Lions Lose The Mock Draft, Chaos And Stupidity Ensues

 The Lions Fan Ghetto on Friday Night

I’ve been letting stray thoughts sort of coalesce into something useful before I wrote this but everything is still sort of a seething mass of inanity and so if this just comes across like a formless rant, the wild eyed gibbering of some deranged street preacher with a head full of acid and a heart full of hate, well, then forgive me.  But goddamn, man, just . . . goddamn.

Anyway, I suppose I should start at the beginning.  Yes.  The beginning.  That’s always a good idea in situations like these.  Christ, I feel like I’m either giving a statement to the cops or addressing a support group for the criminally insane.  But that’s sort of how I feel at the moment, so I guess it’s okay.

Okay, right, the beginning.  Everything started fairly innocently enough.  I mean, I have a weird love/hate relationship with the draft.  Well, maybe it’s not so weird when you consider that there are a lot of people out there like me who understand where I’m coming from.  At least I hope so or we are doomed as a species.  I love the draft because it gives me a chance to see my team acquire fresh talent, new names, new faces, new stories, new . . . everything.  It is a time of great hope, of possibility and the grandeur of dreams in their innocent youth.  I also hate the draft because people are annoying and I hate them and I want to go stick my head in an oven.

Perhaps I should elaborate.  The thing is, is when the draft rolls around everyone and their drunk uncle thinks that he’s an expert.  Everyone has their little mock drafts, everyone thinks they know – note I said KNOW, not HAS A VAGUE IDEA – what their team HAS to do.  It’s become a terrible thing, rotten and stupid.  I know because I used to be sort of a mock draft junky myself – note I didn’t say a draft junky, I said a mock draft junky.  Big difference.  I used to pore through all the lists, see who was projected where and when and form Ideas and Thoughts and Beliefs and then Ideas and Thoughts and Beliefs turned into Convictions and Convictions turned into They Have To Do This And This And This Or Else Everyone Is An Idiot and then that turned into senseless hair pulling and wild gibbering because my team didn’t win the mock draft and goddammit, this shit is important you guys.

Except not really.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s back up a little bit.  Okay, so prior to the draft this year, I did a senseless thing and decided to livetweet the draft – yes, that’s actually a thing now, stupid as it sounds.  Naturally, this led to me getting completely out of control and getting thrown in Twitter jail – also, actually a thing (well, sort of anyway.)  Basically, I was given the equivalent of a live microphone – always a dangerous thing – and I went fucking wild, saying every goddamn thing that came to mind until Twitter sent some dudes in with white coats to take my mic away, slap a straitjacket on me and escort me from the building.  Somehow, this ended up with me doing the Twitter equivalent of riding around in a jeep a la Hard Harry in Pump up the Volume so the authoritahs couldn’t triangulate my position.  I continued covering the draft this way through most of the rest of the night, surrounded by only a few dedicated friends and followers.  Honestly, it was probably the most Armchair Linebacker way the whole night could have gone down.

So, anyway, the only reason I relate all that nonsense is to explain that things were already chaotic and entirely too stupid and the Lions hadn’t even made one goddamn pick yet.  In retrospect, it was a powerful omen for the rest of the weekend.

When the Lions did finally pick, miraculously everyone seemed pretty happy with it.  Building consensus amongst a fanbase is fucking impossible – as the rest of the weekend showed – and so we should all take the relatively sanguine way we collectively handled the Riley Reiff pick as a good sign.  Or maybe it’s a bad sign given that by the time the weekend was over we proved that we were incapable of the basic thought patterns which allowed our ancestors to move, knuckles scraping, from the trees to the savannas many moons ago.

But that is what my high school English teachers would call “foreshadowing” before they sank into their chairs at the end of the day and drowned the stark, naked horror of their reality in a flask of powerful spirits.  Anyway, the pick happened and we behaved like gentledudes and lady-gentledudes (gentleladydudes?  I’m getting confused by my own lexicon here.  Help me out.)  all shaking hands, smiling, patting each other on the back and saying shit like “Good show, old bean,” and “Let’s play cricket on the morrow before retiring to an evening of brandy, poetry and sexual repression.”  It was a civilized night – my shameful jailing notwithstanding – and it led to some high hopes for the rest of the weekend.  Of course there was some minor grumbling, some harrumphs about David DeCastro and some slight nail biting and flop-sweat about the Lions not taking a defensive player, but all in all Lions fans were remarkably well-behaved, almost like they – gasp! – dared to trust Martin Mayhew and the gang.

And then Ryan Broyles was picked on Friday night and all hell broke loose.  The gentlemen from the night before were suddenly beating each other to death with their croquet mallets, the ladies were wielding shotguns filled with hate and anarchy, dogs began howling and packs of raving lunatics began loping through the courtyard, hooting like feral apes, knuckles scraping, throwing their feces at anything and everything, the gentlemen dropped their now bloody croquet mallets and began dabbling in cannibalism, effigies of Martin Mayhew were hastily constructed and then burned by the naked and the damned and the whole world burned while the savages worshipped the fire and spoke in primitive grunts about the end times.

Somehow, I got caught up in all of this and much to everyone’s shock, tried to keep the peace.  It was a futile effort that left me battered and embittered and I spent much of the rest of the night naked, hiding in a cave, prepared to beat the savages to death with their own leg bones.  I think my role as The Voice of Reason actually shocked some people back into civility and rational thought.  I mean, if I was the one telling people to chill out and take a few deep breaths before getting wild then maybe, just maybe, shit had gotten a tad too out of hand.

It wasn’t even the disagreement or trepidation with the pick, it was the instant reversion to LOL JUST LIKE MILLEN THE LIONS WILL NEVER CHANGE AMIRITE shit that was so awe-inspiringly stupid and mind-meltingly maddening.  Let’s get that out of the way right fucking now, okay?  This is not about people not liking the pick.  I can talk to you guys.  Hell, I did talk to you guys.  There was disagreement and there was some sarcastic poop flinging done by both sides but in the end, we all remained relatively rational and sane people, all hiding in the same cave while the savages tore the rest of the world apart.

It’s those goddamn savages who ruined everything and to them I say this – fuck you.  Fuck you, fuck you, annnnnd fuck you.  These are the idiots who just wallow in their own misery and complain just to complain.  It was insane.  After the Lions picked Broyles, they went from criticizing the pick to inane vitriol about how the Lions draft strategy is terrible and about how Mayhew and the gang are worthless shitheads with no understanding of anything beyond the mechanics of spooning applesauce into their mongoloid heads.  Suddenly, Mayhew and Schwartz were drooling idiots who had to wear special helmets every time they tried to brave the outside world.  It was stupid and deranged and it left me wanting to roam the halls of MLIve with a shotgun and an ether rag.

