[Archie Byron's depiction of the entanglement of Failure Demons and Spirit Warriors]
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The week in NFL manufactured content has been heavily embroiled in screams of “CANCEL CULTURE!” by the mirrored sunglasses sect, all the while nothing really being awakened other than the NFL’s continued quest for dominance of the American marketplace. Token acts of sacrifice to help overlook the fact we all anxiously await watching athletic specimens of human men give each other brain damage in 11 minutes of actual movement during a 3 hour affair of commercialism and thus consumerism. The NFL knows it loses no fans when they scream “CANCEL CULTURE!” because lolol where are they gonna go? We’re the only nation on the entire planet stupid enough to worship this death sport.
But we still have two teams involved in the symbolic quest for 0-17, to help magically usher in the death knell of the American Consumer Empire, so I wanted to cover the two teams left briefly, last minute. But as empires die, and cultures fade into the rubble of their own doomed history, I thought this week I’d instead think positively on the men who give up their lives for this fucking self-destructive death cult we call American football. So this week is sort of a Tale of Two Byrons.
Detroit Lions (0-5; 10 pt average margin of defeat) – Even after I gave up the NFL, I kept two jerseys I had accumulated over the years of getting nice embroidered bootleg jerseys off Ebay in various color schemes, more for the color than the person. But two remained, due to the person. The first (which I still have) is a black bootleg Washington R-words Sean Taylor jersey. His death was impossible to avoid because he was too pure for American football, and yet perfectly geared for it. I often wonder what many of these spirit warriors could’ve achieved had they not been burdened by the sport, and been allowed other opportunities in life. The second jersey (which I gave away, maybe even mailed to Neil, I can’t remember to be honest) was a Detroit Lions Barry Sanders #20, as Sanders was one of the most unique athletic talents that came along in my lifetime of wasting weekends watching American football. There was an effortless magic about him that was unlike any of the other alleged G.O.A.T.s that have come along since, or before. Jim Brown had a similar aura, but his was a headfirst Black Power aura. Barry Sanders used his athletic genius to avoid the contact – key to surviving the modern hyper-accelerated version of the slow death sport. Sanders was burdened by being a Detroit Lion – the most amazing player to perhaps ever have existed in the position, trapped on a team with a culture of failure demons so heavy that even he couldn’t lift them beyond an occasional playoff appearance, even as the NFL playoffs expanded to allow more shitty teams to be involved. How did Sanders end up there? There’s multiple pieces involved in that process, but the NFL’s enforced parity through the draft has always meant the worst teams pick the best players, which curses far more souls than it blesses (word to Robert Griffin III). Sanders grew up in the non-football hotbed of Wichita, Kansas. You’d think a future NFL Hall of Famer would’ve been a natural from a young age, and Barry showed signs of that, yet he wasn’t his high school’s starter until midway through his senior year. Why was that? A young Barry Sanders has a brother named Byron about 17-months older who was ahead of him as starter, who overshadowed him through Barry’s junior year, and left him not a starter even during his senior year. Barry excelled once he was a starter, but that late blossom meant most major college recruiters never got a whiff of his existence, as his older brother wasn’t great enough to bring the recruiters out. Barry Sanders only got four scholarship offers, with only two being major-ish programs, in Iowa State and Oklahoma State. He chose Oklahoma State, but even there, was behind future NFL-talent Thurman Thomas his first two years. It was almost as if the world had this immensely powerful human sports car, just sitting in line behind a different car, that never really got opened up until his junior year in 1988. Sanders, once finally given the starting spot, destroyed every defense he faced, averaging over 200 yards a game. At the time, it was one of the greatest college football rushing performances ever over the course of a season, so him entering the NFL draft was a no-brainer. But that lack of longer history meant teams could talk themselves out of trusting it being more than a flash-in-the-pan. What if that one year was an aberration? Why hadn’t he started before in college, and what happened in high school? The statistics were misleading. The Cowboys went with Troy Aikman with the first pick in the 1989 draft, and the Packers – the Lions sort of rivals – chose Tony Mandarich with the second pick… one of the all-time draft miscues, as the other four men taken in the top five are all in the Hall of Fame now. That left the Lions picking third, who took Sanders, drafting him into the doom that is the Detroit Lions. The Lions themselves wanted Deion Sanders (which is hilarious to imagine how that would’ve turned out for his career otherwise; like would he have just dedicated himself entirely to baseball instead of dealing with the NFL?); but Lions head coach Wayne Fontes, a rare period of football acumen for the team, went to the wall, swearing they had to take Barry Sanders instead. So they did. And the rest was rare moment of glory of a long-doomed franchise, who has only made the playoffs a dozen times since the NFL/AFL merger, the majority of those times being a one and done wild card round loss, even in the expanded era of the past decade or so. But out of those dozen times, five came with Barry hauling the spiritual load of the team. Sanders’ third season, in 1991, saw them play further into the new year than