NFL Playoff Quarterback Power Rankings

My initial idea for this week was to rank the teams based on spiritual energies or whatever and by “my idea” I mean I got it from friend of the blog @LowFashionLover. The only problem, I decided, is that it would just be a rehash of my gibberish from the last 4 months or whatever. I mean, this is basically what I did every week with the Gambling For Sanity shit, so I decided I’d do something else instead of explain why the Cowboys are rotten soul ass for the 20^th time.

And lo, my playoff quarterback power rankings were born. These are based on a combination of factors – how good they were this season, how good they’ve been over their career, what they’ve won, what they’ve lost, and of course, the intangible Spirit Warrior quality which isn’t something I just made up but a vital component – perhaps the vital component – in any competitive endeavor or honest life.

12. Lamar Jackson - Baltimore

I assume Lamar Jackson is gonna start for Baltimore since Joe Flacco has finally been drowned in the Baltimore harbor or wherever the hell he fucked off to, and that’s a good thing for Baltimore since their offense only started to click with Jackson and his legs. The problem is, at least right now, there’s not much more to Jackson than those legs, and baby, that’s a hard way to win in the playoffs.

Of course, Lamar Jackson has never done anything either. Sure, he won the Heisman at Louisville, but we’re talking Advanced Concussion Ball here. One bad hit, one twist of the leg by some dirty asshole at the bottom of a pile, and Lamar Jackson is basically useless. So it’s the bottom of the rankings for him. At least for now. I like the dude, and I think he has Spirit Warrior potential, but the world is not fair, especially to Potential Spirit Warriors, who it enjoys snuffing out before they can realize that potential. I mean, shit, just look at me.

11. Dak Prescott – Dallas

Dak Prescott was sort of a sensation as a rookie, but no one has really liked him since. Sure, the Cowboys are back in the playoffs, but that has more to do with the NFL East collapsing en masse than anything the Cowboys did, and more specifically, anything that Prescott did. If Alex Smith had stayed healthy and The Eagles didn’t Philadelphia all over the fuckin’ place, the Cowboys would have finished third and everyone would want Dak kicked out of town. Jerry Jones would have had him buried in an oilfield or some shit or sold into slavery to some rubber tree plantation down in Brazil or Indonesia. They still do that shit, and you best believe Jerry Jones is involved somehow.

Anyway, that’s obviously a rotten spiritual situation, and it’s hard to see Dak Prescott overcoming any of that. Of course, there’s also the fact that the motherfucker is named Dak, which sounds like some futuristic lacrosse player. Just rotten energy all around for this dude. If he didn’t have Ezekiel Elliott to hand off to every game, this shit would get really dark really fast. Some would say that having to rely on a violent lady beater to go through life is already really dark, but shit, welcome to the NFL.

10. Mitchell Trubisky – Chicago

I don’t trust Mitch aka QB10 yet, and more importantly, I know that Bears fans don’t trust him. This is as much because of their woeful history at quarterback as it is anything to do with him personally, but those are the psychic environs he finds himself in. It’s not his fault that the Bears quarterback list reads Jim McMahon and then, uh, Rex Grossman? Kyle Orton? Erik Kramer? Fuck, man. Fuck!

Trubisky has made obvious progress so far, and probably just had the best Bears quarterback season in forever, but again, that’s more about the Bears than him. He is a number one overall pick, so the talent is there, but how the fuck are you gonna back a BEARS QUARTERBACK in the playoffs, especially one who has never won a goddamn thing? There are probably better years ahead for Trubisky, but for now, this dude is still out of his element.

9. Whoever the Fuck the Eagles QB Is

I’m still not sure if the Eagles are gonna go with wunderkind-turned-battery throwing target Carson Wentz, or the dude who won the Super Bowl last year, Nick Foles. This is partly because the Eagles don’t seem to know themselves, and partly because I’m not bothering to find out. Obviously, that means that this isn’t exactly an ideal situation.

Wentz is good, or at least should be good, but Eagles fans seem to be blaming too much of the team’s problems on him, which is probably mostly because Eagles fans are by and large irrational ogres. But this is how a dude’s spiritual energy gets ruined, especially a dude who spent his college years playing second tier ball in North Dakota. This motherfucker is like the farm stud with a big dick who gets off the bus all wide eyed and then gets fucked, both literally and spiritually, into oblivion by the big city pimps. He’s still got a hard dick right now, and he’s off buying muscle cars and making records with Reed Rothchild, but he’s only one year away from turning tricks in a parking lot for hateful Eagles fans that just want to jump him and leave him laying in his own blood to cover for their own self-loathing.

Nick Foles, on the other hand, has a mediocre dick, he’s spent most of his career as the pizza boy in fuck scenes who watches wide eyed as the real stars get the job done, and no one really expected much from him. But then Wentz couldn’t get it up, Foles had to step in, and shocked everyone by fucking good enough to win an AVN award last year.

That means he’s always gonna be hovering just over Wentz’s shoulder, which is not a good thing for Wentz’s spiritual energy or for the Eagles, for that matter. It may seem like a good thing, to have a backup who won the fucking Super Bowl, but it really isn’t. It just meant that the pressure was on Wentz to be fucking perfect this season, and when he wasn’t, Eagles fans tore him apart. They either had to ride with Wentz or Foles, and they chose neither and it’s fucked them.

