Burn Them All

I’m in a belligerent mood. I don’t feel very articulate and I kind of just want to fight someone. So, if this is just a raving, incoherent mess, vaguely dumb, laced with epic amounts of testosterone then hey, that’s just the way it’s gotta be. Also, if I wander off half way through and start ranting at Jared Allen like Hulk Hogan, well . . . at least you’ll be prepared.

Anyway, fuck this. Fuck this. And by this, I kind of mean everything. My initial plan was to write some Morrisseyesque WHY ME LORD? screed that would have ended with me telling you not to worry because I’d just huff some ether but to hell with all that nonsense. I just want to see my Lions beat the shit out of the Vikings. Is that so wrong? Everything else can just go to hell.

Take everything that’s been said over the past couple of weeks, put it in a box, set that box on fire and then shoot it into the sun. The world is expecting us to grovel right now, to beg their forgiveness like bleating sheep because our football team has acted the fool the past couple of weeks but goddammit, after everything we’ve been through we don’t have to apologize for anything. I’m sick of feeling like I have to nod my head somberly just because Cris Collinsworth or Al Michaels or Troy Aikman is Tsk Tsking us (I would have included Joe Buck but it has become abundantly clear that Joe Buck just doesn’t give a fuck anymore. About anything. I’m pretty sure he saw some weird, heinous shit in the offseason, like he looked into the Ark of the Covenant and now all he has left is a nihilistic understanding that he and all that he cares about are just specks of dust on the pimple of the ass of a god that doesn’t even know he exists.) I’m sick of it. We all know what’s going on, we all know what has to change and that’s that.

We have been collectively shit on for so long that people don’t seem to understand that deep inside we are snarling wolves. We’ll play nice for a while but as soon as you start piling on, we’ll rip your fucking throat out and I think that’s where I am now, right at this moment, as a fan. My team is hilariously dumb and they have embarrassed me and themselves the last couple weeks, but they are still my team and everyone else can go to hell. I told you this would not be eloquent.

The last few weeks have felt like a slow maddening push from some cruel, bastard force, one which has driven us backwards, backwards, backwards, no matter how much we have tried to fight back. And we’ve spent all that time fighting back and fighting back and fighting back, desperate to avoid . . . well, the place we are now. But now we’re here, pressed up against a wall and there’s nowhere left for that fucking thing to push us and Ndamukong Suh just crashed a helicopter and then ate a white woman and Pat Robertson just went on the 700 Club to tell all his followers to spray us with Holy Water and to pay him $79.95 for a special “blessing” that would keep them safe from the blood soaked Detroit Lions and Jared Allen, that ignorant fuck, is hee-hawing his way through some shitty, hackneyed routine about Detroit and ENOUGH GODDAMMIT. Enough.

Nothing else matters now other than watching my team maul the Vikings. Everything else is irrelevant and stupid and debasing. The Lions have once again become some sort of lame joke, a shitty punchline on the lips of every smug asshole with even a passing interest in the NFL. This joke is different, though. It’s not laced with a sort of pathetic pity, the kind that we have grown all too used to, but rather with a smug sense of self-satisfaction, a lazy sort of condemnation which is both thoughtless and vicious. Neither sort of joke is funny. I’m not laughing. Fuck you.

Does Jared Allen think he’s the first son of a bitch to ever make a lazy ass joke about Detroit before? Shit, I make jokes about Detroit. But there is something particularly worthless and petty and pathetic about making jokes about Detroit when you know it’s okay to do it, when you know that everyone will Haw-haw and back your cowardly ass up just because it’s Open Season on the Lions and everything about them, including their city. Well, fuck you, Jared Allen, especially because your hillbilly ass is scuffling along in last place, taking cheap shots wherever you can, getting away with it just because nobody gives a fuck about you or the Vikings right now. If Jared Allen kicks a man in the balls, but no-one is around to see it, did it really happen? Apparently not, judging by his 0 game suspension.

