Hope is Absurd, But Then Again, So Am I

Ever since he was hired to be the next head man of the world's largest garbage dump that is the Detroit Lions, Jim Schwartz has done the nearly unthinkable. Without the team having played so much as a single measly game, he has managed to cover that garbage dump with a new rosy smell. Sure, the garbage is still there, Rod the Terrible's diapers are in a towering heap in the corner and the refuse of fifty years of tears and anguish are both terrible and awesome in their immensity, but somehow Schwartz has managed to convince Lions fans that it will all be okay. We'll never get rid of all this shit just piled up here, but we don't have to add to it, and one day perhaps it can serve as a monument to our collective toughness as fans that we actually put up with this monstrosity for so long without completely cracking.

Schwartz's pedigree is pretty impressive, as is his approach to the game, and his understanding of the Lions downtrodden fanbase. These are things that have been well documented at places like thelionsinwinter.blogspot.com (which, incidentally, happens to be the best Lions blog out there in case anyone's interested and in case I can get Ty some traffic from my six readers besides him. I kid, I kid, there are probably eight or nine of you.) The question is, is whether or not this optimism is really warranted. I mean, certainly, everything that has come out has made at least a degree of that optimism reasonable, but collectively, as a fan base, we seem to be falling in love with this dude in a way that makes me believe that we are only days away from him coming home only to find fans hanging out in his trees serenading him with, like, lutes and shit. That is a weird image, but these are weird times, and there is no place weirder in the football world than a city and a state coming off of the first ever 0-16 season.

There is a mania at work here which is understandable and perhaps a little sad. We were so abused by our old boyfriend that now that we have a dude who smiles at us and tells us he loves us and that we are pretty, we're ready to start shopping for wedding dresses and if anybody says anything bad about our man we will cut the fuck out of those other bitches and . . . and perhaps I have gone too far with this analogy, but fuck it, as I said, these are strange times. Look, there is every possibility that we have gone completely overboard with the outpourings of affection for our new head football coach. Christ, I feel like I am about to start seeing sonnets written about the guy soon. The poor man is probably terrified, huddled inside of Ford Field, afraid that people will start mailing him locks of their hair and shit, but fuck it, this is the sick and deranged world he has entered into. We are an irrational people, haunted by the past and terrified of the future, and we are clinging desperately to this one man because he represents a last gasp of hope.

It's a strange thing, but there is more hope after 0-16 than there ever was during The Troubles(some call it the Matt Millen era, but fuck them for uttering such a filthy name). I suppose it's a little like a small town after a tornado or a hurricane has just annihilated it. There is much sadness and despair, but there's also the feeling underneath all of that madness and chaos that there's a chance to rebuild. Completely and totally. This is not some half assed attempt to salvage a fucked up and broken foundation but an honest attempt for the first time to build a whole new foundation and then build on top of that. And leading the charge is Jim Schwartz and everyone is cooing and baking him cookies while he pounds the first nails. It's all incredibly ridiculous but fuck it, we have suffered entirely too much and if we are clinging to an irrational hope, stupid and naive, then so what? The future will be what it will be and for now, we just want to believe that someday - hopefully relatively soon - our new town will be beautiful and happy and thriving and that garbage dump just outside of town will be nothing more than a reminder that we have come far and that damn it, we deserve to be happy.

That's a whole lot of gibberish about tornadoes and wrecked towns and garbage dumps and ex-boyfriends and a lot of other weird bullshit, but that is what 0-16 does to a man and I will not apologize for any of it, including this odd little tangent. But you probably all know what to expect by now and so to hell with it, I'll just gibber on.

Anyway, as wonderful as all this new hope stuff is, there is still the shambling and bumbling presence of that wraith Old Man Ford shuffling around, getting in everybody's way. It's like the whole town got destroyed except for the crazy old mayor who has been fucking up everybody's lives for years, or if you want to get exceedingly dorky about it, and why the hell not since this is the internet and all, it's kinda like Darth Vader was finally murdered and here's Luke Skywalker ready to set shit straight only the goddamn emperor is still hanging around and won't get the fucking hint that it's time for him to step aside. And he's a rich old powerful son of a bitch who can still shoot some of that freaky lightning at you if you try to fuck with him.

