Detroit Lions Preview Part Whatever: The Dudes and Lady Dude in Charge

On January 14^th 2014, the Detroit Lions hired Jim Caldwell, and I gave up. I did. I’ll admit it. After years of psychological torture, constant kicks in the nuts, half a decade of writing about the Lions, of spilling my idiot brain and bleeding my heart onto Armchair Linebacker, I fucking gave up. I couldn’t take it anymore.

It wasn’t just that. It was a lot of things. I have always had a hard time with the NFL because it has always seemed totalitarian and dystopic to me. A fascist parade designed to get me to love shitty beer commercials and farting horses, to wave the NFL flag like a lobotomized geek, chanting USA while Herr Goodell bent me over a table week after week, his goons rifling through the pockets of my stripped-off pants. I grew to hate the NFL, and in a lot of ways I still do. This will always be a struggle for me, reconciling something I have found I have no real control over – my Lions fandom – with the disgust I feel for these jackbooted shitheads. This has always come out here on Armchair Linebacker, has always bled through into whatever the fuck I’m gibbering about, so it’s not exactly a surprise. It just felt – and still feels – more explicit somehow. I feel dirty and wrong for caring, for continuing to engage in this horseshit drivel, giving my presence to a league of flag humpers and Trumpian dipshittery. But here I am.

I’ve already spun far away from the point, which is that, yes, in 2014 I gave up. And I gave up because after all the Pain and the Fear and the Drain Cleaner and Ether, the Lions hired Jim Caldwell, the man who had a college coaching record of 26-63. It was absurd, too absurd even for the circus of the absurd known as Lions football. I’ve already bitched about Caldwell so much, explained my utter disdain so often, that I’m not going to do so here. It broke me. That’s all that matters.

2008 fucked everyone up. It fucked us up in ways most of us still can’t really comprehend. When you hit bottom, true bottom, you’re left with a desperate need for Answers. There’s only one way to go: up. At least that’s what you tell yourself, what I told myself. I convinced myself that this would be a linear ascent, that somehow 0-16 in some fucking bizarre way cleansed us of our sins, burned it away in the fire, that 50+ years of horror and pain were somehow finally paid for. I believed all of this because I had to, it was the only way I could cope with 0-16.

Of course, it didn’t work out that way, and it caused me to go on a journey of the soul worthy of a nihilistic Cormac McCarthy screed. 0-16 was meaningless. Just another mile marker on the road to hell. It wasn’t hell itself, it was just a shitty thing that happened in an endless parade of shit, and to treat it like some sort of cosmic pivot point was weak and stupid. 0-16 wasn’t the bottom because there is no bottom. That is something I think I had to learn, but when the Lions hired Jim Caldwell – hang on, there’s a fucking spider on my neck, what the fuck??? Okay, I’m back now, it’s dead – I couldn’t handle any of that shit. I wasn’t ready. I was broken. 0-16 finally caught up to me. It had been chasing me all that time, and it finally cornered me somewhere in my dreams like fucking Freddy Krueger and cut my dumb ass up.

So what brought me back? I don’t know. Isn’t that dumb? I don’t know. I think I finally accepted some things about the Lions, about 0-16, about the sheer idiotic randomness of an indifferent universe. But mostly it’s because I decided it’s okay to hope again. lol Neil, you fucking jackass.

I know. I get it. It’s fucking absurd to be doing this to myself again. It’s fucking crazy to think that this will end any way other than the way it’s ended every single other fucking time for the last 60 years. But the moment Jim Caldwell was fired something woke up inside me again (he couldn’t remember how he got there, ha ha ha) and I just fell back into it. Into all of it. I went nuts deep diving into stats and history. I looked at every season of every team, every single one of their players, going back almost 70 years. That’s true. I did that. I am a fucking lunatic. You know this about me by now. But even for me, this was bizarre behavior. I bought Madden and played it for many seasons. I think I was making up for lost time, trying to cram as much football back into me as I could.

But why did this happen and what does this have to do with Matt Patricia? Well, it happened because I decided to give the new guy a chance this time. It’s pretty simple. But I’m not talking about Matt Patricia. I’m talking about Bob Quinn.