The problem with turning to Foles is that while he may be the stud for the day, he still just has a mediocre dick. He just managed to have the fuck of his life at the right time. That’s all. Now when he can’t get it up or ends up splooging all over himself, or dribbling on a teammate’s thigh as they think “What the fuck?” Eagles fans are gonna turn on his ass HARD. And then what do they have? A small-dicked loser and a broken big dick that can’t get hard anymore. That’s life in the Big City, I guess. The only reason they’re this high on the list is because Wentz still does have a big dick and because of what happened with Foles last season. 9^th is a position of respect in this case.

8. Jared Goff – Rams

I like Jared Goff. He’s obviously good, and by this point on the list, they’re all pretty good. The problem is that I don’t know if you can trust him. There is just something missing, something indefinable, something ineffable (fuck you, Alex.) I don’t know what it is.

He’s never won anything, obviously, so it’s hard to give him any credit spiritually, and while he’s been good, he hasn’t been great. This is completely unfair, really. I just looked at his numbers again and they’re great, okay? But the thing is, is that I don’t know how much of that is him and how much of it is the Rams and Sean McVay. It feels like this is a system type thing more than a quarterback transcending himself and his team to be great. This doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense at all. I understand this. This is utter gibberish. But I feel like if you swapped Goff with, say, Matthew Stafford, you’d get the same result.

Now this is where we start arguing about Stafford, but I don’t want to do that. From one angle, that should speak well for Goff. I mean, Matthew Stafford is pretty good, right? But from another angle, Stafford is who he is, a talented dude who’s never won a goddamn thing. BUT THAT’S BECAUSE OF HIS TEAM, you scream at me, and that’s sort of the point. I feel like Goff might be similar. He’s a good quarterback, but he’s not a quarterback who’s capable of transcending his team. Just like Stafford. So, yeah, Stafford would do well in Los Angeles while Goff would lose with the Lions. That means they are good enough quarterbacks to win with, but not so good that they can carry you over the hump like, say, Brady or Russell Wilson.

Then again, maybe Goff is that guy. Who knows? That’s sort of the point. We don’t know right now, and we won’t know until he does the damn thing. Is this fair? No. Is it ridiculous? Yes. Will I look like an idiot when this is all said and done? Probably. But welcome to Armchair Linebacker.

7. DeShaun Watson – Houston

Wait . . . what? DeShaun Watson ahead of Goff? Yes. I know this probably doesn’t make sense to you, but here’s my rationale: DeShaun Watson won a Heisman and a national championship in college. The dude has done it before. Sure, not on this level, but being a winner is something that travels. That is good spiritual energy.

And, I mean, if you look at the numbers, he’s basically in Goff’s league there too. But he also runs well, and is a weapon that way. I’m ready to say that Watson is a better quarterback by just about any metric.

The problem, of course, is that he doesn’t have a huge body of work, an entire career to fall back on, to make people confident that he’s truly The Man. That’s really the only thing keeping him from being higher on this list. (And don’t get me started on people who think “higher” means like 9^th or 10^th instead of 4^th or 5^th, which they would call “lower.” They do this all the time when it comes to seeding in the NCAA tournament and it drives me fucking nuts. The argument is that, well, 10 is higher than 7 so should be called a “higher” seed or ranking. This is fucking preposterous. It should be called a “lower” seed or ranking because that is what the number signifies. In this case and in seeding cases, 10 is lower than 7. This shouldn’t be hard for people, but it is and it makes me SEETHE.) Anyway… uh, yeah. That’s it for this dude.

6. Philip Rivers – Chargers

Philip Rivers has had a long and productive career, and when it’s over, he’ll probably go down as being underrated. The problem with Ol’ Phil, of course, is that he’s a colossal asshole and a dude who always blows it in the end. I’ve compared him more than once to Matthew Stafford, and… yeah, that still holds true. Go back and read what I wrote in the Jared Goff section. That all applies to Rivers. The difference is that Rivers has a fucking decade and a half on Goff, and has proven over and over again that he is an upper tier NFL quarterback. Conversely, he’s also proven that he’s exactly what I fear both Stafford and Goff are – good, but not good enough.

In one respect, I feel like I should swap him and Goff, because Goff at least has a chance to prove me wrong. But in another respect, I feel like Rivers maybe deserves the benefit of the doubt. I mean, for all the shit I’ve talked about him, for as big an asshole as he is, you just can’t kill this fucker. He never goes away. And if he manages to win it all this year, all of that noise changes for him. I mean, I don’t think it will, but who’s to say?

If Jared Goff has Philip Rivers’ career, he should be ecstatic. But he should also be disappointed. This is a weird as fuck dynamic, but that’s sports, baby. In the end, I’m sticking Rivers here because it feels wrong to put him behind the two young dudes, but there’s no way that you can put him any higher than this, right? This is who he is. He’s number 6. That is Philip Rivers and it always will be. Jared Goff is number 8 right now. He has a chance to be number 1 someday, but probably not today.

5. Andrew Luck

This is probably too high. Fuck, it’s almost certainly too high, but here’s the thing: everyone kind of shit on Andrew Luck and wrote him off before this season. Some people even said he was finished, his career over due to injury. He responded by dragging the Colts to the playoffs and throwing for over 4,500 yards, with 39 touchdowns. That is a hell of an answer, and gives him some spiritual credibility that the dudes behind him just can’t match.