I am not a man easily stunned.  I pride myself on my ability to see this shit coming and prepare accordingly.  But even I was shocked by the sheer level of hyperreactive insanity which took hold of Lions fans.  All facts were ignored.  All positive momentum obliterated.  To these ingrates, we were suddenly back in the dark days of 2008 and we were all wailing like idiots on the cracked floor of hell.  I guess I knew that these people existed – hell, I have made a habit of browbeating them and mocking them here so I definitely knew about them – but they existed as sort of a mutant subculture, easily ignored because they were just too stupid to worry about.  They could sit in their tiny little cells and bleat like idiots, gibbering about THE SAME OL’ LIONS HUR HUR HUR because I assumed most of us had gotten past that.  I mean, after all, 0-16 to 2-14 to 6-10 to 10-6 kinda speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

That’s the thing – the argument against these jackasses is so self-evident that there is almost no need to even make it.  Anyone insisting that the Lions are still the same ol’ Lions, no different than the Millen-era Lions, are clearly living in some bizarre fantasy land in which they get off on their own masochistic ravings, jerking off like lunatics to their own pain, whipping themselves because they have become so twisted and perverted by the years of pain and chaos that to them their own misery has become its own kind of twisted joy.  They live to bitch because, to them, that’s what being a fan means.  It is an outlet for their own stupid rage.  Rather than beating their wives and shotgunning their children to death in their own cribs, they sit at a keyboard and bitch about the Lions because that’s the only outlet for their misery.

Fuck them.  I’ve had enough of their bullshit, with their self-indulgent tripe.  These worshippers of The Fear are a fucking barnacle on our ship and we need to start scraping them off.  Again, this has nothing to do with being critical or wondering if the Lions should have done something else.  This has to do with the assholes who refuse to take one goddamn honest look at the situation and spend their time doing nothing but bitching and moaning and shitting all over anything and everything because they are stuck in a perpetual misery machine powered by their own bile, a picture of Matt Millen plastered in front of their eyes, eyes held open like in Clockwork Orange, while their brains turn to mush and their hearts to ash.  They will never be happy because happiness is antithetical to what they get out of their fandom.  Fuck them.

Every single one of those assholes will read this and gibber on about me being a Kool-Aid drinker or some other horseshit like that, conveniently forgetting that I am not exactly known as Mr. Sunshine myself.  Hell, prior to 0-16, I was the only dude sitting here telling everyone that we were headed for chaos and disaster while everyone else was gibbering on about the playoffs and about Rod Marinelli finally being the right man for the job.  I am not afraid to criticize.  Hell, I am not afraid to outright abuse.  I am the most vicious asshole this entire fanbase has so spare me the bullshit about me being some sort of hippie pacifist who thinks Love is the answer.

The funniest – and most ridiculous – part of it all is that after these assholes spent all of that second fateful day bitching and moaning and overturning cars and setting shit on fire because the Lions were ignoring defense in favor of –gasp! – another wide receiver, the Lions spent the rest of the draft picking nothing but defense, and  - surprise! – this then led to those same people turning around and bitching because the Lions were taking too many cornerbacks.  It was the most damning evidence possible of their fractured and idiotic view of the situation.  It proved inarguably that all they care about is their God-given right to bitch and moan.

You can’t argue with them.  There’s no point.  They will just twist and backtrack and split logic in half with their axes of lies and argue inane points that have no bearing on the original issue.  Arguing with them is a fool’s pursuit, a madman’s game and I’m fucking done with it.  I’m fucking done with them, the sub-mutant ingrates.  This is why I am not like the others, because the others are dumb and heinous and their mouth-breathing insipidity is an affront to all that is good and noble and decent.  They are the idiot peasants banging at the gate with torches and pitchforks, demanding blood, fed only with stupid rage and the fire of their own self-contempt, in need of a target, any target, to distract them from the fact that they are, in fact, utterly worthless and that their lives are meaningless slogs.  They are the cannon-fodder of the gods and I would pity them if they weren’t so goddamn contemptible.  Instead, I piss on them and I drink their milkshakes and . . . I have gotten entirely too out of hand here, haven’t I?

I would apologize but that is what this whole stupid lost weekend has driven us to.  It has made madmen and animals of us all.  The night is dark and full of terrors and so is being a fan of the Detroit Lions, and it’s not because of the actual Detroit Lions anymore but because of that idiot sect of their fanbase who worship hatred and despair and lick the wounds of a crippled god because happiness and hope are so beyond them that embracing madness is their only twisted road to salvation.  Sure, it’s a false salvation but people will cling to whatever bullshit gets them through the night.

As for the actual draft itself, well . . . I’m going to have to write an entirely separate post about that.  I’m sorry it has come to that, but, well, there were things a man needed to say and this man has said them.

I will elaborate on one thing, though, and it’s something I touched on at the beginning of this rambling manifesto.  The Mock Draft culture has finally reached the point where it is detrimental and just a goddamn headache to deal with.  I mentioned that I used to dabble in this bullshit myself before I got clean and started going to meetings for other mock draft junkies where we all detailed our embarrassing experiences and comforted each other over coffee and cigarettes.  You see, it’s all a bunch of bullshit.  Nobody knows a goddamn thing, including all the idiot “experts.”  Every year – every goddamn year – dudes who were supposed to be surefire second round picks fall to the seventh or don’t get picked at all.  My own personal epiphany came the year when Michigan safety Ernest Shazor was supposed to be a borderline first round pick.  Instead he wasn’t even drafted.  BUT . . . BUT THE MOCK DRAFTS SAID HE WAS A SECOND ROUNDER.  Yeah, and the mock drafts don’t know shit.

Again, this happens every fucking year and every year people bray like donkeys because their team doesn’t pick that year’s version of Ernest Shazor.  If a “surefire” second-round pick is still there in the 7^th, doesn’t it make more sense that the Mock Draft creators and connoisseurs fucked up rather than every single NFL team has suddenly developed an incurable case of space-madness? (Why space-madness?  Well, doesn’t it just seem worse than regular madness?)  I mean, it’s not just your team that’s passing him up.  It’s every other team too and I’m guessing not all of them are run by drooling idiots.  Sure, a few are but trust me, you don’t know better than the dudes who run the Patriots or the Steelers, even though you read paragraph long scouting reports on all the players and spent every night watching Youtube highlight videos (they’re called HIGHlight videos for a reason, you know?) instead of actually spending time with your wife and kids.  I’m sorry to tell you this, but just because you spend hours poring over highlights with shitty dubstep soundtracks while your wife sighs and pleasures herself with a vibrator because you are staring slackjawed at your computer screen for the 168^th night in a row, it doesn’t make you an expert on anything other than being a goddamn fool.

And that’s the biggest problem with draft day.  Leaving aside all the roving packs of idiots I discussed earlier, even rational people get tripped up by the draft because they fall in love with their mock drafts.  They judge everything based on what their mock draft says, not on what their team – and the dudes who run it – do.  It comes down to this – do you trust Martin Mayhew and Jim Schwartz?  If you do then everything else should be irrelevant.  I know that is overly simplistic, but the point is this:  if they determine that a specific player fits their system and, more importantly, their plan, and you trust them and their plan, and they go out and make it a point to grab that player, like they did with Broyles or with Tahir Whitehead later in the draft, then don’t you sorta have to give that precedence over your own fascination with your mock draft?  I mean, it’s not like they just shrugged and picked a guy.  They targeted these dudes and then went after them.  At that point, you have to ask yourself why you’re upset and if you still have a problem, then it’s with their philosophy and not with their decision making within that philosophy.