This is Bob Quinn’s team. I’ve said that before, but listen, it’s not a coincidence that I kept referring back to the Patriots and Tom Brady and how they built their team throughout this Odyssean preview. Bob Quinn was with the Patriots from the beginning of their dynasty. He was a key figure in their scouting department, a dude who got himself involved with personnel decisions, and a man who generally was deeply entrenched in the building of that franchise. He understood the Patriot Way. That’s why the Lions hired him.

But it’s one thing to stick a guy in upper management and to then hire an endless string of turds with their own vision to coach the team. Jim Caldwell was a dead man the moment Quinn was hired. I hoped so, anyway. I was delighted when it turned out to be true.

Is that cruel? Is that me picking on poor Jim Caldwell some more? Maybe a little. But more than that, I was waiting for it to be true because it gave me a chance to see what Quinn was all about. Whoever he hired would explain a lot about where this team was headed. When he hired Matt Patricia, I knew. I knew that this was Quinn’s team, and regardless of whether the plan is a good one or not, it at least meant that the Lions would have a coherent vision going forward.

Matt Patricia was hired because Quinn was familiar with him and he would do what Quinn wanted and needed. He is Bob Quinn’s bitch. That’s fine with me. I don’t really care about Matt Patricia in terms of “vision” or “plan” because those words belong to Bob Quinn, not Matt Patricia, and if Bob Quinn wants to turn the Lions into the Patriots, that’s fine by me. Execution of the plan is another matter, of course, one that will likely require an insane amount of luck (lol I’m a fucking idiot for getting back into this and daring to hope, aren’t I?) but it’s ambitious, it’s fairly straightforward, and you either live or you die trying. No half measures. And that’s what I think Bob Quinn brings to the Lions.

Of course, there’s still Matt Patricia: the football coach to consider. Bob Quinn won’t be the dude designing game strategy or making decisions in the heat of the moment. That’s on Patricia, and . . . I don’t know, dudes and lady dudes. I just don’t know.

I’m worried. I’ll say that much. I already covered what I think of Patricia as a defensive coordinator in my defensive preview. Go back and read it if you want. I’m not gonna link it because I’m lazy and also because you literally just have to go to the blog’s homepage and scroll down you fucking jackanapes. Anyway, it’s not exactly a glowing endorsement. But head coach is different than defensive coordinator, so we’ll have to see. I know that’s a copout, but what else can I say? Patricia has never been a head coach, on any level, so no one, not even Patricia himself, knows how he’s gonna handle his business in the heat of the moment.

The only thing I know is that he was Bob Quinn’s handpicked choice. So be it. Live or die trying.

The Lions coordinators are further evidence that this is Quinn’s team. Uncle Paulie Pasqualoni is 69 years old (lol for multiple reasons) and I already covered his credentials in the defensive preview too. It’s worth pointing out that he’s only been a defensive coordinator once in the last 30 years, and that was for two seasons with the Dolphins a decade ago. Believing that he will take charge of the defense and be some sort of a master strategist is fucking insane. No, he’s Matt Patricia’s boy the same way Patricia is Quinn’s. He’s just there to execute the plan and to stay the fuck out of the way. No friction here.

Jim Bob Cooter – and I will never, ever get over the dude being named Jim Bob Cooter for fuck’s sake – was retained as the Lions offensive coordinator, which further highlights how impotent Patricia is here, at least when it comes to the vision of the team. Cooter (lol) was kept on because Matthew Stafford is familiar with him, is comfortable with him, likes him, and Stafford is the key to this whole damn thing. He is the heart of Bob Quinn’s grand vision, and Cooter (lol) can hopefully keep himself from climbing naked through strange women’s windows long enough to maintain a frictionless relationship with Stafford and thus a frictionless relationship between Stafford and Quinn.

