The Lions Are In First Place

The Lions are in first place.

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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.

Total Victory

Let me start off with a quick confession before we get to the Ballad of St. Calvin and the Holy Ghost, Matthew Stafford.  Last week, I missed the game because of, uh, let’s just call them reasons and leave it at that, okay?  Anyway, I did record the game and intended on watching it right away, but every time I do that, it’s impossible for me not to spoil it for myself.  I mean, the lure of finding out who won the damn game in 1.2 seconds is too much to pass up.  And so that’s how I came to see that the Lions lost in brutal fashion to the Bengals.  I immediately decided that there was no way I was watching that bullshit, but being a masochist, I decided I would watch the Sam Martin shankapalooza, if only out of some sort of morbid curiosity.  So, I watched it, it was the most Lions way to lose a game imaginable, and then deleted the whole goddamn thing.  So that’s why I didn’t write anything last week.

Anyway, that is the backdrop to what went on this week.  It’s easy to see how the Lions could fold mentally and emotionally after something like that.  After all, we are dealing with a band of idiots who have more often than not proven themselves to be as fragile as the most temperamental of divas.  This could get ugly in a hurry.  Friend of the blog UpHere noted the same thing to me in a twitter message before the game.  This was important because it could either make or break this team. 

The game itself was wild and stupid and weird and filled with laughing gas and tear gas and abdominal gas and every other kind of gas you can imagine, but the main thing to take away from this is that there were more than half a dozen moments in this game where this team could have broken, and probably would have been broken in the past.  Shit, with less than a minute left in the game, the announcers were talking about it like it was already over, bemoaning the Lions killer turnovers and talking about how the ridiculous stats of the offense were all for naught, and blah blah blah, we know how this shit goes.  And yet, when the game actually ended, it wasn’t the Lions melting down, but Dez Bryant throwing a tantrum on the sideline while Jason Witten had to fight the urge to physically assault him and Matthew Stafford was mobbed on the other side of the field like Tom Cruise at the end of Top Gun.

The storyline optics there are so blazingly obvious that it feels almost unnecessary to have to actually talk about them.  You saw the game, that shit was stark.  This is the sort of thing that can make Matthew Stafford indisputably The Man.  I know that sounds like something I’ve said before, especially since the Lions have done this a dozen times since he showed up, but this one just felt different.  I think it was because the moment was such a make or break thing, the emotions and brain goo so susceptible to whatever the hell was going to happen, that what actually did happen just felt even more enormous than it would have anyway.  This wasn’t just a come from behind win.  This was a come from behind win, and a display of Brass Balls Big Dick Swingin’ by the quarterback, by The Man, when everyone on the team was looking for something to believe in, for a reason to strap a rocket to their back and blast off to the moon rather than point that rocket straight at their faces and blow themselves to hell.

This was Matthew Stafford leading an army of wavering soldiers into a battle, having everything go wrong and then at the last second, saying fuck it, swaggering into the Kill Zone, and then doing the Big Balls dance from Major League II before putting a bullet between the eyes of the enemy commander and winning the day.  These dudes will follow him anywhere now.  That’s what that moment means.

But before that, you also had St. Calvin sonning the fuck out of Dez Bryant.  Sure, Bryant caught a couple of touchdowns, but St. Calvin had 329 yards receiving, which, uh… this is why you don’t publicly challenge your betters, son.  It was yet another instance of one of our dudes rising to the moment instead of being overwhelmed by it, of becoming a Destroyer of Worlds because that’s what was called for.  And again, in the end, Calvin set the team up to win, and he and Stafford slapped each other on the back, hugged and laughed it up on the sideline, like two fighter pilots recounting a hyper-adrenalized successful mission while Dez Bryant howled with infantile rage, his teammates incapable of concealing their utter disgust.

It’s a perfect picture, one that should be framed on the walls of our hearts for a long, long time.  This was a moment in which the Lions triumphed against all the Failure Demons and the worst parts of their nature while their opponent crumbled.  It was a moment which negated everything else that had come earlier in the game, when all those turnovers and blown opportunities seemed to signal in all too sickeningly familiar neon lights that this team was going to fail the test yet again.  Instead, the outcome of the game, that moment when Stafford literally flew over both his line and the Cowboys standing across from them, turned all of those failed tests into tribulations that made the moment all the sweeter, all the more significant, and, ultimately, a vindication of this team’s mental and emotional health.