And that brings up the issue of trust.  If you do find yourself questioning their philosophy – and that’s okay, within reason anyway – just remind yourself that they took an 0-16 team, which I’ll remind you is basically worse than an expansion team – and took them to 10-6 and the playoffs within 3 years.  That’s fucking amazing and to me, that’s something that has earned my trust.  To me, questioning these dudes’ philosophy after what they have accomplished is fucking crazy.  What they have accomplished is damn near miraculous and it hasn’t been done with smoke and mirrors either.  This hasn’t been some random turn-around, the sort of phantom playoff run that, say, the Jacksonville Jaguars make every once in a while.  No, this has been a result of a sustained adherence to a larger plan, and that plan has been pretty self-evident – pass the ball on offense, and rush the passer on defense.  They have drafted to those strengths, consistently and with success over the last few years.  Anyone arguing that they haven’t is either a liar or completely insane. 

Their philosophy is forward thinking.  It understands the new reality of the NFL.  It’s all about who can throw the ball.  Anyone who doesn’t understand that just hasn’t been paying attention.  It’s an arms race and the Lions have made it a point to stockpile as many weapons as they can on both sides of the ball.  On offense, they are loading up on receivers, much like the Packers and Saints.  You don’t need two or three top receivers anymore.  You need four or five.  People arguing that Ryan Broyles is redundant and that he has nowhere to play are missing the point – the numbers have changed, the position breakdowns have changed.  You need a deep well, filled with receivers, if you’re going to keep up now.  Defensively, the Lions have put a premium on rushing the passer.  Their philosophy is that in order to stop a passing game – and create turnovers – you need to take away the quarterback’s ability to throw the ball.  If you can do this effectively, your secondary doesn’t necessarily need to be stocked with All-Pros.  Do the Lions need better cornerbacks?  Yeah, they do.  And they know that.  Hence, their drafting of three straight corners in the draft on day three.  I know that’s not good enough for some people since they want someone who can step in and start right now at cornerback but that dude wasn’t there.  I don’t care who you point to, when the Lions had their opportunity to draft, that dude wasn’t there. 

Everyone wants immediate starters when it comes to the draft, and that’s another issue that has just gotten in the way here.  When your team is a piece of shit, yes, that is what you want.  When you have a playoff team, no, you don’t want that because if you’re drafting dudes to start it means that you have to rely upon a rookie as a starter at a key position and let me tell you something, most rookies aren’t very good.  This is why the Lions never drafted anyone to replace Jeff Backus right away until this year.  It’s because whoever they drafted wasn’t going to be any better than what they already had.  Sure, they could have drafted a cornerback just to draft one, and that would have made some people happy, but that philosophy ends up with you reaching for players all the time and that shit never works out.  If you don’t believe me ask Jordan Dizon.  That’s the sort of shit that Matt Millen did – drafting and signing guys because they filled a perceived need, regardless of fit – and it’s fucking insane to see people arguing that’s what the Lions should do today.  Everyone hates Matt Millen for the shitshow he subjected us all to, but it’s become increasingly clear that a lot – and I do mean a lot – of Lions fans have no clue why he was so bad.  It’s maddening and comical to see them bitching at Mayhew and Schwartz and demanding that they do the exact same sort of shit that Millen did.  It’s fucking insane and I don’t even know what else to say.

This has been a lot longer than I anticipated.  That’s because this weekend from hell created a lot of shit to talk about.  The crazy thing is I haven’t even really talked about the dudes the Lions actually drafted.  In fact, I meant to roll the whole draft philosophy thing into another post in which I talked about the actual particulars of the Lions draft but I got carried away.  One thing led to another and now here I sit, almost 4,000 words later, my eyes feel like they’re fried, my fingertips are starting to get sore and I’m making typos all over the goddamn place.  So, I guess I’ll just leave you with this final thought – it’s time to grow up.  The self-indulgent wallowing in the misery of the past has to end.  Fuck Matt Millen and fuck your clinging to him like a life-raft, to your keeping of him in some sort of glass case that you can break open whenever you need an excuse for your own worship of The Fear.  This is not the same ol’ Lions and if you think a single second round draft pick is indicative of anything, you probably need to chill the fuck out.  I love you dudes and lady dudes, but goddamn.  Just . . . goddamn.

2001: A Spaced Out Lions Fan's Odyssey

I remember waking up on a friend’s couch, hungover, my mouth tasting like either a dirty ashtray or an asshole, take your pick, way back in the halcyon days of 2001 – yes, those space oddity days when I would occasionally look up at the sky and throw bones in the air and gibber on aimlessly to a robot named Hal – to the voice of my friend Scott, talking excitedly about the Lions first day of the NFL Draft. He liked the selection of Jeff Backus but he was really, really excited about Dominic Raiola, the Lions second round pick. As a fellow Lions fan, I agreed that sounded swell and then I probably either passed out or threw up a geyser of what was either blood or the previous night’s meatball sub (I wasn’t always a denier of animal flesh . . .) on the patio outside. Who can say for sure? There was a beautiful girl named Summer who was worried that it was blood and apparently her loving concern for my greater health triggered an argument with her and her boyfriend, who was one of my best friends – and whose couch I had violated the night before, as I had many nights before, which happens when you’re young and irresponsible but just responsible enough (or hell, just lazy enough) to know that driving home isn’t a good idea – although I didn’t know about it and had to be informed later when she apologized to me for the fight that I hadn’t heard because it never managed to penetrate my drunken haze. In the end, it was probably just the meatball sub but I appreciated her concern and I thanked her, assured her that everything was fine and went about my day and my life because I was bulletproof, I was immortal and the idea of puking up blood was actually kind of cool in that immature, macabre, fucked up way, because life was without consequence, just an orgy of the senses, filled with a sort of indefinable fuzzy manic hope which never coalesced into anything real, anything of substance or weight or direction, but resonated with a particular sort of wild energy which propelled me – and all of my reprobate friends – from one day to the next.

That was the last day before these beautiful worry free Mayhew days that I really, honestly trusted what was happening with the Lions. That’s because everything in their life was new. They had a new leader, a man with a Super Bowl pedigree whose promise seemed to reflect that of the world stretched out before us, and although his name is now only spoken with a sneer and a mouth full of bile and spit, back then it was easy to believe because hey, why not? Perhaps that is an artifact of my own place in the world back then. I don’t know. The reality is that my own football fandom was in a different place then. I was in college and my brain was elsewhere. Sure, sure, I still watched all the games, knew all the news, lived it, loved it, blah blah blah, but I’m not sure if I had any room in my head back then for any real, heartfelt opinions. It was simply easier to believe. Sure, Barry had walked out the door and there was still a pervasive sense that Things Were Not Good, but there was Hope too and I think people forget that. Matt Millen was not “Matt Millen” yet and everything that came to stand for and for a few brief precious heartbeats, I was able to smile and say “Cool, man,” and not only say it but think it and believe it when my aforementioned friend Scott – who at the time was probably slightly more of a football junky than I was, at least when it came to draft news and the like (I was more interested in pursuing the lifestyle of an actual junky – minus the crippling heroin addiction anyway. I wasn’t that far gone for fuck’s sake.) – came into the room, woke me from my wild haze and blathered excitedly about the future of the Lions offensive line. It was easy to hope because hope is what you do when Hope is all you have.