The Lions offenses under Cooter (lol) have been mixed. His first couple of seasons were mediocre at best, but last season, the Lions ranked 7^th in scoring despite not having a functional running game. Of course, that’s a double-edged sword since establishing a functional running game is Cooter’s (lol) fucking job. But it also shows that Cooter (lol) is capable of scheming around it. Then again, too many times last season the Lions wasted time trying to establish that running game before Cooter (lol) said fuck it and let Matthew Stafford do his thing. I know I’m just writing in circles here, contradicting each sentence with the next, but that’s kind of the point. I still don’t know what to make of Cooter (lol) because I don’t know how much was him, and how much was Jim Caldwell’s dumb ass.

What I do know is that the Lions offense as a whole, just based on sheer numbers, was arguably one of the top 3 or 4 Lions offenses of the past 20 years. That is kind of pathetic and explains a whole lot when you consider how piss poor the running game was, but what the hell, we don’t live in the Garden of Eden.

What I also know is that the only thing that really matters right now is that Stafford likes Cooter (lol who among us, amirite?) and Bob Quinn likes that Stafford likes Cooter (lol) and Matt Patricia is just standing there looking like a Hungarian caveman with his thumb up his ass while he lets them do their thing. It’s coherent. Risky, maybe, but coherent. Live or die trying.

Of course, the big shadow looming over all of this is the fucking Ford family. (Alliteration!) They’ve been the one constant all these years, all these soul-sucking trail of tears years. That is . . . depressing. The hope was that once William Clay Ford Sr. kicked it, his son, Bill Jr. would have a more aggressive style than daddy as he sought to make his mark. Naturally, his old battle-axe of a mother took over instead and told Bill to shut the fuck up and stay in his room while she went to Bible study with Rod Wood and Caldwell. Sigh.

Then again, the NFL is littered with the shithead children of successful people. Mark Davis in Oakland, Jed York’s gumpy ass in San Francisco – dudes like this who inherited their teams are generally disasters, so maybe we got off lucky. Hell, Bill Sr. himself was a trust fund baby. The fucking Ford family, man. The dude who made them all rich, old Henry, was a fucking Nazi sympathizer. He also did more to make the city of Detroit what it was than anyone else, so I don’t know, man. People are ridiculous and complicated. His heirs, of course, have been fuckups because that’s what heirs do. They are soft idiots, raised out of touch in some bizarre world free of consequences, forever arrested in the grips of absurd wealth and their own whims. To expect them to somehow lead anything, even a fucking toy like a professional football team, to anything other than disaster is absurd.

Naturally, they’ve been in charge of this whole broken rickshaw of a ride for the last 60 years. Martha Firestone Ford isn’t a real Ford, of course. She just married into it all, which somehow feels even worse. But it’s not like she’s some street-smart wife who landed a rich dude. No, she’s an heiress herself, of the Firestone family. Tires and cars. The whole thing is fucking incestuous.

Anyway, these are the people in charge of the Detroit Lions. It’s kind of amazing I didn’t give up again in the middle of writing this. But I’ve convinced myself that most of these people don’t matter, that the only person I have to believe in here is Bob Quinn. Is this stupid? Both in terms of the Lions strategy and in my own self-delusion? Almost certainly, but live or die trying, I guess. I’m here again, and I’m still alive. For now.

Detroit Lions Preview Part 2: The Defense

I know everyone is in HELL YEAH 16-0 BABY preseason idiot mode, but I’ll be right up front with you: I think the defense is gonna be a big ol’ pile of shit this season.

People don’t want to hear that shit, and I get it. I really do. Hope is the only thing keeping most of us going and anyone who comes along right now and shits all over that is an enormous asshole.

*bends over like goatse*

Hi.

The wild swings between Hope and Fear are especially magnified this season though thanks to a new coaching staff, specifically one brought in to fix the Lions wretched defense. This also means that it’s tough to really predict how things are gonna go with any real certainty because no one really knows what the defense is even gonna look like. Preseason games don’t really tell us that much because, well, because the preseason is dumb and meaningless. Never forget the Lions went 4-0 in the 2008 preseason before 0-16 took all of our idiot souls.

