Fake Geniuses and Bleached Bones

In a rational universe the Lions should easily beat the Cardinals, who are of shit. They’re 3-9 with a struggling rookie quarterback, and . . . *checks the Jets record and then checks the score from week one* FUCK!

But . . . but . . . the Lions beat the Packers, and . . . *checks the score from the Cardinals/Packers game last week* Well, never mind.

This is the place we’re living in right now. It’s not just that we can’t be sure if the Lions can even beat shits like the Cardinals or the Jets (or the Bills, which lol is coming up) it’s that when you look at the records and the results, we’re one of those teams too.

So much for taking the next step.

But hey, trust the process and all that, which . . . wait, that’s not actually a thing in the NFL. The NFL is not college football, where you take over a shitty program and then recruit your way out of a hole. The NFL is a league built on the idea of parity. You’re either good or you’re not, and there’s no real way of changing that other than, well, to be good. It’s not really something you can build. Look at all the NFL success stories. None of them were really “processes”, at least not in modern salary cap times. They just found players and coaches who won. That was it. That was the process. They didn’t have a bunch of losers whining about how they needed more time or about trusting the process.

The only team I can really remember consciously “trusting the process” is the Dallas Cowboys when Jimmy Johnson took over, but that was almost 30 years ago, and even then he didn’t whine and complain and bitch at the media about it. He just did crazy ass shit like trading his best player for half the Vikings roster and all their draft picks. He made serious moves man. He drafted Steve Walsh with a supplemental first round pick at quarterback and then in the same year drafted Troy Aikman first overall. This is because he understood that this is where things started. He was unambiguously building his team from the ground up. No half measures.

The Lions have been trying to half-measure this thing, and then whining about it. That is a bad combo. Another key difference: Jimmy Johnson took over a Cowboys team that had completely died under Tom Landry. They were already dust and bones when he took over, which meant he could rebuild cleanly. The Lions were 9-7 last season and just needed some tweaks to finally get them over the hump. Instead, Matt Patricia showed up and started moaning like a loser about what a loser he was and why we should be okay with it. Fuck it.

So . . . no, this isn’t like the Cowboys and it isn’t like any other team I’ve ever seen. The Lions are lost. They are just sort of haphazardly rebuilding, but not really, and hoping it will all work out while getting all defensive and bitching about how everyone needs to be patient and trust the process. Fat Matt is out there shrugging at press conferences, yelling at reporters and muttering shit like “it is what it is” which is so passive aggressive and soft. This is bullshit. Grow up. Be a man, goddammit.

Patricia and Bob Quinn so badly want to project this air of confidence, that they are serious men about serious business, and there are times when if you squint through the haze you can convince yourself that this is true. I’ve said it before, mostly because I’ve been caught up in the delirium of a moment and because I so badly want it to be true. But too often, it just feels like a bullshit pose, more defensive posturing from profoundly weak men pretending to be strong. These guys are bitches, and the more I see from them, the more they posture and carry on about how everyone else needs to be patient and fall in line instead of actually, you know, just going about their business like they say they do, the more I know this is true.

These are some hard words, but this is not a soft place for soft people. This is Armchair Linebacker. This is Detroit, motherfuckers. Come to work and shut the fuck up.

Anyway, so . . . yeah. The Lions are caught in this weird twilight between trying to win and rebuilding, not really committing fully to either and it’s a fucked up place to be. They’re trying to rebuild on the fly, but it clearly isn’t working. They are a long way away right now, longer than they’ve been in years, since probably 2010. There are zero examples in NFL history where this exact situation has worked out. Matthew Stafford is a decade in now. There are zero examples in NFL history where that dude suddenly becomes The Man after that long, with the same team, after that team decides to blow it all up and rebuild around him.

The Lions are stuck, thanks largely to his contract. They had one choice: to go for it now. That was it. They had to win with Stafford because the alternative didn’t exist. But that’s now dudes like Matt Patricia and Bob Quinn think. They are egotists, and they had to tear this shit down so they could “prove” that when the Lions won, it was all because of them. They are loudmouth idiot CEOs who walk into a company that just needs the right push and break it because they need people to know it’s their company now. They’re like Dave Brandon, the former Dominos and Toys R Us CEO and former Michigan athletic director, whose motto was “If it’s not broke, break it!” And he did. He broke all those companies, including Michigan, doing horrific damage to each brand along the way. Shit, Toys R Us went bankrupt and doesn’t even exist anymore. Michigan is still recovering from the damage done by Brandon. This is who Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia are. I see that now. I can smell it on them.

The longer this goes, the more defensive they are going to get. Matt Patricia will shrug at press conferences, sulking like Walter in The Big Lebowski, all “I’m calmer than you are” at bewildered reporters and fans. Bob Quinn will stalk the locker room with a baseball bat like Crazy Joe Clark while Lions players sneer in disgust and wonder how small his penis really must be to do shit like this. These are fake tough guys, fake geniuses, and it doesn’t end well for idiots like that.

In the face of all that, who cares if the Lions win or lose against the Cardinals? This is a sort of no-mans land we find ourselves in right now, hoping against hope that somehow, some way, these dudes will prove they are the real thing. We will delude ourselves at points into thinking it’s true because we will force ourselves to, because we can’t handle the alternative, because at least it’s something, right? But it isn’t. It’s all just a fucked up mirage in the desert. We’re gonna die here. Hopefully, our children don’t follow in our footsteps. Don’t come looking for us. Just let our bones bleach under the sun.

Lions 17 Cardinals 14