The turnovers were nearly fatal, and the Cowboys big plays in the second half still point to a team that is inherently limited.  These sorts of things happen to this team, and will continue to happen, because they are a flawed team coached by flawed men, and nothing is going to change that at this point.  It just won’t.  But you can let that beat you again and again, and ultimately break you, or you can try to live with it and eventually overcome it, to be the best version of yourself that you can be, warts and all, and that’s what I think we saw against the Cowboys. 

But let’s not let one simple and undeniable truth get lost in all this talk of moments and inherent flaws, and the grandiose psychobabble and hyperbolic gibberish I’m letting loose here: the Lions outgained the Cowboys 623-268.  That’s fucking absurd.  They blew them right off the fucking field.  If they don’t turn the ball over, they beat the shit out of the Cowboys.  Even with the turnovers, the Cowboys were lucky the Lions didn’t run them out of the building.  The Lions were just better, and not just better, but significantly better.  The Cowboys, by the way, are probably the best team in the NFC East.  Okay, okay, the NFC East is a horrific dumpster fire of a division this year, but still.  There’s a chance that if the Lions make the playoffs this year their opponents will be these very same Cowboys.  The point is that the Lions are in this.  They’re really, truly in this.  All they have to do is to get the mental shit lined up, and, well… now you can kinda see why this game feels like a big goddamn deal.

This team will break our hearts still.  I think we all know that.  It is just a part of our identity.  But I think now, there is an underlying sense that even when things go all FUBAR, that it’s okay, because Matthew Stafford has returned from the Outback, and he’s returned as a Spirit Warrior, and that he’s got this, man.  He’s got this.  That sort of confidence, that sense that there is a sort of mental and emotional safety net, is contagious.  Not just for us fans, but more importantly, for the rest of the team.  They can just go out and play ball because Stafford’s got this.  And even when it’s not enough – and sometimes it won’t be – that’s okay, because next week, it will be.  That can be a very, very powerful thing.

I just can’t get over that final scene – and yes, I realize it is sort of ridiculous to talk about this almost like it was a movie, but that’s how epic and cinematic it felt, didn’t it? – of Stafford getting mobbed, jaw squared to the world, fire in his eyes, victory in his heart, while the Cowboys bickered and fought on the sideline.  Not only did the Lions survive their own trial by fire, they utterly broke the will of their opponents.  If this were war, this would be Total Victory. 

This was the Boy Prince, the young Lion who was once knocked off his horse against those heathens from Cleveland only to rally his men to victory with one arm hanging, becoming the King, the Lion in the prime of his life standing confidently on the field of battle, calling his shot, and then turning and walking back to his adoring soldiers while the enemy commander crumpled to the ground, shot between the eyes.  Matthew Stafford didn’t just execute a gameplan, he put the whole goddamn war on his back, and he triumphed.  And everyone watched him do it.

This could mean everything, or it could mean nothing.  The only Truth we know is that life is just a series of moments, moments that define us, moments that exist within themselves, beautiful and alone, and in these moments, regardless of what’s happened in the past or what may happen in the future, Total Victory is possible.  And Matthew Stafford and the Lions just had one of those moments, and no matter what happened yesterday or what will happen tomorrow, that moment will live forever, and it will always be perfect.  Total Victory.

Satisfaction

THERE.  There, there, there, there . . . THERE.  That’s what I wanted to see.  That’s what I’ve been waiting to see.   The Lions demolished the Jaguars and while I am not prepared to start gibbering about the playoffs again quite yet, I can see the sun peeking back over the horizon and maybe, just maybe, this whole damn thing can still work out after all.

You see, it wasn’t just that the Lions beat the Jaguars, it wasn’t even that they crushed them, it was the cold methodical way in which they beat them down.  In the past, we’ve seen this team whip up on shitbird teams with fire in their hearts, rambunctious and hyper-talented young warriors who burned the village, took the villagers prisoner and then pissed in the well at the center of town while laughing and drinking straight from the bottle, real swaggery pirate type shit, and I liked that.  I did.  To a point.  You see, the problem with pirates is that they are also transient fuckups and they will end up eventually sinking their own ship after getting drunk and shooting a hole in the hull.  But these Lions, the ones I saw today, finally acted like grown men.  They rode into the village with a job to do, calmly did it, butchered their enemies and then calmly rode back out of town.  They didn’t act like it was their Super Bowl or like this was the game of their lives, like they had something to prove to us, to the world and most importantly to themselves – which is how they’ve had to play to win in the past, but they played like a team that expected to win simply because they were better, because they were the men and the Jaguars were the wasted youth.  And that right there is what I have been waiting to see for a loooooong time.