So how does anyone figure this out? More specifically, how did I, a rapscallion and a nincompoop, arrive at ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER so soon? Is it just baseless fear-mongering? Maybe a little. It’s almost impossible to be a Lions fan and not have those Failure Demons nipping at your heels like jackals, cackling your biggest fears to the dark places of your heart. But there’s more to it than that, I think. I try to be objective (calm down) and . . . I just don’t see it, bros and lady bros.

That’s because no matter how I look at it, I arrive at the same conclusion: Doom. Women rending their garments in the streets, beating their naked breasts and dashing their babies’ heads against the rocks while the men hoot like animals and sodomize each other through bitter tears.

Start with the personnel, which is basically the same personnel as last year’s defense which wasn’t nearly good enough, especially against the run. One thing I’ve mentioned multiple times throughout this preview odyssey, especially when talking about the Patriots, Packers and Seahawks, is that the NFL, for all its wealth, is a league of finite resources. This is because of the salary cap. It means that teams are constantly having to cut corners and having to make hard choices about which parts of the team to leave as relative weaknesses. The Patriots, Packers and Seahawks, who have the best quarterbacks in the league, have still won, mostly, even though they’ve been forced to essentially strip their teams of anything other than their quarterback.

So, I get it. NFL team have to constantly make choices. The Lions seem, to me anyway, to be choosing that Patriots/Packers/Seahawks strategy of loading everything on Stafford, of doing whatever they can to let him carry the team, and hope for the best everywhere else. You could see this in their offseason priorities, which basically consisted of them doing everything they could to fix the running game and offensive line. This was done for two reasons: to give Stafford more protection and resources, and to give the Lions offense more options so that they can keep drives going longer.

Keep Drives Going Longer.

That is a key phrase we’ll encounter again. But basically, the Lions have made the choice to try to control the game offensively while forcing the defense to just Hang On. I get it. I mean, it’s a strategy, one employed by the Patriots to great success over the years. All of this depends on Matthew Stafford being Tom Brady, however, which is scary as hell. But this isn’t the offensive preview, so I’ll try to move on and get this to finally make sense and come together for you, okay?

This is all a roundabout way of saying that the Lions needed a lot of help on defense, especially along the defensive line, and they didn’t do a goddamn thing to address it. Not really, anyway. They signed Sylvester Williams, but he’s basically just a marginal starter who isn’t gonna change the game or anything. That’s all they did to bolster the middle. And then there’s the Edge, not the wrestler or the U2 guitarist, but the dude responsible for getting to the quarterback. Everyone took it as a matter of certainty that the Lions would draft one, maybe even two, and early. Instead, they basically said fuck the edge and took no one. Well, okay then.

The Lions did draft Da’Shawn Hand in the fourth round, but he’s a dude who comes with a reputation as someone who does nothing really all that well, certainly nothing to inspire excitement in fans or fear in opponents, but his selection revealed the way the Lions plan to play on defense: a passive, bend-but-don’t-break style that is built on the idea of gap responsibility and not fucking up. The thought is that someone like Hand can handle being responsible for multiple gaps, and while he’ll never excite you, he shouldn’t horrify and disgust you either.

I mean . . . it’s a strategy. It’s nowhere near what I think the best or most effective defensive strategies are. I hate passivity on defense. I like the idea of responsibility, but the passivity allows more opportunities for fuckups. I mean, you’re far more likely to make a mistake during a 9-play drive than a 4 play one.

But it is a change, it’s just not the change we all wanted. Gone are the wild-haired attack the QB defenses, which were the legacy of Jim Schwartz and the defense he tried to build. In is the Patriots Way, which as we’ll see in a little bit, is kind of a fraud, at least defensively.

The linebackers aren’t exactly inspiring either. Jarrad Davis should be a player, but it’s hard to truly build something with other teams’ castoffs, which is all that Christian Jones and Devon Kennard basically are. I think the thought is that Kennard can be the big linebacker who holds the edge and keeps big plays from breaking out there, but you can dress a hobo up like a millionaire all you want, at heart he’s still a hobo and will cut you while you sleep just to steal a can of baked beans. I’m just saying, he’s no Dont’a Hightower no matter how badly the Lions want him to be.