Maybe he is Rivers. I don’t know. But his career kind of hits the sweet spot between Rivers and Goff in that he’s done it more times than Goff, but hasn’t been ghettoized like Rivers. There’s also this: the Colts are not a good team. Not at all. Yet here they are, in the playoffs. If you swapped Goff with Luck, what would it look like? Luck would almost certainly be the golden boy as he led the Rams to the same sort of season they had this year, maybe even better. While Goff and the Colts probably would have a losing record. That’s my take and I’m sticking to it.

Sure, Luck may sound like Andre the Giant is fucking his throat every time he talks, and sure, he can’t grow facial hair without looking like he posts on Reddit, but you can’t deny that this dude rose up this season and proved something. People like to shit on him for never really earning all the slobbering praise he gets, but fuck it, I think he’s the real deal. He’s just on a shitty team, that’s all. The difference? He can actually transcend his team’s shittiness to drag them to the playoffs. Not many dudes can do that.

4. Drew Brees

Brees probably deserves to be a little higher, but fuck him. There is something spiritually rotten about him. People just never really notice because it’s balanced out by the spiritual richness of New Orleans. But the dude is a shit-smeared torture advocate. Torture advocates are dudes who live their lives in fear. They are cowards. So, yes, Drew Brees is a coward. He’s also a million years old.

Still, I’m not gonna deny that the dude is one of the best quarterbacks ever. He’s thrown for a million yards – check that, he’s thrown for the most yards in NFL history. That’s right. EVER. He’s also won a Super Bowl. The dude is a legend. I’m not gonna deny any of that. That should make him, at worst, second on this list. But I’ll say it again: fuck him.

There’s also this: the Saints have always been pretty inconsistent under Brees. They’ve had 5 losing seasons, 6 in which they never got above .500, and I’m gonna put it out there: it’s because Drew Brees is a spiritually bereft coward. Fuck him.

3. Russell Wilson – Seattle

I said before the season that Russell Wilson was a top 4 quarterback in the NFL. I also said that the Seahawks would finally collapse because they gutted their team and left Wilson hanging. All he did was lead them back to the playoffs. That shows me something. That shows me something huge.

He’s never been a huge OMG STATS guy, but his numbers are always good enough, he’s won a Super Bowl, should have won another if not for the most LOL WHAT ARE THEY DOING plays in sports history, and, again, he’s proven that he’s one of those extremely rare dude who can carry a shitty team all the way with him. I have nothing else to say here.

2. Patrick Mahomes – Kansas City

The dude just had a wild fucking year. 50 touchdowns. I mean, goddamn. He’s the MVP. He’s The Man. One problem: as a great man once said, to be The Man, you’ve gotta beat The Man WHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

1. Tom Brady – New England

And Tom Brady is indisputably The Man.

For all the fun I’ve had with Brady this season, for all the American Pyscho histrionics, you can’t deny the dude. It’s easy to say that he’s spiritually corrupt because of all the obvious affectations and sociopath ridiculousness, but this dude is a wild OG Warrior deep at heart. He is that one in a million motherfucker who will sacrifice everything, including basic decency, to win. This is a dude who would fuck over his own baby to win a game of Old Maid. This motherfucker is a menace, a danger to society, but he is also who I would pick to lead Earth against an alien invasion.

You also have to remember this: the Patriots and Chiefs already played once this season. Who won? Brady and the Patriots. That’s right. If you come at the king, you best not miss, son. Until Mahomes can overthrow Brady, he can’t be number one on this list. Hell, even if he does do it, he’s probably still not number one. This is because Tom Brady is number one all time. He’s the Greatest.

Of course, The Greatest is also at an age where he’s starting to have to synthesize virgin blood in a lab in order to keep going without crumbling into dust in the light and being dragged shrieking to the hell that surely awaits him. Everything ends. Everything dies. And Tom Brady can see The End. The motherfucker can feel it. When he goes, and he’ll go soon, it will be an epic disaster, a noisy and dishonorable end. This is not a dude who will die quietly on his throne. This is a dude who will die raving incoherently covered in his own shit because he can’t control his bowels anymore while his servants loot the castle and his kingdom disintegrates into unholy ruin. It will be a goddamn scene, an utter fiasco that will leave all of New England dead, a ruined crater of human filth, their ghostly shrieks and wails reaching to the heavens, ignored by a disgusted god who will send them all to the gnarliest depths of hell.

That’s all coming for Tom Brady. But the thing is, is that he knows that. He feels it. And that’s just gonna make him even crazier and harder to beat. He’s gonna hang on with everything he’s got, and no motherfucker named Pat is gonna take that from him while he still has his wits, while he’s still Tom Fucking Brady. The man is a Force unto Himself, a spirit that defies things like morality, unbound by human measures of decency. He will absolutely kill Patrick Mahomes entire family if he feels threatened and he’ll get away with it too. Who’s gonna stop him? You with your petty humanity? No. The only thing that will stop Tom Brady is the inexorable erosion of Time itself, its humbling and dispassionate march which trods us all down, turning humanity into little more than a barren desert, unseen by the boots that keep marching, marching, marching . . . to Time, Tom Brady is nothing, the gods are nothing. To Time, even itself is nothing, an utter irrelevance, and in the end, it will crush itself too and we will all disappear, our very dust, our souls, into a black hole, and none of this will have mattered or have even happened. The universe is fucking wild. But the last voice to shriek in defiance as it bends and twists and is disintegrated by Time and that black hole will belong to Tom Brady. And that’s why he’s the Greatest. Now and Forever.