It’s weird, in retrospect, because that first Millen draft was his best – both Backus and Raiola are still playing for the Lions, for better or worse, depending on your viewpoint, your mood and your general level of sobriety at any given time – and yet no one really looks at it like a successful draft, more a relic of those bygone days when Hope actually seemed possible and Backus and Raiola were future Pro Bowlers and not just comfortable fixtures and human piñatas we smacked with baseball bats because they had the temerity to exist and to continue existing throughout that Decade of Infinite Pain. We have never celebrated them because, in our minds and our hearts, they have never been worthy of celebration. What does it say about what we went through as fans that while we eviscerate the legendary failures of yore – Mike Williams, Charles Rogers, Charles Rogers’ hollowed collarbone where he stored his weed, Roy Williams, Joey fuckin’ Blue Skies – and burn them in effigy before the altar of our despair, we also deride the few who actually made it, those souls who cooked in the fire for a decade and somehow lived to tell about it? We bitch about Backus and Raiola in the same vein as Harrington and his gang of fools. To us, they are all part of the same nuclear wasteland of the soul, that same era that can be summed up in one ugly, charged word: Millen.

That last paragraph is actually kind of a digression from what I meant to talk about. The truth is that I am just kind of writing and seeing what comes out, with only a loose idea of what I actually want to talk about, but sometimes those things happen and if I wander in my journey, forgive me. Hopefully, I am compelling enough to humor. Anyway, I suppose my larger point is that Hope can be a weird and ephemeral thing and history can twist it in weird ways into something ugly and perverse. But I think I was reminded of my earlier story about my friend and the couch and blood geysers, etc. because it was the last time I felt this loose, this carefree about the whole Draft. In a weird way, Hope can make you let go a little bit. The worse things got in those terrible Millen years, the more I – and I suspect many of you – clung to the notion that every little thing was important, that it was necessary to obsess over every little detail because who even knew what in the fuck could go wrong next? And more than that, it was necessary to look to the Draft, to the future, for a sign – any sign – that we could begin to hope again. Somewhere in there, there had to be a savior, and if we looked long enough and hard enough and argued amongst each other enough, somehow we would find it. It was all kind of absurd, and yet it was a coping mechanism, a necessary evil that let us somehow survive those strange and all too terrible times.

But now, we find ourselves believing again, and for the first time probably ever in my lifetime as a fan, we don’t just believe in Hope – in that ephemeral concept which exists only as a possibility, as potential and an idea but little more – but in Reality, in the realization of those wild hopes and silly dreams. Our Lions are on the verge of something special and we all know it, we all recognize it. And with that belief comes confidence, comes that ability to just let go a little bit and let things play out without obsessing over every little detail. We don’t have to argue about this shit because we know that Mayhew, Schwartz and company have got this. We trust them, and that’s the important thing, the thing that separates the Hope of the past from the Belief of today – Trust. They have it in a way that Millen never did, in a way that Millen never even came close to earning, in a way that frankly, no figure in the Lions organization has ever had or earned, at least in most of our lifetimes.

It’s hard to know how to proceed in this new environment. It kinda feels like we should be doing more, like we should be arguing or writing more or obsessing about dumb shit, but whenever we try – or whenever I try anyway; forgive my egotism in speaking for the collective – it just feels kind of forced, doesn’t it? It’s more natural right now to just want to sit back and see how this all unfolds. I’m conscious of all the names being bandied about, all the Mock Drafts and all the various scenarios and I’m aware that there are still people out there breathing into a paper bag and gibbering wide eyed about the need for a franchise left tackle or a brand new, shiny cornerback but it’s all just so much noise right now, noise which I have no real desire or need to penetrate. That’s because I believe, because I trust, and I know that in the end, when it’s all sorted out, that my dudes with the offices in Ford Field will do the right thing. Because that’s what Trust means, that’s what Belief means. Will I still have questions and thoughts and opinions (oh so many goddamn opinions) once it all shakes out? Of course I will. But lying beneath all of those questions and thoughts and opinions will be a core of Trust and Belief, a stabilizing force that will shape and guide everything else. That’s definitely different, which is kind of a ludicrously hilarious understatement given the horrors of the past and the explosions in the sky that have occurred on this here blog courtesy of yours truly, and yet it’s the place we find ourselves in today. It’s different, but I think it’s interesting and compelling in its own way.

I once lived like a savage Viking riding on the edge of a storm, and as long as I stayed out ahead of that storm, Hope was all that mattered. It was wild and stupid and carefree and without shape or texture, just a visceral force propelling me forward. It nodded and laughed and hi-fived because the Lions drafted dudes like Backus and Raiola and it assumed the future would eventually take shape the way that it needed to because that was just what happens, that was manifest destiny. And then the storm caught up and everything was chaos, man. Everything blew apart. Every assumption, every hope, every fantasy, every stupid and childish belief, born of equal parts innocence and arrogance, disintegrated in the heart of that storm and all that was left was either to let that storm blow me apart with it or to fight back, to rebel, to scream and spit into that storm’s vile heart in a desperate attempt to hang onto something, anything, even the tiniest particle still floating around from that childish Viking stormride.

Now, I’m a little bit older, a little bit wiser and I usually wake up in my own bed now and not on some filthy couch in someone else’s place. My heart is still wild and on fire, but it is cooled in the ice bath of experience. The storm came and it blew everything apart and then Martin Mayhew and Jim Schwartz found us floating in the wreckage, clinging to debris, on the verge of drowning, and they pulled us into their boat and they have sailed us to dry land. This is calmer, quieter and not nearly as frenetic as either the Viking stormride or the storm itself, but in its own way it is more self-assured. It is Hope made real, the gathering of all those different parts and particles that were blown apart, all those wild and discordant thoughts and ideals and beliefs, into something new, something whole and harmonic, something solid, and most importantly, for the first time, something real. This is where our journey has taken us, where time and experience and heartache and frenzied manic joy and sorrow have brought us and now I’m just ready to watch and to smile and to know that we not only survived, but we have thrived and no matter what happens during the Draft weekend (or week, or month or however fucking long ESPN decides it’s going to be from now on) when it’s over, deep in my heart, I’ll look at my friend Scott and I’ll say “Cool, man.” And this time, I probably won’t throw up.

Johnny Culbreath

For years, Lions fans have bitched about the state of the offensive line, and, well . . . they’re not wrong. It has been a big problem for way too long. But at the same time, they’re not exactly right either. I know, I know, that sounds confusing and kind of stupid, but I think that it’s true. It comes down to a patience issue more than anything else, I think. People want the quick fix. They want some 9 foot tall behemoth with a dragon’s head and the body of a grizzly bear to descend from the sky and eat Jeff Backus before settling in as our starting left tackle for the next thousand years. And so, every year, when the draft comes and goes and the Lions fail to take an offensive lineman in the first round, those people throw up their hands, gnash their teeth and start muttering about breaking out the torches and pitchforks. It happens every damn year.

