What Could Be

I’m not really sure what to say about this game. Either the Lions win and it will be trumpeted as a sign of progress, dudes and lady dudes falling all over themselves to insist that the time is Now and glory unto Ford, etc., or they will lose and much garment rending will be had, dudes and lady dudes will reenact the falling man from 9/11 (it’s the newest dance craze!) and Matt Patricia will be ridden oinking through the riotous streets. These are the perpetual manic depressive swings of a Lions fan, and that will be that.

The thing is, though, is that I’ve kind of come around to approaching this whole thing on a macro scale, not really concerned with what happens this season – it would be nice if the Lions won, obviously – but more concerned with the idea that things are headed in the right direction, “right” in this case meaning something, a feeling really, unfamiliar to us at any time over the last 60 years. I don’t want signs that the Lions will be competitive or be able to sneak into the playoffs every three years or whatever, I want signs that they won’t be a gang of soul fuckups and spiritual losers. I want signs that they will eventually be a Real Live Boy, not the stillborn fetus tossed in the dumpster that we’re so used to mourning.

This sort of feeling is tough to explain to outsiders. In a sense it feels like a retreat, a step back from expectation. It is a concession that the Lions are Not Good. But you can either take that and throw a fit and vomit all over sports talk radio and demand mass executions, or you can take that step back and try to see a bigger picture, and honestly, it feels refreshing when you allow yourself to think like that. It takes some of the hatred out of it, the endless sense of betrayal that lies at the heart of being a Lions fan. It is very dark business, and the only way to survive it is to take that step back sometimes and try to see What Could Be instead of what Is.

The last time I really let myself do that was in the early days of the Jim Schwartz era, which was as much a reaction to 0-16 as it was anything having to do with him. I mean, where else do you go after 0-16? You really don’t have a choice but to invest in Hope, in the long game of What Could Be because What Is in the wake of 0-16 was, well, 0-16.

There came a point late in the 2010 season when you could see it. You could see What Could Be, and it was tantalizing. In the end, it was heartbreaking, of course, because that is what it means to be a Lions fan, but that heartbreak was only made possible by the tantalization of What Could Be, of the hazy idea that everything would be okay because Ndamukong Suh was a monster and Matthew Stafford was still in his infancy, and you could see it, you could feel it, you knew that while maybe it wasn’t Happening, it was About To Happen, and there is perhaps no headier feeling in sports, no perfect glow of Faith and Excitement than that moment because all your dreams are alive, untainted by reality. About To Happen is that perfect moment just before orgasm.

And late in that 2010 season, you could feel it turning from About To Happen to Happening as the Lions won 4 straight to close out the season. 2011 started with 5 straight wins and my god it was Happening, and then of course the Lions went 5-6 the rest of the way and never recovered and that 9-0 stretch between 2010 and 2011 just felt like a bittersweet mirage, False Hope, and that has gone on to taint the last 7 years or so the same way 0-16 tainted everything. False Hope is dangerous, because when it’s taken away and you realize that it’s Not Happening, you become bitter and miserable and start calling up sports talk radio shows and farting into the phone before drowning yourself in the toilet.

But while it was happening, we didn’t know that it was False Hope. We just thought it was the real thing, that we were living in that moment between About To Happen and Happening and in that moment is perfect bliss, the eternal serenity of the orgasm. I’m reminded of that for two reasons: that is what I’m looking for as this season continues, not the Happening itself, but the About To Happen, the sense that soon – well, soonish anyway – everything will be different, that it will be good, and that we will be happy. It is probably a fool’s hope, and in a sense it is more dangerous than wanting instant gratification because I don’t just want a halfway decent team right now, I want it All, and I know that All is a process. That is a weird dichotomy. That retreat from the Now seems inherently pessimistic, and yet it is actually the act of an almost insane optimist, a sort of willing soul masochism devoted to the possibility of the Magic of the All, in an almost desperate Hope.

But second, and more relevant to this week’s game, is that one of the first wins in that 9-0 stretch happened against the Dolphins in Miami, which is exactly where the Lions are playing this week. It was somehow even better that Matthew Stafford was out for that game – he was out for that entire 4-0 finish to the season – because the Lions were winning with Shaun Hill of all people, and that just made it seem all the more Real, that if they could do that with Shaun Hill, just wait until what they could do with a healthy Stafford. The 5-0 start the next season seemed to confirm all of that, which just made what happened after feel all the more cruel, but still, again, we were lost in the rapture of About To Happen.