And lately, that rich old dude has been rambling about how the decision to hire Schwartz was all his and about how this is his team and all that bullshit in between spoonfuls of applesauce. It's all very disconcerting, maddening really, when you start to feel hope, think that maybe there's a chance and then some old goober who you've been desperately trying not to think about gets off of his golf cart and reminds you that his dusty old bones are still running shit. Terrible, just terrible.

And yet, it's a testament to how much Lions fans want to believe - in how much they need to believe - that much of this has been swept aside with an annoyed shrug. As a fan base, we love Jim Schwartz and we love what he's been doing since he was hired to be our football coach. And for now anyway, we're determined not to let that old man rise from the center of that giant trash pile and ruin our fun. There's a lot of heartache ahead, terrible and without mercy for our beaten souls, but for right now, Jim Schwartz - and with him the Detroit Lions - hasn't lost a single game and fuck everyone, we're Lions fans and we need this.

The Offseason is Terrible and Annoying

The NFL off-season sucks. It's not just because there's no football. It's also because every dumb thing gets picked apart by people obsessed with football who need something to bitch about. That's fine, and as I now blog about all this bullshit, I suppose I should get into the act.

And the issue which has me on edge today is the disturbing trend of players having hangnails. Yeah, that's right. If these scandalous motherfuckers could only stay straight and fly right during the off-season, they wouldn't have to suffer through these horrible and debilitating injuries which leave their hands vulnerable to dropped balls, fumbles and of course the dreaded interception. That's not to mention the toll it takes on their towel snapping abilities in the locker room. I mean there is only so much dancing and observing of a teammate's elephant dong that you can do in the locker room. At some point, you have to be able to use your hands for something, such as the perfect towel snap, and if your hangnails are bothering you, well then you're shit out of luck. So, there you are, sitting in the locker room, panicked and depressed because you can't snap a towel with the force or the dexterity that you need to. And then some ROOKIE comes along and snaps you right in the ass. That shit stings! And the next thing you know, all of your teammates won't look you in the eye because you were abused by a rookie and couldn't retaliate. And all because you had a hangnail. And so then, because you are a starter, morale starts to suffer, and soon enough the guy who's supposed to block for you doesn't do his job because he doesn't respect you. And then you're laying on the turf while the other team celebrates, and all because you failed to keep up proper hygiene on your fingers. A couple weeks later, because you lost the game, the coach gets fired. He goes home and beats his wife. A horrible thing, just horrible, and pretty soon you've got Chris Mortensen hanging out on your door step twenty-four hours a day bugging you about what you think about the whole thing. Meanwhile, that whole debacle, what with pictures of the poor battered wife's bruised face showing up on all the news stations, has caused a revolt in your fanbase. They no longer want to support a team full of degenerates and wife beaters. Your owner, disgusted, vows to clean house, and faster than you can say sex boat, you're released and no other team will give you the time of day, because not only did you lose that crucial game for your team, word has gotten around about how you let a rookie abuse you in the locker room, which has caused everyone to view you as soft. Plus, you have the whole stink of the wife beating issue on you, and even though you never hit anyone, everyone on your poor former team has to deal with the fact that the rest of the sports world views you as a bunch of degenerates. So there you are, without a job, your damn hangnail still killing you, and all you can do is try to ease the pain with the help of your seedy neighbor, Skinny Pete, who offers you some pills to get you through the day. That's all well and good, you're just floating along, but then Skinny Pete tells you that this shit ain't free and soon you've sold everything in your house to pay for your massively inflating drug habit. Skinny Pete tells you that it will all work itself out and because everyone else in your life has abandoned you by now, all you can do is cling to that degenerate and hope he's right. Of course, by this time Skinny Pete has gotten you hooked on heroin or crack and after a few more months go by, the bank decides it might be a good idea to tell you to get the hell out of that nice home of yours for not paying your mortgage. So, now you're homeless, crashing with Skinny Pete and his girlfriend, who smells like cat pee and gave you a detached retina that one time when she was all fucked up on PCP, thus ending whatever tiny hope for a comeback you had left. And now you spend your days getting abused by Skinny Pete and blowing truck drivers underneath overpasses for crack money. And all because you were too busy in the off-season hitting the clubs and fucking whores to keep your fingers free of the dreaded hangnail.

These are strange and terrible months, savage and awful, and we must all be vigilant, lest our gridiron heroes come down with something so terrible as a hangnail. We cannot let them skate through this off-season like the hedonistic millionaires they are. Hangnails in the NFL are an important issue and hopefully we will see an Outside the Lines about it soon. Until then, we've got, what, two months and change until the season officially kicks off? Jesus Christ.