I suppose the real crux of the issue is the human lightning rod named Jeff Backus. Now, I’ve written a bit about Jeff Backus here – feel free to search around the site for some of this delightful gibberish – and so I won’t beat the holy hell out of the argument yet again. But here’s the thing about Backus which is important to understand if we’re going to move forward here: he’s both massively underrated and massively overrated. This weird discrepancy is the natural byproduct of arguing in these strange and terrible times, especially when that argument has been going on for a solid decade. Both sides become entrenched and become obsessed more with proving their point than with actually being smart and reasonable and honest about the whole damn thing.

To Backus’ detractors – a group which includes probably the majority of Lions fans - he’s the devil himself, a miserable shit demon made of goo and failure who conspired with the Failure Demons and Julius Peppers to murder Matthew Stafford’s poor shoulder. He is the living symbol of the offensive line, for good or bad, and most people think he should be slung up on a cross and pelted with rocks in order to pay for the offensive line’s many terrible sins.

To Backus’ supporters – a group which includes scouts and his own coaches – Backus is the paragon of excellence, the lone glorious soldier doing all he can to win an unwinnable war, his heart and soul a shiny exemplar for all true warriors the world over. He’s been called the best offensive tackle in the NFC North by this group. He’s been touted as a Pro Bowl caliber player and the stalwart of the Lions offensive line.

Both of these sides are full of shit.

Now, I’m not a fan of the one sentence paragraph, but in this case I think it is justified. I want everybody reading this to internalize that sentence before we move on. Jeff Backus is a B- player who’s managed to hold on for a solid decade at left tackle because the Lions can’t find anybody better to do the job. He’s not the messiah but he’s not the devil either. He’s just a guy who’s a little bit better at his job than the average player would be. That’s not saying much, admittedly, but what people fail to realize is that the number of people who could do that job better – who could do it exceptionally well – is astonishingly small. Elite left tackles are like diamonds wrapped in platinum and blowjobs. If you find one, you should hoard it like Gollum did that goddamn ring.

That’s the real issue here. It’s not whether Jeff Backus is any good or not. He’s not the best but he’s not the worst either and the sooner people come to terms with that on both sides, the better off as fans we’ll all be. No, the real issue is that finding a guy who is obviously better than Backus is at best challenging and at worst almost damn near impossible. There are a lot of tackles drafted in the first round. Every year. And people freak out when the Lions don’t draft one of them, but the thing is, is that the reason why there are so many tackles drafted early is because people league wide have become victims to the same mass hysteria which drives the “Let’s tie Jeff Backus to a boulder and then roll him into the ocean” mindset. Nobody is happy with their starting left tackle, which only reinforces my point that those dudes are really, really hard to find.

That’s the lesson that everyone should learn – that elite left tackles are rare beasts like unicorns or happy Lions fans – and that reaching for one just to reach for one is a fool’s errand, which will inevitably only lead to more heartbreak and folly. But people don’t learn that lesson. Instead they go the other way. In their desperation they grab any tall bum off the street, slap some pads on him and tell him he has to stop Julius Peppers from legally murdering their quarterback. It’s the whole “Well, this sucks, so the alternative has to be better” trap. And the reason it’s such a terrible trap is because when it comes to offensive tackles, no, the alternative isn’t better, it’s usually just more of the same, and in a lot of cases, it’s actually worse.

That’s why so many left tackle prospects are drafted in the first round, because people are desperate to replace their average or shitty left tackle, not because so many of them are actually worthy of being picked that high. Now I’m not saying that you should never pick an offensive tackle in the first round. That would be dumb. (And by the way, that’s the same sort of polarized I MUST PROVE MY POINT AND SO I WILL TAKE THE MOST EXTREME POSITION AVALAIBLE kind of arguing and thinking that I mentioned earlier, which ends up just being only so much dumb noise in a wilderness already filled with the braying idiocy of the dumb and endlessly foolish.) If a guy who you know will actually be better at left tackle is there, then by all means, draft him. If Orlando Pace or Tony Boselli or some dude like that is out there, it would be dumb not to take him. But if that guy isn’t there, don’t turn to the nearest tall, fat dude who managed to play college ball and try to make him that guy. That’s all I’m saying and that’s the trap that too many fans and too many teams fall into.

It’s with all that as the backdrop that year after year Lions fans howl and shoot rifles at the moon and write their Congressman because the Lions passed up yet another possible replacement for the Devil Backus. It’s ridiculous. I mean, all you have to do is take a look at the Lions own history of drafting offensive tackles. Since drafting Lomas Brown in 1985, which worked out pretty damn well, the Lions have drafted 5 offensive tackles in either the first or second round. The list: Juan Roque in 1997, Aaron Gibson in 1999, Stockar McDougle in 2000, Backus in 2001 and Gosder Cherilus in 2008.

Take a moment and let that sink in. Okay, done? Good.

Jeff Backus is the best player on that list. Taking an offensive tackle just to take an offensive tackle because that’s what you’re supposed to do is dumb and those names bear that shit out better than anything I could say. Sure, sure, some of that speaks to the Lions own ineptitude when it comes to scouting and development, but let’s face it, all those players were going to be drafted by somebody early in all of those drafts. It’s not like the Lions were the only team out there willing to take a shot on Aaron Gibson. The names on that list typify the average first round tackle. Most of the time, you’re going to end up with Stockar McDougle instead of Orlando Pace or even Lomas Brown.

Which finally – finally! – brings us to Johnny Culbreath, the Lions 7^th round pick in this year’s Draft. It would seem to me that the Lions coaches and scouts understand all too well everything I just wrote. They are smart guys, guys who pay attention, who understand better than most that you have to draft the right guy at the right time, and that most of the time the tackles who are drafted in the first round are the wrong guys at the wrong time.

Look, it would be great to have a cyborg at left tackle, someone who can show up at camp and shotput Jeff Backus off the field, but if you can’t find the guy who can do that, why bother drafting someone in the first round who’s just going to give you the exact same thing? Or worse, someone who is just going to waste away on the bench because he can’t beat out Backus? That’s pretty much the definition of a wasted pick. And the worst part wouldn’t even be that the dude failed to make the improbable impact fans dream about but it would be that the Lions would have picked him and ignored some other potential impact player. Why draft a dude who’s not really going to improve your team in any meaningful way when you can draft a guy who can immediately improve your team?

I know, I know, I still haven’t talked about Culbreath, but all this horseshit is really about him so hang on. The point is that Jim Schwartz knows that he can’t get a dude who can just step onto the field at left tackle and be demonstrably better than Jeff Backus right away. He just can’t. And he has other needs all over the field, and there are dudes available in every draft who can step in and be demonstrably better right away than the dudes who are playing their positions and so he drafts one of them instead.

