Where The Hell Are We? Part 4: The Offensive Line

(I’ve decided to do a pre-draft series taking a look at the Lions position by position while I’m still upbeat and motivated and before being a Lions fan leaves me feeling depressed and incapable of stringing words together besides “fuck” and “this”. Each section will take a brief (lol sure) look at the team’s history at the position/notable players/etc., a look at more recent years and, finally, the situation as it stands today on the eve of the draft. I’ll do something like two a week, starting with the defensive line and ending with quarterback. Today, we're talking the offensive line, which for most of our history has indeed been offensive. Consider this a quasi-draft preview/history lesson/idiot gibberish. Cool? Cool.)

Ancient History Because I Believe In Psychic Energies: Offensive linemen are tough to judge for a couple of reasons: 1. They don’t really have anything easy like stats to lean on, and 2. Their effectiveness really has to be taken as a whole, as part of a larger unit working as one. With that said, I’ll try my best and hopefully I won’t shame and disgrace you with my ignorance.

Anyway, the Lions history – at least of the ancient variety – is remarkably meager when it comes to the offensive line. Even while the Lions were stocked with Hall of Fame defensive players (go and take a look at those defenses from the 50s/early 60s, they’re insane, with Joe Schmidt, Alex Karras, Yale Lary, Wayne Walker, Lem Barney, Night Train Lane, Dick Jauron, Roger Brown, Darris McCord and on and on and on it goes. In doing my deep dive through Lions history, I’ve developed a new-found appreciation for those teams, one that I think has been mostly lost in the mushroom cloud of everything that came after. Sad, but this is the world we live in, and yes, I know this parenthetical obliterated the entire paragraph and the flow of whatever the hell this sentence was, but I’m gonna go back and read where I left off and you should too.) the offensive line was largely anonymous, a marginally adequate unit that wasn’t exactly the strength of the team.

Still, it was a unit that maintained something of a perpetual cohesiveness, remaining together for years in a way that free agency has made utterly impossible, and so perhaps it is a unit which as a whole deserves something of a mention here, with dudes like guard John Gordy and center Ed Flanagan the most notable.

After that, there were little flashes from guys like tackle Keith Dorney, but really there was nothing for a good 25 years, which perhaps helps to explain how things turned to utter shit. It wasn’t until the early 90s, roughly coinciding perhaps not-coincidentally with the time of Barry Sanders, that something resembling a worthy unit emerged.

Even this was tainted by things we’ll get to in a minute, but the Lions actually had a couple of really good long-time starters here who formed the foundation of a pretty good line. Yes, at the time everyone complained that it wasn’t any good, but that’s because every fan who has ever lived has been convinced his offensive line was utter trash. The dirty little secret that none of us like to admit in between sneering that Emmitt Smith’s reputation was built by his offensive line while poor Barry ran behind a line made up of sorrow and Frenchmen is that Barry Sanders actually had a pretty decent offensive line for most of his career.

Anyway, onto those really good players I keep hinting at. Left tackle Lomas Brown went to seven straight Pro-Bowls, while center Kevin Glover was a long-time solid starter who emerged into a Pro Bowler in his early 30s. The two of them gave the Lions something we never really had before or since: two legit pillars to prop up the offensive line and our hopes and dreams.

Of course, Lomas Brown was later tainted by admitting that he once purposefully blew a block in order to get Scott Mitchell hurt, but in our fucked up world maybe that actually makes him a hero. I don’t know, the madness of Lions Disease makes us all crazy and compromises the very concept of morality, so it’s no surprise that a dude who spent a decade lost in it found himself doing some shady shit so he wouldn’t go mad. It was a hilariously petty thing to do and perhaps it makes Lomas a piece of shit, but we’re Lions fans. We’re all pieces of shit.

The tragedy underpinning all of this – because even when things are good for us they have to be streaked with tragedy, right Barry? Right Calvin? – is that the Lions appeared to be on their way to building a Cowboysesque offensive line behemoth. Then starting guard Mike Utley was famously paralyzed on the field and that offseason, the Lions other starting guard, and the one with perhaps the brighter prospects, Erik Andolsek, was killed when a truck ran off the road and ran him over while he was working in his front yard. I mean, what the fuck? Now these are some heinous psychic energies to have to live with. How can you ever get past something like that? Well, the Lions couldn’t, they were forever compromised by it, and neither could we, which perhaps helps to explain why we sneered bitterly even while Lomas Brown and Kevin Glover were doing their thing. And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.