My disappointment this season wasn’t a product of the 3-4 record – although that certainly didn’t help – but of the fact that this team didn’t look like it was progressing in any way.  In fact, it looked like they were regressing and I’ll admit that I lost faith that they would ever evolve from a Wild West team that reveled in gunfights and an early, pointless death into the sort of team that we saw today.  It just wasn’t happening.  It seemed to me like the DNA of the team was fully formed, that all that maddening bullshit was simply who they were.  I just wanted them to prove me wrong.  Just once.  It’s just that they never did.  Until today.

I know that seems like just another chapter in the Bipolar Madness of the Book of Neil and hey, what can I say, you’re not wrong.  I place no faith in what I am supposed to feel and instead pay homage to what I actually do feel.  The result probably seems inconsistent and highly changeable, but it really isn’t.  I like to think it’s more of a willingness to not allow myself to become tethered to an ideological sort of parody.  Most people decide how they want to feel and then bend everything that follows to that ideological stance.  The result is one-dimensional gibberish, the empty parroting of cheap clichés and worn-out talking points, preaching to a vast echo-chamber of like-minded fools, all vicious and stupid parodies of both themselves and each other.  I try to constantly reexamine things and if I decide that I’m wrong, then what the hell, I’m wrong.  Actually, “wrong” isn’t the best way to look at it.  It’s more that what’s “right” is more an evolution of perspective.  In other words, things change, facts are not always stable things, and when they do only a blind fool refuses to accommodate those shifting variables and let them help reshape his worldview.  The world changes every day, every hour, every minute, and the moment we stop changing with it - the moment we solidify a world view and adhere to it dogmatically no matter what - is the moment that both we and that dogmatic worldview become irrelevant and we then become clownish parodies of ourselves, empty and useless, dumb noise machines that occasionally eat, shit, fuck and sleep.  Truth is subtle and often elusive and it has a way of tricking us and doubling back on our own convictions.  Each moment is an island unto itself, with its own set of facts and its own meanings and to blithely try to throw one big ass blanket over everything rarely works and usually only serves to befoul the situation even more than it already was.  We all have our convictions, and that’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about the shallow need to create a dichotomous belief structure in which everything either fits on one side or the other without regard for the subtle details that are always present.  You can still have a belief in absolutes – only a coward refuses to take a stance – and I am not advocating some shapeless, gormless shades of grey juvenile worldview.  I’m just saying that the world is delicate, and each moment should be judged on its own merits, and that judgment should be augmented by our truths, by our worldview, by what we already believe, but not necessarily defined by those same things.  I apologize, though, because I’m getting weird and way, way too carried away with this and to be honest I’m not even talking about football anymore and so I’ll stop.

The point as it relates to the Lions is this: sometimes I’m going to say “Yo, this sucks and here’s why . . .” and sometimes I’m going to seem to go completely overboard and say “Yo, this was fucking awesome,” and often these two incongruous statements will occur within a day or two of one another.  One is not a repudiation of the other, only an acknowledgement that, well, the facts changed.  I still believe what I’ve been writing but I also believe what I am writing today, even if they seem sort of contradictory, and what I’m saying today is yo, this was fucking awesome.  The key, of course, is to find a way to keep both the OH NO THE SKY IS FALLING and the OH YES LOOK AT THE BIG BEAUTIFUL BLUE SKY in perspective.  Even when my sense of hope was rapidly diminishing, I still kept the door open to my heart.  I never completely bailed out.  I simply said that I wasn’t sure anymore.  Similarly, I’m not about to declare that this is now a team headed to a Super Bowl and the Promised Land of sunshine, blowjobs, candy and monkey butlers and monkey butlers eating candy and giving blowjobs while the sun shines.  The Lions victory over the Jaguars – and more importantly HOW they got that victory – is exactly what I wanted to see.  Now I want to see them do it again.

But for now, for today, I am content to bask in the beautiful glow of evolution, of this team finally walking upright and learning to speak in something other than guttural grunts and savage hoots.  I think what’s most impressive is that they did all this – they both physically and for the first time mentally (and how sweet is that?) dominated the Jaguars, imposed their will on them, broke their backs and made them humble - even without Louis Delmas, quite possibly the team’s most important defensive player and emotional leader, without DeAndre Levy, an important cog in that same defense, with a banged up secondary, with a certain besainted megastar wide receiver running around on one leg and with the knowledge that if they didn’t win then the season would descend into the realm of the Chaos Demons hanging over their heads.  The ingredients for this sort of triumph didn’t really seem to be there and yet the caked got baked and goddamn it’s delicious.