I like Darius Slay. How could I not? He was an All Pro last season, but you have to wonder whether he can do it again. After all, consistency has not always been his strong suit, and if he starts giving up big plays instead of making them, then the Lions are straight fucked. That’s all there is to it. He’s the key for this entire defense. If he plays like he did last season, then maybe, just maybe, the Lions can keep teams out of the endzone. If not, then the Lions simply don’t have a coherent defensive identity and they’re dead. It’s that simple.

Glover Quin is still decent, but he’s not gonna make the difference like Slay, and everyone else back there are pretty much just guys. I’m serious. In terms of the defensive personnel, it’s pretty much just hope that Slay plays like Superman and that maybe Ezekiel Ansah can get to the quarterback enough times to throw opposing offenses out of rhythm. There’s really no other reason for hope.

But the defensive personnel is tough to really analyze without knowing how that personnel will be used by Matt Patricia and Uncle Paulie Pasqualoni. And here’s where I think the tale gets told.

Pasqualoni was last a defensive coordinator about a decade ago in Miami. That alone is enough to start making one eye the drain cleaner longingly. He lasted two seasons. The first was a surprise 11-5 season which saw Pasqualoni’s defense finish 9^th in scoring and 15^th in yardage. Not bad, right? The next season, Uncle Paulie’s last, they finished 25^th in scoring and 22^nd in yardage. Let’s have a moment of silence for Uncle Paulie’s career.

Why the big discrepancy? It’s simple: turnovers. His first season, the Dolphins finished 5^th in the league in turnovers forced. His second season, they finished 27^th. That huge swing alone probably accounts for a lot of the decline on defense. It also probably shows that the first season was something of a mirage. There’s a school of thought that turnovers are essentially random, and that relying on them is something only done by a great fool. I think that’s basically true, but I also think you can do things to force turnovers more frequently. Specifically, I think an aggressive defense that puts a ton of pressure on the quarterback can reliably force turnovers more than a team that just sits back on its heels. You see where I’m going with this, right? The Lions defensive philosophy isn’t exactly aligned with forcing turnovers. To me, that makes Uncle Paulie’s second shitty season more likely than the first.

But really, fuck Uncle Paulie. He’s a thousand years old and was basically brought in because Matt Patricia knows him, is comfortable with him, and because Uncle Paulie will take orders from the head of the family.

And that’s where the power really lies here, with Matt Patricia. You know, the guy last seen leading a defense to utter collapse and a loss in a Super Bowl despite Tom Brady throwing for over 500 yards. Yeah, that guy.

Oh Lord, why??? How long, Lord??? How long???

Sorry. I just needed a moment to wail and hurl recriminations at the almighty. That’s because I think that Matt Patricia’s reputation is entirely fraudulent. At least as a defensive coordinator.

The thing is, is that this seems kind of insane given that in Patricia’s six years as defensive coordinator for the Patriots, their defenses finished in the top 10 in scoring defense every season. So why the fuck am I complaining? Well, in three of those six seasons, they finished 25^th, 26^th and 29^th in yards allowed. That’s, uh, that’s not good. Especially that 29^th place finish, which was last season, which translated into Doom in the Super Bowl.

Then again, the whole point is to keep the other team out of the endzone. Who cares how many yards you give up as long as the other team doesn’t score? This is the very essence of the bend-but-don’t-break philosophy. But here’s why I think that Patricia – and the Patriots Way on defense – is kind of a fraud: Tom Brady.

It’s not just that Brady carries the team offensively, he also carries the team defensively. What do I mean by that? Remember that phrase I mentioned you should remember earlier? Keep Drives Going Longer.

Football is a team game, and in more ways than you probably realize. It isn’t just about who’s on the field together. It’s about how your different units complement one another to create a unified and coherent philosophy. It’s why you see so many quick-strike, spread offenses with such “shitty” defenses. It isn’t even that their defenses are shitty so much as they’re often left hanging out to dry by their offenses, who don’t give a shit how often the defense is on the field or whether they give up 10 points or 40 so long as the offense can score 50.

On the other hand, some “good” defenses aren’t actually very good at all. But they still work because the offense plays a style built to protect the defense. Long drives and field position are maximized in order to 1. Keep the defense off the field, and 2. Put them in a position where they can bend a bit when they are on the field.