ever before, actually being good enough to get a bye past the wild card round, and stomping the Dallas Cowboys, 38-6, at the Silverdome – perhaps the only playoff win the team ever had at that long-time home. They went to the NFC Championship game for the first time ever (and only time in retrospect), where the Washington R-words destroyed them, 41-10. Despite his brilliance as a player, Sanders never won another playoff game, and after the 1998 season, still performing better than most any other RB in the league (he finished fourth on the rushing leaders list, but with his yards per rush down to 4.3 as opposing teams knew all they had to do was focus on him, as there was nothing else to worry about), Sanders announced his retirement. He remains fourth on the all-time list, despite playing half a decade less than two men who moved past him, in Emmitt Smith and Frank Gore. And it’s interesting to think about the Lions and Cowboys, who are connected by their Thanksgiving Day games, and the what-ifs around how things could’ve been different if Byron Sanders hadn’t knocked his brother down the high school depth charts back in the mid-‘80s. If Sanders had played at a bigger university, and had more than one season creating highlights, might the Cowboys have gone with him instead of Troy Aikman? They drafted Emmitt Smith the following year, which set up the famous tandem that Jimmy Johnson (and Barry Switzer) won a number of rings with. I mean, in 1990, the top two QBs taken in the first round, though, were Jeff George (1st overall), and Andre Ware (7th overall). I don’t think a Barry Sanders/Jeff George combo in Dallas would’ve achieved the same results. So some things just aren’t meant to be. Sanders was supposed to be a Detroit Lion – the club’s lone highlight. And Ware – their high profile 1st round QB draft pick before Joey Harrington, and then Matthew Stafford – never amounted to much, as Wayne Fontes never started him all that often, despite having demanded the team draft him similar to what he did with Barry Sanders. Interestingly, Andre Ware’s last chance at an NFL roster was when he went to the Jacksonville Jaguars training camp in their first season in existence, in 1995, but he was buried behind Steve Beuerlein (whom the Jags got in the expansion draft) and Mark Brunell (who they traded for on their first draft day). He was cut in preseason, played in Canada and the World League, but never played prominently ever again.
Jacksonville Jaguars (0-5; 11.8 pt average margin of defeat) – As you see there, Mark Brunell came in as the Jaguars first designated-starter at QB, due to that big trade on the first day of their first draft. But by 2003, Brunell was getting older, so the club looked the future, and spent a 1st round draft pick on a quarterback for the first time in franchise history. The 1st Round Quarterback is a time-honored gamble in the NFL, where you stake the next decade of your franchise on the mystical determinations of whatever pack of scouts you’ve assembled at the time. Carson Palmer had already been taken with the first pick, and once it got the Jaguars at the number 8 pick, the top QBs left were major conference players in Florida’s Rex Grossman, Cal’s Kyle Boller, and then a wild card in small Marshall University’s Byron Leftwich, famously seen as such a gritty QB that he played while half-broken in a match, with his offensive linemen literally carrying him to the line of scrimmage for the next play. A few games into the 2003 season, Brunell was benched, and Leftwich took over. And though he seemed to develop into the QB the team hoped, he was snake-bitten by injuries, specifically his ankles, which always seemed ready to break, or twist. This led to splitting time at starter, due to injury, and finally being let go. Strangely though, being an intelligent QB-minded player, saddled by ankle injuries rather than brain damage, it allowed Leftwich to have some prominent back-up QB roles with the Falcons, Buccaneers, and Steelers, where Leftwich could be a competent player, and learn the various offensive systems, almost in tenure track as assistant coach. This led to only a few year break after his physical retirement before he joined the Cardinals under Bruce Arians as a quarterback coach, who was the offensive coordinator who taught Leftwich things at Pittsburgh. This is why Byron Leftwich ended up one of the league’s relatively young coordinator minds, reuniting with Arians in Tampa Bay as the team’s offensive coordinator, and winning a Super Bowl last season with Tom Brady. Arians even publicly complained before last season that he was surprised Leftwich was not at least interviewed for vacant head coaching positions, as he gave full credit to Leftwich for running the offense. So if the NFL can not be racist a little bit, Leftwich seemed destined to coach somewhere, the accidental benefit of a career shortened by non-cognitive injuries. Meanwhile, the Jaguars gambled on a 1st round QB again in 2011, with Blaine Gabbert, which went so well (lol), they had to try again in 2014, this time again gambling with a less prestigious university product, in Central Florida’s Blake Bortles. Bortles became starting QB by the end of that season, and was their only starter from 2015-2017 – the only three-season period they’ve had only one QB start. But by 2018, he fell out of favor, and was replaced by his back-up, which led to a couple years of scrambling to find stability in the position, that led to the team drafting Clemson wonderboy Trevor Lawrence with the 1st overall pick this past NFL draft. It was the 1st overall pick the team ever had, so time will tell if he’s destined to be a Peyton Manning, or Tim Couch.
So that’s the tale of two Byrons, and how great men get embroiled in the failure demons of doomed entities. Maybe one of these two teams will be ultimately doomed enough to finish this Quest for 0-17.
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