I Hate Coming Up With Titles For These Things

So, last night I watched the Red Wings lose in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals and in the aftermath I was reminded of a question I was asked a while back, and it's one that I've pondered for a long time now, and that is whether it's more painful to have your team get close only to fail or to be a miserably rotten franchise that has no hope of getting anywhere near anything resembling glory. And since I am wallowing in the horrendous tide of shitwater following last night's brutal loss, I figured now was pretty much the best time possible to answer this question.

For as much as last night sucked - and it suuuuuuuucked - after everything was all said and done, after I had gotten done cursing my poor television and wishing horrible things on complete strangers, wondering what the Russian word was for mongoloid, and generally acting like a retarded methed up werewolf, I was able to sit down, take a deep breath and realize that the Red Wings are still a damn good team and a great franchise, and I feel comfortable and confident with the dudes in charge and the talent assembled. They'll be back. The dismay that I feel is only temporary, a momentary thing that will pass and then I'll go back to being excited about the Wings next year.

But the Lions are another story altogether. The pain and agony, the horrors that they put their fans through is constant, a never ending barrage of stupidity and rank incompetence that is played out week after week for a third of the calendar year. There is no let up, no moment when we can all sit back after a loss and remember that, overall, things are okay, that we've had a lot of success and in the future we'll have more of it. No, instead, after each loss, all we can do is look up at the owners box and see Old Man Ford asleep and drooling on himself while Junior spoonfeeds him applesauce and the degenerate apes who run the franchise sitting in their own filth, flinging shit at one another and denigrating their own players. It's a horrible thing, terrible and soul crushing, and when you really stand back and look at it all, compare the two situations and really think, only a great fool would tell you that being a fan of a team like the Wings is somehow worse - even when they lose in heartbreaking fashion - than being a fan of the Lions, when every day, every week, every miserable season is just one long heartbreak that never ends.

But there are new people in charge, civilized, intelligent people who seem to know what they're doing. And in that there is a semblance of hope - maybe for the first time in a decade. With that hope there also comes the potential for disappointment. The losing might be tougher to take because we might actually start expecting things. But those bad feelings will be temporary, ephemeral, and when we take a deep breath, we can remember that there are people up there who in the end have a pretty decent shot at getting the job done. And really, that's all we ask for. It's just the chance, the chance to maybe win something one day, the chance to get to stand up as Lions fans and tell everyone else that we're the best, the chance to watch the games with excitement and hope in our hearts. They may lose- and for a while they're probably going to do a lot of that - but for the first time in a very long time Lions fans can take a deep breath and feel like we can trust these guys to fix this thing. It's been a long time coming, and it will probably take a long time still to get where we want to be, but at least we're moving forward now, towards something, and not just freefalling towards the Earth, bitter and angry because Matt Millen, the Fords, Rod Marinelli, Wayne Fontes and company forgot to pack our parachutes.

It will be a hell of a day, the day that we as Lions fans don't want to rush Ford Field like a pack of irate vampire apes. And it will be a hell of a day when we get upset when they lose because we expected them to win instead of getting upset when they lose because, well, because we're just sick of them losing.

I have been a fan of great teams and lousy teams, the sublimely brilliant and the terribly inept, the historically great and the infamously awful. Sometimes your teams lose, and it sucks. It really sucks. But in the end all you really want is the chance to have that feeling, to either be overjoyed when you win or despondent when you lose. It's no fun feeling like you're heading to the damn gas chamber every time your team plays. It's terrible and it's wrong. I want to have the feeling with the Lions that I got last night with the Red Wings. I want them to make me feel terrible, like my sports heart has just been ripped out. It sounds ridiculous, but it's true. I dread ever having to feel about any of my favorite teams like I have felt about the Lions or like I used to feel about the Tigers.

I just want the chance to cheer like I mean it, like I believe in the players wearing the uniform of my favorite team. I want the chance to get pissed off at the refs, to feel righteously indignant when things don't go my team's way. I want the chance to feel proud, to be able to say I'm a Lions fan without people either laughing or commiserating with me like someone just died. I want the chance to be the fan of a team that wins the damn game - or a damn game. And if they lose the game, well, I want the chance to sit down after it's over, after all the bitterness, after all the stupid sports rage has subsided and think hell, we're still pretty damn good. It still seems so far away, but for the first time I can really remember as a Lions fan, it feels possible, real. Perhaps it's just because it's new, or maybe I've just gone completely around the bend, beaten and defeated by the horrors of Lions fandom past, delusional and clinging desperately to a mirage, but here we are, and I think maybe, just maybe, we've got a chance.