Recent History: This basically boils down to two names: Jeff Backus and Dominic Raiola. If you just recoiled in disgust, I don’t blame you. I mean, I once semi-famously wrote a thing in which I cast Backus as Lennie Small and Raiola is perhaps my least favorite player of all time, just a ridiculous idiot jackoff who liked to feud with his own fans, infamously flipping them off once.

And yet, somehow, these two represent our best offensive linemen of the last twenty years. Again, this really, really explains some things. Backus, the long-time left tackle, was bemoaned by Lions fans pretty much from his first snap to his last as a perpetual source of despair. He ended up playing here for over a decade. Why not? The reality is that he was never really that bad, but he was never really any good either, and what ever the hell was left over in between those two possibilities was maybe even worse. He was simply Not Good Enough, and perhaps nothing exemplifies the last 60 years of Lions football than that attitude.

Raiola, incredibly, was basically Backus’ twin in this regard, and even more incredibly, it all happened at the same fucking time. Raiola was here even longer, was hated by everyone, was perpetually crushed in the ground game, and just hung on and hung on and hung on, destroying spirits and the Lions offensive line until he finally fucking retired. Not Good Enough is the cruelest thing in the world.

Where We Are Right Now: After Backus left, the Lions took their time but then replaced him with Taylor Decker, who was legitimately good his first season with the team. They’ve had a harder time replacing Raiola, and Travis Swanson, his heir, just left the team in free agency, so I guess it’s try again. They might slide Graham Glasgow to center again, which he played in college and when Swanson got hurt, but he’s clearly a better guard so I don’t know, man.

At guard, the Lions tried really hard to set a strong foundation here, drafting both Larry Warford and Laken Tomlinson. Naturally, neither are still here, and to make matters worse, are pretty solid players in their new homes. They also drafted Riley Reiff to be Backus’ replacement, but he too left via free agency, which forced them to grab Decker, and it’s kind of amazing there’s even anybody here to help given this musical chairs of disaster.

But amazingly, the Lions actually seem to have a real chance here. This sounds strange given the fact that the line as a whole has not actually been, you know, good or anything, and even more ridiculous given that the Lions running game has atrophied to the point of being little more than a quadriplegic baby, and Matthew Stafford was sacked more than any quarterback in the league. There’s probably a lot of correlative effect there – a shit running game is going to cause your quarterback to get lit up since teams can just ignore the run and attack him – but regardless, both issues have to be laid at the feet of the offensive line.

Aside from Decker and Glasgow – who’s emerged as a pretty solid guard – the Lions signed both guard T.J. Lang and tackle Ricky Wagner. Lang was a Packers Pro Bowler who also earned a Pro Bowl spot in his first year with the Lions. He’s legit good. Wagner, who came over from Baltimore, is something closer to adequate, but the potential is there for more. Pair them with Decker and Glasgow and baby, you got a stew. But the problem has been that the Lions can never quite get everyone on the field together and always have a gaping hole somewhere. As I said right up front, an offensive line is best judged as a unit, and a gaping hole anywhere in that unit means the whole thing will fall apart. Think about it as a literal wall. If you’re missing a piece – any piece – it’s not really a wall, and all sorts of foul shit can happen.

A couple of years ago, it was Swanson getting hurt, forcing Glasgow to try to hold shit down at center, which, uh, didn’t really go so well, which is why the prospect of him moving there again causes the ol’ nervous collar tug. Last season, it was Decker going down for half the year.

So, what do the Lions really have here? If everyone can stay healthy and they can replace Swanson, things could actually be looking bright here. They did bring in a couple of starter types. Unfortunately, Wesley Johnson, the center, who came over from the Jets, stinks, and was judged by at least one metric to be the worst center in the league. Okay then. Kenny Wiggins, on the other hand, emerged as a solidish starter for the Chargers last season. He’ll be 30 when the season starts, so this is more a “please hold shit down until we fix this” than an “oh good, we’ve fixed this” kind of deal.

The Lions clearly have no faith in Johnson, since they gave him a one year minimum deal. That means he probably won’t be taking over at center. They gave Wiggins a better deal, which tells me that they want him at guard while Glasgow moves to center, which . . . eh. The best case scenario here is that Wiggins is really good depth and that the Lions manage to snag, say, Frank Ragnow of Arkansas in the draft to be the starting center for the next decade. I’m guessing, though, that we’ll get Glasgow and Wiggins as starters and the hope that both take a next step. This could be good, or things could fall apart again and Decker might get run over by a truck while he’s working in his front yard. I’m hopeful, but *takes a look at the last 60 years* . . . yeah.