Ndamukong Suh was sacking dudes in that game in Miami, Shaun Hill was doing his best, and Jim Schwartz seemed to be creating something different, a culture of almost obscene Swagger, that just felt so seductively good after the humiliating cuckish misery of 0-16 and the years that preceded it. Of course, that obscene swagger ended up being exactly what ruined the Schwartz era and Ndamukong Suh specifically for us, because that is how things go for us.

Again, though, that just makes me think of what’s going on right now. Matt Patricia seems determined to do something radically different than Schwartz. Instead of obscene swagger, he seems like he wants to build a culture of cold, merciless professionalism, of icy businessmen calmly assassinating their rivals before moving on to the next victim like 53 Anton Chigurhs. It is vastly different, but it is in that difference that the Hope truly lies. That is why I am at the very least intrigued and willing to take a step back and devote myself to looking for About To Happen. I’ve seen enough signs of it this season to think it is at least possible, and to be honest, that’s really all I need to give my heart away again. I’m a goddamn idiot, but at least I’m not a coward.

So . . . yeah, I want to believe in this game against the Dolphins as sort of a funhouse mirror version of that 2010 game against the Dolphins. Like that game, I want this one to feel like progress, more evidence that we are about to be seduced by the About To Happen, even if the way we get there is completely different than the way we got there in 2010. There will be no rampaging Suhs in this game, but that’s kind of the point.

The good thing is that I think we could see it. The Dolphins are 4-2, but they’ve been outscored on the season, and their actual expected record based on that total score is somewhere closer to 2-4. Their quarterback, Ryan Tannehill, is out again, and even though Brock Osweiler beat the fucking Bears last week, that’s the Bears and they have their own dysfunctional cross to bear. I’m not taking whatever happens against them as any sort of sign for the future.

Basically, the Dolphins are a completely mediocre team, and that’s exactly the sort of team you want to see your dudes show something against. Of course, this has been a weird season, one in which it seems like the Lions are destined to beat all the teams that they’ve never been able to beat while getting humiliated by the mediocrities of the world, so who knows, man? That in itself is a weird departure from the norm for us. I don’t remember the Lions ever beating teams like the Patriots and the Packers like this, especially within a couple of weeks of each other. At least not recently. The last time I remember something like that happening is actually in the mid-90s when they beat the 49ers and the Cowboys in prime time. Perhaps not coincidentally, that’s the last time being a Lions fan felt fun in any way.

That’s what beating teams like the Patriots is. It’s fun. And it’s fun because it buys your team so much instant credibility, it buys them space in which to get to that place you want them to get without feeling like the walls are constantly closing in. I mean, if they can beat the Patriots, and beat the shit out of them, then isn’t anything possible?

That is the magic of the About To Happen, and while I don’t feel like we’re there yet, I can at least imagine its possibility, which is sort of the same feeling, just on a smaller, more fragile scale. Beating the Dolphins will feel like another satisfying data point. Losing to the Dolphins will feel like a setback, but thanks to those wins over the Patriots and the Packers, and more specifically, the Patriots win, it won’t feel devastating. It will just remove us a bit from About To Happen, which sucks, but hey, these things are a process, and the lesson we should all learn from that 9-0 mirage of 2010/2011, is that instant gratification is often a hideous lie. I’d rather let this team develop slowly, the right way, bit by bit, piece by piece, moment by moment, than set my hair on fire and run screaming naked through the world like those Suh teams.

Sure, that can feel more fun in the moment, but fuck the moment, I want Forever. I want something Lasting. I want it All.

The Lions can beat the Dolphins. The Lions might beat the Dolphins. And for now, that’s good enough for me. That possibility at least keeps me interested, at least keeps me moving forward. There’s nothing worse than looking at the schedule and sneering because you know your team is going to lose. I felt that way earlier in the season, which makes me all the more ridiculous right now. I recognize this. But I don’t care. I am ridiculous. And I find myself willing to invest in . . . in something. I don’t know exactly what it is yet, but that’s part of the fun of it. That’s what makes it exciting again for me. That’s what makes it Hope.

Predicted Final Score: Lions 24 Dolphins 17

Lost In My Own Delusions

Lieutenant Mark Sanchez, ladies and gentlemen!

I’m excited for this week’s game against the Jets. It’s another test, another mile marker on the long, terrible road out of hell, and we’ll know a lot about whether or not the Lions have made the jump to Ludicrous Speed that we all hope, deep in our wounded hearts, that they have. Coming into the season we all hoped for progress and we have gotten it. It’s been evident, especially over the last month, when the team has gone 2-2, with the two losses being one possession types on the road in Green Bay and New York. The Lions have really only been slapped around in one game, and if that game against the Vikings was played today, I’d pick the Lions to win it. That may sound like irrational hubris, the stupid nattering of a fool drunk on Hope and Delusion, but damn it all, I actually believe that crazy shit.

