The Desolation

"This isn't The Fear. It's the Desolation"

Those words were sent to me via e-mail by Scott aka Good Friend of the Blog and Frequent Commenter UpHere, yesterday during the game. They came after he asked me to get Raven Mack to find out the symptoms of an aneurysm. This was the first game of the year. A half hour before, optimism reigned supreme and The Hope was making sweet love to us and promising to buy us a giant diamond ring and to make us the happiest girl in the entire world.

And then Matthew Stafford was driven into the turf by Julius Peppers. It looked bad, and we all held our breath and then he stood up, his throwing arm was hanging limp by his side and, well . . . This isn't The Fear. It's the Desolation.

Why? It's such a simple question. It's one word, but it's laced with so much pathos, loaded with so much meaning and terrible emotion and spiked by decades of brutal and despicable history, that it has become a question of dread and such unbearable weight that the very act of asking it is a testament to failure and to the million little pieces of our shattered hearts and its mournful squeak is the dying echo of Hope.

Why? I don't know. Who does? I speak often of the Failure Demons and Fate and all manner of mystical forces that feel like they are perpetually lined up against us, but now, more than ever, doesn't that all feel true? Doesn't it feel like there has to be something brutal and mean and otherworldly that has devoted itself, for whatever reason, to just toying with Lions fans?

The last several years have been horrible, just one long apocalyptic struggle for survival. Being a fan shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't require epic tests of faith and horrific manglings and desperate pleas to the heavens for mercy. I mean, at some point, you have to find happiness, don't you? You have to get lucky, to stumble upon something, anything, that can make you smile and say "Wow, this is alright." But we never get lucky, never stumble upon anything other than a banana peel laced with acid and malicious intent.

Once Matthew Stafford was drafted and Jim Schwartz was hired and Martin Mayhew announced to the world that he was competent, it felt like Lions fans all took one, huge deep breath, exhaled and said "Here we go." After so much pain, after so much brutal agony, after so many years of never getting what we want, we steeled ourselves for one last dive into that terrible breach. We allowed ourselves to believe in Hope once again even though Hope had spent years tricking us and abandoning us when we needed him the most.

Even last year, when Stafford got hurt, we took another deep breath and said "That's okay. This is all for the future. All for the future. The future." We repeated that like a mantra: The future, the future, the future. And we gibbered on about Hope and smiled at one another and looked for rainbows in the sky and light way off in the distance and convinced ourselves and each other that it was all leading up to something glorious and amazing and, well, worth it all. We did this with wide, panicked eyes, with desperation bubbling just under the surface and we did this because we had to, because what other choice did we have?

And maybe all that is true, and maybe that future really does exist, and maybe we'll get there, but when Matthew Stafford went down and then got back up missing crucial parts of his shoulder anatomy, all of that evaporated in an instant. All the faith, all the good will, all the talk of the future and all the patience was sucked away and all that was left was The Desolation. All that was left was the feeling that it was all pointless and utterly without meaning or anything good or decent or worth caring about. All that was left was the familiar pain and the familiar idea of rank failure and we knew in that moment that nothing had changed.

I spent the whole post after the game talking about how hard we fought and in that we must take comfort. We must do this because, for now, it's all we have left. The reports on Stafford's injury are hazy, with words like Separated Shoulder and Shoulder Sprain and Oh God Why being thrown about along with numbers like 6-8 weeks and 4 weeks to who fucking knows how many weeks tossed in for good measure.

We have had it with meaningless football. We have had it with the idea that at some point in some nebulous, undefined future that the world will brighten and we will smile and have success. We have had it with the pain, with the agony, with the self destructive knowledge and acceptance of losing. We have had it with just rolling over and saying "Well, this is just the way it is."

At some point, you have to plant your flag in the dirt, even if that dirt looks more like shit, and turn around and say "Fuck it, today I'm going to fight." That's what the Lions did on Sunday and that's what we must hold on to right now.

Of course, all that is much easier when you get a fair shake. It becomes much tougher when a referee decides, just for the hell of it, to interpret a ridiculous, Byzantine rule in the most ridiculous way possible at the most critical time possible in the most cruel and fucked up manner possible. I mean, who does that? Who sees an obvious touchdown and then thinks to himself "Well hmmm, there is a way that I can take that away . . ." I mean, come on.

Could the ref have interpreted the rule the way he did? Yes. But that's because the rule is so ambiguous and so ridiculous that he could have interpreted it any way that he wanted to. He chose to interpret it in the cruel and awful way that we saw. And that leads us back to that deceptively simple and terrible question: Why?

Why indeed. What is it about the Detroit Lions that causes a referee to look at Calvin Johnson catching a miracle touchdown pass to give us long suffering fans our first road win in a billion years after having watched our franchise Quarterback get obliterated and decide "Well, fuck it, I'm going to say that's not a touchdown." What is it?

We could ask ourselves that question until we went completely insane trying to answer it. All that's important is that it happened, and somehow, someway, we have to move on from it, just like we have had to somehow, someway move on from every other infernal and horrible thing that has happened to us as Lions fans.

UpHere sent me that e-mail I mentioned at the beginning of this post during the game. Later, he sent me more e-mails asking if Jim Schwartz was going to get swallowed by a whale. When the Calvin touchdown fiasco occurred he sent me another e-mail that said "And there's your whale." Yes, that's how it feels to be a Lions fan, like the whole thing is just some biblical test of faith. And then, in the end you end up getting swallowed by a whale.

It's a hard thing to have to endure. It's perverse that it was only yesterday morning that we all felt so full of hope and joy and excitement and that today I'm having to write the sentence "It's a hard thing to endure." Yet again.

But here we are and for now, at least, we have some idea where here is. It's familiar, it's cold, it's hard, it's mean and we absolutely hate it. But we are used to such things, terrible as they are and we will survive to see another day. All we can do is stare at the Failure Demon who has captured us in his dungeon once again and then try to punch him in the face. The future is once again just a hazy idea, a half forgotten dream and we have to put it out of our minds. We're here and we have to fight for what's in front of us, for today and for ourselves. We deserve so much better than this, so much more, and I'm sick of waiting around for it. I want to win. Not for tomorrow, not for the future, but for right now, for today. I want to win one game just to win that game. I want to say to hell with that question. Fuck why. I just want to be happy now.

After all that brutality, after all that pain, after we had fallen prey to The Desolation, UpHere sent me one more e-mail that said "Fuck all of them. I'm counting that as a win. We are 1-0 and I don't give a fuck what the NFL says." He said the same thing here in the comment section after my last post. The world had taken the biggest shit on us and in the face of all of that, there was still that spark of defiance. Indeed. Fuck all of them. We are 1-0 and I don't give a fuck what the NFL says.

How Cruel

Roughly 29:30 minutes into the game between the Lions and the Bears today, God caught us in a rear naked choke and his chorus of angels screamed TAP TAP TAAAAAAAAAAP! And then, the whistle blew, saving us just before we passed out and somehow, someway, we were still alive.

Yes, we were alive but mortally wounded, beaten senseless and left bloody and stupid, gibbering incoherently to ourselves, Hope having fled the building like he just robbed the fucking place. We could have just laid there and died. After all, we were already dead, finished before we even got a chance to live. But for some reason, we kept fighting, kept repeating the word PRIDE over and over and over and over again.

