NFC North Preview, Non-Lions Edition

The NFC North is obviously a division that stirs deep feelings, mostly ones of disgust and horror, but I’ll try to be as fair as a I can, especially because I’ll only be talking about three of the teams here. That’s because I’m going to use this as a springboard towards my multi-part Lions preview beginning on Friday. That will likely be its own special brand of fear and loathing, but today it is fear and loathing of another sort as I plunge into the sick, fucked up world of the Lions divisional rivals.

It’s actually kind of an easy division to call this year, maybe the easiest in the entire NFL save for the AFC East. But even the AFC East has its own intrigue this season as Tom Brady and Bill Belichick battle the clock, each other and common decency for one more season. The NFC North, on the other hand, should go the way everyone expects it to go. “Should,” though is a dangerous word, a heartbreaking word, the mother of all disappointment and despair. So, with that said, let’s get these fucking teams out of the way.

Minnesota Vikings

Why They’ll Win: The Vikings have arguably the best defensive line in all of football, led by Everson Griffen and Linval Joseph, and have a Pro Bowl laden back seven behind that, and that’s just the defense. On offense, the Vikings have a Pro Bowl receiver in Adam Thielen, a Pro Bowl tight end in Kyle Rudolph, they get Dalvin Cook for a full season at running back, and oh yeah, they add Kirk Cousins at quarterback. They went 13-3 last season and should be even better this season. What the fuck, man, I’m already depressed.

Why They Won’t: The Vikings always blow it. Always. It’s in their nature. And that’s because they don’t really know who they are – or at least they don’t accept it. They should be wild-eyed Vikings, a band of degenerate marauders hated and feared by the rest of the league and strip-club bouncers around the country. Instead, they have always been the team of “Minnesota Nice”. They’re not Vikings, they’re good, sober Midwest Methodists. They rise early to tend to the fields, only fuck in the missionary position with the lights off, and secretly hate their wives.

This was most obvious during the 1970s, the team’s glory years, when Bud Grant led them like a grim, sober, passionless preacher. That clean living meant that they were good enough to get to the edge of the Promised Land, but they could never enter because to truly enjoy Paradise you have to fire in your soul. You have to have True Belief and Love for who you are, for what you are. You must have Joy. Obligation isn’t enough. It’s never enough, and anyone who tries to build their life – or their team – around Obligation will only see it fall apart when it really matters. Men will fight and die for Belief, for Love, for that Fire. They’ll break and run if Obligation is the only thing holding them. Vikings rape and plunder the nice, sober people.

The only Viking who’s ever had that Viking spirit was Randy Moss, and they didn’t know what to do with him. They were always vaguely ashamed of him, never truly accepted his ways, and they killed his spirit. Don’t talk to me about that fake ass Jared Allen, either. He wasn’t a Viking. He was just an asshole cop.

All of this brings me in a roundabout way to Kirk Cousins. I hate Kirk Cousins. I loathe that fucker. Why? Tribal reasons, of course. But there is also this: he comes from a town only about a half hour away from me. It is the most self-righteous white-ass conservative town you could imagine. I’m not talking Klansman shit, I’m talking that sober upper middle-class Christian living culture, a bunch of Dutch moralists who look down on the rest of the world, living their lives out of Obligation. This is the sort of place that Betsy DeVos comes from, that the fucker who started Blackwater comes from. These people are evil and fucked up.

This is where Kirk Cousins comes from. This city is so insular, so addicted to the smell of its own ass, that it drove my own beloved sister away. This is true. She used to work there, an important member of the city government. But she wasn’t one of them, and they made her life miserable because of it. She almost had a goddamn nervous breakdown and said fuck it and quit even though she didn’t have another job lined up. My sister is the best person I know, the hardest working person, the most goddamn decent person, and they almost ruined her. Fuck that place. Fuck Holland, Michigan.

This. Is. Where. Kirk. Cousins. Comes. From. 

And in that sense, he is the perfect quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings. He fits that moralist self-righteous, missionary position lovin’ team and place to a tee. But that sort of passionless corruption of “decency” always unravels when it matters most, and so does Kirk Cousins. There’s a reason the Redskins basically pushed him out the door. He wanted a contract extension, but they kicked him out of town instead. They then went and gave that contract extension to a dude five years older than Cousins. They did not like this asshole.

That is a pretty big red flag right there. It is hard to see a dude like that winning it all, of being capable of rallying his team when they need it most. The Vikings have always been dudes just doing a job, not dudes fighting a Holy War, which is what you need to truly win at, well, at anything. It has to consume you, it has to become you.