But enough of all that. There is football to be played on Sunday, Lions football and no matter what anybody thinks right now, that’s worth something. Yeah, the last couple of weeks could have gone, uh, a little better, but shit, who the fuck do the Vikings think they are? Who the fuck do people think we are for that matter? Right now, it seems like everyone is laughing at us and saying how we just can’t get it done, all the while tonguing Tim Tebow’s anus like it was a fucking trumpet and they were Louis Armstrong. Well, here’s something you might have forgotten – before St. Tebow and his choir of angels started on their stairway to heaven, what happened? Yeah, that’s right, the Lions beat the shit out of them. Hell, they fucking embarrassed them. These Lions are still those Lions. Understand that.

The Lions are hurt. They’re angry. They’re embarrassed. And if they are worth anything in this world, now is the time when they will fight, when they will rip the throat out of whichever fool team is unlucky enough to wander in their path. Maybe the Lions are fatally flawed. Maybe they have now suffered one too many casualties on this Road to Redemption, but you know what? They’re not dead yet and you don’t fuck with a wounded lion unless you want your face torn off and eaten. So poke away, Jared Allen. Poke away.

Of course, I’m sure the Vikings are confident. I’m sure they’re telling themselves that they should have beaten the Lions earlier this season, and you know what? They probably should have. But they had their chance and they blew it. Now they have some child quarterback and a hurt Adrian Peterson dragging the dumpster fire that is their season into our home, into Ford Field, into Detroit, and the Lions are angry and carrying giant cans of gasoline to throw on that dumpster fire. You think the Lions don’t remember that game? You think the Lions don’t remember Jared Allen trying to kill Matthew Stafford? You think the Lions don’t understand what’s on the line here? The Vikings are playing for nothing. They just want the season to end. The Lions are playing to shut everyone the fuck up. At least for one week. Laugh at the Lions. Shit on them all you want. But right now the Lions are a playoff team – a goddamn playoff team – and the Vikings are just a collection of aimless shitheads drifting towards the welcoming arms of oblivion.

There is nothing left to talk about. Nothing left to say. There is just football, glorious football, and then when the Vikings are dead, we burn Oakland. And that's just the way it is.

Lions win.

Predicted Final Score: Lions 42, Vikings 17

No Glove, No Love. For Anyone.

For some reason, I felt like this had particular relevance

Hey, remember when the Lions were 5-0? That was fun. This, uh . . . not so much. Then again it’s hard to win – for any team – when the other team beats you, you beat yourself and then the refs decide the hell with it and pile on for good measure. That may sound vaguely whiney, but shit, did you see that fucking game last night?

Indeed, in a season that has turned from sublime to vaguely ridiculous, last night’s game was probably the most ridiculous of all, a three hour long gag reel of stupidity and general lunacy punctuated by a not so subtle reminder that the universe hates us and that its minions, in the guise of real, live NFL officials, have been instructed to forever bend us over and Sandusky us into oblivion. Most Lions fans spent last night in a state somewhere between apoplectic and outright insane. I spent the entire second half making macabre jokes on Twitter about failing levee systems and Jim Schwartz ordering Code Reds in the locker room and in between I typed the words shit and fuck and then combined them poetically into “fuck this shit” and “this shit is fucking ridiculous” and other various masterpieces of the English language. Gallows humor was at an all-time high. Shit, the whole fanbase felt like an Armchair Linebacker post come to life. Poor Ty even wrestled the family cat at halftime. It was out of control.

Normally, you would expect that this collective madness would be inspired by some sort of epic collapse by our beloved Lions but the weird thing is that they actually played reasonably well given the circumstances. Faced with a billion different injuries, the Lions were going to get beat up a bit in this game. That was a given. The key was in the effectiveness of their counterpunching, and here’s the thing: the Lions packed a pretty mean right hook last night. Unfortunately, I mean this both metaphorically and literally, but let’s ignore all that terrible bullshit right now and just concentrate on the positive, okay? And the most positive thing that I am taking away from that game is that Matthew Stafford got his swagger back. He looked pretty damn good for most of the game, and for the first time this season really, I felt like we were finally – finally – seeing the quarterback we thought we would see before the season. He was generally accurate, he stood tough in the pocket, took some big hits, got up, smiled and kept firing. There was one point in the second half, following a deep completion to Nate Burleson, that the camera caught Stafford strutting down the field, that fighter pilot smile on his face, and no matter what else was going on, it made me feel happy and confident and secure in my hope for the future, in a way that had kind of shriveled up over the past few weeks. If the Lions had somehow pulled out that game, I think that shot would have become iconic, etched in the history books, part of Matthew Stafford’s highlight reel, his, ugh, forgive me for saying this, Favre moment. But the Lions didn’t win. They lost. And so no one will remember that shit, and, well, here we are.