And somehow we weren't dead yet. We took furious punch after furious punch and we were still there. And then we started to move forward, inch by bloody inch. Hope was miles out of town by then, but fuck him. We were doing this for ourselves, for here, for now. Then a Failure Demon dug his way out of hell and tripped Calvin Johnson as he streaked down the sidelines.

There we were again, laying beaten, bloody, utterly exhausted but again we decided to crawl forward. Fuck everyone else. Fuck hope. Fuck the world. It was just us. We were already dead but maybe we could still live for a few brief moments, maybe we could make the world see us before our hearts stopped beating.

We had no offense, no counter. We were being pummeled and all we could do was offer up the occasional limp wristed slap in response. And yet, we were not beaten. Not yet. Dead but not beaten.

And then Lance Briggs' body was possessed by the devil himself and he devoured Shaun Hill's soul. We were just a mass of blood and guts and pride. Finished.

But as we were punched in the face, we looked up and through the blood, through the mess of failure, through a mask of red death, we smiled and we spit a bloody defiant gob in Fate's face and our heart kept beating.

At one point, early in the fourth quarter, the FOX crew flashed a graphic memorializing crew members that had recently passed away. It occurred to me that they should have added the concept of Hope to their memorial. It was gone. We had none. It didn't matter.

It didn't matter because we weren't playing for Hope, weren't staying alive for some glorious future. We were staying alive for the moment. We were staying alive for ourselves because fuck fate, fuck the universe, fuck 50 plus years of losing, fuck 0-16, fuck Matt Millen, fuck Rod Marinelli, fuck yesterday, fuck tomorrow. Today. That was all we had left and by God we were going to live until we died.

And then our neck was broken. Indeed. After somehow staying alive, after refusing to die, fate grabbed us by the throat and squeezed until all the bones in our neck cracked and splintered. There was nothing left but a heart beat and a tiny little voice in our brains saying "You will get up, motherfucker, and you will fight."

Somehow, someway, we did. Somehow, someway, we got to our feet, even though we couldn't feel those feet, couldn't feel our arms or our legs. We couldn't feel anything, but we could feel our pride and we could feel the moment and we weren't dead yet.

And somehow we fought, threw punch after punch after punch and Fate trembled before us and then fell and we laughed and we screamed and we cried and the Rocky music started playing and then something infernal stepped in, something foul, something claiming to be a referee, something claiming to speak for justice, and that wretched beast told us that it never happened, that Fate never fell before us and Fate just smiled and spit in our face and then we were caught in that terrible rear naked choke again and we struggled and we fought and although we were already dead we thought "How cruel." How cruel that it had come to this. How cruel that we had fought for ourselves, finally and without any aspiration other than our own sense of pride, our own desire to live in the moment, to be happy for only a whisper before the lights went out. How cruel. And then, everything faded and the world stopped. But we never tapped. We never tapped.

Revenge

Strange and terrible times indeed.

The Detroit Lions can't win on the road. They especially can't win without a healthy Louis Delmas and a healthy DeAndre Levy. Only a great fool, a staggeringly delusional idiot, would pick the Lions to win against the Bears in Chicago to open the season. Well, dudes and lady dudes, I am that idiot.

Indeed. The reasons why the Lions can't win are well known, and they're not wrong. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that the Lions can suddenly stroll into any stadium in the country and win and I'm not going to tell you that they'll be fine without Delmas or Levy. They won't. If neither of those two plays - really if either of them misses the game - the Lions defense will be up shit creek without not only a paddle but without a canoe, and you don't want to be floating face down in shit creek while a bunch of assholes with a canoe and functioning paddles pass on by your poor body, drunkenly laughing at your misfortune. Then again, why would someone choose to go canoeing in a creek called Shit Creek? That just doesn't sound very fun, you know?

Ahem. Anyway, yeah, right away we have a couple of bright flashing lights, big red ones in the sky telling us to slow the fuck down and take cover and start praying to various deities. (I won't judge you if you pray to Papa Smurf or something like that. Strange and terrible times, etc.) But sometimes, even though your land is overgrown with weeds and groundhogs and Morlocks, all you have to do to feel like everything is going to be alright is cast an eye towards your neighbor's land and see the bombs falling.

That's right. Our land was bombed and left lifeless and barren long ago, but lately some life has come back and there will come a day when it looks beautiful and green. The land of the Chicago Bears, however, is currently a land run amok. The citizens are tearing out their own hearts so they don't have to be mutilated by the falling bombs, their dogs are running wild and free, in terrible packs that eat babies and terrorize the crippled and the old. Soon, that land will be an empty, desolate wasteland, a barren plain ruined by a nuclear holocaust.

I know this because all I have to do is look at their sidelines and I can see the harbingers of doom, the angels of death, roaming around looking for their next victims. Indeed, while Lovie Smith sits in his big boy chair and drools all over himself, clapping his hands whenever a balloon or something floats by in the sky, the Bears offense is run by Mike Martz and their defense is run by Rod Marinelli.

Wait . . . what the fuck? How did this happen? How could a team be so stupid? The Bears were there. They saw what went down. They know what happens when those imbeciles get their hands on a team. It's like they're trying to bottom out. Who the fuck is in charge over there?

Anyway, I look at that and I suddenly feel like we might have a shot. Call me crazy. You wouldn't be the first person to do so.

Still, even though the Lions are on the way up and the Bears are so obviously on the way down it's hard to know just where we are in our trajectory relative to them. I mean, come on, I'm not fucking Euclid over here. It's possible that we're still not ready to beat them, especially on their home field. And especially without Delmas or Levy.

But then, a couple of days ago, I read some gibberish from Lovie Smith about how this game was extra meaningful for Rod Marinelli, that beating the Lions would somehow be special to him, like he was the aggrieved party in that whole horrible marriage we're so desperate to forget. Well, fuck that. Can you believe that wretched shit? I mean, are you kidding me? How dare they. How dare they pretend like Marinelli has some sort of righteous axe to grind here. How dare they pretend that he was anything other than a colossal failure. Fuck him.

Look, I know that some of you get caught up in that BUT HE'S A GOOD MAN tripe and well, fine, that's great. But, honestly? I don't feel the least bit bad for Rod Marinelli. He was the man in charge. I put a ton of the blame for 0-16 on his feeble minded ass. Go back and look through the site archives. Before that season even started, when everyone was predicting the playoffs, I was hammering him for ruining what little chance we had. Sure, Matt Millen made 0-16 possible but Rod Marinelli made it happen if that makes any sense.

The poor fool should be forced to march down Woodward, his arms in stocks while fans throw tomatoes at him and whip him with old bicycle chains laced with acid. He should be stripped naked and forced to beg for his clothes back in front of a crowd of angry fans at the end of his terrible journey. He should be forced to swim across the Detroit River to Canada in the hopes that they will accept him as a refugee. We can even charter boats and sail alongside him as he swims, hurling insults and garbage on him as he goes. I don't care if he cries. I don't care if he's a good man. Fuck him.