Dominic Raiola Is A Dumb Asshole

Dominic Raiola is an asshole. That is not exactly a revelation to anyone who’s been paying attention, but it still needs to be said, especially after the fiasco earlier today against the Bears, which, well… just look at the above.

I mean… come on. This, of course, is just the latest in a long line of assholishness (assholery?) from Raiola. Here’s a little primer put together by my old pal Andy Isaac over at Uproxx in case you need a refresher. I’ll wait while you take a stroll through bad memory lane.

That was written in the wake of Raiola’s ridiculous attempt to take out the knees of Patriots defenders during a fucking kneel-down play (he failed, because . . . well, of course he did, which pretty much sums Raiola up, both as a player and a human being) and Isaac tweeted that out today with a note that it was time to update the post.

That’s the sad reality of following Raiola’s long and pathetic career. You’re constantly having to update that mental picture of him to account for whatever dumb goon bullshit he just pulled. It’s fucking ridiculous.

But the worst part about Raiola isn’t that he’s an asshole. He’s a dumb asshole. Just ludicrously stupid. He isn’t like one of those sly, wily veterans from the ‘70s who would twist a dude’s dick off at the bottom of a pile. No, he just does this shit openly, for everyone to see, and then he gibbers like a moron to try to rationalize it. He’s a fucking fool.

Fools come and go all the time in the NFL. It is basically the National Fools League. Lions fans get this perhaps better than anyone. Charles Rogers, Titus Young . . . look, I could go on forever here and we’d all be reduced to a pile of tears and ash by the time I was done, so let’s just not do that, okay? The point is, is that these fools usually blow up and then get kicked out of the league and sent to jail or the nuthouse or to get their brains studied after they strip naked on the highway and start waving a gun around. They don’t last more than a decade, and they certainly don’t last with one team.

But Dominic Raiola has, and really, that about sums up the many, many issues the Lions have had as a franchise during that same time period. He’s been with the team for 13 years, and most of those years have been terrible. Joe Buck finally did something worthwhile when he pointed out during the broadcast that during Raiola’s 13 years with the Lions, 10 of those years have seen the team lose 10 or more games. Holy shit! I mean, there’s losing and then there’s whatever the fuck that is. Raiola is literally one of the biggest losers in NFL history.

But we also have to deal with the fact that he’s figuratively one of the biggest losers in NFL history. That is a combination that is too odious to bear. This is not the story of some asshole who everyone forgives because he leads the team to glory on the football field. No, it is the story of a dumb fuckup asshole who loses all the time and incredibly still not only keeps his job but maintains his place as the wise old elder of the franchise. This is so messed up that when people wonder why I burned out on the Lions, I should just point at it and scream THIS! THIS! FOR FUCK’S SAKE THIS!

It’s not really a secret to anyone who’s followed me for a while that I have kind of dialed back my fandom the last couple of years, and I think this is one of the biggest reasons why. I still watch the Lions and I root for them to win because I can’t not. They are my team, for better for worse, through sickness and in health until death do us part. But let’s face it, there’s been a whole lot of sickness and if that sickness had a face, it would be Dominic Raiola’s.

His soul is made of burning garbage, wasted tears and a whole sewer’s worth of shit. He looks and acts like a dude who smells like stale Funyons, cheap beer, old smoke, sweat and regret. He challenges his own fans to fights and he makes it embarrassing to be a Lions fan. He is Lions Disease made flesh.

Most of the time, assholes are forgiven by their own fans, who rationalize their behavior and develop a persecution complex that allows them to imagine that their poor picked on boy is just the target of unfair harassment. It’s what fans do. But the incredible thing about Raiola is that Lions fans hate his fucking guts probably more than opposing fans do. He’s a goddamn loser, a hideous ghoul plaguing our hearts and souls for more than a decade now and he just won’t go the fuck away. He’s a dumb asshole who deserves every bit of vitriol he gets and more. He is what makes being a Lions fan Not Fun. He makes the whole team feel so goddamn unlikable and hard to root for. He doesn’t just need to be run out of town, he needs to be strapped to the back of a flatbed truck and paraded through the streets while fans pelt him with trash and then a priest needs to come in and do an exorcism. Fuck Dominic Raiola, I will see him in hell.