And . . . Curtain

I actually sat down to do this late last night, half drunk, completely insane, filled with a whirlwind of conflicting emotions, but I was just too wrecked, both physically and spiritually, to do anything other than pound my keyboard like some pathetic half-mad ape and the final result would have no doubt resembled a cuneiform version of a succession of hoots, grunts and whistles and throughout it all there would have been a terrible eerie soundtrack playing through all of our heads, the ghostly sound of me weeping like a faithless man from far away. Terrible, terrible . . .

And so I decided to put it off until today when I would no doubt be refreshed and re-energized. Instead, I am vaguely hung-over, my eyes burn and so does my soul. There will be a time when I look back upon this season with happiness, when I give it the fond farewell it deserves, but it still hurts too much and so all I can do is try to explain what last night felt like, which is kind of impossible because in order to do so I would have to die and then be reincarnated as Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”.

The weird thing is, is that it wasn’t all horrible. Hell, the Lions actually led at the first half and I managed to tweet some gibberish about the team playing well, and even as I wrote it, a vague thought was flying through my mind which resembled something like “No, stop, you fool, you are only setting yourself up for something ridiculous.” I promptly ignored this thought because it seemed a product of old fear based thinking and then I went back to watching the game. And then the world caved in on itself, my head melted like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark and I’m pretty sure I traveled back through time and was crucified by Pontius Pilate. Or maybe it was by David Bowie playing Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ. Who can say?

Anyway, sacrilegious babble aside, there was still never a moment when I lost faith, which I suppose is a good sign. After all, I’ve seen too much wild and crazy shit this year to completely fold in on myself, too many comebacks, too many manic adrenaline fueled “Holy shit, I can’t believe this is happening!” moments, and so I kept my heart alive for as long as I could, a dangerous decision given that I should have disconnected and gone into protectionism mode far earlier.

After all, I was a goddamn beast last night. During gamedays, I am continually thankful that my neighbors don’t regularly call the cops on me. After all, during the course of your average game it probably sounds like I’m doing everything from strangling a goat to singing death metal – while strangling a goat. I am not what you would call a cool, calm, composed fan while the action is actually happening. So . . . yeah, following a game I always feel like I both survived a war and thankful that nobody had me arrested or committed.

But this game . . . this goddamn game . . . well, I wouldn’t be surprised if my neighbors went into hiding at some point in the second half. Shit, they’re probably all in the Witness Protection program while the feds try to build a case against me. “Yes . . . yes, sir, that’s the man . . . that’s the one I saw wrestling a bear in his living room and then eating the bear’s heart while punching a puppy. That’s him!”

At various points in that second half of woe, it probably sounded like I was wrestling with the devil while simultaneously arguing with God like we were some sort of dysfunctional couple on Cops. “You said you were gonna stop all this nonsense, God! This is fucking bullshit! Never again!” That sort of thing. If someone would have looked in the window, it probably would’ve resembled the scene from Highlander right after he chops a dude’s head off – just lightning flashing everywhere, people screaming, headless bodies flopping on the ground, swords slashing, madness, just . . . utter madness. At one point I lost my shirt. I ripped it off like some sort of degenerate street thug getting ready to throw down. A couple of hours later, I couldn’t find it. I finally found it earlier today. To be honest, I forgot I was ever wearing it. It was just a sweatshirt and I still had a tee-shirt on so it wasn’t completely absurd, but . . . okay, fine, it was but I just don’t want you to think that I was just stomping around bare-chested and violent all night long. I’m a civilized man, after all.

Not that anyone would have been able to tell last night. Had the cops actually been called, they probably would have broken down my front door and then tied me to a chair and called in an exorcist while I swore at them in tongues and spit pea soup and vile, vicious words, my head turning 180 degrees while I vowed to eat Drew Brees’ soul and to banish Aaron Berry to some dark corner of hell.

So . . . uh . . . yeah, it wasn’t the best night. I’m an emotional dude, a passionate dude, and I make a goddamn ass out of myself watching this thing we call football. I scream and I yell and I carry on like a freak. I scream “Fuck you!” at the television like a goddamn petulant child, I try to bargain with all manner of deities and I’ll even change clothes during the middle of the game because I think that it somehow makes a difference in the outcome of the game. My adrenaline spikes, I shake like a junky, I weep like a faithless man when things are going bad and I cheer like a Roman Coliseum fan hopped up on crank and blood when things are going well. I do not temper myself because this is sports fandom and sports fandom is carnal and wicked and beautiful and completely unreasonable. It exists completely within its own sphere, its own world, and this world is insane and has no laws other than the laws of the beast. It’s feral and strange and completely fucking insane and I revel in it because why not? Why not? It’s perhaps the only socially acceptable way to touch the madness, like scream therapy for the crazy.

I’ve begun to ramble and I haven’t touched on the actual events of the game nearly as much as I probably should, but I suspect this is just my way of protecting myself. After all, I don’t exactly want to relive what went on in that second half, you know? Some part of me still believes that it’s halftime and that the score is 14-10 Lions and the biggest thing I can be pissed off about is that the ref blew the whistle and caused the play to go dead after The Great Willie Young ate Drew Brees’ soul and knocked the football loose. A part of me is huddled in that memory, clinging to it like the last rickety life-raft in a storm from hell.

