An Ode to a Stafford

Somehow, the Bears have a shittier record than the Lions. I expect that they will swap places as the Bears defense tangles with a Lions offense that might be without Matthew Stafford, which turns this into a bloodletting if true.  Mitch Trubisky is a failed man, the Bears don’t seem to know how to run the ball, and that’s good news for my dear stupid Lions, but Stafford’s ability to go or not go looms large and renders all analysis pointless because if he doesn’t play, we ain’t getting out of there alive.

I suspect that he will Spirit Warrior his way through the pain, but all of this noise has made me think that maybe we take that goofy bastard for granted. I mean, he’s been The Dude for the Lions from the moment he was drafted. He had some injuries early on, but by year three he was all healed up and throwing for over 5000 yards, and it’s been a good run for Matthew Stafford, the best quarterback the Lions have ever had. Of course, there is the talk that he is a loser, that he’s not quite at that elite level you need to be to be Top Gun. I have thrown many words at him and you about this particular problem, and it pains me, but he’s just a hair short of greatness and that is something that I think we all know by now. It sucks because he is a terrific quarterback. He’s just not that other level quarterback who can become the Terminator when the shit gets hot. You either need to be a sociopath or the devil himself to be That Guy, the one who wins in the end. Matthew Stafford isn’t a sociopath, he’s a nice guy who loves his wife. He isn’t the devil. There is nothing magical about Matthew Stafford. He’s just a dude who can throw a football very fast and very far, and that’s okay. That’s the mechanical thing that almost nobody is blessed with. It’s just pure talent, and that has taken him to the precipice of being The Dude, but there’s not enough magic to open that last door to greatness.

He is a rare dude, Matthew Stafford. No one else has managed to hang in there a decade plus like he has, you know? That means something to me. He has earned every last bit of respect I can give him. He has bled the Lions blood that we all bleed, and he has been the epicenter of some of the gnarliest fights against the Failure Demons, and he has never backed down, never quit on us. And that is kind of amazing because we are a people known to have heroes that quit on us. I don’t blame them. This fucking team breaks everyone in the end. But Matthew Stafford has never quit on us, and goddammit, that is worth something to me.

I don’t know how much longer he can hang on, but he’s been here longer than anyone else has dared to be. That takes some big balls, man. He knows he is married to a dead thing, a cursed thing, and yet he stays because that’s what you do when you are a goddamn man, and Matthew Stafford has at the very least been a goddamn man.

But like I said, we kinda take him for granted now, which is both absurd and remarkable given our horror show history. You would think we would spread rose petals before his every step, but we don’t. Instead, we bitch and moan and do what I just did here and pick the dude apart, making him suffer for all of our idiot sins.

We will not get another Matthew Stafford. He will be the Lions greatest quarterback, and it is just so goddamn tragic that there is nothing that he’s won, nothing that he can look back on and say, yeah, I did that. It’s always a parade of Failure Demons when it comes to the nitty gritty of Lions football, and this poor son of a bitch has to be the face of that, year after year, and yet he never quits on us.

I don’t know how to feel about Matthew Stafford because he is hopelessly intertwined with the tragedy that is Detroit Lions football. I want to love him, but I can’t because he’s the face of this goddamn thing that has failed time after time. I want to love him, but how can anyone do that when you look at him and see all of our collective pain, our not good enoughs? I want to love Matthew Stafford, but I can’t because he is a victim just like all of us are and nobody wants to love the wretched.

But maybe I do love the wretched a little bit. Maybe I do love Matthew Stafford. After all, he is the only one that has stayed, that hasn’t quit on us. I want him to be happy and have good things but that is where the tragedy of it all starts to bleed in and ruin everything. He is cursed as the quarterback of the Detroit Lions, a doomed man who still fights because he is a goddamn man, and he will never win anything. That is his fate. That is the cross this dude bears for us all. He will stay, and he will be the best we’ve ever had, but he won’t get to win anything from it. It almost makes you want to cry.

I don’t know how much longer he can keep doing this, keep staying, but I just wanted all of us to take a moment and say thank you to the dude for not quitting on us. Everyone else does, but he hasn’t. (Yet)

That (Yet) sucks but it had to be said. I don’t know if he can take it to the end. No one should have to punish themselves like that. Not for us, we idiot fans who impose so much of our own misery onto him. But he hasn’t quit on us and I don’t see him quitting on us, so I won’t quit on him. As much as I hate Matt Patricia’s bullshit, as much as I can’t stand Bob Quinn’s phony tough guy act, as much as I despise the Patriot Way, none of that is Matthew Stafford’s fault, and I will mentally remove all these pathetic fucks and just want my boy Matthew Stafford to win something. Even if it’s small, like just one playoff win, I want him to have that. I want him to be able to look at his past when he’s old and senile from being concussed and see that he did something right, and that sticking with us was worth it.

Just let my dude have one thing, let him win one damn thing. Because he has never quit on us, and the world is filled with shitty people who will quit on you, who will leave you, but Matthew Stafford isn’t one of them. He is one of us, and we are not like the others, and I will see him in Valhalla.

Lions 27 Bears 17