But he’s not ignoring the tackle position either, no matter how much the hysterics rant and rave about that being the case. His strategy – since he knows that he can’t find a surefire starting left tackle in the first round – is to look for a guy with a lot of tools late in the draft, a raw player who the coaches can develop into a starter and a force two or three years down the road, so that when the time comes when Backus has to be replaced, the Lions will have someone ready and able to do it. It’s kind of like this: Backus is like an old car, reliable, not too flashy and you know eventually you’re going to need to replace it. But you know that given a variety of factors – your finances, family size, insert whatever you want here – you know that any car that you could buy right now would just give you pretty much the exact same thing. So why even bother to buy a new car that would just be the same as your old car? Why not spend the money on, say, a kickass home theater system or a fine prostitute or maybe even your own private army of highly trained howler monkeys? Or a fine prostitute howler monkey? You know, one that’s had its teeth removed and . . . too far? I’ve gone too far again, haven’t I? The point is, is that you can find other, better uses for that money than just buying another used car which is going to give you the same performance – and the same problems – as the one you already have. But . . . there’s something else you can do too. If you have the know-how – which in this case would be analogous to good coaching – why not pick up an old Mustang or (insert whatever car you want here. I know people get all riled up about cars and get weird and particular about this shit, but I’m not really a car guy, so just imagine your ideal car and go with it, okay?) and then spend the next couple of years fixing that baby up until finally, when your car is ready to go you not only have a new car waiting in the wings but a badass car you built yourself, a car that you can be proud of and show off to all your friends? Fuck buying a used Subaru. Build yourself a goddamn Mustang.

And that’s the Jim Schwartz/Martin Mayhew style: they want to build Mustangs, not buy Subarus. (Nothing against Subaru, I just picked a name out of thin air. Leave me alone, car zealots!) All that is just another way of explaining and restating the Philosophy of Greatness which I have made the central point of all of these draft breakdowns.

It’s obvious that this is their style just by looking at their draft history: in 2009, they drafted Lydon Murtha in the 7^th round. In 2010, they drafted Jason Fox in the 4^th. This year, they drafted Culbreath in the 7^th. Not one of those players was drafted because anyone thought they would kick Backus in the ass and replace him right away. No. They were all drafted with an eye towards the future, because Schwartz and Mayhew looked at them and saw potential Mustangs. Murtha ended up getting caught in a numbers crunch and was poached off of the practice squad by the Miami Dolphins. He started four games for them last season in place of Vernon Carey and looks like he’ll at least be a serviceable NFL player. Fox is still with the Lions and is being groomed for better things. And Culbreath? Well, Culbreath gives the Lions another Mustang to work on in case Fox falls apart or never runs well in the first place.

The Lions know they have issues on the offensive line. The chicken littles running around screeching and bitching and asking anyone who will listen “Why won’t they draaaaaft a taaaaaackle?” need to understand this. I know it’s hard to have faith in the Lions decision makers after every terrible thing that has gone on in the last half century of unnumbered tears. I get it. Believe me, I get it. Just go back to my first post on this blog and start reading forward if you don’t believe me. I understand. It’s hard to accept that things are different and that there is real plan in place, and that the people in charge of this whole thing aren’t blithering idiots but rational, smart dudes who understand both the strengths and weaknesses of this roster. They know that the Lions need to build their offensive line, but they’re trying to do it the smart way, not the fast, sloppy way that most fans seem to want. People want instant gratification and at least in this case, that shit just isn’t possible.

Culbreath isn’t a perfect player. There’s a reason why he didn’t get drafted until the 7^th round. But his biggest flaw seems to be that he’s a raw athlete who isn’t anywhere near being ready to play every week in the NFL. That may frustrate some people, but that’s a correctable problem, you know? If you’re going to have a flaw, that’s the one that you want in a 7^th rounder.

Everything else seems to be there for Culbreath. He’s got good size – 6’5”, 320 lbs plus – he’s strong and he seems to be a pretty good athlete. He originally was headed for Florida St. out of high school but his shitty grades sent him instead to South Carolina St. where he was a four year starter, a conference player of the year and an FCS All-American. So it’s not like the dude is completely unknown. He was dominant at a lower level of football, a level which he was able to dominate through sheer size and athletic ability. He was the proverbial man amongst boys, and in that way he kinda reminds me of Sammie Hill.

If the Lions coaches can develop Culbreath anywhere near as well as they’ve developed Hill, then there’s a good chance that one day Culbreath will be the Mustang the Lions coaches hope he can be. Of course, that comparison isn’t completely fair. After all, while Hill was even rawer than Culbreath is now, and played at even a lower level in college, he also seemed like he had a higher ceiling. Like I said, Culbreath is limited. There are concerns about his feet and his punch coming off the line, but those concerns seem like ones that could be corrected with good coaching and I’m glad that we have a group of people in charge who are confident in their abilities to provide that good coaching. I’ll say again what I said about Doug Hogue: if this were Millen and Marinelli, then I would think this was a lousy pick, a dude who couldn’t possibly pan out because the idea of player development as part of a central, unifying plan was beyond absurd, like the idea of monkey nuclear physicists or, well, Matt Millen as anything other than a giant pile of failure. But with Mayhew and Schwartz, I’m willing to believe what they believe: that they have the ability to build a Mustang out of spare parts and one kick-ass body. (I swear I didn’t mean that to sound as homoerotic/disturbing as it came across. Also, I apologize for using the phrases “homoerotic” and “came across” in the same sentence. Shit, I’ll be right back. I need to get all this out of my system. Maybe I’ll take a break and write some Willie Young erotica. You know you want it! No? Okay, fine.)

And that’s the whole point here, I think – that we need to trust the dudes in charge and believe what they believe. I know that’s a huge leap of faith for some of you to take and I can respect that, but from what I’ve seen from these guys, they get it. They understand how to coach guys up and bring out the best in them. They believe in a Philosophy of Greatness and so do I. I see a pattern in the way that they work and the way that they draft. I see it. And there’s no way I can really explain that without devolving into weird psychotic gibberish and wild grunts and dumb howls that would just leave you shaking your head in disdain. I can see patterns, man, and I know that sounds like the fractured ravings of a loon on mushrooms or with a head full of acid, but goddammit, I can see them. I can. And I like what I see. I see how Johnny Culbreath fits into the bigger plan, how he factors into this new Lions universe. I hope I’ve managed to explain that at least a little bit in this post. I know I keep rambling on about the Philosophy of Greatness and I keep sliding away from the point to explain things that don’t seem like they need to be explained, but they do. They do. Because to me, that’s the whole point here. This Lions universe of ours is complex and bewildering and someone needs to be here to try to make sense of it all and for whatever absurd reason, I have taken that upon myself. I don’t want to just explain Doug Hogue or Johnny Culbreath’s strengths or weaknesses in a vacuum. I wanted to explain them in the context of that larger universe and I hope that I have – at least a little bit.

I’ve begun to ramble (begun???) but what I really wanted to say is that thanks to Jim Schwartz and Martin Mayhew, I can finally make some sort of sense out of the Lions universe that isn’t just a screaming blue light of pain, misery and confusion. The noise of the past has died down a little bit and now I am just watching as the new pieces of this universe slide into place and it makes me smile, like a retarded little kid watching balloons float overhead it makes me smile, because in this universe Johnny Culbreath isn’t just some nobody the Lions picked simply because they had to pick somebody. He’s a part of that universe and I see how he fits – or at least how he’s supposed to fit if everything goes the way it’s supposed to – and that makes me glad.

