And Then There Was Fire

 

The Lions have lost this season in a myriad of brutal tortures, left dumbfounded after a 98 yard field goal or two or three or whatever the universe decides is the best punishment for whatever the fuck we did. They have watched, hang dog ruined, as the Bears ate up the last eight minutes of the Thanksgiving game, just to kick a measly field goal that humiliated and shamed Dan Campbell, who is a Spirit Warrior at heart, but who struggles with the advanced arithmetic.

 

The Lions, despite their cruel record, have not been nearly as bad as it seems. Sure, their quarterback is still recovering from a headfucking done to him in Los Angeles, and the Lions aren’t exactly the team to get healthy with in that respect, but he is still a number one overall pick with a ridiculously hot model girlfriend, which tells you that he can deliver on some level, and while that level is still being searched for, at least it is there, and if we can somehow find it together, it will be a hell of a lot less to worry about going forward.

 

The Lions have no-name receivers, kids really, who are stepping up. Amon-Ra St. Brown, and my god what a name and I am ashamed I have not profiled this earlier or at all, emerged as a potential top receiver, and every week that goes by, despite the ridiculous losses, there is someone new who emerges, who plays hard, better, faster, than we thought he could, and that all reflects well on Dan Campbell, and also allows us to focus on gathering talent regardless of position without having to chase needs, which is the quickest way to the NFL outhouse.

 

Penne Sewell, our rookie diamond, has turned himself into one of the best tackles in the league already after some shakiness early on. Get the line squared away, and we’re in business. Get Frank Ragnow back healthy next year, and that line is legit.

 

Defensively, young dudes are doing all they can to make an impact, but this is where the growth has to come from season to season if this thing is going to work. I think it can, as long as Campbell knows his role as firebrand Spirit Warrior who gets his dudes to play harder, stronger, better, simply because they love and trust him. And then get some coordinators who know their business and stay out of that lane.

 

The Lions won – my god, talk about me burying the lede – because Dan Campbell coached from his heart, which is exactly the thing people, myself included, have shit on him for. He went for it on 4^th down and it was a colossal disaster, but it was still the right call. It just felt like the thing that happens to the Lions, where we get our entire upper torso ripped open and have to watch as our enemy pulls our still beating heart from our chest and eats it in front of us as we die. That is the Lions football that we know and somehow survive.

 

BUT, the Lions were given a moment, a slice of time ticking away faster than they could play, and we knew – WE KNEW – it would all end up comically. But it didn’t.

 

Instead, whatever natural born supermodel slaying juice Jared Goff had buried down deep, his last reserve of it maybe, was summoned and Goff made the right throws, lived dangerously against an ever ticking clock which we KNEW would be our doom, but fuck all that because Goff just hit Amon-Ra St. Brown for the game winning touchdown as time expired. Suck on that everyone who isn’t us.

 

That it came against the Vikings and the Mega-Church loving Kirk Cousins makes it all the better. It’s kind of weird to think about, but Cousins grew up here and I imagine his football team, his first love, is the Detroit Lions. He is far past that now, of course, but you wonder if there maybe wasn’t a hint of joy in his otherwise rotten heart for the team of his youth, for the boy who he was, who could have gone in a million different directions, but chose the oppressive conservative church life because that’s what cowards do.

 

Cousins is a coward. He is not a leader, as evidenced by every single one of his NFL teams fading into mediocrity even as he puts up his numbers. I am glad he is not our quarterback, and even if we shit all over Jared Goff for not being Mathew Stafford, like a dude mistreating his new girlfriend because she is not the love of his life that he had to let go, I would take Goff one million times before I would even consider Kirk Cousins as our quarterback.

 

There is a lot of work left to do, a deep yawn of a cavern of history that can never be squared away, that haunts us, every game, every season, but in that impossible cavern, there is a man named Dan Campbell rubbing sticks together to try to make fire, and that is where it begins, where it has to begin, and maybe, just maybe, that little dart as time expired to Amon-Ra St. Brown was the spark that lit that fire and those sticks are burning in Dan Campbell’s hands, and he is crying, both in joy at having made fire, and in pain as it burns him. He will have to learn how to control that fire, and if he can do that, the Detroit Lions as a species may just conquer it all someday, even if that day is thousands of years from now when we are all ghosts and skeletons, but consciousness is a funny thing, The Great Willie Young transcends time, and somehow, someway, thousands of years from now, we will all be there to witness and revel in the Detroit Lions, champions and conquerors.