Whoa. That kind of got out of hand, didn't it? And yet, it was kind of cathartic. Look, Rod Marinelli probably is a good man and he deserves good things in life, but just keep him the fuck away from me and the rest of our fans. We don't deserve that shit. All that bullshit about this being special for him makes me feel legitimately angry. It pisses me off. In fact, I am a little surprised by just how much it pisses me off. I hated 0-16, and I despised Marinelli's role in making it happen, but I don't think I ever was personally mad at the dude for it. But his self righteous woe is me bullshit has sparked something terrible and dark and wretched inside of me. It has turned me into a blathering idiot and has made me want to see him get embarrassed on Sunday. I want his defense to give up fifty points and for his pants to fall down on the sideline while the announcers laugh at him. I want Shaun Rogers to show up just for old times sake and beat him like he's a worn out old whore of a stripper. I want Lovie Smith to publicly fire him at halftime and I want to see the camera shot of him loading his shit into a box and then being shunned by every cab driver in the city. I want my vengeance for 0-16 and damn it all, I want it on Sunday.

I am shocked at my own bloodthirsty savagery here, but that is what 0-16 will do to a man, even more than a year after the fact. It will creep up occasionally and cause terrible violence and weird ranting and raving and none of it is noble and it is all vaguely shameful but I can't pretend it's not there either.

So, yeah, I really, really want the Lions to win this game.

Can they? Well, the Bears are essentially run by the Three Stooges of Lovie, Marinelli and Martz so yeah, I think they can. Whatever advantages the Bears may have from a talent standpoint are pretty much obliterated by the collective incompetence of those three idiots.

Of the three, Martz is probably the most competent. That's saying a lot because the dude is kind of a walking punchline now. He knows what he's doing, he's an innovative tactician and he's been a winner in the league before. But, holy hell, is that one arrogant and crazy dude. He will absolutely shoot himself right in the face just to prove a point. He'll turn that pistol around and fire just because you say he can't. He doesn't care if he gets hurt, if he loses his nose, his lips and anything that keeps him from looking like that lady who got her face eaten by that chimp. The only thing that matters to him is that he's right. It doesn't even matter if he's wrong and now he's all fucked up and scarred for life. By going through with it, he'll have proven himself right. He said he would do it and he did. That's Mike Martz for you.

That will end up being what gives the Lions defense a break. Jay Cutler is more than capable of shredding the Lions pass defense. (Hell, a drunk Stephen Hawking could shred the Lions defense. They don't call him "Wheels" for nothing. Ahem. Sorry.) But Cutler is also a bit of an idiot. He's a lot like Martz in that he has that "Fuck it, it's a bad idea, but Goddammit, I have to be right" thing going on. Combine the two and you have a dude who might throw 40 interceptions this season. I'm not even joking.

Meanwhile, the Lions Defensive Line should be capable of stopping Matt Forte, especially early on. That's the key to this game. If they do that, then Martz will almost immediately say to hell with it and then it's bombs away. Three interceptions and a million tears from Bears fans later and the Lions should be able to walk away with a victory.

Offensively, the Lions shouldn't have any problems. Matthew Stafford and Calvin Johnson should be able to hook up all day and Jahvid Best should be able to slice through the shitty Defensive Line the Bears will trot out on Sunday. Yeah, yeah, the Bears have Brian Urlacher back, but all he is now is just a name. I don't see the Bears stopping the Lions, and I don't see them executing well enough offensively to keep up. Basically, the Lions will win this game because Martz will fall on his own sword rather than admit defeat. He'll just keep making things worse and worse for himself and his team rather than admit that he should change up the game plan. Would the Bears beat the Lions with competent coaches? Probably. Will they with this collection of failures and abominations? No. Fuck that. I want this win and I think we'll get it. Take your streaks and shove them up your ass.

FIVE NO DOUBT TERRIBLE PREDICTIONS

1. Delmas will play. Levy will not. This is much better than if that was flipped around.

2. Stafford will go 23-31 for 317 yards and 3 touchdowns with 1 interception. His progress will be plainly evident.

3. Jay Cutler will throw the ball 45 times, and will complete 31 of those passes for 396 yards and 2 touchdowns. He'll also throw 3 critical interceptions. The Lions pass defense will bend horrifically but it won't quite break.

4. Jahvid Best will run the ball 21 times for 117 yards and a touchdown.

5. Calvin Johnson will be unstoppable, catching 9 passes for 152 yards and 2 touchdowns.

SPECIAL BONUS PREDICTION BECAUSE I AM A GIVER: After the game, Rod Marinelli will gibber like a buffoon about playing the game the right way and then he will be mauled by an actual bear that was brought to the game as a special mascot. The bear will then run wild until The Great Willie Young wrestles it to the ground. The two will then become inseparable and Willie Young and his Pet Bear will replace Ernie Sims and his monkey in all of our hearts.

PREDICTED FINAL SCORE: LIONS 31, BEARS 21

Let's Do It

Me, this season.

Tomorrow, I'll write my first game preview post of the year. There will be a lot of weird bullshit, a bare minimum of actual facts and a wild bipolar current running through the whole thing, which really, will run through everything I write this season.

There will be times when I seem like Hercules ready to strangle the whole world with my arrogance and hubris, when I am claiming that St. Calvin is some sort of mystical Terminator with angel wings and Andre the Giant sized hands or that Jahvid Best has the legs of a cheetah grafted on to his body or that Matthew Stafford is the Swagger King and pilots F-14's in the offseason and has the call sign Iceman. And then there will be times when I threaten to drink bleach and start yammering on about being beaten to death by rabid vampire apes and start hollering at sky and insult Drew Stanton just because he's there. All of these things will happen and many of them will happen within the scope of the same post.

Yes, that's how schizophrenic this season should be and it's how schizophrenic I feel right about now. Last season was supposed to be the crazy one, the one where The Hope intermingled with The Fear, and in some ways it did - especially in that game against the Browns, which was the quintessential Hope/Fear game. But really, everything was delayed just a little bit thanks to the mountain of injuries which derailed the Lions season. Matthew Stafford was healthy for only a fraction of the season and after getting his knee torched against the Bears we never really got a chance to see him take off like we hoped. By the time he did get healthy, he ran absolutely wild on the Browns but then his shoulder got nuked and that was that. So there were glimpses, tantalizing and wonderful, but they were just glimpses and we were left to wonder what if? Which is where we are today.

Unfortunately, I had hoped that the what ifs would be left behind as soon as the final gun went off on last season's shit storm, but here we are still asking ourselves those same questions we did a year ago. We just don't know what to expect. Not really anyway. We have our hopes and we have our dreams and on some level we know what it possible - refer back to my post from earlier in the week in which I waxed retarded about that very thing - but we're still not sure what's going to happen.

That's not a very happy place to be, but unfortunately that's about all we have going for us as Lions fans. Every year we get ourselves all excited and tell ourselves and anyone who will listen that this year will be different. And then the season starts, Yakety Sax starts playing in our heads and we mentally check out once again. It's terrible, but it's true.

The past few months, I have felt as optimistic about the Lions as I have in a long time. After all, the pieces seem to be in place for a strong and kick ass core that could dominate for the next decade. Matthew Stafford, Calvin Johnson, Jahvid Best, Ndamukong Suh and Louis Delmas all make me feel something that I have rarely felt as a Lions fan: confident. I speak often of hope, but I rarely speak of confidence and that's because, honestly, I've never had any as a Lions fan. There was Barry Sanders and that was it. But even Barry would let me down at times (Heresy!) Yeah, I know, I know, Barry was Barry and he is a martyr and our Patron Saint blah, blah, blah, but don't forget those -2 yard games at Lambeau Field in the playoffs in January. Even our wildest hopes and dreams have had a ceiling, a cold frozen ceiling, over the course of the last twenty or so years.