The good thing – hell, the damn near miraculous thing – is that I think a lot of people would probably agree with me. And okay, fine, that says more about how hilariously the Vikings have collapsed this season than it does about the Lions, but fuck it, perhaps that is the point. There are teams out there now more fucked up than the Lions. There are fans of other teams without hope, bitter at the world, screaming at the sun and barking at the moon, because they know their team is a broken mess, irreparable, and for once, those fans are not us.

We have come a long away in just a few weeks. This is the way that progress often happens – not gradually, not linearly, but with a sonic boom, a parabolic rise which builds on itself exponentially until one day you finally stop to breathe, check to make sure all your vital bits are still there, and realize that you are a million miles off the ground, thundering across the sky with the stars and the sun while everyone else stares at you in wide eyed wonder from their own mortal place under the sky that they cannot touch.

We are not there yet. To be honest, I don’t know where we are. Our team is 2-5 (well, 3-4, but you know . . .) and most people seem to think that 6-10 is a likely destination, which . . . uh, I hate to break it to you, but if we go 6-10 the only way we’re soaring across the sky is if we are snatched up by some giant hellbird who just wants to fuck with us before dropping us onto the rocks far below. That’s where we’re at right now, and hey, that’s okay if that’s all there is to this. That’s reason to smile given where we’ve been. Even a dirty shack with a hole in the floor to shit in feels like paradise to the man who has spent half a century getting cornholed in hell by Failure Demons and Hitler.

But there is a small piece in all of us that wants to believe that our parabolic journey has just begun, that things will move so quickly now that none of us will even be able to understand what is happening until it’s finally over and our Lions are beating the shit out of everyone. It wants to believe in something miraculous, something strange and wonderful and improbable, because we deserve a miracle, we deserve magic. That is why the game against the Jets sold out so quickly this week. Last week, the fans couldn’t be bothered to show up. It wasn’t because they didn’t care, it was because they didn’t believe. Now, they do.

People don’t get excited when they think the end of the road is 6-10. They just don’t. They don’t start to believe and to gibber on about magic and miracles unless they’ve embraced some part of themselves that is eternally hopeful, some part of their soul that has never been touched by the Failure Demon, some tiny part that they keep so close to their heart that they never let anyone know it’s there. That’s what you’re seeing right now with Lions fans. For the first time, they believe and for the first time they are opening up their hearts and revealing the thunder and the joy within because, deep down, they – no, fuck that, we – really believe that it’s different now.

Of course, this is very likely a hilarious prelude to tragedy, and I will likely look back at this and wonder how and when I was possessed by the spirit of Walt Disney on lithium, but that’s part of the fun of all this, you know? I’m just sort of reveling in it all, reveling in the sheer possibility of it all. Yeah, I know it’s dumb. I know it’s irresponsible and I know that I will very, very likely end up disappointed when the parabola immediately flattens out and I realize that the long road out of hell still has a million miles to go. I know all this and yet, I don’t care. And I don’t care because for the first time in a long, long time – maybe ever – I feel like anything is possible right now.

When I was a kid, there were moments that were probably filled with more possibility – I’m thinking specifically of the Lions skull fucking of the Cowboys in the playoffs in ’91 – but I was just an idiot kid back then and didn’t really know any better. I didn’t understand the magnitude of the moment. And hey, as great as that moment was, we still didn’t have a franchise quarterback and we were coached by a dude who looked like he was going to be found dead in an alley after mainlining a plate full of spaghetti. This is the first time that it’s felt like all the key pieces are in place – Franchise QB? Check. Hyper-talented playmaking receiver? Check. Game-breaking running back? Check. Monster defender who will gladly rip the opposing quarterback’s head off? Check. Head coach who is smarter than everyone else and who actually makes our team better? Check.

Sure there are holes to be filled, but the core is there. The heart of the team that will leave us smiling and gibbering like idiots when we jump to Ludicrous Speed is there. Now it’s only a matter of time. It will click in and when it does . . . well, just read all of the idiot gibberish I have been spewing lately.