But I know that that second half happened and so do all of you. We all watched it and even though it caused me to descend into the heart of darkness, whispering The Horror, The Horror over and over and over again to my beleaguered soul, there was still that rational human side of me that stayed reasonable (well, sort of, anyway) and wondered over and over and over again “What if?” What if that ref hadn’t blown the whistle and the Lions were allowed to return that fumble for a touchdown and a 21-7 lead? What if the refs didn’t inexplicably spot the ball a yard further down the field thus giving the Saints a key first down following a third down pass which only netted nine yards instead of the ten they said early in the second half, which would have forced the Saints to punt? What if Eric Wright or Aaron Berry would have caught just one of the interceptions Drew Brees tossed into their arms? Just one? What if the Saints didn’t convert every single third down or all 168 (I believe this is the exact number if I remember correctly. You can trust me, I’m a professional.) 4^th down conversions? What if Sean Payton had behaved like every other caveman coach and punted on those 4^th downs? What if Titus Young wouldn’t have fallen down on that first Matthew Stafford interception, which in retrospect, was basically what ended the game? What if the Lions understood how to properly tackle? What if the refs decided to do their job and call holding on the Saints offense line just one goddamn time? What if, what if, what if, what if, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarfggggggfhkjkhjloksiflhweygfliwefi

And so it goes. So it goes. In a sense, I suppose there’s something macabrely good about all those “what ifs”. Even being able to ask them is a sign that the Lions were at least competitive, that they showed up, that an outline exists – no matter how hazy – for a different story, a story, a world, an alternate reality in which the Lions actually won the game. But it also makes it hurt more. It makes it more frustrating. The closer you get to heaven, the more bitterly painful the flames of hell feel licking at your feet. Because I can see that alternate reality, it makes it more maddening that it never actually happened and that I am forced to live in this world with its bullshit outcomes.

After the game, as I always do, I calmed down and began to channel my wild emotions into something approaching coherence. I tried to be philosophical, to put it all in its proper perspective but to be honest, I couldn’t. I still can’t. Not really anyway. I admire everyone who was able to do an immediate about-face and remind everyone else that this has been a hell of a season, a magical season, and hey, I’m right there with you. But last night is still too fresh in my mind, in my heart, my soul, to do anything other than grieve for what could have been but isn’t because of all those goddamn “what-ifs”. Later, I am sure that I’ll be able to summon something worthwhile and human to wrap up this amazing, wild, weird, fantastic season. And we’ll all smile and laugh and say things to each other like “Man, what a ride!” and “I can’t wait ‘til next year!” Those are things that are undeniably true, and maybe a part of me is starting to crawl into that place already. I don’t know. But the majority of me is just gritting its teeth and remembering all of the things – both big and small – that happened last night and caused the Lions to lose that game and that part of me is too big and too tough to conquer right now.

I do want to say this: for as much as the Lions lost that game (well, defensively anyway), and for as much as the refs stuck their little knives in, helping to bleed us to death while Sheriff Goodell cowered in Houston, shining his tin badge with a smug smile on his liar’s face, the New Orleans Saints won that game. They were pretty damn good and so was their coach. For as much as it rankles me that Sean Payton went for the jugular every damn opportunity he got, I respect him like hell for it. That’s what a real coach does. That’s what a winner does. That’s what allows a team like the Saints to reach their full potential and I commend him for it. Besides, I take that jugular hunting as a sign of respect. He knew he had to do that in order to put the Lions away. That was his acknowledgment that the Lions are a real team, a dangerous team, a damn good team capable of beating his Saints in their own building. He played to win because he knew that playing not to lose would have just meant that his team would be walking around in a daze after the game, wondering how they got knocked out of the playoffs in the first round for the second straight season.

But enough about all that. Nobody wants to hear that shit today and I feel unpleasant even acknowledging it. Today is a day for us, a day to try to purge our own pain, not to celebrate the joys of another’s soul.

I have spent a ridiculous amount of words lately hyperbolically comparing this last month of the season to arriving in a New World or to Wild West shootouts at the OK Corral but today metaphors just seem cheap and trite. Today, the feelings are too real, too raw, too big, to explain away with some pithy imagery. There is nothing symbolic about any of this. There is just an open wound. I know I just said “No metaphors” and then with this open wound thing I, well, I just gave into the welcoming arms of metaphors, but this is just the way I think. Everything is a goddamn play, an opera of the mind, heart and soul and I don’t know what to tell you. My brain is a drama queen.

I guess the difference is that while my brain keeps searching for metaphors, for symbolism – and keeps finding it – last night’s game exists in that same brain as something separate, something that cannot be summed up with gunfight metaphors. Everything else – including my feelings (hell, especially my feelings) - is fair game for the symbolism addict that is my brain, but the game against the Saints exists as its own thing, immune to symbolism, to stories, to metaphors, to imagery. It does not fit in some grand narrative in my head. It just exists by itself, the facts cold and hard and brutal, the memories raw and untouched by anything other than themselves. I kind of just want to wrap that whole goddamn thing up in chains and dumb it to the bottom of the sea of my brain but that can’t happen and we all know it. I’ll always remember this game and I’ll always remember how much it sucked and that’s that.