But this core seems different. It feels like if they get enough players filled in around them that they will be able to do anything. Matthew Stafford has it. He just does. I know, I know, that's some ambiguous bullshit and I'm sure a bunch of nerds could swoop in here with a bunch of stats proving that I'm an idiot and that Stafford will be popping pills with Ryan Leaf five years from now, but fuck all that. You see, I am kind of an expert when it comes to shitty Quarterbacks. I have spent my whole life studying them as a Lions fan. I have seen everyone from Chuck Long to Andre Ware to Joey Harrington to Fat Daunte and I know the difference between them and Matthew Stafford. Matthew Stafford is the only Quarterback the Lions have had in my lifetime who I've felt had it, who I've felt confident in, who I've believed in, who at the end of the day I felt could march a team down the field and win the damn game whether his shoulder was in tact or blown into a million pieces. He's it. He's the man, and I feel 100% confident that he will make it. I do and you're not going to convince me otherwise.

Perhaps I've just gone insane. Perhaps my own brain has forced me to embrace The Hope in order to escape the cruel talons of The Fear. But I actually do believe that things are different this time, that we will make it and in the end that we will get to experience the joy that has eluded us our whole lives as Lions fans.

But that's all in the future and our core is still young and there is still not enough talent around them to believe in our wildest dreams this season. Still, just like every season I started to tell myself "Maybe . . ." and began doing the what ifs and started imagining crazy scenarios in which the Lions surged to glory. Then, just like I have the last couple of seasons, I sat down and did my season preview for this site and, well . . . let's all welcome back The Fear, ladies and gentlemen.

Indeed. By the time I reached my preview of the defense I once again felt like that dude in Hellraiser who gets his flesh torn apart by a bunch of hooks. There are just too many holes, too many problems, for this team to do anything other than occasionally tantalize us with its potential. The future is wonderful, but the future is also still a long ways off and we still have to fight our way out of hell.

It's important to remember that, but it's also important to savor the good moments too. It's okay to get excited when the Lions pull out a huge win, when the offense clicks and they upset someone who they weren't supposed to beat. It will happen this season and when it does we should all celebrate and tell the rest of the world to fuck off. They will all laugh at us and tell us it doesn't matter and that the Lions will still be losers but who cares about them? This is our world and we must make the best of it that we can.

Still, while we celebrate it's important to keep those moments in their proper context. They will be heralds of that wonderful future but that's it. They won't somehow signal that we're ready for the Super Bowl this season. I mean, the Lions have Aaron Berry ready to start this season as the Nickelback and he's an undrafted free agent rookie who missed most of the preseason. I mean, come on.

There will be a lot of crazy bullshit this season and I will be responsible for a lot of it. There will be laughter, there will be tears, there will be celebratory whoops and there will be the gnashing of teeth, the tearing of clothes and the beating of breasts and when it's all over we'll look back, just like we always do and wonder how we survived the whole infernal thing. And then we'll get ready to do it again. I'm ready, finally, recharged and on top of the world. It's gonna be a hell of a ride and I plan on riding the whole way without a seatbelt, naked and wild, my middle fingers up and screaming, my heart open and my hair on fire. The Lions are ready to take the field. Let's do this thing.


PREDICTED FINAL RECORD: 7-9. I couldn't justify going higher than that, but lower than that just felt depressing and I for one have had enough of being depressed. The Lions will finally unload their guns this season and they will likely die in the streets, but at least this year they'll get off some shots of their own and take a few dudes down with them.

2010 Lions Season Preview: The Defense

I actually considered just quoting something from the Book of Revelations here, some Behold a Pale Horse bullshit or something and then just letting that stand as my preview for the defense. That would pretty much tell you everything you needed to know. In the end, I decided against that because, honestly, the Lions do have a couple of good things going for them defensively, and let's face it, the day I confine myself to a few simple words is the day the dude on the Pale Horse actually shows up.

Anyway, let's just get to it before I start rambling like a psychotic ether fiend. (Before? Uh . . .)

DEFENSE

BEST PLAYER: This is sort of a tough one. I am going with Louis Delmas over Kyle Vanden Bosch and Ndamukong Suh. It's tricky because each player is at a different stage in his career and so it's extraordinarily tough to pick one over the other. By the end of the year, their relative worth might be totally different. Right now, Vanden Bosch and Delmas are pretty close. But Delmas is on the upswing and Vanden Bosch is on the downswing of his career. By the end of the year, if Delmas stays healthy - oh Lord, that's a huge if - I think he'll be widely recognized as a better player than Vanden Bosch. That's not to say that Vanden Bosch isn't still a very good player, it's just that Delmas has a real shot at being a blue chip player, the same sort that Vanden Bosch was a few years ago, while Vanden Bosch will never see those days again. They are two players on the same road. It's just that they are traveling in opposite directions and I'll take the player who's on his way up.

But then there is Ndamukong Suh. By the end of the year, he could be the player universally recognized as the best the Lions have to offer on defense. He's that good. Yeah, he's only a rookie, but he's also a once in a decade type of talent. In truth, he should be the best player on this defense, but he hasn't even played a real down yet so it's kind of hard to anoint him. When it's all done, and all three of these dude's careers have played out, Suh should stand way above both Vanden Bosch and Delmas. Ideally, you would like to have all three at their peaks at the same time. That's not going to happen. It could - hell, it should - happen with Suh and Delmas which would definitely be cause for breaking out the candy and blowjobs, but for now, one's a rookie, one's a second year pro with still a lot to prove and one is a battle scarred veteran on the downside of his career. Who do you go with in that scenario?

It's a bit like trying to hit a moving target, but in the end, you just gotta hope you aim for the right spot. And that's why I'm picking Delmas. I'm aiming for that point where he takes the next step but just before Suh takes his next step. I'm probably not making any sense at all, but fuck it, when do I ever make sense?

WORST PLAYER: Well . . . uh, this could be a lot of people. It's sad but true. The back seven of this defense has a shot at being truly wretched and that dude riding his pale horse is about to start galloping to the forefront of my brain again. I'll just hold my nose and pick a dude and then get the fuck out before I start to weep tears of blood. And that dude is . . . C.C. Brown. Yes, in a sea of shit, C.C. is the biggest turd. That may be harsh, but I am not Mitch Albom, you know? Anyway, a few quick words on C.C. and then we can get the hell out of here. C.C. Brown's nickname is "Can't Cover" and when we signed him, my boy Will, a Giants fan, sent me a quick message via twitter offering both his condolences and laughter at my misfortune. So . . . yeah, I'm not too thrilled with C.C. Brown starting at safety. But it's either him or, uh . . . well, an undrafted rookie free agent named Randy Phillips (who I like, but still . . .), a practice squad player named John Wendling or another rookie who up until a couple weeks ago was a failure at cornerback in Amari Spievey. So, uh, I guess it's C.C. Brown and this nice straight razor pressed to my wrist.