This has long been the Patriots strategy under Belichick, and especially under Patricia. And it works – mostly – because of Brady. He engineers long drives – the Patriots led the league last season in time of possession, which kept the defense off the field – and because of this, when the defense is forced to come onto the field, they do so with the other team in shitty field position. When the Patriots do have to punt, they usually do so from an advantageous position, which is why the Patriots also were number one in the league in opponents starting field position.

It’s a coherent strategy, one that’s served the Patriots well. At least until it became just too goddamn much and fell apart in the Super Bowl. After all, for all those advantages won by Brady for the defense, that defense allowed 6.1 plays per drive, which was 30^th in the league, and let the other team keep the ball for 2:44 per drive, which was 22^nd. That explains the vast discrepancy between the Patriots rankings in scoring defense and yardage allowed. They weren’t actually doing much to prevent the other team from scoring. It was Tom Brady. He was the Patriots defensive MVP.

All of this is my way of pointing out that Matt Patricia really doesn’t have anything going for him as a master defensive strategist. He’s not gonna come up with a defense capable of stopping the other team cold. His best strategy, his only strategy, is to hope that Matthew Stafford can be the team’s offensive and defensive MVP.

But it’s more complicated than that, I think. Remember back to when I talked about the Lions making choices. Recall that I said the choice they made was to bolster the offensive line and the running game. Here’s where it gets interesting: those choices were made as much with the defense in mind as the offense. They were made precisely because they are the sorts of things a team needs in order to keep their damn offense on the field and the defense off of it. It’s a coherent strategy, at least.

It also means that they probably aren’t expecting Stafford to go Full Brady. That would be insane. The Patriots basically gutted their entire team other than Brady and still won because Brady could take the entire team, offense and defense, on his back. And it worked. At least until the Super Bowl, but that brings up an important point: with this strategy, there comes a point when even Tom fucking Brady isn’t enough. That’s an insane way to try to win.

But again, I think at least some part of Bob Quinn knows this, which is why he’s attempting not to modify the strategy, but to spread its responsibility around a bit. Not to the defense, but to the rest of the offense. A strong running game and a powerful offensive line are there to help Stafford, certainly, but they’re there to help him protect the defense as much as anything else by working long drives and setting up the defense with good field position.

So where does all of this leave the Lions defense this season? Like I said, I think it will be shit. But that might not even be relevant. The truth will likely be told by how effective the offense is at protecting the defense. That is the Patriots Way. Patricia’s value is similar to Pasqualoni’s: he’s there because he understands the overall concept, not because he’s gonna be a forceful agent of chaos and change. I said this before, a while back: this is Bob Quinn’s team. He understands the Patriots Way. He helped build it. He hired a coach who’s gonna do what he’s told and who’s gonna keep things coherent.

Still, this is a defense that will drive us all insane. It’s not gonna get in there and destroy other teams. It’s not gonna force a lot of three and outs. It’s gonna be frustrating and it’s gonna be maddening. There will be wailing and drain cleaner smoothies and drunks wanting to fight Matt Patricia and Uncle Paulie. The key is to understand that, insane or not, this is the Lions plan. They want to control the game offensively in order to make the defense largely irrelevant. Will it work? I mean, maybe. It’s worked for the Patriots, and Stafford is good enough I think to at least go ¾ Brady and let the hopefully fixed run game handle the other ¼. But that is a lot of Hope in a place where we have none, and it’s hard to forget the image of Patricia standing helpless on the sideline while his defense was destroyed by the Eagles in the Super Bowl.

But Hope is all we’ve really got, which is the usual song we’re left singing this time of year. I think I can see a coherent plan, even if it’s one I don’t necessarily like, and I guess maybe that’s enough for now. At least it’s not deranged anarchy. At least no one is up there mumbling about pad level or bible study or getting confused by the glare of the fucking sun. We know what that’s like, and it sucks. So, it’s Hope again, old friends. And if we can’t have Belief, I guess that will have to do. Again. And again. And again. And again . . .