Wrapping this Nonsense up with Dan Gronkowski

I have just realized that I have been writing about almost nothing but draft bullshit over the last two months and I'm not entirely sure how it happened. I don't even really like draft stuff all that much. I just saw a chance for some easy content and the damn thing ended up with me wandering in the desert for forty miserable years. A lot of good men died out here, but at least we have the memories, like that time I went on and on about different euphemisms for masturbation or the time I inappropriately referenced Hitler or that other time I referenced Hitler or that other time I . . . well, you get the point. It has been long, it has been painful, and at long last, it's over.

Yes, the final bit of draft nonsense that I will write about for a long damn time is also the one that nobody really cares about. Yeah, I'm doing a great job of selling this here, but fuck it, I will still write this even if no one bothers to read it. Why? I don't know, leave me alone. THIS FINISH LINE MUST BE CROSSED. It's fucking June, we started this bullshit in March, and now that we're at the finish line everyone is cranky and swearing at each other, gnawing on our own arms and fingers and hands just so we don't lash out and bite one another and oh Lord, what is this gibberish? I don't know, I am just sick of writing about all of this and I think I am equal parts giddy and irritated when I think about it. Maybe I need a nap.

I suppose it is some sort of stupid stubborn pride thing, because really, I would have told you to fuck off if you said I would still be churning out draft bullshit on June 3. But every time I decide to write something about the Lions, I remember that I started this nonsense and I don't want to look foolish if I don't finish it, which is stupid because really, we're all fools for caring about this stuff and the ones who gibber on about it like this are even bigger fools but that ship sailed long ago and so here we are.

I guess I should just get this over with and then I can go back to writing about Lennie Small and The Lizard King Cinnabon Sims and St. Calvin and all the rest of those shitbirds. Yeah, yeah, Lennie may be gone, but he'll never be gone from our hearts. I suppose next, I'll have to start on the damn season preview, which I know before I even start the damn thing will end up being the size of War and Peace. I thought last season's was long, but the more I write about this shit, the more I write, you know? It is a vicious cycle, horrible and full of blood, sweat, horrible wailing and screaming, awful howling, frightened neighbors, people being whipped like dogs in the streets, crawling on all fours, moaning and begging for mercy from frightened strangers who clutch their valuables to their chest and speed into the night away from all this madness. But I am a Lions fan, and so all of that is familiar anyway.

Jesus, I don't even know what it is I'm hooting about here and so I'll just get to it. Okay. With their final pick in the seventh round, the 255th overall, the Detroit Lions selected Dan Gronkowski, a tight end out of Maryland.

So, yeah, Dan Gronkowski. He's certainly a seventh round pick.

Neil shrugs. Crickets chirp in the background.

Okay, fine, that's probably not fair, but it gets the point across. I mean, this seems like the type of pick where the guys in the war room just all sort of look around at each other, shrug their shoulders and then figure hell, we've gotta pick someone. And Gronkowski it is. Again, that's probably not fair, but fuck it, my team went 0-16 last season, I don't really care about fair.

Okay, okay, fine. The deal with Gronkowski is that he was a high school quarterback, a middling recruit who chose Maryland over that renowned MAC superpower Buffalo. He was eventually converted to tight end where he really didn't do much of anything until his senior year when he was . . . adequate. Gronkowski caught 29 balls as a senior after having snagged only 11 in his first three years combined. So, it's, uh, not real likely this dude makes a big impact at tight end for the Lions.

But really, that's okay. What the Lions are looking for from Gronkowski is a hard worker who could contribute some decent in-line blocking for them. He's got a big frame at 6'6" and if he adds a little weight he could serve as an extra tackle type on running downs. For a high school quarterback that's kind of weird, but the fact that he went from a nobody recruit to an NFL draft pick at a position alien to him speaks to how hard he must have worked. I mean, I doubt that the Maryland coaches were killing themselves trying to make him into a serviceable player. This seems like one of those situations where they gave the guy a shot at QB knowing he probably wouldn't make it, and then told him he had to find his way somewhere else if he wanted to stick around. And to his credit, Gronkowski did, turning himself into a tight end worthy of being drafted by an NFL team. I will ignore the obvious joke about the Lions not being a real NFL team and move on.