MOST IMPORTANT PLAYER: Again, I have to go with Louis Delmas. It's hard not to when Jim Schwartz came out after last season and said the defense would have given up fifty points a game if it wasn't for Delmas. Well, I'm sold. Shit. Sure, there's some hyperbole in there, but man . . . that's pretty telling. Also, yes, I've noticed that I have fallen in love with ellipses in this post. I'm not sure why, but let's just accept it and move on.

Anyway, aside from Schwartz's puffery, Delmas is vitally important because not only is he a very good player, but he is a very good player playing in a secondary that has no one else. I almost wrote "literally no one else" and I wouldn't have felt that bad about it. I mean, shit, with the other dude's the Lions are trotting out in the secondary, they might as well be literally no one, just a void that Delmas must somehow cover for. Perhaps that is being overly harsh, but I have seen far too much carnage and far too much indecent bullshit and seen far too many of our boys lying in a pool of their own rancid blood to be nice about this. The truth is harsh and savage and mean, but we have to both face it and accept it if we are going to move on, and the truth is that Louis Delmas is the only thing keeping this defense from being one long Benny Hill highlight this season. With him, the defense will be merely pretty bad. Without him, you might as well crank up the Yakety Sax and start huffing paint thinner.

PLAYER WHOSE IMPORTANCE IS UNDERRATED: I'll say DeAndre Levy. If he can take a leap as a second year player and a first time starter at Middle Linebacker, then the defense, with Delmas patrolling the back and Vanden Bosch and Suh and company running wild up front, might - might - not be the worst thing in the entire world. (Yes, there is the possibility they could be the worst thing in the entire world. Worse than AIDS, worse than Nazis, worse than Zombies, worse than Nazi Zombies with AIDS, worse than Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. I know!)

If Levy can stabilize a Linebacking corps that's kind of in a state of flux, then the Lions have a shot at making just enough stops to win some games. If not, then the middle of the field is going to be exploited way too often, and it's not going to matter if the linemen blow up a few plays, because at some point they're going to need Levy and his group to step up and stop a running back that gets by them. After all, with a Fullback and a Tight End, that's seven blockers that the line will have to deal with. There will be times that they are neutralized and when they are, Levy and the Linebackers need to make some plays.

DEEPEST POSITION GROUP: This has to be the Defensive Tackles. No question. They are both the deepest top to bottom and the most talented. Ndamukong Suh is, as I said already, a once in a decade kind of talent. His presence alone makes this a formidable unit. But he's not alone. The Lions traded for Corey Williams who was good enough when he was with Green Bay a few years ago for the Packers to slap the franchise tag on him. He struggled a bit with Cleveland but he was playing out of position as a 3-4 Defensive End. Now, he is back at his natural Undertackle position in a 4-3 defense, where he can use his athleticism to get to the Quarterback. Teamed with Suh, the potential is there for an absolutely devastating middle of the Defensive Line.

But, wait, there's more. Sammie Lee Hill was drafted out of some tiny college that was barely above a high school level when it came to football and he managed to start in the NFL as a rookie. Now, granted, the defense he started for was terrible, but still, the dude went from pushing around tiny future accountants and dentists moonlighting as Centers in college to dealing with giant fat superbeasts playing Center in the NFL and he didn't get destroyed. That speaks volumes about his potential and should make Lions fans everywhere ecstatic about the possible trajectory of his career. If he could make that sonic leap in one year, imagine what he can do two or three years from now. I was excited about him going into last season, and that's when I thought he would be kept as far away from the field as possible. I figured if he played, he would be left gibbering and crying in a pool of his own piss, a broken man with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Every time he even heard a whistle, he would shit his pants. And I was still excited about his potential even with that as my expectation for the season. But then he started the whole year and while he wasn't great, he wasn't terrible either. Now, I'm really excited to see what Sammie Lee Hill can do. And the thing is, and this brings the whole point of this section home, is that he won't even be starting this year. No, he'll be coming off the bench in a rotation that has the potential to be absolutely frightening.

The Lions can roll out Suh or Williams or Suh and Hill or Hill and Williams and feel confident that they have a dominant group in there. That is enough to make me start clapping my hands like a retard, my mouth hanging open, my tongue lolling about like a simple idiot. Basically, thinking about the Defensive Tackles turns me into Simple Jack from Tropic Thunder. Which is good, because thinking about the rest of the defense turns me into Col. Kurtz. What can I say? I contain multitudes.

Anyway, the Defensive Tackles are so deep that the Lions were able to cut Landon Cohen even though Cohen was the darling of last season's training camp and has generally played pretty well when given the opportunity. They had to do this so they could keep Andre Fluellen, who's much more versatile - he can play just about anywhere on the defensive line - and who probably has a larger upside. Last year, Cohen was contending for a starting job. This season, through no real fault of his own, he's not even good enough to make the team. That kind of says it all.

SHALLOWEST POSITION GROUP: Son of a bitch. After all that giddiness, here comes the pain. And really, does anything sum up what this season's all about better than that? So much happiness, so much hope, so much pain, so much fear. It's all here, and right now The Pain and The Fear are being provided by the rest of the defense. Okay, the Defensive Ends are pretty good, with Vanden Bosch and Cliff Avril and of course, my man The Great Willie Young (I feel like I should do something, like make the sign of the cross, every time I say his name. Mmmmmm, Sacrilicious.) But the rest of the defense is, well, as Aristotle would say, straight ass. And the assiest bunch of all is . . . aw, hell, I'll go with the Cornerbacks.

I could have gone with the Safeties. I mean, after all, I did kinda blow them up earlier in this post, but they at least have Delmas. What do the Cornerbacks have? Chris Houston? The situation here is almost jaw droppingly bad. It's shocking, my friends. I just glanced at the depth chart to see exactly where we're at here and my eyes bugged out and my mouth dropped open in utter dismay. I look like a kid who just walked in on his parents having sex. Oh, the horror. The horror! It's just asses and elbows everywhere.

Indeed. Other than Houston - the only dude at Cornerback who can get away with calling himself a semi-legit starting Cornerback in the NFL - there's Jonathan Wade, who I'd be happy with as, like, a fifth Cornerback, but HE'S STARTING, so . . . excuse me, I need to take a five minute break to weep softly to myself in the corner.

Okay, I'm back. After Houston and Wade, the Lions have Alphonso Smith, who they just traded for this past week and Aaron Berry, an undrafted free agent. Guess what? THAT'S IT! Yeah, that's all the Lions have. When cut day came, Jim Schwartz basically walked into the Cornerback meeting with a flamethrower and went nuts. The motherfucker just massacred everyone. Dre Bly's body was found burnt to a crisp huddled underneath a desk. Eric King looked like he was found by some Stormtroopers hanging out with some Jawas and Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. You shouldn't have bought those stolen droids, my man. (I'm so sorry.)

Sure, the team then traded for Alphonso Smith, who was a second round pick only a year ago, but he failed so egregiously with the Broncos that they couldn't wait to dump his ass on some other team. That doesn't exactly inspire a ton of hope. And sure, Berry impressed the coaches in the team's mini-camp, but then he got hurt and missed most of the Preseason. I mean, that is almost unbelievable. The Lions decided to keep an undrafted free agent rookie who missed almost all of training camp. THAT'S HOW BAD THE SITUATION IS HERE. I'm sorry for degenerating into the type of dude who starts hollering in all caps but this is what I have been driven to and this is our reality. Good God. I'm going to slam my head in the door. Be right back.