That’s why this game against the Jets has us so excited. It’s not that we think we’re going to win. It’s that we could win. And if we do . . . magic. I have no idea where we really are. I have no idea how to get to the end of this long, exhausting road. It could be a million miles away or it could just be over the next hill. I don’t know. But for the first time, I feel like it could be over the next hill, and that just makes me want to march harder and faster. When I think of it, my whole body sort of involuntarily shudders, and my mind races and it allows itself to imagine the future, and for the first time it can make out specific details. It can see Ndamukong Suh celebrating after a sack and it can see Matthew Stafford running off the field looking like some sort of big dicked cowboy fighter pilot and it can see St. Calvin jumping up and grabbing a touchdown pass while the helpless defensive back just slumps his shoulders and trudges off the field. It can see all this and it can connect with the memories of watching all of these things having happened already. Because that’s the thing. We’ve seen all of those things. We know what they look like. We know what they feel like. We know the future because we have seen it, we have felt it and we have lived it.

It’s just a matter of consistency at this point, and yeah, I have gotten completely carried away, but I don’t really care. At some point, you just have to wrap yourself in the flag of your country and sing with your brothers and sisters even if you know it’s kind of corny, even if other parts of you are telling you that there are still problems. Because pride is a motherfucker. Pride is a beautiful and a terrible thing. It will rip you apart and leave you looking like a damn fool but sometimes, it will leave you smiling and dancing in the streets. Right now, I am filled with idiot pride, I am wrapped in the flag of the Detroit Lions and I am singing drinking songs with my friends and even though there may be a comet heading straight for Earth, we don’t know that. All we know is that anything and everything feels like it’s possible and that alone feels like some sort of cosmic victory after all we’ve been through. And that’s enough for me.

But can we actually beat the Jets? Well . . . yes. And that’s the great thing. Right now, I think we can beat almost anybody. Will we beat the Jets? Well . . . probably not. That’s just the reality of the situation. It’s one thing to be capable of winning every time you take the field, no matter who it’s against. It’s another thing entirely to actually go out and do it. There are a lot of teams in the NFL who are capable of beating anyone they face. That’s all we’ve accomplished so far – we’ve managed to pull ourselves up to the level of just about every other team. The truly good teams – the Patriots, the Colts, the Steelers, etc. – all go out and actually win those games. The teams like us win sometimes, but sometimes they lose and at the end of the season they sit home and watch one of those aforementioned teams play in the Super Bowl.

This is a big test because right now the Jets kind of feel like they could be one of those Super Teams. They certainly have the hype. They have a defense that is hyped up as the greatest thing since the ’85 Bears, they have some famous wide receivers, they have a quarterback who is being groomed to one day own the city of New York, they have a boisterous jackass of a head coach who is beloved by the media because he will say any stupid shit that comes to mind. They were on HBO. They are the It Team, exactly the sort of team we’re expected to just roll over for. In the past, we have just rolled over for dudes like this, tightly shut our eyes and tried to find our happy place while they reamed the shit out of us. And people will continue to expect this until one day we get the butcher knife and cut that son of a bitch’s dick off.

I’m sorry, that all got weird and ugly, but fuck it, that is what I do. The point is, is that we’re never going to be where we want to be until we rise up and stomp one of these damn fool teams. We’ve already shown that we can beat flawed teams – the teams that are basically just like us – and hey, that’s great. That’s progress. And we have shown that we can at least hang in there with teams who are better than us. But we haven’t beaten an elite team yet. We haven’t left a Super Bowl contender standing stunned on the field wondering what the fuck just happened while we dance around and celebrate yet.

The good news is that I don’t think the Jets are nearly as good as they want you to believe. Their defense hasn’t honestly been that good this season. Darrelle Revis somehow went from underrated to overrated within the span of one contract squabble, Braylon Edwards still drops too many passes, Santonio Holmes is still rusty after coming back from a suspension for being a degenerate, Rex Ryan is more talk than action and oh yeah, Mark Sanchez, their golden boy quarterback? He suuuuuuuuuuccks.