I just wanted to hit you with some positive feelings before I got to the rest of the epic shit-show that was last night’s game. Like I said, the Lions lost and somehow, even though I kinda figured they would get dropped in this one, they managed to lose in a way that was utterly infuriating. Honestly, that shouldn’t be that surprising since every time I convince myself that I can handle a Lions loss, someone shows up and does something outrageously dumb or the universe whips its dick out and pisses in my face and pretty soon I can’t tell the difference between universe piss and my own sad tears.

Last week, it was the refs calling a billion questionable penalties, each one of them drive killing, and Ndamukong Suh stomping dudes and then getting chased off the field like Idi Amin. This week, it was the refs calling a billion questionable penalties, each one of them drive killing, and everyone else stomping dudes and shoving refs and I think I even saw Gosder Cherilus or someone try to sneak a chainsaw onto the field. Nate Burleson was damned to hell for having arms and at one point I was convinced that Jim Schwartz was going to beat the shit out of Titus Young. That would have been fine and at least entertaining, but the problem was, was that by the end of the game I was convinced that Jim Schwartz was going to beat the shit out of about 14 different dudes and then he would have to get Gunther or someone to beat the shit out of him too. It was insane.

Every other play there was a flag thrown and out of those about half of them were a direct result of the reckless stupidity of the Lions gang of fools and the other half were the direct result of either incredible incompetence on the part of the refs or the universe’s ineffable hatred for our very souls, depending on your view of the situation. How do you process something like that? How do you deal with the wild and violent mood swings which come from a sequence like this, typical in last night’s game: 30 yard pass to Nate Burleson, flag for offensive pass interference, 15 yard dart thrown by Matthew Stafford to Brandon Pettigrew who gets flagged for trying to eat the ball and then gets yanked from the game for exposing himself to an official, Lions scramble for another first down and then the ref calls a personal foul on Jason Hanson for being too old before Titus Young throws a knife at Sean Payton and has to be restrained by a gang of marines? The answer, naturally, is that you don’t. Instead, you just rant and rave and gibber about how everyone and everything hates you and sometimes you film yourself fighting a cat at halftime.

Fuck those refs, man. Fuck every one of them. They were awful and despicable and when that kind of shit happens it makes you wonder why the hell you even watch this shit in the first place. It has gotten to the point that the NFL rulebook feels like something so Byzantine and ridiculous that it should be renamed the NFL Necronomicon, only able to be completely understood by a select group of wizards and weird old dudes who look like Rasputin. Basically, the refs just call whatever the fuck they feel like calling and then use their arcane wizard knowledge to find some obscure footnote in the Necronomicon that justifies their bullshit. It’s unreal and it’s getting fucking old. Actually, by this point, it is so beyond old that it has become a rotting zombie, haunting us every Sunday until it finally catches us and eats our brains. Awful, awful . . .

So, yeah, fuck those refs, man. But fuck everyone else too. Fuck Titus Young for taking a swing at a Saint with the ref standing right there. Fuck Stefan Logan for throwing the ball in a dude’s face. Fuck Brandon Pettigrew for getting wild with a ref. Actually, just like last week, that shit by itself doesn’t really bother me. People mewling about thugs can pipe down. What pisses me off was the sheer, brutal stupidity of every single one of those personal foul penalties. They were just . . . dumb. And dumb teams don’t win shit in the NFL.

Really, that’s the bottom line. Dumb teams don’t win and right now the Lions are a dumb team. Everything else – all the talk radio fainting from Victorian era schoolmarms about thuggery and the like – is just senseless noise getting in the way of the real issue, which is that again, right now the Lions are a dumb team that does dumb shit waaaaaay too much. Like I said in my Ndamukong Suh piece last week, the issue isn’t talent anymore. And it isn’t about proving that you can hang with the big swinging dicks of the NFL anymore. It’s about doing all of those little things that make those big swinging dicks big swinging dicks and avoiding doing all of those little things that make you the tiny, shriveled dick that everyone is embarrassed about.

I’m sorry, that was a weird metaphor and I don’t know where it came from (checks pants). Ahem.