X-FACTOR: I'm not going to pick an individual player here. Instead, I will take the chickenshit route and say it's health. That's right, health. If the Lions - specifically Delmas and Levy, who are both already banged up - can stay healthy, they have a chance to get just enough stops to allow the potentially explosive offense to score enough points to win some games. If they can't stay healthy, well . . . I looked and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

CORE PLAYERS WHO THE TEAM CAN BUILD AROUND: Suh and Delmas. I'll also through Sammie Lee Hill in here even though he isn't a starter.

PLAYERS WHO COULD BE CORE PLAYERS BUT WE WON'T KNOW UNTIL AFTER THIS SEASON: Basically, this is for players like DeAndre Levy, players who the coaches hope develop into cornerstones that the team can build around but who could just as likely flame out and be off the team in a couple of years. If I would have thought of this when I was doing the offensive preview, I would have put Brandon Pettigrew here. But I didn't and this is the defensive preview, and so . . . yeah, DeAndre Levy.

PLAYERS WHO WE CAN WIN WITH: Again, these are players who aren't necessarily in the team's long term plans but who are good enough to win with, so long as they have the right talent around them. On this team, they are Kyle Vandenbosch and Corey Williams. And maybe Julian Peterson. I am torn on Peterson. I think he can still be a solid player but he also might be done. He didn't really do anything last season, and there's a real possibility that he might just be taking up space now.

PLAYERS WHO THE TEAM WOULD PROBABLY REPLACE IF THEY COULD: Uh, everybody else. Okay fine. Starters that need replacing are Houston, Wade, Brown, Zack Follett and Cliff Avril. I like Follett - I do - but the dude is probably just not good enough to be an NFL starting Linebacker. He is a special teams demon and an awesome guy and hey, that's great. I'm rooting for him. But just because I'm rooting for him doesn't mean I want him to be the starter if he can't get the job done and I think he's probably just a step too slow and just a tad too stiff to do that job. I also like Avril, but as a situational pass rusher. As a third Defensive End I think he's ideal. As a starter, I'm not so sure he can hold up against the run well enough. I could be persuaded by decent years by both of those dudes to change my mind though. And if Houston somehow learns to get his head around on the ball, then I'd bump him up too, but I just don't see that happening. The dude is a great athlete but he has no ball skills, which are, uh, kind of important. Wade and Brown are going to kill us.

PLAYERS WHO ARE IMMORTAL AND WHO MAY WELL BE THE ANGEL OF DEATH AND/OR THE SAVIORS OF MANKIND: Willie Young.

FIVE NO DOUBT TERRIBLE PREDICTIONS:

1. Delmas will be in and out of the lineup with injury, especially early, which will inhibit the growth of the defense. This will be frustrating as hell. There will be a few games where everything comes together though, where he's healthy and everything is cooking and these games will give us some hope for the future.

2. The Defensive Line will kick all kinds of ass and will manage to swing the result of at least one game. They will provide consistent pressure, which will take some of the heat off of the awful secondary and they will consistently stop the run. However, their final numbers will be only average because the secondary will be so shitty that opposing Quarterbacks will be able to get rid of the ball before the Lions D-Line can crush them and the Linebackers won't be good enough to consistently clean up after the D-Line blows up a running play.

3. We will be endlessly frustrated by the poor play in the secondary, which will cost us several games and will be the most obvious need going into 2011.

4. DeAndre Levy will play adequately at Middle Linebacker but he won't be a star. He'll be a slight disappointment but he'll still be the best Linebacker we have.

5. PAIN. TERRIBLE PAIN.

2010 Lions Season Preview: The Offense

It's not homoerotic if they're both wearing helmets.

In previous years, I devoted approximately a billion words to each position group in a monstrous season preview that left me shaking like a junky, my brain mushy and worthless and my heart full of so much hateful depression that it was a minor miracle that I not only kept watching football but didn't just strip naked and run into on-coming traffic. (Why would I be naked? Well, why not?)

This year, I have decided to do things a little differently. And while I'll admit that the preservation of my sanity is the biggest reason for this change, there are some other legitimate reasons. For starters, I have already devoted so many words (so fucking many . . .) to just about every player on this team that by now each one would just feel like it was an exercise in mind numbing repetition. I mean how many times do you need me to call Drew Stanton a Grit Farmer or explain my position on Jeff Backus? Second, going position by position can obscure the point of the whole thing, which is that each one of these position groups works in harmony with the other ones. It's all well and good to explain why the Defensive Backs are straight gutter trash or to declare that the Defensive Line will murder people with their bare hands. But it doesn't really explain how that affects the team as a whole.

So, I have searched far and wide for a solution and in the end, I have just decided to go my own way and make it up as I go along. You know, the usual. Today, I'm going to take a look at the offense. Tomorrow, I'll do the defense, and then on Thursday I'll give an overview of the whole damn thing, complete with ridiculous predictions, and then on Friday I'll hit you with a preview of the Bears game. Sound good?

Oh, one last thing. I am still holding to my announced plan to post something every day. So, starting now (or yesterday, really) be sure to check here every day to read whatever weird bullshit I am serving up. Every day? YES. EVERY DAMN DAY. (Well, weekdays anyway. Have a heart.) I can't promise a specific time. Some days will be later than others. If you're counting on me to be like the faithful husband who skips home from work at the same time everyday with a smile on his face, then you'll probably be making a mistake. Instead, I'll be more like the husband who sometimes comes home after work and sometimes comes staggering in at two AM, stinking of cheap booze and whores. It won't be pretty, but damn it all, at least I'll still be coming home to you every night. And that's something, right?

And with all that out of the way, let's start this thing.

OFFENSE

BEST PLAYER: Come on, who could it be other than St. Calvin? Indeed, Calvin Johnson is the one offensive player we have who we can throw down as a trump card in conversations with other fans. We are like poor white trash living in a wealthy neighborhood and while everyone else bolts around in their Porsches and their Maybachs and their rocket powered tanks and AT-ATs, all our vehicles are on cinder blocks on the front lawn. At least until we open the garage and drive our Ferrari out. That's Calvin Johnson. Everyone just sits back and laughs at us, mocks us and calls us losers and yet, somehow, we have the nicest toy of all and when he shows up, the laughter dies down and everyone just stares at awe while we drive away.

WORST PLAYER: I'm limiting this to the starters. It would be excessively shitty of me to rag on a fringe roster player here, the third Tight End or backup Fullback or whoever. It would be like kicking a retarded puppy. All that said, the winner (loser?) here is Gosder Cherilus. Cherilus is a former first round pick, a remnant of the dying days of the Millen reign of terror, and so far all he's shown the ability to do is take a bunch of dumb penalties and blatantly try to injure Jared Allen. Perhaps this is Karmic payback for the brutal and inhumane slaying of my man Lennie Small. Perhaps his peanut brain was somehow transferred to Big Gos' head. I don't know. What I do know is that for a first round pick, getting chased after by an enraged Jared Allen shouldn't be the highlight of your career. I also considered going with Stephen Peterman here. Peterman is not a very good player, but really, that's not his fault. He was born shitty. Again, it would be like whipping on a retard. Cherilus, though, has talent. He has the ability to be much more than he is. But he's a wasteful idiot, and therefore this category is all his. By the way, one last thing: it's probably not a good sign for the right side of the Offensive Line that it is made up of the two players who I considered here.