Fuck Mark Sanchez. While everybody is busy fellating him, he’s busy riding the coattails of the Jets defense. His completion percentage this season is 53.0. For perspective purposes, among quarterbacks with 100 or more pass attempts this season, that is the second worst in the league next to only Bruce fucking Gradkowski. Derek Anderson has a better completion percentage than Sanchez. Matt Moore has a better completion percentage than Sanchez. Ryan Fitzpatrick . . . okay, you get the point. That is fucking atrocious. What a goddamn fraud. That motherfucker is being fitted with his Joe Namath cock ring and being held up as the breakout star of his draft class. And that, right there, is why he can kindly go straight to hell. Because we happen to have a quarterback by the name of Matthew Stafford from that same draft class who doesn’t get anywhere near the love that Mark Sanchez gets. While everyone was busy lovingly caressing the holy balls of Sanchez, they were shit talking Stafford for his interceptions last season. And yet, Sanchez’s numbers were a gigantic pile of shit. If you offered me a chance to take Sanchez straight up in exchange for Stafford I would chase you with a whip made from my garden hose, piranha teeth and hatred. I would shoot you in the back with a cannon and then shit in the giant cavity of death that used to be your chest. If Matthew Stafford played for the New York Jets, he would be getting his dick sucked on live TV right now. I mean it. You could change the channel and there would be Matty with a smile on his face and his pants off while a gaggle of fame whore blondes fought over the right to blow him for all the world to see. If Mark Sanchez played for the Lions right now, fans would be tossing batteries at him, Dominic Raiola would be challenging people to fights and the media would be shitting all over him as just another Joey Harrington. So yeah, I want the whole world to be able to see my man Stafford shine while Sanchez shits the bed. I want there to be no doubt. I want Jets fans to curse every deity known to man for their misfortune. I want them to know that our man is better.

I want to watch Ndamukong Suh eviscerate Mark Sanchez and then run into the endzone holding the man’s internal organs and then I want to watch him spike Sanchez’s heart while Rex Ryan falls to his knees and pleads for mercy. I want to watch Alphonso Smith intercept Sanchez and then do The Carlton on the Jets bench. I want to see Darrelle Revis suffer a massive panic attack and have to be stretchered out with a stick in his mouth so he doesn’t bite his own tongue off after St. Calvin abuses him over and over and over again. I want to see the Jets, in all their arrogance, try to cover him one on one with Revis. I want them to do it. I want them to come out and think they are just going to roll over the Lions because, ha ha ha, Same Ol’ Lions amirite? I want Rex Ryan to have a big fat smirk on his face and I want Jim Schwartz to expose him as the dumb hillbilly he is. I want blood and I want the future and I want Ludicrous Speed and I want the pelt of the New York Jets on our wall and I want the whole world to believe in possibility and I want HBO to film it all and I want Roger Goodell to give us medals like at the end of Star Wars and I want this to be the start of a decade of utter conquest and destruction, a decade which sees us pay everyone back for a lifetime of hell. I want to win and I want to win so, so badly.

Will we? Like I said, probably not. The Jets are a good team, even if they aren’t a great team, and . . . you know what, fuck it. Mark Sanchez can kiss my ass. Lions win and the whole world can sit in slackjawed confusion and Chris Berman can do his Lions??? routine all he wants and I can wrap myself in the flag of the Detroit Lions and we can all get drunk and make such a scene – Such. A. Scene. – and five years from now, we’ll stop to take a deep breath and we’ll look back and we’ll know that this is where it started. The Detroit Lions are here, and I am the herald of their doom. We will sack your city and we will enslave your children. We will crucify your quarterbacks and we will eat the dead. I am going to ride this fucker until he throws me. The road might go on for another million miles, but right now, I’m willing to believe that its end is just over the next hill and damn it, I am going to run, run, run . . .

FIVE NO DOUBT TERRIBLE PREDICTIONS

1. Matthew Stafford will be surprisingly effective against the Jets pass defense, throwing for 275 yards on 28 of 40 passing with 3 touchdowns and 1 interception.

2. Jahvid Best, on the other hand, will be completely shut down on the ground against the Jets, rushing for only 27 yards on 12 carries. He will catch 7 passes for 75 yards however.

3. Calvin Johnson will catch 7 passes for 130 yards and 2 touchdowns and Darrell Revis will break down at midfield and have to be taken out of the stadium on a stretcher with a stick in his mouth.

4. Mark Sanchez will complete 12 of 27 passes for 135 yards and 1 touchdown to go with 2 interceptions. He’ll be sacked 4 times and after the game he will be publicly bitchslapped by a disgusted Joe Namath, who will demand that Sanchez hand in his penis as punishment for being a pretender to his great throne.

5. I will be committed shortly after completing this post.

PREDICTED FINAL SCORE: LIONS 24, JETS 21. YEAH I SAID IT.

Hope and Madness in the Preseason

Awake, noble beast.

Preseason games are almost always mostly worthless. I say that from the perspective of the fan. For the coaches and the players themselves, of course the games are valuable. They give the team a chance to see how certain guys perform in a game situation and allow the starters to knock off some rust. Still, guys get hurt - guys always get hurt - and you would think that the coaches and players would be overjoyed if they could shrink the preseason by a couple of games. I mean, really, the coaches get a pretty good sense of who they want on the team and who they want to have escorted out of the building by security just by watching them practice and scrimmage day after day. That's their job, you know? By the time the dudes who are truly fighting for roster spots get into the game, the other team usually has their third stringers out too and the whole thing becomes pretty pointless. I mean, who gives a fuck how your undrafted free agent safety does against the other team's third string quarterback and a receiver who won a contest to play for his favorite team for a day?