Back to the point – the next step for the Lions is proving that they can do all of those little things that separate the truly good teams from the rest of the riffraff, and just like last week, this week against the Saints, the Lions failed miserably.

I suppose, on some level, that is a good place to be. It means that we have come almost unfathomably far in a relatively short amount of time. It means that we are talented enough – good enough – to at least be in the conversation. After all, there is a reason this game was flexed up to the Sunday night slot, you know? And it’s because in many ways these Lions are most definitely not the “same ol’ Lions” and everyone knows it.

But on another, baser, more primal level, this shit is fucking infuriating and any joy and satisfaction that we can take in our team’s hard fought rise back to the land of the living is utterly obliterated by seeing them act like a bunch of goddamn baboons in heat, flinging their shit around and flashing their bright red asses while everyone else points and laughs because they don’t know how to act in this strange land of the living yet. And, to make things worse, a world that already seems like it hates us, that treats us like we don’t belong, suddenly has a legitimate reason to pick on us and pretty soon people are throwing yellow flags filled with BBs or corn or the trapped souls of the damned or whatever the fuck they fill those things with because Nate Burleson has arms.

It’s horrible and it’s maddening and it feels kind of like watching a beautiful parade float that the whole community worked on and built together over a period of months and years, filled with smiling, waving children, suddenly catch on fire and then slowly careen off the side of the road into an ammunition depot or a fireworks factory. You want to stop it but the thing is just picking up speed and picking up speed and all those poor kids are going to die and somebody get a bucket of water and goddammit, this wasn’t supposed to happen.

But to hell with all that. It is happening and we have to find a way to try to put it into perspective. Story of our lives, right? The good news, as I said earlier, is that the Lions are talented enough now and in the end, I think that will overcome everything else. Let’s not forget, this is a team with a young and wild heart and perhaps Jim Schwartz fucked up this year, I don’t know. Perhaps he leaned so far over the line with this team, that line between controlled aggression and wild, reckless stupidity, that he lost control of it and now he has to find a way to drag everyone back to the line. I don’t know.

All I do know is that right now, the Lions have to basically win their next three games if they want to have a decent shot at the playoffs. Considering that a third of the way into the season people were openly gibbering about Super Bowls and parades and skullfucking Aaron Rodgers, that is a sobering thought. If the Lions don’t get their shit together and get tripped up at any point in the next three weeks, then we will ultimately look back on this season with sadness and regret and those are emotions we’re far too familiar with as Lions fans.

The Lions can do this. They absolutely can and they should. Like I said, they’re talented enough and they can play with anybody. When it comes to down to down effectiveness, to the pure man against man you can’t stop me physicality that is football, I think the Lions have proven that the past two weeks. Unfortunately, there is a whole other side to football, that cerebral side, which has completely eluded the Lions the past couple of weeks and it sucks that we have to worry about that as much as we do but, well, here we are.

All that would be enough to cause even the best of us to begin muttering like raving lunatics but then there is another factor which I think we need to come to terms with, another factor which looms over everything and has become impossible to ignore, and that’s that the referees, for whatever reason – either because it’s illegal to be a Detroit Lion in the NFL, or because a reputation built on bullshit and lies has somehow become all too true, or because of the sheer baffling hatred the universe has for us, etc. – will fuck us over. They just will and by this point I think we all know that. Those pass interference penalties on Nate Burleson were fucking criminal. Could they have been called? Eh, maybe, depending on how stringent your definition of offensive pass interference is. But that’s the problem. In the NFL, every penalty is a fucking judgment call now. It’s like holding. For a long time, it’s been said that holding could be called on every play. It just isn’t. Well, what happened with Nate Burleson was the equivalent of holding being called on every play. It’s a judgment call, and right now the refs have decided to judge us guilty on every fucking play. To truly understand the rank absurdity of it, all you have to do is look at a play in the first half. The Saints, up 3-0, were backed up on their own side of the field. It was third down and Drew Brees decided to chuck it 40 yards down-field to his receiver. Aaron Berry had perfect coverage and yet, the pass was dropped right in and the receiver caught it. Replay showed that the reason he caught it is because he managed to disrupt that perfect coverage for just a split second with a subtle push-off on Berry. It wasn’t called. And it wasn’t called because that kind of shit happens all the time. The Saints went on to score on that drive – after getting gifted with another horse-shit call for pass interference which saw the Saints receiver actually latch onto our defender’s arm and drag him down – and that one third down bomb was the key play that made it all possible. Like I said, that shit happens all the time and nobody calls it. So . . . whatever. You learn to live with that shit. But here’s the thing – that subtle push-off was more egregious than any one of Burleson’s supposed push-offs, and yet Burleson was called every single fucking time. When you have to worry about that, it almost makes all the rest of the stuff, the stuff about talent and the stuff about all that mental bullshit, feel meaningless because it’s impossible to win when you have to play by different rules than the other team.