MOST IMPORTANT PLAYER: This is different from Best Player. Calvin Johnson is great, but he's not the most important player for us offensively. Don't get me wrong, he is an extremely important player. Even if he only touches the ball ten times, his mere presence opens up the field for the rest of the offense. But, he does only touch the ball ten times a game - at most. There is a player who touches the ball on every play, and his name is Matthew Stafford. Yes, this is a bit of a no-brainer and isn't the most creative of answers, but sometimes the obvious answer is also the right answer, you know? It would be foolish of me to say otherwise. If Matthew Stafford takes a leap over last season - if he cuts down on the turnovers and manages to stay healthy - the offense will be explosive. If he still throws way too many interceptions and gets banged up then the offense will struggle. It's that simple.

PLAYER WHOSE IMPORTANCE IS UNDERRATED: The key guys are obvious in the offense - Stafford, St. Calvin, Jahvid Best - but there are other players who are important too, players whose performance this season could mean the difference between ordinary and extraordinary. Chief amongst these players this season is Nate Burleson. It is critically important that Burleson plays well at the second receiver spot. If he does, then it will force teams to pay attention to him and ease up on St. Calvin, which could open Calvin up for a monster season. If Burleson plays like he can, then the Lions will simply have too many weapons for the defense to deal with, too many dudes to cover, too many players to chase around the field. If he struggles, then the defense can smother St. Calvin and key on Jahvid Best out of the backfield. Burleson playing well will be critical to the offense's success this season.

DEEPEST POSITION GROUP: I'm going to go with the Tight Ends here. They aren't the most explosive nor are they the most talented, but from top to bottom they are probably the most solid. In Brandon Pettigrew, the Lions have a complete Tight End, a guy who can get open down the seams, serve as a safety valve for Stafford and provide elite level in-line blocking. Behind him, Tony Scheffler is a very good receiver for a Tight End and Will Heller is a fine blocker. The starter has all the tools while his backups each possess a high level of skill in one particular area. That's exactly what you want. This position was so deep that the Lions were able to trade Dan Gronkowski to the Broncos for Alphonso Smith, who was a second round pick at Cornerback only a year ago. That's what depth will do for you. Without that depth, the Lions would have kept Gronkowski, who played well in the preseason. With that depth, Gronkowski was expendable. He wasn't going to make the team but he was good enough to be attractive to another team, and the Lions were able to deal him for a potentially useful part in the Secondary. This is how you effectively build a quality team.

SHALLOWEST POSITION GROUP: I'm going to say the Offensive Tackles. Look, there's a reason why Gosder Cherilus is still starting, and it's not because he has a Pro Bowl caliber player just waiting behind him for his chance to play. Meanwhile, Jeff Backus is probably the most hated player the Lions have - fairly or unfairly - but again, it's not like the Lions have anyone else. There is a faint ray of hope, as Corey Hilliard looks like he could be a decent developmental prospect, but honestly? There's not much here, especially after Jon Jansen was taken out behind the barn and shot, his corpse flung next to Lennie Small's. I could have also gone with the Guards here, and in retrospect maybe I should have. At least the Offensive Tackles have some first round credentials backing them up. All the Guards have are Rob Sims, Peterman and Manny Ramirez. No blue chippers there, but hell, maybe that's reason enough to give this to the Offensive Tackles. The Guards are at least playing up to their ability. The Tackles on the other hand are supposed to be good. But they aren't and so fuck them.

X-FACTOR: This is Jahvid Best all the way. If he hits his ceiling, which is somewhere between Brian Westbrook and Chris Johnson, then look the fuck out because this offense will just straight up kill a bunch of fools. Best brings a dynamic to this offense which hasn't been seen since a certain martyred Saint (of the non-New Orleans variety) rode out of town on a river of tears. Oh, Barry, you have been missed. If Best can bring a fraction of what Barry brought to the Lions once upon a time, then the pieces might be in place for an offense that is capable of hanging with anybody.

CORE PLAYERS WHO THE TEAM CAN BUILD AROUND: These are the guys who are set, the positions we don't really have to worry about, the ones who will be with us when we finally reach the mountaintop. They are: Matthew Stafford, Calvin Johnson, Jahvid Best, and Brandon Pettigrew. Stafford and St. Calvin are locked in. They are the future, for better or for worse. Best and Pettigrew are included here largely based off of potential. If they don't work out they could still be replaced but we won't think like that because we are optimists in our hearts and gentlemen and lady gentlemen in our souls. But for now they are the players who the team expects to still be here seven or eight years from now, leading the way.

PLAYERS WHO THE TEAM CAN WIN WITH: These are players who aren't necessarily elite level talents, and if the right guy came along, you'd replace them. Eventually, you have an eye on replacing them, but they can get the job done if they have elite talent around them, if that makes sense. They are: Jerome Felton, Nate Burleson, and Rob Sims.

PLAYERS WHO THE TEAM WOULD PROBABLY REPLACE IF THEY COULD: These are guys who the team would eventually love to replace. Given unlimited options, you would probably see other players starting in their place. Mind you, some of these guys are not terrible, but they just aren't players with whom you can win a championship. It's that simple. They are: Gosder Cherilus, Stephen Peterman, Dominic Raiola and Jeff Backus. Considering this is 4/5 of the Offensive Line, you can now commence picking out the most fashionable necktie you can find to hang yourself with. Until this unit is overhauled, the offense - no matter the weapons - will never reach its full potential. This is something that we know all too well as Lions fans. We spent a decade watching our offense almost get there but never quite reaching its full potential. How many times did we drone on and on about "If we only had the Cowboys Offensive Line . . ." But we didn't and the result was St. Barry being washed away in a flood of his own tears. I don't want to see that happen again. Do you?

KEY BACKUP: I'll go with Kevin Smith here. Jahvid Best should be a star. He is the most talented running back the Lions have had since, well . . . you know, but that doesn't mean he can do it all by himself. He'll need a breather and Kevin Smith has to produce when Best is out of the game. Ideally, Smith will return from the slaughterhouse death of his poor knee with the ability to still do some things. He should still be an effective blocker and receiver out of the backfield but thus far, since coming back from his injuries, he hasn't shown the ability to run nearly as well as he did as a rookie, when he ran for almost 1,000 yards on that apocalyptic 0-16 team. If he can't regain the ability to run off 4-5 yards every time he gets the ball (let's face it, the dude is never going to be explosive) then the offense will bog down whenever he is in there. If he can't get it done - and can't do so right away - Maurice Morris is waiting in the wings.

FIVE NO DOUBT TERRIBLE PREDICTIONS:

1. Stafford will take a leap this season, and will throw for 3,800 yards, 26 touchdowns and 13 interceptions. He will still make the occasionally frustrating and critical mistake, but he'll also put us in position to win more games than we're accustomed to seeing as Lions fans.

2. Calvin Johnson will catch 90 passes for around 1350 yards and 12 touchdowns. He will be the big play terror that everyone fears when they play the Lions and he and Stafford will be a lethal combo that will have enormous buzz around them going into 2011.