It's that hard work that will give Gronkowski a shot. It's possible he's maxed himself out already, but if he hasn't, given his work ethic, there may be something here. It's possible that he turns himself into the type of solid blocker that manages to stick in the league for a while because coaches know they can depend on him. He'll never be flashy, but he's the type of dude who will do whatever it takes to make himself useful to somebody.

The question, of course, is whether or not that will be enough. Like I said, he may have already maxed himself out. An adequate college tight end is all he might be capable of. And, if that's the case, then okay. But for now, he's at least somebody new, somebody who hasn't been infected with Lions Disease, and if he hasn't maxed himself out yet, well, maybe he's the sort of tough foundation player who can give the team the tiny push that every team needs to move in the right direction. Every little bit helps, and I hope that Gronkowski can offer just that little bit.

What they could have done differently: Shrugged at each other in the war room and picked somebody else. I mean, what do you want from me here?

What we can expect this season: The odds are pretty long that we'll ever see anything from Gronkowski, so I doubt that this season is going to be a real memorable one. Maybe he sees the field on heavy run downs - that is if he even makes the team.

Early Pick Grade: I, uh, well . . . I'm not going to grade this one because really, what's the point? He's a late seventh rounder that probably won't ever do much of anything. But, really, neither would anyone else they could have picked instead. The upside for a player picked this late is basically Ramzee Robinson.

My grade for the Lions 2009 NFL Draft: B+. I liked this draft - for the most part. I have warmed to Stafford, although that may be a defense mechanism more than anything. I think that Pettigrew and Delmas should be instant starters and should both be good for a long time. Levy is a bit of a gamble, and Hill could end up making this draft great if he pans out. I'm not really big on the Williams or Aaron Brown picks, but one of them should be able to grab the kick return job and hopefully give us more than an Aveion Cason type performance. I love Follett but he may never be anything more than a special teams standout - if he even makes the team. Murtha is intriguing but his history doesn't exactly inspire a ton of confidence and Gronkowski seems like just a guy. Add it all up and it's a pretty good haul. The Lions were able to draft the three best players at three different positions in the draft in Stafford, Pettigrew and Delmas. That's really impressive. If the middle round gambles pay off, then this draft could be a huge hit and something we'll all look back on as the beginning of something decent and good and right for a change. I think the top three guys should make this a decent draft no matter what, but it's Levy and Hill and either Williams or Brown who will make it great or make it a close miss. And if Murtha or Follett hits along with the rest of them, well, parades in the streets and love your neighbor and all that. Which would certainly be a change. Yes it would. Yes it would indeed.

Farewell, Lennie Small

Goodbye, Lennie, you sweet prince of a man. You stood your ground when everyone said that you were a lousy football player(well, except for the times when you jumped early). You held those vicious wolves at bay when they howled for your head(You also held the opponent too much, but hey, you're Lennie Small, you can't help it, you don't know any better.) But above all, you managed to be an important cog in the Detroit Lions' well oiled machine, and were such an inspiration as a player that I was left with no choice but to compare you - no, compare is such a weak word here - to dub you the real life incarnation of a renowned character from twentieth century American literature. Truly, you were an inspiration to many(mostly to the institutionalized and the mildly retarded, but hey, everyone needs heroes), and I will never forget you Lennie Small. You may have been born George Foster, but you shall always be Lennie in my heart, and it is my hope that you can spend the rest of your days petting rabbits and remembering that although you may be gone, your contributions in the building of the glorious world of 0-16 will never be forgotten. Thank you, gentle and noble son, and goodbye(That means don't come back, Lennie. No, Lennie . . . Oh God, he just turned around, quick, shut the door! SHUT THE FUCKING DOOR!)

Zach Follett, Go. Run. Hit.