And that’s where we are right now. We have three straight must win games, our team collectively has their head up their asses, and even if their heads were firmly on their shoulders it almost wouldn’t matter because the refs or the universe or whoever has decided that the Necronomicon had doomed us and that we are to be buggered up the ass from now until the end of days. How do you deal with something like that? Well, you don’t. You either smile in the face of hell and march like some terrible death angel into the future, or you freak out and scream at the world. Or, fuck it, you wrestle cats at halftime and make macabre jokes with all your friends. (I swear I am not picking on Ty with the cat thing. It’s just that, for some reason, that shit was hilarious to me and made sense on a strange level that only I could probably understand.)

In the end, all we can do is . . . well, there really isn’t anything we can do, and that’s what’s so maddening about all of this. And so we watch and we wait, and we wait and we watch, and we try to continue to believe that one day, the sun will rise pure and clear and it will smile on us and all of the senseless bullshit we have to deal with as Lions fans will finally evaporate and all that will be left will be the dreams of a lifetime and a world that finally – finally – makes sense. Until that day comes, though, fuck the refs and fuck everything else because just like always, friendos, it’s us against the world and if we’re going to die, we might as well die with blood on our lips and a scream in our hearts. Fair is just a word. So is Hope. So is Fear. Smile in the face of death and let’s get on with this.

Who Knows?

We’re in a weird place as Lions fans right now. I think it’s okay to say that, right? I mean, I know that everyone has sort of retreated to their bunkers and have spent the past week lobbing grenades at anybody who disagrees with them about The Way Things Are, but I think it’s at least okay to admit that we’re all in a weird place right now. At least I hope so. That’s pretty much the only way to describe this manic sort of crazed desperation which has grabbed us by our collective throat and thrashed us around, wringing every last drop of Hope, Fear, Worry, Pain, Joy, Depression, Jubilation and every other emotion out of our tortured, twisted little souls.

Indeed. In the wake of the oh so special Thanksgiving Day pants shitting, most Lions fans seem to have retreated into one of two camps, both desperate and crazed in their own way, both completely built on the ruins of a half century of failure and despair. The first group is the Fuck It, Season’s Over, Let’s All Go Home group, whose poor ravaged souls just won’t let them believe in anything anymore. After watching the Lions lose to the Packers, this group essentially curled up in the fetal position, like dying soldiers trying to hold their mangled intestines in, curling up, their last bastion of shelter in a land gone mad. I can understand this. I can. It’s very, very easy to just let that on/off switch inside of you flick to the off position and then to just watch, numbed, while the Lions stumble into oblivion. It’s what we’ve all done in some form during our lifetimes as fans. It’s the only way any of us could have made it this far. It’s true. Look, I am a man who’s not afraid to feel. I think shutting down and checking out is basically the coward’s way out, but I’ve done it over the years too. Anybody who says they haven’t at least a little bit is at best delusional and at worst, a liar. But there is emotional preservation and then there is just senseless wankery, the sort of self-righteous PITY ME NOW caterwauling that takes refuge behind a wall of stupid fear. This is the sort of shit that I can’t stand, the lazy Fuck This Team They’ll Never Win Anything Ever braying. To hell with that. That is not emotional detachment. That is emotional wallowing, maudlin bullshit that just makes you look like the equivalent of a drunken vagrant rolling in his own pathetic filth.