3. Jahvid Best will run for 1100 yards on 250 carries as a rookie, and will be a pain in the ass for defensive coordinators to have to contend with as the season goes on. He will not be a workhorse, however, and many of his yards will come on big plays. An average game for him will look like this - 15 carries, 75 yards, 1 touchdown, 4 receptions, 46 yards, and a billion headaches for defensive coordinators. There will be some games where he just explodes and then there will be other games where he'll be frustratingly quiet. These games will also correlate with the team's success - or lack thereof. But he is still a rookie and along with Stafford and St. Calvin, there will be significant buzz surrounding Best going into 2011. Jesus, I'm so excited. Someone might need to slap me or shock me with a car battery or something. Calm down, you fool!

4. The Offensive Line will provide a workmanlike effort this season and we'll leave it saying they did just enough to make it work. Stafford will manage to stay healthy even though he'll still take a few too many hits thanks to breakdowns - especially by Cherilus, but Rob Sims' infusion into the lineup should ease some of the protection burden on Jeff Backus. Meanwhile, there will be some games where the line is able to open up holes in the running game but there will be others where there's no room at all, and like I said with Best, the results there will have a strong correlation with the team's overall success.

5. The receivers other than St. Calvin will have a largely decent year. Burleson will be a Godsend, quickly developing into Stafford's comfort receiver, the dude he turns to first when everything is covered. As a result, he'll catch 65 passes for around 900 yards and 6 or 7 touchdowns. However, he'll also miss a game with an injury. Brandon Pettigrew will slowly return to prominence following his knee injury, causing Stafford to target Tony Scheffler early in the season. But by the end of the season, Stafford to Pettigrew will become a familiar sight and Scheffler will see his production start to wane a little bit. Unfortunately, beyond Burleson, the Lions will get disappointing production out of their receivers. Bryant Johnson should manage to catch 40 balls, but he'll be too quiet in too many games. Meanwhile, Derrick Williams will again do nothing and the Lions will be on the search for more receiving depth going into 2011.

The Home At The End Of The World

Well, here we are. But where is here, exactly? That's the question that's going to hang over this entire season and it's one that, frankly, I just can't answer. Not yet, anyway. One day - hopefully fairly soon - I think I'll be able to take a deep breath, smile and say "We're here" and we'll all know exactly where that is. But for now, "here" is a confusing purgatory, a place of both deep terror and almighty joy. The Fear and The Hope exist side by side here, and sometimes it's impossible to even distinguish between the two.

Just look at Matthew Stafford. Everyone is excited about Stafford. Everyone thinks that he's finally the answer to a half century old riddle. And yet, statistically he had an awful season. He threw way too many interceptions and his team only won two games. Stafford only played in 10 games and threw 20 interceptions. Extrapolated over a full sixteen game schedule that works out to 32 interceptions, a staggering number that should have us all reaching for the ol' Clorox cocktail.

But then there's the Matthew Stafford of the Browns game, the Matthew Stafford who had the best game statistically by a rookie quarterback in the history of the NFL, the Matthew Stafford who lurched back onto the field after staggering off of it, his shoulder made of hamburger meat and defective fireworks, and threw the game winning touchdown before giving in to the pain, and above all, the Matthew Stafford who made us all feel a pure and inviolable sort of hope.

It's great to believe. It's great to have hope. But in that moment, we did more than believe, we did more than hope. Those are feelings that rely upon faith, in an idea, a feeling. They are not real things - their rewards exist in an unknown future, a future that we can write with our minds however we want, good or bad. Hope allows us to envision something that isn't real. But when that game ended, we didn't hope, we didn't believe. We knew.

Knowledge is predicated on evidence, on facts. For the first time, we could look at what Matthew Stafford did and we knew. This was no flight of fancy, no hope, no dream, no belief. This was knowledge, rooted in cold fact, hard and unwavering, and for that moment in time, we lived in that future of our dreams. It was a future made real, if only for an instant.

But it was only an instant, and the rest of the season saw Stafford take a brutal beating. He was never right after that game against Cleveland, and that knowledge became a memory. It was like we were allowed to be sucked forward in time for a moment, to live and breathe and know what it was like to live in that dreamland, to know that it could be real. And then we were sucked right back out again, and all we could do was watch it recede into the distance until it was just a dream again. But we remember. We were there. We knew.

And that's where we find ourselves as Lions fans on the brink of this new season. We still believe, we still hope and we still allow ourselves to dream, and that is all fortified with the knowledge that the unattainable, the imaginary world of our dreams, is real. We have that memory, we know it's out there and now we just have to find the way back.

But, unfortunately for us, we can't just search, carefree, unburdened by the world we live in now. Because the horrible pains of the past, the Failure Demons and the Marinellis and the Millens and the 0-16 Nazi Werewolves are still beating the holy hell out of us. We know that the future of our dreams exists because we were there for a glorious instant. But we also know that the world of chaos and pain of our nightmares exists because we have been there for a lot longer than just an instant. We know without a shadow of a doubt that that world is real.

The fact that we can even believe in that future of our dreams, that we can grab hold of that instant when we knew it was real, is a testament to both our native optimism and to our desperate desire for something more than this dark world of sadness and despair. There is no way that we should even believe in anything but that darkness anymore. There's no way that we should even be human. After what we have endured, we should all be wandering around naked in the streets, grunting and flinging shit at one another, cannibalizing one another in madness, utterly without reason or dignity. And yet, we somehow still dream. We somehow remember that there is such a thing as the light and that it is better than the darkness. And when that light shone through, when it pierced the black clouds which had been impenetrable for so long, we knew it. We knew what it was because we dreamed of it, because we believed in it. And even after the light disappeared, swallowed up again by the darkness, we knew it was there, somewhere.

The Fear and The Hope. They are opposites and yet they live side by side for us. One has owned us for decades. The other has sustained us, has kept us human, has kept us on the long path to the future of our dreams. We have no idea when we will finally get there and, honestly, we have no idea how to get there. All we know is that it is out there, somewhere and that it does exist. It is real, not because we want it to be, but because we were there.

I don't know where we are now. It is dark and it is cold and there are mean people with whips hurting us. There are Failure Demons flying all over the place, hooting and screaming, a terrible frenzy of evil that is impossible to ignore or avoid. And yet, there is a better world out there. We know this now. We don't just believe it, don't just hope for it. We know it.

At the end of the year, we will look at the season as a whole and it will still seem dark. The numbers won't be pretty and the final record will be dismal. But when you have lived in the dark for so long, there is more than one shade of black. Just like the legend that the Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, we have dozens of words for the darkness. The outside world just looks in and sees black. We see different colors, different shades of black. They are all black, and yet they are all different. The outside world might look in during this season and see nothing but black, but what we will see will be as different from black as black is from purple, as purple is from blue, as blue is from green, as green is from yellow, as yellow is from white.

And somewhere in there, somewhere deep inside our own universe, where only we can see the full color spectrum, there will be light. And when the season's over, it might be almost close enough to touch or it might be still so far away that it almost feels like a pale mockery of our dreams. We just don't know. But what we do know is that it is there, and that it points the way to the future of our dreams, to that land we once visited, to that world that was good, that was pure, that was everything we ever hoped it would be. And no matter how far away that light is, whether it's close or whether it seems a billion light years away, our eyes will be drawn to it and we'll stare into it and we'll dream some more and we'll remember that somewhere, there is a world where those dreams are made real. And one day, we'll call that place home.