Passing on Rey Maualuga not once but twice caused many - okay most - Lions fans to go berserk and start contemplating scaling Ford Field dressed like extras from Mad Max, pitchforks and torches in hand, and hatred in their hearts. And while a good deal of this animalistic frenzy is simply the byproduct of having been repeatedly whipped and beaten by the brutal shitbeasts who have run this franchise for oh so many painful and inglorious years, a portion of the disgust was due to the Lions dire situation at linebacker, specifically in the middle, where the Lions were set to apparently dress Roary, the ridiculous Lions mascot, in the guise of a middle linebacker and then pray that he wasn't beaten enough to sign autographs and pal around with the slackjawed young Lions fans, poor terrified children who would need the comfort of a dude in a giant lion costume after presumably witnessing the horrors of Lions football for the first time, all while their fathers shook in their seats, drunk and terrified, beaten like junkies with post traumatic stress syndrome. Horrible, horrible. But I have wandered off track with that epic run on sentence and so I will try to steer back towards the point, and that is that the Detroit Lions were in woeful need of help at linebacker and at first glance seemed to say fuck it, bizarrely comfortable with the notion that come the first game of the season, they would be left with poor Roary and little else.

This is, of course, ridiculous. Soon after the draft ended, it became clear that DeAndre Levy was drafted specifically to be the middle linebacker of the future and while there has been some question as to the wisdom of this move, much of the immediate concern has been allayed by the Lions signing of Larry Foote to start in the middle next season. And with the outside backers seemingly set in stone with The Lizard King, Cinnabon Sims and Julian Peterson, more and more fans are starting to come around to the idea that the dudes who were selected by the Lions might not be so terrible after all.

I have already written about Levy and now I will discuss the second linebacker who the Lions drafted, a seventh rounder out of California, Zach Follett.

A fairly highly rated recruit coming out of high school, Follett signed with the Cal Bears and immediately found playing time on a pretty good team. He was a productive player who got better with each season - always a good sign. In fact, Follett was a pretty highly decorated player, picking up conference honors in multiple seasons, culminating with a first team All Pac-Ten designation following his senior season.

Follett made his name as an attacking player, racking up plenty of tackles for loss and sacks during his time at Berkeley. He flashed pretty good speed and an impressive ability to hit the shit out of anything that moved. And what's more, he seems like the type of dude who loves to play football, someone who wants to go out there and smack everyone else in the mouth like King Kong on PCP. I mean, there's a whole lot to like here.

So how did Follett slip all the way to the Lions near the end of the seventh round? Well, he had some injury problems in college, particularly the dreaded neck stinger, and that probably caused him to fall some. But, unfortunately, the simple fact is that Follett probably isn't quite good enough to be a productive starting linebacker in the NFL. He does hit - and hard - but he lacks ideal fluidity, and will get lost in coverage. His aggressiveness can also work against him, particularly when he tries to blow into the backfield only to overrun the ball carrier. He's probably not the most instinctive player, and he's not exactly a student of the game type. He just seems like one of those guys who really, really wants to fuck people's shit up, and hey, that's cool.

I think Follett will probably be the sort of guy who will make a couple of huge HOLY SHIT type hits, maybe a couple of sacks here and there and will bring a shit ton of energy to the game whenever he's in there - all valuable things to bring to a team. He will probably stand out the most on special teams, where he can just run down the field and murder people with reckless abandon, and then be tethered to the bench in between by a choke chain so he doesn't wander into the stands and start wailing on poor unsuspecting drunks. He's going to be a popular player. There's no doubt about that in my mind. He has fan favorite written all over him, but he's probably one of those players who is just a hair shy of being good enough to be a starter in the NFL. He kind of reminds me of a 4A player in baseball - prospects who are talented enough to dominate at the Triple A level but who aren't quite good enough to get it done with the big club.


What they could have done differently: Look, when you're into the seventh round like this, there is really no point in speculating about what could have been. Everyone at this point is a crapshoot. I guess if you want to talk about the position itself, well, then I suppose the Lions could have taken Maualuga or Laurinaitis(fuck it, I am not checking the spelling - if they're right, they're right, if they're wrong, well, life's full of disappointments, I'm sure you'll move on from this one.)


What to expect this season: Special teams demolition derby. Maybe he'll see a few snaps at linebacker, but from the sounds of things, he seems like he's pretty lost out there so far during the Lions OTA's.

Early pick grade: A. This dude is pretty much the blueprint of the sort of dude you want to get in the seventh round - passionate, aggressive, highly productive in college, a surefire contributor on special teams with some potential for more down the road. A great pick.