The other camp is not quite as bad, but that’s only because relentless optimism is generally more palatable than mindless bitching. Well, sometimes. Okay, let’s face it, mindless optimism is just as bad. It’s fucking annoying. It’s okay to acknowledge that things aren’t going too well right now without being a “bad fan”, whatever the fuck that means. Too many people right now are basically doing the equivalent of clutching a half torn-apart rag doll, a crazed look in their eye, mumbling “Baby is fine, baby is fine,” over and over and over again. Fuck that. Baby is not fine. Baby has an arm missing and it’s got buttons for eyes. In fact, that’s not even a baby, you lunatic. It’s a bag of flour with straw pasted on it for hair. Put it down and fucking relax. Too many people seem to be reacting to that impulse to detach with an extreme This Is The Best Team Ever I Don’t Care What Anybody Says And They Will Win Every Game And Then They Will Win The Super Bowl 72-0 And Then A Wizard Will Turn This Bag Of Flour Into A Real Baby And Then The Baby Will Grow Up To Be Barry Sanders mindset.

In short, everyone is reactionary as hell right now, either giving in to The Fear, chaining themselves to it like beaten dogs or running like hell from The Fear and refusing to even acknowledge its presence and shaming all those who dare to admit that, yeah, they’re kind of afraid right now. And that refusal to even acknowledge The Fear is honestly its own sort of chaining. By refusing that it’s even there you’re still letting it control how you react and how you feel. The beaten dog and the desperate run-away – in the end you’re both slaves.

Really, the whole mad world that is Lions fandom right now stems from the fact that we have no idea how to put anything into its proper perspective. I’ve talked about this before, but goddammit, it’s true. And the sad part is, is that there’s nothing we can really do about it. I mean, an outsider would look at this situation, see a 7-4 team and tell us to relax, that we should just be happy that we have a team that is relevant and in contention for a playoff spot and that we’re all fools to believe that we deserve anything more right now. And that person would be right. (Thank you to Raven Mack for doing his best to put this shit into perspective for us.) Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter what you tell us because we have all been driven insane by half a century of failure and despair. That’s why I’m here. I’m basically a madman just sitting atop a giant height chair banging a gavel made of bones and sadness and pretending like somehow I have a better handle on all this than anyone else and that this somehow entitles me to tell everyone else how they can feel. Shit, I’m just as fucked up as everyone else. I’m just as reactionary and incapable of putting this stuff in perspective as the rest of you. We’re all completely fucking nuts.

I think this season in particular has driven us to bipolar mania because the stakes feel higher. This is something else that I’ve talked about before, but I think it’s crucially important to understand if you want to understand why we are the way we are. In the past, during 0-16 and it’s depressing aftermath, yeah, everything sucked and the losses felt horrible and allowed me to make a name for myself as some sort of freaky Death Angel but the reality is, is that underneath all the senseless gibbering and manic OH GOD THE PAIN THE PAIN wailing was a sense that one day things would be better, if only because they had to. And the last couple of years especially have had an undercurrent of real hope to them, like we knew that this thing was on the right track and that when the future arrived, all this terrible horseshit would be washed away in a flood of joy and victory. That singular Hope, that belief in an inviolable future, is what allowed us to keep moving, to keep pushing forward in the wake of 0-16. Well, now The Future is here – or at least that’s what we’ve led ourselves to believe – and now we’ve gone fucking crazy because this is it. Every failure now feels like some sort of cruel mockery, like a violation of that deeply held promise that eventually everything would be alright. If it goes wrong now there is no sunny wonderland to look forward to. There is just this, and if this isn’t good enough to make up for all the pain of the past, then . . . well, where the hell do we go from here?

I’m not saying that it’s right. I’m just saying that I think that’s what’s happened. We allowed ourselves to believe that The Future, and everything we forced ourselves to believe that that phrase meant, was now and in doing so we allowed ourselves to open up our hearts to their fullest extent, ready to reap some sort of mystical reward for years and years of suffering. For fuck’s sake, we are damn near a religious cult, a collection of manic freaks whose only response to our pain has to been to transform it into something redemptive. We’ve allowed ourselves to believe in a Heaven that will somehow answer for all of that pain, all of that suffering and despair and we’ve allowed ourselves to believe that that Heaven is the 2011 season. I suppose this makes me something of a High Priest of the Damned, but what the hell, I’ve been called worse.