So, yeah, the Vikings will probably win this goddamn division. And then they’ll fuck it all up like they always do.

Green Bay Packers

Why They’ll Win: Because they’re the Packers and they have Aaron Rodgers. Really, like the Patriots, like the Seahawks, that’s what it will come down to. Like those teams, the Packers have whittled away their actual team because they know that Aaron Rodgers can go out and win this shit all by himself. If the Packers win, that will be why. Aaron Rodgers. That motherfucker.

Why They Won’t: Look, I just talked about this with the Seahawks. There comes a point where that whittling strategy, that cutting corners shit, goes too far and you find yourself throwing for 500 yards in the Super Bowl and still losing. The Packers, like the Patriots, like the Seahawks, have passed that point. That was shown last season when Rodgers got hurt and pretty soon the Packers were getting whipped on at home by the Lions. We all know that never happens. Lord how we know.

Rodgers by himself gives the Packers possibility. He could drag them to the Super Bowl and win the fucker because he is a goddamn vampire and even when you think he is dead, he pops back up and starts gnawing at your neck.

But even vampires are easy to kill when you get one trapped with no place to hide. Or so I imagine, anyway. I haven’t personally killed any vampires. I thought I did once, but it just turned out to be a meth addict with fucked up teeth. I mean, vampires are supposed to burst into flames when you kill them, like in the movies or like Al Davis, but this dude’s corpse just laid there, looking dumb. I had to burn it myself. That’s a bunch of bullshit.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, Aaron Rodgers is a vampire, but even vampires blah blah blah. The point is that he doesn’t have anyone helping him here. This should – SHOULD – be comforting, but somehow we all know that he’ll manage to fuck the Lions when it matters most because that is the world we live in and we’re just dumb bags of blood sitting out in the open waiting for him to suck us dry like he always does. This goddamn sonofabitch. It’s not fair! Cheese is full of fat and Milwaukee beer tastes like piss. Fuck this goddamn state and fuck Aaron Rodgers, I will see him in hell, because we all know that’s where I’ll be going.

Chicago Bears

Why They’ll Win: Uhhhh, well . . . I mean . . . I guess . . . hmmmm. Okay, maybe Mitch Trubisky makes a leap and becomes a franchise guy. That’s about all I’ve got here. There’s also this, I suppose: the Bears have a weird habit of having a good season out of nowhere before heading back to the shit pile the next season. In the last 25 years they’ve had back-to-back winning seasons only once, but they’ve also won double digit games four times after a non-winning season. This is a weird franchise, and weird shit happens. So . . . you never know. That’s all I’m saying here because, really, that’s all I – and the Bears – got.

Why They Won’t: Well, there’s that whole back-to-back winning seasons only once in 25 years. That is a lot of Failure Demons to have to try to fight off, especially for a second-year quarterback who didn’t exactly look like a goddamn Ghostbuster his rookie year, not even a nerd like Egon.

Look, I’ll be honest with you. The Bears were the first team I was ever conditioned to hate. That’s because they were on top when I came of age as a fan. I hated Mike Ditka, hated the entire menacing aura of his Bears teams back then. They were The Enemy, and so they always will be to me. This also means that it makes it hard for me to ever truly size them up. I want them to be bad every season, I need them to be bad. Sorry, L.B. You’re my boy, but your team can get fucked.

But really, there’s just not much to fear here. Jordan Howard is a good running back. That’s about that. That’s all they’ve got. Trubisky didn’t look like he was ready, and he’s in really a pissy kind of environment here, right? I mean, when was the last time the Bears truly had The Man at quarterback? Fucking never. That’s when. Their entire history is one built on failed quarterback dreams. Whenever they’ve won it’s because the defense has dominated, and the Bears defense looks like dogshit this year. It’s just too hard to see Trubisky doing anything.

Worse, they know it. Their fans know it. My boy L.B., an Armchair Linebacker vet himself, tried to fire up his own blog again, and with it his fire for his team. He already said fuck it again. That’s because the Bears ruined him before the season even started. That is dark. Dark and terrible. But that is who the Chicago Bears have become. They are not the Ditka Bears anymore and haven’t been for a long time. Christ, they’re not even the Lovie Smith Bears and how fucking sad is that shit? That’s embarrassing.

This is a team going nowhere in a division filled with killer quarterbacks. There will be no easy wins for the Bears, probably no wins period, in the division. I say that knowing full well Matthew Stafford will throw, like, six interceptions in Soldier Field because that is the horrible world that I live in. Even when they Bears are utter shit, it’s hard for me to truly enjoy it because my team is the fucking Detroit Lions, and they are the kings of utter shit. And like a fine jazz improv artist, I guess that brings me, finally, to the Lions . . .

