Let's Go To Work

 

The Lions play the 49ers today, and I am just now pecking out some words, which I have not done for the Lions since the Stafford trade, which is the emotional fulcrum of this whole season and maybe this whole new regime. But we’ll have to unpack all of that as the season unfolds with it.

 

I freely admit I am not expecting a winning team this year, but I am expecting a team that will have some respect for itself. People laughed and mocked the whole “biting kneecaps” thing, but it was a statement about positive energy and about wanting players who understand that you’ve got to have that dawg in you to get where you want to go.

 

It’s classic Detroit, which is an underrated thing, I think. Our collective sports teams are usually at their best when they embrace a Let’s Go To Work blue collar approach. The Pistons are the most obvious example, not only embracing a blue collar attitude but taking it to its extreme limits, like it was a fucking gang. It was a gang you did not want to fuck with.

 

It was so nice, they basically did it twice, running the same formula that saw them take down Jordan, Bird and Magic, this time triumphing over Shaq and Kobe. The players swung sledgehammers in their hype videos at the Palace.

 

Detroit basically became synonymous with blue collar basketball, and yes, some people said it with a sneer, but fuck them. If you want to rep Detroit, you have to be tough. It’s famously in the DNA, and while the image of that DNA can get hijacked and twisted by people who just don’t get it, there is a reason why it pops up again and again: because it’s real. Because that is what the city of Detroit is, was and always will be. You can break a city. We all know that shit. But you can’t break what people take into their heart and hold to mean something to them.

 

Even the flashy Red Wings hockey teams didn’t get over the hump until they famously embraced the Grind Lind, with Kris Draper, Kirk Maltby, Darren McCarty and Joe Kocur all named as honored members. They were physical and did the dirty work the stars don’t like to do. And, of course, McCarty famously destroyed Claude Lemieux and created an indelible moment not just in Red Wings history but in Detroit’s history, that history of stepping up when the stepping gets hot.

 

My favorite baseball player growing up was Kirk Gibson, who was basically a wild man who could hit the baseball far, far away. He was also a former Michigan St. football player (we’ll forgive him that transgression) and did everything with an intensity and a sense of hustle that became the heart of the Tigers best baseball teams. Even when he left, he famously hobbled to the plate for the Dodgers and won the whole fucking thing.

 

And then there’s the Lions.

 

Yeah.

 

We have done this dance so many times that to make a cheap mockery of the steps would just make me angry. I will not caterwaul about Hope yet, or claim that Everything Is Gonna Be Alright. Because I don’t fucking know if that’s true. Probably not. But you have to live in this world anyway. You have to find a way to live in this world.

 

And so, for me, now, it’s the little things, like embracing a genuine blue collar ethos. Marry this team to the city and take the identity that is just waiting there for you. This is not a sociopath swinging a bat in a locker room or making smug asides about mental toughness. This is, well, biting kneecaps. Raw, hard work, fuck it if you get hit, hit ‘em back. Start swinging before they do.

 

Penei Sewell, the Lions first round pick seemed to embrace this immediately, and paired with Frank Ragnow and Halapoulivaati Vaitai, there is already an emerging identity there to be had. Hit the other guy and then when he’s tired, hit him again. It is a potentially nasty thing, an old school approach that coaches love to talk about but rarely actually execute. Of course, D’Andre Swift may have murdered a dude over the 4^th of July, but I don’t see any flags on the field, keep running and gunning, baby!

 

Detroit is dirt. Detroit is grime. Detroit is a swinging hammer. Don’t just talk about it, be about it. I’m not talking full on Ndamukong Suh style violence drenched in stupidity, I’m talking mean workers, like assembly line dudes doing their job and walking out of the plant with fucking tree trunks for muscles. Make that real, make it true, and that is something you can always lean on, either as an emotional identity or a very real schematic identity.

 

Yeah, yeah, I know that’s not how modern football has evolved, but fuck, you guys, we have had nothing. Even if it is flawed, it is better than the wilting fuckups which we are all too familiar with. Build this thing in phases, I don’t even fucking care anymore. Just get the fucking job done. It is almost madness to preach patience to Lions fans and I’m not even really doing that. I’m just speaking for myself and telling you that I’m willing to see how this plays out.

 

It’s perhaps sad that this is all I’ve got, but I am tired of rooting for a team with no real identity other than as a team that always loses and fucks up in the most soul-taking ways. I just want something that feels like a first step out the front door and not panicked shuffling while the house burns down around you.

 

I haven’t even talked about Jared Goff or whatever the hell he’s gonna do, but that’s because I don’t know, and in a way, I find that almost refreshing, that so much of this team and this season is going to be about writing their own story instead of trying to pick up halfway through an already abandoned chapter. We always talk about starting over, about a near total reset, but we never actually seem to do it, chasing time and Matty’s rocket arm over and over again.

 

This team will almost certainly not be good, but it also needs to not be anything other than its own self. The players and coaches need to own it, and I suppose we do as fans too. There will be so many moments where it will be tempting to go for the gallows and get mean, but I really want to give this a chance, and of course I will get weird and ridiculous because that is what I do, but I want to always be able to look to the heart of this team and see that working man identity, to start to maybe even trust it. And then?

 

Well, then maybe we get some receivers. Until then, just look for small victories. Just don’t necessarily expect them to be literal victories.

 

 

49ers 21

Lions 17