The truth is this: the Lions are still a young team, at least where it really matters. Matthew Stafford is 23 and sometimes he looks like he’s 16, all baby-faced and awkward, and we need to remember that. He’s not in the prime of his career. Not even close. Maybe there is a football heaven. Maybe there isn’t. I don’t know. That doesn’t really matter right now. Right now, the only thing that matters is that the Lions are 7-4. They’re not the best team in the league but they’re sure as hell not the worst either. What they are is a playoff contender, and whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, given that three years ago this team went 0-16 that is damn near miraculous.

Now, with all that said, I’m worried. I don’t mind admitting that. I don’t particularly enjoy it, but I don’t mind admitting it because, hell, it’s true. That game against the Packers just felt . . . wrong. I don’t know any other way to put it than that. It felt like the sort of game which we could look back upon at the end of the season, sigh and say, yeah, that’s where the damn broke. There have been signs that things are not as sound as they should be all season long, but that game felt like an unraveling, like some sort of breakdown that seems somehow both inexplicable and all too familiar. I don’t know how to answer it. I don’t. All I know is that this doesn’t feel like a team that has its shit together. Considering its quarterback has thrown 11 billion interceptions in the last few weeks and that its star defensive lineman is currently being portrayed as Saddam Hitler and is being forced to take a time out like a naughty four year old, I don’t think that’s such an outrageous thing to say. This is a team that does not have its shit together. Yet, I expect that some people will still disagree and yell at me about this because, well, read everything that I’ve written in this post so far.

But to hell with all that. Right now, the only thing that matters is that the Lions have a huge game this weekend against the Saints and that’s a bad, bad time to not have your shit together, you know? It’s tempting to make this game some sort of referendum, a Meet Me At The Crossroads sort of Come To Jesus moment which will decide our destiny as a team and as a fanbase going forward, but that would just be reactionary and vaguely ridiculous. I’ll admit it, that was actually my intent going into this thing but I have splashed some water on my face and forced myself to quit clinging so tightly to some sort of ideal, invented years ago out of a need for basic survival. If the Lions lose this game, it doesn’t mean that the end is nigh or that we should start booking Matthew Stafford airfare back to Georgia or that we should storm Ford Field and install a new Pope. This game comes at a horrible time for the Lions, at a time when maybe their defining star is forced to sit on the bench and during a time when half the team seems like it’s injured. They should lose this game. It is incredibly unfair to put some sort of Do Or Die pressure on them right now. That sort of madness speaks only to our own incredible self-delusion and to our own desperate need to escape the horrors of the past.

Still, the Lions can win this game. I’m not denying that. Strip everything else away and the Lions actually played really, really well against the Packers. They moved the ball down the field very effectively and the defense stood its ground against the most explosive offense in the NFL. Unfortunately, you can’t just strip everything else away. When it came to all that shit that exists between the lines, all that shit that the numbers just can’t explain, the Lions failed and they failed egregiously. The real battle the rest of this season, including this week against the Saints, isn’t about moving the ball effectively or stopping the run or anything like that. No. The real battle is about all that intangible shit that normally drives me nuts to talk about. It’s about simple execution, abut attitude, about control, about being a sound football team that has its shit together. It’s not about talent anymore. It’s not about proving that we belong. It’s just about all those little things that make the Packers and Saints the Packers and Saints and all those despicable little meltdowns that make the Lions, well, the Lions and every shitty, obnoxious thing that has meant over the years. This is about taking that talent and turning it into something confident, something willful, something that doesn’t feel like some sort of insane Flying Circus.

That’s what faces the Lions the rest of the season and that’s what faces them this Sunday night against the Saints. Like, I said, the Lions can win. I won’t go into the whys because all week long, the Lions blogosphere has been filled with people manically explaining every possible way the Lions can win this game, everything from 3-3-5 defenses to lead pipes bashing Drew Brees’ knees to Kevin Smith’s ankle miraculously healing itself to kidnapping Jimmy Graham to Nick Fairley announcing his presence to the levees breaking and the Superdome flooding to The Great Willie Young cloning himself and bringing man to ultimate enlightenment. Okay, fine, that last one might have been mine, but really, I’ve seen just about everything this past week and I suspect so have most of you. Again, this just speaks to our desperation and our own manic need to hang onto this idea that salvation can be had and that it can be had right fucking now.