(to be continued)

Final Non-Lions Judgment:

Vikings 11-5

Packers 10-6

Bears 5-11

The Lions Are In First Place

The Lions are in first place.

…

…

…

No, really, they are.  You can even look that shit up.  They are in first place and oh my god this is really happening, you guys, and… okay, hold it together.  Breathe.  Get rational, Neil.  Get…

Fuck all that.  The Lions are in first place!  And while I’m sure at some point the night terrors will set in again, and I will start whispering weird things to The Fear in the dark, where there is no light and only he can see into the wounded places of my soul, for now, I am dancing with the lights on and Hope is clapping in the corner while Victory plays the hell out of the jug.

But the reason why we’re all having a pig roast of the soul right now is because the Lions went into Chicago and beat the Bears in a game which spawned a thousand heart attacks, and almost caused me to jam a wire coat hanger into the electrical socket in my living room to prevent cardiac arrest.  I may have been halfway through dialing the phone to order a hit on Nick Fairley while simultaneously penning a letter of outrage to Herr Goodell for the persecution of the most noble one, The Great Willie Young, but then Big Nick stuck his giant head through the screen and said “Yo, put that fuckin’ phone down.  Now.”  And I did as he swallowed up the Earth and the Moon and the Sun and left us all staring into a New Void, one containing nothing but worlds of our own potential making.

In retrospect, that final obliteration of the Bears ill-fated two point conversion attempt was a fitting way for this to end.  It was a frustrating game by any metric.  The Lions had chance after chance to put the game away in the second half, largely due to the fact that Jay Cutler was reduced to hobbling down the field with the aid of a walker, croaking about how he slipped and fell in the shower and begging somebody, anybody, to check his medic alert bracelet.  But they couldn’t capitalize, as Matthew Stafford played maybe his worst game of the year, and the screen game suddenly disintegrated.  This would worry me, but I think it’s just a momentary blip, as these guys – Stafford and Reggie Bush – are too good and too experienced (yes, we’ve reached that point with Maverick Stafford now) for that to continue for too long. 

This meant that the game felt like a succession of missed opportunities, which felt sickeningly fitting giving that “opportunity” was the overarching theme of the game as a whole.  The Lions needed to win this, and oh lord, wouldn’t it have been fitting for them to lose the game 100 times over?  But those are sick thoughts, and let us not speak too much of them.  In the end, St. Calvin dashed around a mere mortal, plucked the ball out of the air and then it was time for Chicago to plea to false gods and bathe in the frightened sweat of the irrevocably damned. 

Of course, they were almost bailed out by a combo of Nick Fairley morphing into his evil twin at the worst possible time (well, even more evil anyway) and a ref enacting his family’s revenge for an ancient grudge feud with The Great Willie Young dating back to 1852, but then Fairley commenced with his planet swallowing and that was that.  Nick Fairley, Eater of Worlds, had arrived, and all the Bears could do was hang their heads low and know that they had just met a supernatural force.  Josh McCown went and sat down on the bench, to ponder what if, while Jay Cutler received mouth to mouth in the locker room and shat himself.

Meanwhile, Fairley did a fat man high step down the field that shook the earth, and caused frightened birds to flee from their nests in the Sears Tower and animals at the zoo to roar in panic.  The bones of the T-Rex at the History Museum shuddered and Chicagoland put aside all their cares and worries, put down the guns and prayed to the East, to the new Mecca of Fairley, and… okay, yes, I am getting carried away here and somebody probably just put a fatwa on me, but it’s worth it, friends.  It’s worth it because the Lions are in first place.  They are.  It says so in the standings, which state that the Lions are in first place, which means that they have a better record than anybody else in the division, which means they are in first place.  They are.  In first place.  In first…

Okay.  Right.  Anyway, there was a beautiful synchronicity to that game (and oh lord, you know we’re in trouble when I start gibbering about synchronicity again…)  It was one of those things that unfolded in seemingly terrible and obscene ways, but when it was all over, it was impossible to imagine it playing out any other way than it did.  It just felt right.  The Lions were plagued by all their usual demons, but instead of letting that define them, they said “shut the fuck up, demons” and then Nick Fairley ate them.  And wasn’t there something just so perfectly beautiful and synchronous about the Bears having their go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter wiped off the board because Alshon Jeffery didn’t complete the process of the catch?  I mean, this is where that heinous monster was born and then unleashed on the world by the Lizard Man Pereira.  Today, that monster turned around and ate the people who cowardly hid under its wings that fateful day, and then Nick Fairley ate it.