I should never, ever, say that I’m not going to give into symbolism, to metaphors, because as I’ve already demonstrated, I am completely incapable of doing so. I don’t just write in metaphors, in symbols and dramatic imagery, I think that way too. This is what makes me the creative super-beast that I am, but sometimes it gets in the way. Sometimes, I just want to think in clear, concise terms and I want everything to be simple, easy, black or white, up or down. This is how I feel about last night’s game. I just want it to be a dead thing, not something that lives and blossoms and flourishes in my brain, taking untangleable (spellcheck says this isn’t a word but fuck it, I just made it a word) root, something that will pop up in epic terms later on, something that will inform the rest of my fandom, the way that the last 50 years of failure has. I desperately don’t want this to happen. I don’t want it to become some epic dragon, flying through the halls of my brain, breathing fire and laying waste to everything in its path. As you can see, it’s too late. Too late.

So, I guess all I can do now is try to put it into its proper context, to allow the metaphors and the symbols and the imagery to grow but to watch over them and make sure that they don’t grow into something too ugly or monstrous. Obviously, I’m rambling, but this is what happens when you write at the exact same time that you try to gather your thoughts, that you try to contextualize everything. In the end, I suppose I have no choice but to acknowledge this game’s place in the epic opera of my mind. It happened, but I have to remember that it is but a scene – a scene that marks the end of an act but not the whole damn opera. It is a scene that marks the end of an act, but there is more than one act in any play, in any opera, and even though this one is over, I don’t hear a fat lady singing, and even though the lights just dimmed and the singing just stopped and the curtain momentarily closed, I know that soon enough, it’s going to open up and there will be Matthew Stafford, at the height of his powers, and there will be Calvin Johnson and my God, what beauty, what a fucking show, and I can’t wait. I can’t wait.

Last night happened and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that. My mind still reels, and my heart still thunders against the ravaging horrors of it all, but it’s over now and maybe this is what people call acceptance, or at least something like it, or the faint whispers of it. I don’t know. What I do know is that as soon as I am done writing this, it will be time for my mind and my heart to move on, and I will begin watching that curtain, waiting for it to open, and I will remember that despite the way it ended, this act was a ton of fun, fucking incredible, awe inspiring really, and I’ll smile a faint, hopeful smile and I’ll remember that this opera is destined to be amazing, because it is my opera and all my operas are. And finally, I’ll remember that this is just a beginning, the birth of a star, and that soon – very soon – this star will shine and on some distant planet, someone will look up, see it shining up in the sky and they’ll wonder where this star came from, and what it actually is, and my soul will whisper that it came from my heart and what it is, is the Detroit Lions and it will never die.

This Time, We're Bringing a Bazooka

I’ve been trying to figure out what I would talk about for this here preview since, let’s face it, this is kind of a momentous game and I figured it deserved something suitably epic. But how do I do something especially epic when my normal stuff has dragons and dead people and monkeys and semen and werewolves and escaped vampire apes and Willie Youngs and a whole menagerie of epic creatures and imagery? I don’t know. Maybe I could attach a drawing of a 40 foot tall clown devouring a baby? Or a 40 foot tall baby devouring a clown? In the face of that disturbing truth, I felt like maybe the best idea was to just discard hyperbole all together and just try to be quietly honest, a beautiful piano sonata rather than a wild loud guitar solo from hell.

And with that in mind, my initial idea was to get personal and talk about being eleven years old and watching from the upper deck of the Silver Dome as the Lions blasted the Cowboys into oblivion, but I figured that would take a maudlin turn pretty quickly and would end with me babbling about the horrors and disappointments of the last twenty years and I think we’ve all had enough of that, haven’t we?

Right.

So with that idea discarded, I toyed with the idea of linking this game, against the Saints, to the very first game of the Jim Schwartz/Matthew Stafford era, which was also against the Saints. I was intrigued by the similarities between the two games. In the first, I remember writing that I expected the Lions defense to be firebombed by the Saints and I likened it to a Wild West shootout and just hoped and prayed that our boys would show up with something more than a slingshot. They didn’t, and, well, the Lions were firebombed. Obviously, ever since it became clear that the Lions would play the Saints in their first playoff game since the Tyrannosaurus Rex administration most Lions fans have been bracing themselves for another shootout, only this time we’re pretty sure that our boys will be bringing something more akin to a bazooka than a slingshot. Obviously, the parallels are interesting, enticing even, and for a symbolism addict like me, it’s hard to turn down an opportunity to start gibbering about the Symmetry of Fate again. Plus, it’s kind of hard to turn down the image of Matthew Stafford as Doc Holliday with a fucking bazooka in his hands blowing away Drew Brees and the Clanton Brothers at the OK Corral. But even that sort of symbolism, that sort of That Was Then This Is Now sermonizing is tied too heavily to the past and I’m sick of the past. We’re in the fucking playoffs and everything else is meaningless.

So . . . what’s left? Well, thankfully, the Saints and the people and fans of New Orleans have done me a kindness and lobbed a big, fat juicy softball right over the heart of the plate. All week long, they’ve been gibbering and jabbering about who they’ll play in the second round, blatantly disrespecting the Lions and damn near taunting us. Hell, ESPN even ran a poll asking which number would be higher, Drew Brees’ interceptions or Ndamukong Suh’s personal fouls. To date, with almost 15,000 votes counted, America, by a 64-36% margin, thinks that Suh will have more personal fouls than Brees will have interceptions. On one hand, I’m almost impressed by the blatant trolling efforts of ESPN and the New Orleans Saints this week. They understand that America is stupid and eats this shit up with a spoon made of ignorance and slackjawed inanity. On the other hand, fuck all of them.