To the average fan, this shit is damn near intolerable. By the time the game ends, it's some sub-UFL bullshit, just a bunch of random dudes wandering around the field trying desperately to do anything to impress the middle aged man roaming the sidelines screaming at people, like street walkers auditioning for some savage pimp. And while there may be some train wreck entertainment potential to all that, for the most part it's boring as hell. No one gives a shit about the score (Remember, the Lions went 4-0 in the preseason once, which got everyone all excited for a surely glorious season, a season that turned out to be . . . 0-16. NEVER AGAIN.) Everyone just keeps looking at the clock wondering when the fucking thing will be over.

But, of course, we are not the average fan. We are superfans, idiots and nerds and obsessive compulsives who nitpick every little thing, tearing our hair and beating our breasts, gnashing our teeth and speaking in tongues when we argue about who the 53rd man on the roster should be or whether or not the retarded farmboy discovered by the coaches baling hay and wrestling cows deserves to be on the Practice Squad or not. We scream and we fight and we bitch and we moan about every tiny stupid thing and therefore we convince ourselves that the image of said retarded farmboy laying a monster hit on the ditch digger playing 5th string quarterback for a week before he gets cut and goes back to his real life is somehow meaningful. It's absurd.

Look, I don't mean to utterly demean the preseason. It is exciting - for the first few minutes anyway. Yes. The first quarter is worthwhile. The first quarter is that time when the starters mostly go up against the other starters. It's the only time during the preseason that actually seems like real, genuine football. We don't have to trick ourselves into caring. We don't have to tell ourselves things like "Well, I'm kinda interested in seeing how that retarded farm boy handles himself if he gets chop blocked by that homeless guy the other team signed to practice at right tackle." For a few minutes at least, it's our stars against your stars, and for the first time in months, we have football.

And that's where we were on Saturday night against the Steelers. Well, sorta anyway. You see, I actually missed the first few minutes of the game. Oh, I was there, watching, but instead of the game, I got five minutes of a MASH episode instead. Indeed. It would seem that the local nickel and dime station responsible for airing the Lions preseason games had some technical difficulties. Now, I was expecting some problems. After all, preseason game coverage is notoriously substandard, a ridiculous affair with production values that even the members of a junior high AV Club would scoff at and announcers who seem like they were pulled out of the line at a local soup kitchen before the game and told that if they just yammered on for a few hours they would get an extra bag of crackers and a bottle of Thunderbird and maybe even a cot for the night. But I wasn't expecting for them to be so shitty that they would be unable to even broadcast the start of the game.

I mean, shit, what was the problem? Were they really so inept that they didn't even know how a broadcast works? I mean, what the fuck was going on? Who was in the production truck? Ernie Sims' monkey? Was that scandalous little dude in the truck just mashing buttons and throwing his poop at people? Is that what happened? If it is, you can tell us. We'd understand. Hell, I'll be delighted if it turns out that the little fella is still around, part of the family. After all, everyone knows that Old Man Ford believes in loyalty. I could see him ordering Tom Lewand to give Monkey Sims a job with the organization.

Okay, okay, this is starting to spin out of control and I apologize. Anyway, the production was so bad that there wasn't even a delay when it came time to start the game. There was no black screen or anything. An episode of MASH just started up, almost like it was scheduled to, like they knew they were going to fuck up. They are so lousy and beaten that they are more prepared to fail properly than they are to succeed. They can't broadcast a game, but damn it all, they can get a fucking episode of MASH out with the best of them.

There is a joke to be made here about that being the appropriate production team for a franchise like the Lions, but I am above such nonsense and so I won't make that joke. Well, I suppose I sort of just did, so fuck that I guess. (Also, Goddamn, how was MASH ever a hit show? It was like watching a shitty sitcom without the laugh track. Just bizarre. I mean, you'd have guys making jokes and then pausing where the laugh track should go, only there was nothing. Just awkward silence. To be honest, I thought I remembered MASH having a laugh track, but . . . oh fuck this.)