Of course, I might be drifting too far towards the optimistic, but so what? I recognize that Culbreath may never pan out. I recognize that he might just end up being a practice squad player who gets cut when nobody’s paying attention. I get all that. But then again, maybe he will pan out. Maybe he will one day be that Mustang that we show off and brag about to all of our friends, and really, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? That it’s possible, that even a 7^th round pick like Johnny Culbreath is worth getting excited about because there’s a pattern to it all, this universe is finally starting to make sense and even the smallest details, the smallest picks, even a 7^th rounder like Johnny Culbreath, could be the ones that one day take us to the playoffs and beyond, to an endless horizon where the only limits are our own imaginations and confetti falling from the sky as Roger Goodell hands Old Man Ford the Lombardi Trophy. This may be the dream of the perpetually foolish, the delusions of a broken and shattered and ruined mind, savaged by the unknowable realities of 0-16, but fuck it, what a dream.

Doug Hogue

Doug's the dude standing over the dying guy.

The first time I typed the words Philosophy of Greatness – a phrase I am already threatening to beat into the ground – it was right after the Lions drafted Doug Hogue. I fired that phrase off in the following tweet:

armchairlb: My take on the Lions draft strategy: They're drafting for greatness, not for competence.

Okay, fine, I guess I didn’t exactly type the words “Philosophy of Greatness”, but that’s where the concept sort of took root in my head, and then it grew from there. I applied this philosophy to the Lions decision to draft Nick Fairley, Titus Young and Mikel LeShoure, but like I said, where it really began was with Doug Hogue.

You see, on the surface, there seemed to be a lot more NFL ready players than Doug Hogue available when the Lions drafted him, a lot more finished products, dudes ready to just hit the field running, who didn’t need to be coached up or told to do anything other than what they already knew how to do. They probably weren’t going to bomb out or end up running the wrong way down the field with their pants around their ankles or anything like that but they probably were never going to be anything more than what they already were, which were dudes still available to be drafted in the late rounds of the NFL Draft.

That’s kind of the point. They had already reached their ceiling, their upside, and that ceiling was a fringe NFL player. Okay, good for them. But that’s not exactly someone you get excited about, you know? Instead, what you want out of a pick like that is someone who has room to grow, to get better, maybe someone from a tiny school like Sammie Hill or someone who’s just learning the position like Doug Hogue, someone who can one day make the experts look back and say “Shit, I guess he should have been a first rounder.” Yes, in my world, Mel Kiper starts off all his evaluations on TV with “Shit, I guess . . .” He and Todd McShay then do shots after every 3 picks so by the end of the first round they are pretty deep in the bag, and then by the end of day two they are incoherent and vomiting on Chris Berman (Like that would be the first time Berman’s been vomited on by a plastic robot with fake hair and a bad spray tan. Come on.), and by the end of day three they are being carted off in an ambulance with a priest and an unsuspecting hobo and his sweet, sweet liver. By the time they got to the 7^th round, Kiper would be slurring shit like “You know what, Chris? Yaknowwhat? You ain’t shit, motherfucker. You ain’t shit. I ain’t gonna tell you a damn thing - a damn thing – ‘bout this guy, ‘cause Chris, lemme tell you somethin’ Chris . . . you listenin’ Chris? Good, listen, ‘cause I’m only gonna say this shit once: I don’t give a fuck, Chris. Oh shit, lookit yer hair, motherfucker, it’s all whispy an’ shit. TJ, look at this motherfucker’s hair! How can you stand this cocksucker, TJ? All sweaty an’ gross. Nah, nah, Teej, lissen, man, I respect you ‘cause you been there. You been there. But this motherfucker right here? Thinks he’s a comed . . . comed . . . a funny guy an’ shit. But he ain’t. He ain’t! An’ we all know this shit, Teej. You tol’ me. Yeah, you did! Don’t gimme that look, TJ, you know what you said. You know . . . hey! Todd, get over here motherfucker, they gonna make a new pick. A new pick! Oh shit!!! I was not expectin’ that dude. Todd, you stupid motherfucker, you ain’t ever takin’ my job ‘cause I ain’t goin’ nowhere, but you a good kid, Todd, you a good kid, not like this fat motherfucker here. Berman. Pfffffffffffffffffff. Awwww, shit, someone get me a bucket.”

I’m sorry that things had to get derailed like that, but that was some serious business that needed attending to. Back to the main point – ideally, you want guys at that position with room to grow, as players and, hell, even physically if you get lucky. It’s all about having faith in your own ability as a coach to find that perfect lump of coal that you can squeeze and shape into a flawless diamond. Fuck your chipped stones, let me make my own gems. That’s the mindset that the Lions coaches seem to have and I commend them for it.

There is a tendency to swoon over name players when Draft time comes along. Most fans would rather see their team draft someone like, say, Greg Jones, the Michigan St. linebacker, because they know who he is. But they know who he is because he’s already a finished product. What you already see is what you’re gonna get and that’s that. And while there’s a sense of safety in that – a reassuring devotion to competence which, let’s face it, is something we’ve lacked for a long, long time – there isn’t much upward mobility in such a sentiment. It’s a philosophy that strives for 9-7 and a first round playoff knockout. Could someone like Greg Jones help a decent team? Yes. Probably. Could someone like Greg Jones be a key piece on a championship team in the NFL? No. Probably not. And that’s the whole point. If you can’t eventually say yes to the latter question when you’re evaluating a player in the Draft than why even bother?

The Draft is your opportunity to acquire the raw material with which to build your killing machine. The spare parts that keep it running can be found in free agency or plucked off the waiver wire. But the raw material, the fuel, the heart of that killing machine, comes from the Draft, from the guys you pick out of the crowd and mold into what you need them to be. But that takes confidence, that takes guts and it takes a leap of faith - that you believe in your own fans’ willingness to cut you some slack and give you the benefit of the doubt because you are their head football coach and you know what you’re doing. Rod Marinelli never could have gotten away with that shit because he was Rod Marinelli and deep down we all knew he was a meathead and kind of an oaf, and even worse, that he was hysterically over his head. Even if you were one of those kindly souls who believed in Marinelli for a while, I think that deep down you had to know that he was swimming with sharks in the deepest part of the ocean, only he wasn’t so much swimming as furiously doggy paddling with water wings on his arms. Jim Schwartz, on the other hand, knows exactly what he’s doing. I firmly believe that – and while five years from now someone else might be writing about me being a poor, naïve soul, I think that I’m right about Schwartz and if there’s one thing I’ve learned to trust in my many years wandering in the fan wilderness with the rest of you, it’s to always trust my instincts. I can spot a stink cloud from a mile away. I can pick out the Failure Demons in disguise. These many brutal years have given me that unfortunate gift. And when I look at Jim Schwartz, I see the real deal. I see a man who can lead us out of this valley of darkness and into the Promised Land and so all I can do is trust him and try to understand his ways.