The overwhelming temptation is to turn this into an issue of respect, but to be honest, that’s what the Saints want. That shit plays right into their hands. The Lions are at their worst when they’re feeding off of emotion and punching dudes and slapping refs around because they aren’t being respected. The reality is that for the Lions to win this game, they have to ignore all of that stupid bullshit and then make it all go away by doing one simple thing: winning the goddamn game. This stuff is never going to go away until the Lions show up somewhere like New Orleans and coldly and ruthlessly shank the Saints in front of their friends and loved ones. This is not about respect. Not anymore. The Lions are in the playoffs. They don’t need your fucking respect, ESPN. They don’t need your fucking respect, New Orleans. No. This is about winning. That’s it.

The flipside to all of that, though, is that I don’t think the Saints respect the Lions. That’s fine. I don’t give a shit anymore, and I don’t give a shit for all the reasons I just said. The thing is, though, is that’s not fine for the Saints. If they don’t respect the Lions . . . well, here comes Doc Stafford with a fucking Bazooka, Drew Clanton. Best mind your manners, son.

Let them talk. Let them laugh and taunt and say all manner of stupid shit. Let them look ahead to the second round. Let them talk about the 49ers or the Giants or whoever. Good. Great. While they’re looking ahead, the Lions are focused on one thing: killing the Saints. You don’t hear any Lions players or coaches or fans or anybody really talking about the Lions second round prospects. That’s because all anyone even remotely connected to the Lions cares about is winning this game. And when the playoffs get here, the difference between winning and losing is so small, that something like focus can mean all the difference in the world.

The Saints don’t want to think so. They think that they’re worlds better than the Lions. Hell, everybody who isn’t a Lions player or coach or fan thinks so. After all, they’ve got Drew Brees, and with numbers like these – 5476 yards, 46 touchdowns and only 14 interceptions – why wouldn’t they think that no one would be able to keep up with him? He’s the fucking Ferrari of Quarterbacks right now. All they have to do is show up, rev the engine a few times, put it on cruise control and then coast to victory.

Well fuck that. The Saints’ – and all their believers’ – biggest mistake is in thinking that the Lions are showing up to the race in a fucking Minivan or something. Look at Brees’ numbers again. They’re phenomenal. Untouchable. Right? Well, here are Matthew Stafford’s numbers: 5,038 yards, 41 touchdowns and only 16 interceptions. Take your Minivan and shove it up your ass because the Lions just pulled up to the line in a fucking Lamborghini. And now, motherfuckers, we’re gonna race.

It’s amazing to me that the Saints and their fans and the media and everyone from the Pope to starving children in Africa to Hitler’s ghost could be so cavalier about this game. They all laugh and point to the Lions mistakes and personal fouls and all that shit the first time they played, but even with all that, and even with a suspended Ndamukong Suh and a bunch of other injuries, the Lions were knocking on the door in the 4^th quarter, threatening to tie the game. Watch that game again. The amount of terrible penalties the Lions piled up was fucking absurd. Yeah, some were earned, but the 19 pass interference penalties called against Nate Burleson were pure bullshit and you all know it. Remember the Saints flying offsides and blocking the Lions field goal attempt at the end of the first half only for the refs to run off the field like they just witnessed a murder and were too afraid to do or say anything about it? Remember that the Saints received 100% of the breaks while the Lions were crucified by Pontius Goodell while the masses jeered and chucked rotten fruit? Remember all that? Good. Now remember Matthew Stafford smiling like he just shot down a MIG and then buzzed the tower even though all this bullshit was going on, and remember him throwing the ball downfield, again and again, and remember the Lions coming and coming and coming, like some sort of Terminator, and remember that you couldn’t stop us by yourselves. Remember that and keep overlooking the Lions. You fuckers.

I’m getting worked up and I should probably take an ice bath or dive off the roof naked into the snow, but my neighbors complained the last time I did that. Then again, I think my fury is at an appropriate level. It’s not wild or stupid, but simmering and determined, and I’m guessing that’s where the Lions are right now too. They know what happened the last time they played the Saints. They’re hungry for this game – not just for a playoff game, but for this particular playoff game against the Saints. I honestly believe that. They want everyone to see that they won’t be owned by that bullshit, by all the penalties, by all the dumb reactionary shit that drove a stake through their heart in that game. Meanwhile, the Saints are laughing and looking forward to the Conference semis. But most of all, the Lions want to win. Badly. And they want to win the damn game on the field with everyone watching. And the Saints, well, you get the sense that the Saints wish they could just fall asleep on Friday night, have a wizard or fairy sprinkle some dust on them and then wake up on Sunday with a magic victory in their back pocket. They don’t want to play this game, and therein lies the difference.

Of course, while motivation is crucially important this time of year, there is more to it than that. The Lions still have to go out and, you know, actually show that they aren’t a bunch of simple-minded ogres who will flip out like someone just touched their ears or something. They have to make plays when they’re there to be made. They have to stand in the line of fire, dodge some bullets and then unleash hell with their bazooka.