I will say this, though – I think the Saints can be had. Do you remember earlier in the season when we actually tried our hand at picking games against the spread? Yeah, well anyway, that whole thing fell apart when Raven lost all his money to a vicious hobo in a dice game and I blew all of mine trying to help him get it back. It’s a long story, but just to sum up, the whole thing ended up with Raven and me in a secluded cabin in southern Indiana, armed to the teeth in anticipation of revenge, but then we found out that the hobo lost all of that ill-gotten money in a pyramid scheme and eventually we realized that there was no way we were ever going to see that money again. We even hired a lawyer but it turned out that the dude was an actor who just swindled us out of the rest of our money. He even took all of our weaponry and our vehicles, stranding us in this shitty little cabin with only a single bottle of Thunderbird and one single gun with only one bullet. It was cruel and terrible, but luckily for us, a drifter stumbled upon our shack and we were able to lure him inside. We put that one bullet to use and managed to sustain ourselves on his flesh until help arrived in the form of a gang of meth heads who looked like escapees from that movie Winter’s Bone. You’d be surprised but they were shockingly sympathetic to our plight and after we explained what had gone wrong, they agreed to front us the money for a bus ticket in exchange for all of our clothing, Raven’s gold fillings, ownership of Armchair Linebacker, the promise that I would give them my first born child and some fireworks that Raven and I planned to celebrate with after we got revenge on that hobo who started us down that terrible trail. I promised Raven I’d never talk about it - he’s embarrassed and frankly so am I – but to be honest with you, I left out some dark and terrible details and so I figure he’ll be okay with me discussing it. So, yeah, that’s why we stopped doing that.

Well, anyway, while writing my part for one of the last gambler’s roundtables that we did – I don’t even think it was ever even posted on the site – I talked about how I didn’t trust the Saints. There was just something about them that didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on it and I still can’t but even though they’ve had some ridiculous games in which they have scored a billion points, I think that’s been borne out at least a little bit. I mean, they lost to the fucking Rams, you know? So . . . yeah, it’s not like they’re unbeatable and if there’s one thing the Lions have shown it’s that when they’re on, they can hang with anybody. The question, of course, then becomes will the Lions be “on”?

Who knows? That’s the trillion dollar question, isn’t it? Both for this game and for the rest of the season. If the Lions can pull their shit together than yeah, they can beat the Saints. They can beat anyone. If they can’t, well, then . . . hey, we’re already a million miles away from where we were, you know? I still believe. I’m not sure I want to explain that anymore though. I just want to leave it at that for now. No more gibbering on about the future being now or about the Symmetry of Fate or about long journeys and hanging over the edge of a cliff or anything, really, other than that one simple truth. I believe. And that belief is patient, if only because it has to be. It’s easy to throw this season into the fire and mope and whine about doom and it’s just as easy to plaster on a fake smile and to insist that everything is going to work out this season. The reality is that I just don’t know right now. I just don’t know. And that’s okay. It has to be. And that’s how I feel about this game against the Saints. I just don’t know. The Lions could pull it together and win by two touchdowns and our faith in some misguided notion of immediate salvation could be restored. Or they could melt down completely and lose by 30 and the idea of salvation would suddenly feel very, very far away. I don’t know. The only thing I can try to do is to do my best to keep it all in perspective, to remember that this game comes at a terrible time for the Lions and that it won’t tell us anything other than where the Lions are right at this moment. The future is the future and the past is the past. Right now, all we have is this simple truth: Ndamukong Suh has been suspended, the Lions are racked with injuries and they have to find a way to beat the Saints on Sunday. If they do, fucking awesome. If they don’t, well . . . tomorrow is a new day.

I’m rambling now, as is my wont, and so I suppose I should wrap this up. I’m at a point in my fandom where I’m hoping for everything but expecting nothing. That is a weird place to be. Depending on your viewpoint, that is either senselessly optimistic or profoundly cynical. Hell, maybe both. But that’s the deal, man. That’s just where I’m at. What does that mean? The hell if I know. All I know is that when kickoff comes on Sunday, all of this bullshit won’t matter and I’ll be acting the fool, completely incapable of doing anything other than cheering with wild eyed hope, lost in a Honolulu Blue fever, believing in everything, my heart open to the promise of redemption and vulnerable to the jagged, ugly knife that is the sorrow of defeat. And there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.

Predicted Final Score: Fuck it, who knows?