Of course, people will say that it was “only” the Jaguars and hey, they’re right.  I’m saying that too.  But here’s the thing – this is exactly – EXACTLY – how you beat a team like the Jaguars if you want to be a real, grown-up football team.  They dispatched the Jaguars coldly, professionally, physically breaking them not through some animal effort but through sheer force of will, through sheer personality.  They beat a shitty team because they were just better, because they were the team they always could be if they just grew up and took care of all the little things.  This, right here, was a goddamn playoff team.  Maybe they won’t make the actual playoffs, but the team that took the field today was a team that could not only make the playoffs, but actually WIN a game in the playoffs.  This was not some frantic roller-coaster ride or a gambler playing Russian Roulette while someone tried to shoot an apple off his head with an arrow.  This was a complete football team, in every sense of the word, a team that could throw on you, run on you, stop you cold on defense and not shoot itself in the foot with the cursed Failure Gun.  Sure, they gave up two garbage time touchdowns and allowed the Jaguars to move the football in the fourth quarter, after the game was already out of hand, but even with all that they still outgained Jacksonville 434-279 and held the ball for ten more minutes.  That’s called dominance, kids.  That isn’t luck, that isn’t a hyper-adrenalized comeback, that isn’t OH GOD MARTHA HIDE THE KIDS AND THE DOG AND FETCH ME MY NITRATES AND A BOTTLE OF ETHER, the sort of wild coked up donkey show we’ve come to expect, win or lose.  No.  It was simply cold, methodical dominance.  My heart-rate barely moved during that game.  I never paced my living room, never had to plead with the gods, old or new, never had to make up all new swear words because the ones we all know simply weren’t powerful enough, never drove my neighbors from their homes in fear.  As I said on Twitter after the game, quoting a wise man (I think it was Moses) - today was a good day, I didn’t even have to use my AK.  Indeed.  Instead, I just sat on my couch and calmly watched my football team, the Detroit Lions, just as calmly destroy the Jacksonville Jaguars.  And it’s about damn time.

Finding a Way

The best part about being a Lions fan is that each win feels like a genuine joy.  I mean, we know enough to appreciate each and every win, to savor it, because we are intimately familiar with the alternative (and by that I mean we served as the concubines to a parade of Failure Demons for more than half a century) and whenever the Lions win, however the Lions win, my heart smiles.  The worst part about being a Lions fan is, well . . . read that parenthetical again.

Right.  And that’s the thing.  For as good as each win feels, it’s hard to let my heart soar completely away into the stars because I know I’ll just wake up tomorrow, chained to the bed by one of those Failure Demons and . . . awful, awful. 

This season has been a colossal disappointment.  I don’t think I’m out of line saying that.  In order for the Lions to make the playoffs (and please, let’s not concoct scenarios in which the Lions missing the playoffs this year is somehow an acceptable fate) they would have to probably finish 7-2, which would put them at 10 wins and at least give them a shot at a Wild Card.  Given what I have seen this season, the odds of that happening are somewhere between slim and get the fuck outta here with that nonsense.  Which means that the Lions are almost definitely staying home for the playoffs this season which means that this season will be a failure. 

I know that some people will try to massage that truth, to find some twisted sense of accomplishment in the lesser, but that is an embarrassing attitude and I won’t have any of it.  I didn’t come this far with this team to start telling lies to my own heart just to try to obfuscate a reality that is too tough for me to face.  That would be cowardly.  And furthermore, that attitude is profoundly defeatist.  It accepts mediocrity not out of some fucked up sense of loyalty but out of the fear of The Other, and in this case The Other is Hope, or rather what happens when Hope gets trampled into dust which I guess is just a convoluted way of saying The Fear.  No, missing the playoffs is not good enough and goddammit anyone who says that it is, who says that we should somehow make peace with futility, who says that we should kneel before the Failure Demons and acknowledge their claim to our souls, is part of the problem, part of an attitude, a culture, that has kept us oppressed for way too damn long.