The Lions probably aren’t going to stop the Saints offense. They just aren’t. I’ve resigned myself to that. If anyone is expecting the Saints to go three and out series after series and for Drew Brees to be humiliated, well . . . you’re probably just setting yourself up for misery and despair. But they don’t have to either. Not with the way the Lions offense has been playing. Matthew Stafford has been unstoppable lately and as long as he and St. Calvin do their thing, then the defense just has to make a few key plays. The question then becomes, can they?

I think so. The Lions defense was embarrassed last week, and you can bet that there will be zero tolerance for fuckups in the secondary this week. This doesn’t mean that they will be perfect, but it does mean that they’ll step up just enough to at least slow the Saints down some. By the time it’s all over, all the Lions defense needs to do is take a couple of bullets and not collapse. If they manage that long enough, eventually Doc Stafford will set up with his Bazooka, and then, well . . . New Orleans, he’ll be your huckleberry. (If you haven’t watched Tombstone, then there are things about this post that probably seem weird and incomprehensible but fuck all that, I can’t be held responsible for your cultural illiteracy.)

After all, let’s not pretend that the Saints’ defense are a gang of world beaters themselves. Plus, I think a lot of us – myself included – are falling prey to the old “Hey, that just happened and so that’s what will happen forever” way of thinking. You know, the one that says that since the Lions looked like shit defensively last week, it means they’ll look like shit this week? Yeah, that one. After all, it was only the week before that we were all raving because finally the Lions showed up in all three phases of the game, and it wasn’t that long ago that we were thanking God or Buddha or Patrick Swayze or whoever because we had the defense there to keep us alive and sane while the offense was struggling. That defense is still in there somewhere. Especially if the Lions get Louis Delmas back. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I remember that this is a defense that is capable of domination. Remember the Monday Night Massacre of Jay Cutler and the Bears? Yeah, me too. That defense is still there and everyone would be well served to not forget that.

Anything is possible. I’ve said that a lot lately. I think the most likely scenario is that this game is a shootout, a fucking gnarly gunfight from hell, with dudes carrying machine guns and bazookas and flamethrowers and bazookas that shoot flamethrowers. If that happens, then it all comes down to the ability of the Lions defense to make just enough plays to allow Doc Stafford and Calvin Earp to bring some fucking justice to the land. But . . . I also think there’s at least a chance that the Lions defense we saw earlier in the season, that Monday Night Football defense, could rise from the dead, like pissed off vampire apes from hell, and drown Drew Brees in the River Styx. That’s the thing that nobody’s talking about, and if that happens, well . . . I’ll be writing another preview piece next week. But, on the other hand, I don’t think there’s even a slight chance that the Saints defense will dominate the Lions offense. I just don’t see it. As long as the refs aren’t simpering penises (penii?) the Lions will be able to move the ball at will. Matthew Stafford has proven that pretty conclusively.

My man UpHere had a good point when he e-mailed me telling me that he actually preferred this matchup to the hypothetical Lions/Giants playoff game that would have taken place had Matt Flynn not been possessed by the ghost of Peyton Manning. Of course, my initial instinct was to tell UpHere to quit huffing paint thinner or licking toads or drinking the blood of an Indian following a peyote binge, but when I read his reasons, I realized he was probably right – the Lions are built for a shootout right now, and the Giants defense, with its ferocious pass-rush, is probably the last thing we want to deal with. The Giants might not be a better team than the Saints, but they might actually have been a worse matchup for the Lions.

But I think there’s a larger point in there too – for as much as everyone seems to be worried about what Drew Brees can do, we need to take some fucking pride in what Matthew Stafford and our warrior kings can do. If you want to win by trying to simply outscore us, well . . . good luck with that. I’m not that scared of another team’s offense because I know that my team’s offense can answer the fucking bell. And once you establish that, then what’s left? The Saints defense doesn’t scare me. Not even a little. And while the Lions defense might not scare the Saints, that is their fatal flaw, because it should. For as much as the Lions defense made us all shiver and shake like witless junkies and cry like faithless fools last week, they’re still dangerous and they still have the best defensive player on the field – maybe the best two or three defensive players on the field – and none of us should forget that. If the Saints want to forget that, well, then that’s their problem and I’ll say a prayer for them while they’re getting pulled apart in the bowels of hell.

This game has nothing to do with the past. It has nothing to do with the future. It has nothing to do with respect. All it has to do with is here and now, with the present, with the space and opportunity that lies just in front of us. If other people want to make this game about those other things, then let them. If other people want to laugh and snigger and underestimate this Lions team because of shit that just doesn’t matter, then that’s their problem and our advantage. The only thing that matters is that on Saturday night, the Lions play the Saints, in the playoffs and whether you believe in the Lions or not is irrelevant, because the Lions have dudes named Matthew Stafford and Calvin Johnson on offense and warrior kings named Ndamukong Suh and Cliff Avril and Kyle Vanden Bosch and Nick Fairley and Louis Delmas on defense, and in the face of those immutable truths, nothing else matters. Draw your guns, Drew Brees, because this time we aren’t coming with a slingshot, we’re coming with cannons shooting napalm and this ain’t the Wild West, this is Detroit Lions football and Doc Holliday is just a ghost and Matthew Stafford is very much alive and he is the truth.

Lions win.

Predicted Final Score: Lions 31, Saints 24