Okay, I'm just starting to ramble now. (Starting!?) Anyway, the idiots in production finally managed to get the game moving across the airwaves and the first thing I saw was the Lions starting with the ball inside of their own five yard line. Well, that's just great. Apparently, there was a fumble or something or a Steeler shit his pants or a fan ran onto the field naked and began accosting the refs or Ben Roethlisberger managed to wriggle out of his Roger Goodell approved chastity belt and ran amok in the stands, wiggling his dick at anything with breasts, which unfortunately culminated with him in the upper deck, pantsless, masturbating in front of a fat longhaul trucker named Sal who was at least a B-Cup. Look, I didn't see what happened and so I am forced to use my imagination, which as you all know is a very, very dangerous thing. If you don't want me to make up wild scenarios that end with Big Ben attempting to fuck an old fat man then just show me the damn game, alright?

As for the game itself, once I was actually able to watch, I came away with an odd feeling for a Lions fan: hope. It's strange. Even in that season when the Lions went 4-0 in the preseason I didn't feel any hope at all. You can go back to my first posts on this blog and you will see that I was predicting utter disaster before the first game of that miserable season. And yet, coming off of two seasons where my favorite team's combined record is 2-30, I watch them play and I feel hope.

Perhaps I have been beaten and wrecked so badly, tortured by the Failure Demon so heinously, that I no longer have any grip on reality. This is a distinct possibility. I'm man enough to admit that. And yet, I don't know, in that first quarter against the Steelers I felt like I was watching something unfamiliar, something different than I've seen in the last decade of pain. I was watching a real live football team, my football team, and they actually looked . . . good?

Yes. Good. I said it. And I don't mean that in a relative way either. I don't mean that they looked good when compared to how shitty they normally look. Hell, the bronze medal winning football team from the Special Olympics would look good compared to the shitbirds who have called themselves the Detroit Lions over the last ten years. (Do they play football in the Special Olympics? Because if they do, then I would watch that shit. So would you. Don't lie. I know, it's horrible, but you know it's true. Look deep within yourselves and tell me that it's not.)

No, I mean they actually looked good when compared to other NFL teams. They did. Stop laughing and just listen to me, okay? It was amazing. It was a revelation to be honest with you. So this is what a good team looks like? That thought ran through my head during that first quarter.

And why not? After all, Matthew Stafford looked cool, calm and confident as he shredded the Steelers defense. Sure, he had one interception but that was one of those freak ones that should have been caught but was tipped by Jahvid Best right into the arms of a waiting defender. Other than that, he just dropped back and hit his receivers at will. It was a glimpse of true talent, a window into the dreams of our future.

Meanwhile, Jahvid Best looked like the real deal at running back. He showed the ability to get it to the outside and impressed me with his ability to bang in between the tackles. His most impressive run was almost, dare I say it? Yes, I will. Barry Sandersesque. Oh shit, I think the ground just rumbled below my feet. I apologize, but even though that may be an extraordinarily hyperbolic and possibly heretical thing to say, it's not far off from the truth. The dude was caught by two defenders five yards in the backfield and he made them look like dumb assholes, making a sweet little move, spinning out of it and then managing to turn a five yard loss into a five yard gain. By that point, I was becoming irrationally excited.

You see, it wasn't just that the offense was kicking the Steelers' defense's ass. It wasn't just that Matthew Stafford looked like the man, or that St. Calvin looked like, well, like St. Calvin, or that Jahvid Best was trying to resurrect the ghost of Barry or that the offensive line was absolutely handling the Steelers defense, giving Stafford a nice pocket to throw from on virtually every play. That was all great. That was what we hoped it would be. Our dreams looked like they had finally started to coalesce and come together, to stop being just dreams, amorphous and hazy in the back of our minds. They were becoming real. We were awake and this was all happening.

But it was something else that had me feeling giddy. It was the defense. The godforsaken defense. If we dreamed about the offense and smiled, we had nightmares about the defense and shivered. There was no pretense there, no outlandish hopes, just a realistic expectation of death. When we looked at the offense, at Matthew Stafford, at St. Calvin, at Best, we saw the sun start to rise, pale and distant on the horizon. It wasn't here yet, and it wasn't warm, but we could see it and we knew that soon enough it would be overhead and a new day would be here, a day filled with warmth and happiness and that sweet, sweet sunshine. But then we would look at the defense and there was no sun rising on the horizon. There was just cold darkness, vicious and unrelenting, and we would remember that this was our world, that this cruel and terrible wasteland was our reality.

No matter how much we looked to the offense and dreamed of the sun, the defense and its cold, bleak reality kept us tethered to our pain, to our many horrible failures, and hope was twisted into something cruel that almost mocked us. We could see it, but we knew that we could never touch it, could never have it. Hope was unattainable. It was just a dream and nothing more.