But I am getting carried away.  After all, the Lions beat the Seahawks, Matthew Stafford returned from his walkabout, and to bray about such dreadful, depressing things like an obnoxious jackass is unseemly.  I mean hey, it’s certainly possible that the Lions can get hot, go on an epic Fontesian run and sneak into the playoffs.  Except probably not, and even if they do, that is not the future we were promised, and it’s not the future we deserve.  I do not want to settle for that sort of schizophrenic ugly madness again.  I don’t want to ride a rollercoaster of ridiculousness into a first round playoff obliteration or 6-10 every other season.  I don’t want to have to constantly worry that that goddamn rollercoaster is going to run off its rickety tracks week after week, and I don’t want to have to scrape myself up from the pavement far below after it crashes, drag myself back into one of the carts and signal for the carnie to crank that fucker up and take me right back to the top again.  Sure, there might be some thrills along the way but goddammit people are dead, can’t you hear them screaming?

I’m sorry.  I can’t seem to shake this negative bent and I am sure that it is off-putting and I wouldn’t blame you if you called me a cocksucker or something and spit in my face.  Well, I would take it kind of personally and I might spit back in yours but that’s only because I am a strict Newtonian and believe in the supremacy of physics. 

Anyway, the problem is this: for as good as the Lions winning makes me feel, it is hard to let my heart truly soar because I am a battered woman and just because my man just came home with a diamond necklace doesn’t mean that all is forgotten, you know?  At some point I know he’s going to get violently drunk and then his belt is going to come off and . . . the horror, the horror . . . and then Matthew Stafford will throw an interception or Gosder Cherilus will try to fight a fan or something and these things should not be accepted, not in a civilized society. 

But they will be and we’ll hear all about how nothing needs to change and if we just believe in the talent – if we just love him hard enough – then everything will eventually get better.  But to hell with all that, I have my bruises and goddammit this is bullshit.  This is bullshit.

Okay, okay, okay . . . be happy, the Lions won.  I am.  The door to my heart remains propped open instead of being slammed shut and that’s a good thing.  It is.  Sure, at this point I resemble something akin to a zombie, just lurching forward, not entirely sure why, driven by some inane impulse that I can neither control nor explain, but that’s all I’ve got left as a fan right now and so I guess crazy zombie lurching it is.  Perhaps if I can nourish myself on the brains of the wicked  - you know, your common Vikings, Packers, Bears, etc. – then I can become a real live boy again and then maybe we can talk about Hope and Good Things and New Worlds and all that absurd bullshit I allowed myself to get carried away with last year.

I have explained myself and where I am coming from so many times now that I feel as if I have nothing left to say.  The only thing I can do is hope that you understand and respect that and follow me anyway as I zombie strut into the future, bleak and bombed-out as I fear it may be at this point.  I am not going to be a pleasant companion but that is only because I speak the language of Truths and refuse to make love to Delusion.

Today, the Truth is that the Lions won, and perhaps for the first time all season they deserved to win.  That is kind of an incredible statement to make, what, 8 weeks into the season – Jesus! – and yet here I am making it.  It was the best game the Lions played all year and it came against a quality opponent – or qualityish anyway, let’s not pretend the Seahawks are some juggernaut, although they have shut down opposing quarterbacks all season and Snake Stafford sliced them the fuck up so maybe I should be giving them a little more credit and also this digression and this run on sentence are getting out of hand so pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, he is drunk on his own weirdness again – and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t encouraged.  This was the team that I believed in, the team that I hitched my battered fan soul to and dared to try to ride into the sky.  They weren’t perfect but I never demanded perfection.  Matthew Stafford was The Truth, The Snake, The Fighter Pilot, The Franchise, the whatever the fuck else you want to say, for the first time this season, the defense played well enough (perhaps damning with faint praise, but fuck it we cannot afford to be delusional here), particularly the run defense, outside of one UGGGGGHHHHH NOOOOOOOO run in the first half anyway, and the team’s parade of boneheaded fuck-ups was kept to a tolerable minimum.  In short, it was good enough and good enough is, well, good enough for now. 

The trick, though, is to turn Good Enough into Good Enough Every Week and if they can do that, then, well then we’ll see, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves and start blowing each other and passing out candy canes and blowing candy canes just yet, okay?  This season has been reduced to a weekly fight to simply rise up, to struggle to our feet and dare to walk, not towards anything, not even away from anything anymore, but simply to move because stagnation is the enemy of life and I do not just want to lay here and let death and the Failure Demons take me again.  The Future is hazy and for right now it might as well not even exist.  We just have to try to get up, to walk, every week and hope that somehow, someway, we find our way back to the path that leads to the Promised Land.  Today we shuffled forward, moved again, lived in defiance of the world below, and next week we will try to do the same thing.  It is not what we wanted, not what we dared to dream, but it isn’t nothing either and in that simple Truth, I will try to find my way, just like the Lions did today.