That may sound like senseless cheerleading, and in a sense it is. Cheerleading anyway. But it’s not senseless. It’s very much sensitive. The whole reason I’m cheerleading is because my senses tell me to, because they tell me that this is the right guy at the right time. At some point, you just have to take a leap, otherwise what’s the point? I don’t wanna be one of those dudes who’s sitting back and saying “Yeah, well we’ll see . . .” and scoffing and mocking his fellow fans and missing all the fun. I don’t want to look back after it’s all over and like a drunken Mel Kiper say to myself “Well shit, I should have known.” I trust myself and so I’m trusting Jim Schwartz. You can point out all the reasons why this is illogical but frankly, my dear, I don’t give a fuck. (It’s 2011, Rhett Butler, “damn” doesn’t quite carry the same weight as it did during your Puritan days.)

I don’t mean to turn this into a Rah Rah post or a defensive gibberfest about why I feel the way I do. I really don’t. But I felt that all of that was necessary in order to fully get across where we are as fans, and why Jim Schwartz does things the way he does. He does things like draft Nick Fairley or Doug Hogue because whether he knows it or not, he has a mandate to do so. He has been given a mandate to reach for greatness instead of for settling for competence. Every time Lions fans shake his hand and buy season tickets and high five and write breathless love notes to him on the internet, that mandate is strengthened. We’re all in this together and we’re all in this to the glorious end. We don’t want to settle for Purgatory, for that wandering plain between heaven and hell that so many fan souls occupy. No. We want paradise. We have known the fires of hell and now we will accept nothing less than the milk and honey of the Promised Land. And the only way to do that is to reach for it, to draft for greatness instead of competence.

Which finally – finally! – brings us to Doug Hogue. How does he fit in with this Philosophy of Greatness? Well, I’ve referenced him several times already – which makes sense given that this post is, you know, about him and everything – and so by now you should have kind of a sense of how he fits in with the overall plan. He’s raw – really raw – maybe not so much as, say, Sammie Hill but raw nonetheless.

Hill, if you’ll remember, played at some tiny, tiny Southern School that sounded like it was a made up school from The Cosby Show or A Different World and while I can’t say for sure whether this means that Sammie Hill ended up banging Denise Huxtable in the broom closet of Professor Cornell West’s office underneath a blacklight poster of Martin Luther King, what I can say for sure was that this meant that Sammie Hill was playing football against dudes who were probably worse than the average high school player in a city like Dallas or Orlando or, yes, Detroit. His technique was nonexistent, his knowledge of advanced schemes as mystifying to him as advanced theoretical physics, and yet he ended up on the field a lot as a rookie and, honestly? He wasn’t that bad. He certainly showed enough to convince everybody that he could one day be a real force and although his playing time was tempered a bit by the arrival of Corey Williams and The Lord of the House of Spears, our man Suh, whenever he was on the field there was still a sense of calm, and that everything would be alright because Sammie Hill was already a pretty damn good football player.

I bring all that up to show how ridiculously fast Sammie Hill adapted to the pro game. Now, whether this was because he’s simply a really, really quick learner or because the coaches are that good is up for debate. It’s probably a little bit of both. But honestly, this just lends more credence to my belief that these coaches are for real and that their philosophy is not only a good one, but one which will lead us to those places which we’ve previously only visited in our wildest dreams.

And the point – finally! – is that Doug Hogue is not nearly as raw as Sammie Hill. He played linebacker for Syracuse, a BCS team in a BCS league, and he managed to end up as an All Big East First Team selection his senior year. So, he’s already shown himself to be a capable linebacker against elite competition (yeah, yeah, the Big East isn’t exactly the SEC but it’s still a BCS league, so just go with me on this . . .), and he has good size, outstanding speed and is a big hitter. So . . . why is he someone who needs to be molded?

Because Doug Hogue has only played linebacker for a couple of years. Prior to that, he played running back for Syracuse. So what we have here is a player who is highly gifted physically who might not know what the hell he is doing. So what does that mean?

Well, to me, it’s kind of perfect. We have a player here whose only real limitations are mental, whose areas of concern can all be addressed simply by good coaching. He has the physical tools necessary to excel at the NFL level, now it’s just a matter of molding them and honing them and turning them in the direction desired by the coaches. Again, if Rod Marinelli were here, I’d expect Doug Hogue to flounder through training camp, maybe last a couple of weeks into the season and then get cut after Bonzaing his way down the field on a kickoff and accidentally tackling Roary, the Lions perpetually stoned mascot. (Honestly, just seek out a picture of Roary if you don’t believe me and look at his eyes. So fucking high.) Marinelli wouldn’t have a fucking clue what to do with him. But Jim Schwartz and Gunther Cunningham do. A dude like this is right in their wheelhouse. They’ve already shown their ability to mold raw clay with Sammie Hill, and now they have a chance to do it with Doug Hogue.

But again, Hogue isn’t nearly as raw as Hill. Yeah, he hasn’t been playing the position very long, which has caused some problems when it comes to play recognition and the instinct which comes from sheer muscle memory, but he adapted well enough to be a first team all-league performer in a BCS conference. So obviously, the dude understands at least a little bit what he’s doing.

But even if he didn’t get it at all, the raw clay parts of him are exciting enough on their own. The dude is 6’3” and 235 lbs and he runs anywhere from a 4.5 to a 4.6 forty yard dash, which for a linebacker is – and I’m going to use a purely technical term here – fucking fast. He’s still got that running back athleticism but he’s got a linebacker build, and also an apparent desire to smash people as a human missile. That will help him - and us – immediately on special teams. Hell, Doug Hogue was damn near made to be a special teams animal. And from all accounts, Hogue has even more room to grow. He packed on an additional ten pounds in between the end of his senior season and the Draft without affecting his speed. His high school coach basically said that Hogue had never even seen a weight before he got to college. This guy is almost the living definition of raw clay.

Of course, that has its downsides too. He’s still not very strong at the point of attack, probably thanks to the lack of weight training and he struggles to get off of blocks. Ideally, Hogue would be able to play behind a dominant defensive line that occupies blockers and lets the linebackers run free and hit with evil intentions. And, well . . . have you seen the dudes the Lions are going to be lining up along the defensive line? If there was ever a perfect situation for Doug Hogue to maximize his potential while minimizing his weaknesses, it’s this one.

But even those weaknesses should smooth out over time. He’ll get more time with the weights and as he adjusts to the speed of the pro game, his instincts will only get better and better. Add in the fact that he probably has some more good weight to put on his frame and the final result has the potential to be absolutely frightening. There are no limits here other than what the coaches can teach him and what Hogue is willing to work for. That is the epitome of the Philosophy of Greatness. Chances are that Hogue will never be anything more than an ace special teams player and hey, that’s pretty damn good too, you know? But there is also a decent chance that he could develop into a true impact linebacker, a player with the size, speed and skill to punish opposing ball carriers, and the athleticism to cover tight ends and the speed to even cover the occasional slot receiver in space.

I’m not saying that Doug Hogue is the second coming of Dick Butkus or even the second coming of Ernie Sims, and I’m not saying that he’ll ever reach the full breadth of his potential, but he could and that’s the point. That is drafting for greatness, not for competence and that’s what the Philosophy of Greatness is really all about. So welcome, Doug Hogue, the future is a million miles away, but with players like you, we finally have a chance to at least imagine what that future could look like and that’s why I’m smiling and why I finally – finally! – believe in the Detroit Lions. It’s about damn time.