But then I watched the defense - particularly the defensive line - utterly destroy the Steelers first team offense and suddenly it wasn't just a dream anymore. Suddenly, I could see the first rays of the sun's light peak above the horizon when I looked at the defense and there it was. There was hope, attainable and real.

It was amazing - almost disorienting really - to watch the defensive line just crush the Steelers. The middle of the line, led by Ndamukong Suh, continually pushed back the middle of the Steelers offensive line. There was nowhere for the Steelers running backs to go. Meanwhile, Kyle Vandenbosch was absolutely destroying the Steelers offensive line, wrecking plays almost by himself. And then you had Cliff Avril flying across the line on the other side and sacking the quarterback. It was awesome. I was almost giddy watching it. This wasn't just one player having a good game. This was a single unit, working together and dominating. Yes, that's right. Dominating. Vandenbosch and Avril were so dominant on the outside that it funneled everything inside, where Suh and company, aided by the linebackers, cleaned up. Meanwhile, the defensive tackles were getting such good push that the Steelers were forced to double team Suh, which opened Vandenbosch and Avril up to make plays and get to the quarterback. It was symbiotic and beautiful, the way they all worked together.

Of course, you can say that they were only facing Byron Leftwich because Ben Roethlisberger was day to day (rape) and that it was only one quarter of football - and preseason football at that. But we are optimists in our hearts and so we won't travel down that awful road known as pessimism. We have lingered on that horrible road for far too long and we have seen many good men die alongside of it.

Look, I know that I want to believe so badly that it is probably causing me to go all crazy here, and I don't mean to, but, well, I am like a retarded boy with a strange and exciting new toy when it comes to this happiness stuff. I get it and I just start freaking out and making weird noises, hoots and grunts of happiness, and we can only hope that I don't get too excited and smash it against the wall or pet it until it don't breath no more, George. Yes, I just compared myself to Lennie Small. It is so unfamiliar that it is almost overwhelming. I do not know how to properly calibrate my dreams when it comes to the Lions. I do not know how to put it all into perspective. Joy - pure, real joy - is so unfamiliar to me as a fan that I will embrace it whenever I can, no matter how small. This is what we must do as Lions fans. When we can find joy and meaning and happiness and fulfillment in something - anything - no matter how small, we must embrace that shit to the fullest. It was one quarter of one preseason game. Meaningless and at the same time incredibly meaningful. You can laugh at me all you want, but I don't give a shit. I saw something that made me smile, that made me believe. It was something that made me feel like the future that only lived in my wildest hopes and dreams was real, and I'm not going to apologize for embracing that.

Of course, then the starters all left and things went to shit and the future receded into the far off distance once again and the reality of the present was laughing in our faces yet again. We have no depth. That much is obvious. But I'll take our problem of a lack of quality depth over our old problem of lacking quality anything. We can compete with other teams now - so long as everything goes right anyway and no one is ever injured and none of the starters ever get tired, and . . . you can see that the dream is not yet sustainable. There is life here, but it is fragile and it is young and it can all collapse in a hurry and then it's DEATH INC.

I will admit something here - I didn't watch much of the second half of the game. In fact, I barely saw any of the second half at all. I got what I came for. I saw hope and I saw that my dreams were going to come true one day and that was enough for me. I even had some pleasant surprises. I saw the defense look dominant - if only for a quarter - and I saw players like Ryan Phillips step up and give me hope that maybe the secondary wouldn't be a complete waste.

I didn't want to wallow in misery like we are so often forced to as Lions fans. I didn't want to stick around and have those good feelings, that hope, disappear underneath an avalanche of misery. I didn't want to watch CC Brown make me depressed and cynical about the defense again. It was bad enough to watch Dennis Dixon start to tear up the backups like he was still at Oregon playing against Michigan in '07 again. (Oh, the horror! The horror . . .) I didn't need to see anymore. And apparently God agreed, as he did his best to cancel the damn thing. The skies opened and the thunder and lightning came and I can only assume that God had also had enough. After all, his boy St. Calvin was done for the night and so He didn't need to watch anymore.

The first preseason game is over and I didn't mean to write quite this much about it, but it felt like a microcosm of everything we're going through as Lions fans - hope and beauty coexisting with fear and failure. There is still much misery ahead, terrible and painful, but the light isn't just on the horizon anymore. No, it's around us, fighting with the darkness for our souls and that's what this season is all about. The light is finally here and the glorious war with the darkness has finally arrived. The light might lose this season, but fuck it, in the end I believe that it will win. Is that unrealistic? A fool's hope? Maybe. Hell, probably. But so what? Hope is a good thing and we are all warriors of light in our hearts. Football is here. Let's do this thing.