Look, there will probably be a lot of time to quaver in fear and wear sandwich boards around town proclaiming the end is nigh, and I’m sure at some point soon I will compare Nick Fairley to Lenny Small and his locker will be searched for the corpses of dead bunny rabbits, but for now, I just want to bask in the perfect beauty of this day.  For today, Jay Cutler is being airlifted to the Mayo clinic while Aaron Rodgers’ spends his time with his arm in a sling, sadly browsing local shops for a mustache comb, pondering the meaninglessness of a wasted year, and the Lions are celebrating into the night and Nick Fairley is high-stepping down Lake Michigan Avenue like Godzilla while the locals flee and the National Guard offers their unconditional surrender because the Lions are in first place.  The Lions are in first place.

Here We Go Again

I don't know what in the fuck this is.  All I know is I GISed (that's Google Image Searched, not a weird spelling of "jizzed" you perverts) "Lion fighting a bear", and this is just what popped up.  When I saw it, I almost made it the new blog logo.

I hate the Bears.

Really, I could just write that and then “fuck them” and leave it at that but I have never been a man of few words, as you well know and so what the hell, let’s talk, shall we?

Anyway, yeah, I hate the Bears.  I have hated them ever since I was a little kid and started paying attention to this stupid sport.  I hated their asshole head coach, Mike Ditka, I hated Neal Anderson and his heretically spelled first name (I am slightly too young to remember Walter Payton’s effeminate ass, although if he were playing today I’d probably be making poorly conceived AIDS jokes and offending everybody so perhaps that is for the best.), I hated their defense, I hated their fans, their stadium, and even their colors.  Okay, that’s not true, I kinda liked their colors but everything else about them was offensive to me?  Why?  I don’t know, I was a little boy.  Probably because I was born into the sad life of a Lions fan and they were the kings of shit mountain back in those days and the natural rebel in me has always hated authority and those in power. 

And I have hated them ever since.  I have hated how every time we take the depressing trip to Soldier Field that something terrible and unforgivable seems to happen.  I hated that they hired Rod Marinelli and gave him new life rather than letting him sink to the bowels of the ocean where he would then be swallowed up by the earth and sucked down into hell where he would be cornholed for all eternity by those weird freaky demons from Hellraiser, which is what he deserved after leading us down the Trail of Unnumbered Tears.  And then I learned to hate them more after they were the recipients of a mighty gift from Sheriff Goodell and his minion, the Minister of Propaganda, the lizard-tongued Pereira.  I hated them as they celebrated a game which was rightfully ours, a game which was supposed to be the springboard into a brave new world, one in which Matthew Stafford and Jim Schwartz would lead us to glory but instead served as yet another black day in the hearts of our collective consciousness, with Stafford lying broken on the field and St. Calvin staring incredulously to the heavens, asking why his father had forsaken him.  Hate, hate, hate.

So yes, I really, really want the Lions to win this game.  Not because it fits into some grand vision of the future or because it matters in the early (way too fucking early) playoff picture, but because fuck the Bears.  Really, is there a more noble reason?

Indeed.  Passions of the heart know nothing of records or playoff seeds or any bigger picture other than themselves.  Beating the Bears is a beautiful thing for its own reasons and should not be tainted by anything else.  This is not about a future that may or may not actually exist but about sating some wild lust that hides in our fan hearts and cackles with glee whenever Jay Cutler gets concussed and Bears fans descend into their own land of sadness.  This is about sticking the knife in their ugly hearts and twisting, twisting, twisting until we are bloody up to our wrists and for some reason we are erect and . . . too far?  Fine.

Before the season started there was a lot of heated talk about who was going to be better, the Lions or the Bears and so far . . . well, let’s not discuss such things, okay?  The larger point is that for the last couple of years these two teams have been warring with one another for the same spot.  Only one can hold it, only one can claim that spot and everything that goes with it.  It is a spot that defines both the winner and the loser.  The winner gets to be a playoff team, a team on the rise, a team that belongs to the future and every wild dream that lives within it.  The loser is nothing.

It really couldn’t be simpler than that.  This is a game that is about identity.  It was last year, it was before this season started and right now, no matter how much the Lions have struggled this year, it still is.  I know, I know, that kind of goes against my whole “This game matters for its own reasons and not for anything else” mumbo jumbo I shat out of my word hole earlier but what the hell, I can’t help myself, you know?  Because here’s the thing – if the Lions do win this game, on Monday Night, on the road, in a place where they never seem to win and where the reigning football gods obviously hate them, then suddenly, after all the noise, all the heartache, all the OH GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING PLEASE SOMEBODY FETCH MY ETHER RAG caterwauling of the first third of the season, the Lions will be 3-3, and they will be right in the middle of the NFC North race again.  And even though my soul is critically damaged and lies wounded, bleeding and dying on a battlefield of my dreams, it still crawls towards something – call it a wish, call it an oasis, call it a fool’s hope, call it anything you want, but it still crawls towards it because goddammit, dying is just so 2008.

