What the Hell Do We Do Now?

 

The Detroit Lions have lost in just about every way you could conceive of, and yet they still surprise with the depths of their misery, sending fans time and again to root around underneath the sink for the drain cleaner that will burn a hole in their esophagus’ and burn them from the inside out so that when they land in hell, the burns will already be there.

 

44-6 is a full-on demolition in NFL terms. Games are never this lopsided, but shit, here come the Lions, and here come the tears. There’s nothing to take away from this game that we haven’t already experienced. Unfortunately, the precious few things we thought we might be able to hold onto this season, like D’Andre Swift, have turned out to be fool’s gold for the most part, and when the best thing about your team is the tight end, it might be time to huff some ether or choose another team to twist your innards every week.

 

But it’s not that easy, much like addiction, most of us are born into it, it’s in our genes, our blood, and we don’t know how to stop without an intervention, but even then we’ll just end up tweaked and depressed, smoking one thousand cigarettes per hour as we try to convince ourselves that this sober soccer shit can meet our fix.

 

So, what the hell do we do now?

 

The Lions might very well be headed for 0-17, which… well fuck, might as well just get it out of the way. They have no quarterback, clearly, as Jared Goff has been confirmed broken, and while there is a Dan Campbell Fighting Spirit in there, it starts to get suffocated by the sheer weight of the enormous Failure that is Detroit Lions football. So… again, what the hell do we do now?

 

I suppose we just accept that this season is lost, but does it have to be lost in a way that is historically shitty? I mean, come on. We have suffered enough, but maybe this is our hell and we deserve this, and this is what we get for eternity while The Devil outsources his Pain to Packers opponents and his minions shred us in our hell cells. I don’t even know what I’m fucking babbling about.

 

But that’s all I can do, babble like an idiot and try to make sense of the senseless. It’s not enough to lose, now we get to watch Darius Slay, who escaped this hell, grab the ball and run it in for a touchdown as the angels cry mercy, but there is no one here to hear them other than Failure Demons, and we have lost in every way possible, and Darius Slay is just a goddamn Failure Demon manifested to spice up this particular soup, which tastes of bones and tears.

 

I don’t know if this season can be redeemed in any way. This is just a team stripped of talent, purpose, and anything else that makes up a good football team. Again, there is a heartbeat here, but it is weak, like the fluttering heart of a crippled obese man, trying so goddamn hard to give life, but that fat fucker is just gonna hamburger his way to hell, and fuck your heartbeat.

 

It’s depressing that we are here – again – and it’s sad to realize that this whole rebuilding thing is a fucking fairy tale, none of it real. We’ve been chasing the end of that story our entire lives, and for what? To see Andre Ware morph into Joey Harrington morphing into a dumpster on fire while a triumvirate of supernaturally talented players are hoisted on the cross with the flames burning from below, Barry Sanders feet getting burned into ashes and tears, Calvin Johnson’s wings getting sawed off by an army of devils, Matthew Stafford’s arm and heart eaten by vultures, swooping in to get that smoked BBQ.

 

So, what the hell do we do now?

 

I guess we hunker down and prepare to take whatever quarterback lands at the head of the class even if this is a down year for QB’s because of course it is. Malik Willis is a talented kid who has been ruined by the fiends at Liberty, Jerry Farwell whispering disgusting things in his ear while raiding his pockets. Matt Corral is a dude down in Mississippi who can do all the things, but he is originally a California golden boy and I remember hearing rumors when he was being recruited that he was poisonous, like playing while drunk kind of things.

 

But, I mean Kenny Stabler played drunk and he is a certified Spirit Warrior, so who knows? I am just gibbering here because I don’t know what else to do or say. If I lived one thousand lives, these Lions would haunt me in every one of them. They are a team that spans space and time, breaks down the walls between dimensions and just throws an endless party of misery and despair. You will be reincarnated as a urinal cake in the men’s room at Ford Field.

 

But we know all this. None of us are virgins to this misery. We have bathed in its horrific waters and made it a part of ourselves, and maybe that is part of the problem. Are we simply gluttons for punishment? Are we seeking something that can only be found at the end of a whip or a riding crop? Jesus, I don’t want to turn this into an S&M piece, but these are the directions cruel fate takes us as we plug our idiot brains into the Detroit Lions channel again.

 

I don’t want to watch this team lose anymore, but I can’t help myself. In that respect, like most of you, I am guilty. We enable this farce and we enable each other because… shit, I don’t know, maybe we’re all just sick? Sick in the same depraved way. We are not like the others, and we wear that as a badge of pride and honor, but should we? We’re not like the others because we willingly swim in an ocean of poop. Of course no one else is like that. No one should be.

 

0-17 is a very real prospect. I saw in 0-16 in 2008 in my first year writing about this insipid team. Maybe this is like Halley’s Comet, where I saw 0-16 come in and then years later saw 0-17 and then I die. Who knows? This is an ugly thing in an ugly time, and none of us should be involved in this. But here we are, and I don’t know what the hell we do now.