last 60 years even for?

That is the dark heart of Lions fandom, the sick dysfunctional fucked up thing holding us hostage. I mean, this is the sort of shit that abuse victims tell themselves. I’m not exaggerating that even a little.

This is the cycle of despair. This is how abuse victims continue to get beat on for years and years. This is why they never leave. Because what if tomorrow is different? They tell themselves this because it is the only way, sick and fucked up as it may seem, to validate all the shit they’ve gone through. It has to mean something in the end, or else . . . or else . . . darkness, man. It’s just too dark to contemplate. It’s all that keeps people going, the idea that somehow life is about linear progression, that yesterday and today and their pain only exist to make tomorrow’s salvation mean something.

But that’s all bullshit. I talked about that in my “daddy’s dying” post after last week’s game. Sometimes – hell, most of the time – it never gets better. You just keep getting your ass whipped until you’re finally strong enough – or broken enough – to make yourself walk away for good.

That is depressing as hell, but that is what it means to be a Lions fan. And that is what Matt Patricia and Bob Quinn have to understand. That is step one. And that is the tragedy of this whole vicious cycle. No one has ever bothered to understand this. No one has ever bothered to even acknowledge it. They’ve just blundered in and started beating on us just like the last dude because that is the only way they know how to express themselves. They just try to beat the pain out of us in some idiotic hope that in the end we’ll just be docile lambs waiting to be led. It’s dumb and it’s cowardly and you ain’t a goddamn leader if that’s how you go about your business.

Sadly, that’s what I’ve seen from Patricia and Quinn. Just more of the same. More beatings. More emotional abuse. Believing that they’ll somehow change, that they’ll magically “get it”, is something only a great fool would do. Or someone who’s a lifelong abuse victim.

Fuck. I wish I could end this on a hopeful note, but how do you make any of that into something hopeful? You don’t. You can’t. You can’t control this. I can’t control this. It is not our fault. Cue the Good Will Hunting scene. It’s not our fault. Stop it, Neil. No . . . it’s not our fault. Come here son. Let it out. Shhh, shhh, it’s okay. It’s not our fault.

Panthers 27 Lions 10