Sorry, I’m getting a little carried away, but . . . you know what? I’m not sorry. Fuck that. A lot of people will probably write a lot of things about Dominic Raiola this week, but every damn one of them will try to take the responsible tone of a Serious Journalist and try to sanitize all of this nonsense, and in doing so they will miss the point. Because the point isn’t that Dominic Raiola is a jerk who does irresponsible things for dudes like Joe Buck to tut-tut. The point is that he is a hideously dumb asshole and a colossal fuck-up. This isn’t a smug, moral issue. This is a “Hey, fuck this guy,” issue and that deserves to be said out loud. Or in print. Or in fake print on the internet. You know what I mean.

It’s not like this a new thing that we’re all figuring out. We’ve known this for years, and frankly, I’m just sick of having to put up with it. Fuck you, Dominic Raiola, you are impossible to root for and you have infected my team with your stench for long enough. Get thee gone, foul beast!

Getting carried away again. But that is what Dominic Raiola inspires. He doesn’t inspire Hope or Confidence or any of the shit you would expect from a veteran of his stature. He inspires wild gibberish and biblical ranting. That’s your team leader? Come on.

It’s embarrassing as hell watching him clown his way around the field, in the locker room and, yes, in wars with his own fans. Can you imagine being his teammate, knowing what an asshole he is, and knowing that he’s wrong all the damn time? How can you fight next to someone like that? He’s firing up the other team – notice how the Bears sparked right after his buffoonery – while his own teammates probably struggle to back his dumb ass up. You can talk about it all you want, about loyalty and all that jazz, but it’s tough to really summon up that righteous fury you need to back up a dude like Raiola. He is Wrong and everybody knows it and that calls into question your whole damn thing, which is not the state of mind you want your dudes to have, you know?

This is getting weird and existential, and I’m speculating on the mindsets of overgrown millionaire man-children, which is probably a hideous mistake, but it’s just human nature. These dudes have to hate playing with a dumb asshole like Raiola. They have to. And this has been going on for 13 fucking years!

By the way, do you know who followed Raiola at Nebraska? Richie Incognito. That’s right, for almost a decade, the Nebraska offensive line was anchored by Dominic Raiola and then Richie Incognito. Good Lord. That’s not really relevant to anything, I just wanted to point it out because, well, goddamn! Actually, you know what? It is kind of relevant, because I think it helps to explain Raiola a little bit.

He was a star at Nebraska, the same school that produced Incognito, stairwell menace Lawrence Phillips, alleged rapist and all around degenerate Christian Peter, and, yes, Ndamokong Suh. It is basically the crucible within which assholes are born. It is an asshole factory, and so it shouldn’t really be a surprise that Raiola is the way he is. Besides football, the only thing to do in Nebraska is drink, menace the townsfolk like fucking Frankenstein and sodomize each other with corn. Corn Sodomy was probably Raiola’s major.

Look, this whole thing has been kind of rambly and about as ranty as it gets, but don’t let all of my ridiculousness take away from the main point here, which is that Dominic Raiola is not just an asshole, but a dumb asshole, which is a lethal combination that will kill your fandom dead. Or at least leave it a twisted, mangled perverted version of what it once was. He is no goddamn fun to root for. It’s fucking exhausting. He is everything you pray you don’t get stuck with as a fan, and he is certainly not someone you ever expect to be married to for more than a decade. He is the past of the Detroit Lions in all its tragic despair, and it is infuriating to watch as he drags that past into the present like a mangy dog dragging his shitty ass all over the carpet.

It sucks because I can’t just pretend like he doesn’t exist. I can’t just surgically remove him from my mind’s vision of the Lions. He’s in there, and he’s not going away. And so all I’m left with is an alternative in which I cheer for the Lions in spite of him, which diminishes my fandom, and let’s face it, this is a fandom that wears on you anyway. It isn’t easy being a Lions fan. We don’t need Dominic Raiola around to make it even harder. I just want him to go away, but with my luck, he’s probably got another decade left in him, and sometime in 2024, when he and Jared Allen are jerking each other off on the field in an asshole singularity, a black hole will be produced which will finally suck the remnants of my sanity and fandom inside and all that will be left in the ensuing Void will be a voice cackling incessantly at me and then Raiola’s face will appear like the hologram head of the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz and I will know that God is dead. Fuck you, Dominic Raiola, you killed God. You probably stomped him to death and then taunted Jesus.

Until then, go Lions, I guess. Except for Dominic Raiola, because he is, and always will be, a dumb asshole.

Disintegration

To paraphrase a dude who loves - LOVES - to talk: They wanna be assholes, let them be assholes. It's not my problem.

Indeed.