The question, of course, is can the Lions actually pull this off?  Well, as I’ve said a number of times already, I think this is a team that can win every game it plays and it can lose every game it plays.  I think I have made my peace with that – for now anyway and so I will do what I did last week, shrug, and say the hell if I know.  The Bears are 4-1, but they’re not a particularly impressive 4-1.  Their offensive line is still a piece of shit, resembling something that the French would have built to keep the Germans out in the 1930s.  None of the teams they have beaten are actually any good, although to be fair they did just beat the shit out of the Jaguars, 41-3 so . . . I don’t know?

Yeah, that is lame as hell, but I really don’t know.  All of their wins have been by double digits but all of them have been against shit teams.  The Packers terrorized them though and I think if the Lions can get pressure, which they did last week and which they memorably did last season when they ganged up on Jay Cutler and abused him like [insert whatever horrible and tasteless simile lies in your deranged hearts], then I think we have a good shot here. 

So . . . the question then becomes can the Lions actually get that pressure?  If you would have asked me that a week ago, I would have shaken my magic eight-ball (and by that I mean I would have done a bunch of cocaine in the bathroom and then tried to wrestle an actual bear) and told you “Outlook not so fuckin’ good.”  But then they went into Philadelphia and murder death killed Michael Vick so hey sure, why not?  The key might actually be Louis Delmas.  I think it’s clear now, both from what went down at the end of last season, and what’s happened so far this season, that his presence in the lineup changes the defense from the inside out.  When he’s in there, the defense looks completely different.  It’s crazy.  The line gets consistent pressure – the sort which was the heart of our collective dream world of the soul – and I’m not entirely sure why.  I would say that it’s because he shores things up well enough on the back-end coverage to force the QB to hold the ball a half-second longer but honestly, Michael Vick was getting the ball out of his hand at ludicrous speed, it’s just that the line was breaking through like, well, like the Germans slamdancing their way through Belgium on the way to Gay Paree.  (Yes, I know it’s “Gay Paris” but for stylistic reasons I chose Paree instead of Paris.  I am not an illiterate fool.)  The increased pressure seemed to me to be the line simply playing worldbeaters again and not the effect of some otherworldly pass coverage.  So . . . what in the hell would Delmas have to do with that?  Fuck if I know.  Voodoo magic?  That’s what I’m going with.  Louis Delmas’ voodoo magic is the reason.

Offensively, we just have to hope that Matthew Stafford rediscovers his inner Snake, slits the throat of the Aboriginal spirit which is keeping him imprisoned in his walkabout, ceremonially burns his power bracelet or whatever weird shit we’re telling ourselves in a desperate attempt to convince our own enfeebled minds that everything is gonna be alright.  If that fighter pilot smile shows up then we’ll know we’re in business.  And if that happens AND the Delmas Voodoo Murder Gang hits the field then the Lions are gonna be pretty goddamn tough to beat.

This is a game I am allowing myself to get invested in on two levels – one, the Eagles game allowed me to crack open the door to my wounded heart one more time and a win here would cause me to kick it open and start babbling about Hope and Faith again like a fuckin’ televangelist on angel dust, and two, I just really, really want to beat these fuckin’ guys, okay?

There is every chance that on Tuesday morning I will be snorting laundry detergent and giving myself a Drano enema while listening to old country music and slow dancing with a depressed St. Bernard in my living room before my neighbors call the cops and they come and have me put down both for my own sake and society’s, but maybe, just maybe Monday Night will be like a certain Monday Night last year, and maybe, just maybe, this whole thing has been cooked up by the football gods to remind me of that hoary old phrase I wore the fuck out of the last year and a half or so – the ol’ Symmetry of Fate.  I don’t know.  I am just babbling now, allowing myself to get caught up in the manic frenzy of that deluded part of my soul that refuses to give in.  Oh Lord, I don’t know how It happened but I am feeling the music and my soul is starting to shimmy and shake and it’s rising off of the field of the dead and dying and now it’s dancing towards a light and maybe that light is just the light of heaven and I am already dead but I don’t care because maybe it’s actually the light of my dreams and here we go again.  Here we go again.

Lions . . . win?  Sure, why not?