Lydon Murtha, Welcome to the Jungle

For years now, the offensive line of the Detroit Lions has been a brutal killing field filled with the bodies of the dead and the dying. We can trace the decay of the line back almost twenty years, when Erik Andolsek got in the way of a runaway car while he was chilling in his yard and Mike Utley decided to spend the rest of his days using wheelchair ramps and getting the best parking spaces. Horrible freak events that mortally wounded a promising young line, and which the Lions have been unable to recover from despite spending multiple first round picks on offensive linemen who, frankly, have turned out to be, well, offensive.

Sure, there was Lomas Brown and there was Kevin Glover, but those dudes really just represented what could have been in Detroit had their other linemen stayed healthy, or, you know, alive. And when those dudes got old, the Lions looked around and realized that there was nobody else to take their place. St. Barry the Great noticed it, and he rode a river of tears straight out of town. It was a situation which needed to be addressed for years and, amazingly, the Detroit Lions still haven't done so. The end result of the rampant incompetence which allowed this to continue year after year was a line which greatly contributed to that oh so special season we'll always remember as 0-16.

And it wasn't enough that the talent on the line was obviously deficient. No, the Lions had to add to the misery by messing things up further through good old fashion incompetence. Anyone who has followed me on this blog for a while knows that I wasn't exactly the biggest fan of the Rod Marinelli regime(this is akin to saying that Jews weren't the biggest fan of the Hitler regime - was that grossly inappropriate or just terribly offensive? I'll leave you to decide.)

And now that Marinelli has been deposed and his assistants shot into space(with the bizarre exception of Stan Kwan, the special teams coach - dude must have pictures of Schwartz getting filthy at a chess tournament or something), the players who suffered under the raging incompetence which was the hallmark of the Marinelli years have begun to speak out about the atrocities, war crimes and other assorted fuck ups which they were forced to endure. Jonathan Scott, a little used offensive tackle came out and had this to say on BuffaloFootballReport.com:

In Detroit, the life of a lineman was maddening. Scott said the communication breakdowns between the offensive coordinator and his offensive line coach ran rampant. One told him to step left on a play, the other said to step right.

“So which one do I do?” Scott said. “If I don’t it the offensive line way, I won’t be able to play. If I don’t do it the offensive coordinator’s way then I’ll never get on the field. There were always situations like that.”

Chaotic fragmentation. The shoddy separation of powers triggered on-field breakdowns. Scott said the linemen became “chickens with their heads cut off.” Who was supposed to block where was a play-to-play mystery.

“You can sense frustration throughout the entire team,” Scott said. “Cancer is a disease and negative energy can be transmitted easily from one player to the next and one coach to the next. I’ve witnessed situations where coaches aren’t on the same page. So when you try to change all that negative energy and do a 180 on game day, your chances aren’t that great.”

Okay. I could launch into another tirade here on the buffoonery of the Marinelli regime, but why bother? The man will never be an NFL head coach again and I see no reason to kick his corpse - not out of deference to him, but really, why put myself through that bullshit?

Instead, I figured I'd talk about the future, and more specifically, what the Lions did in this year's draft to ensure that the future would be different than the horror show of the past. And because sending a terminator back in time to protect Erik Andolsek and Mike Utley while hunting down Matt Millen isn't feasible - at least for now - we have to be patient with this aspect of the rebuilding process and hope that this year's draft can be the start of that process.

Unfortunately, it seems as if the Lions missed the memo there, and while I have already expressed time and time again my willingness to cut these dudes some slack and embrace the alien concept of hope, I am left kind of uneasy with the fact that, given the pathetic state of the offensive line, the Lions bolstered it in the draft with a measly seventh round pick. Especially since they passed up Michael Oher in the first round and probably could have snagged somebody who could have helped in the wide expanse that exists between the end of the first round and the beginning of the seventh.

But that is a dangerous thing, playing the what if game, and it will leave us all in a pool of our own urine and vomit as we gibber and slobber over ourselves, our brains broken and finally beaten by the years of torment that come with being a Lions fan. Instead, we have to focus on what they did and hope that, in the end, they knew what it was they were doing.

And what did they do? Well, let's find out.

With the 228th pick overall, the 19th of the seventh round, the Detroit Lions selected Lydon Murtha, an offensive tackle out of Nebraska. Now, the good news is that Murtha was a highly rated and prized recruit out of high school, a terrific natural athlete with good speed and flexibility, the kind of guy who has the agility necessary to handle top flight pass rushers and the kind of size and strength needed in the running game. Sounds great, right? Well, the problem with Murtha is that he never managed to stay healthy while at Nebraska and never lived up to his seemingly immense potential. It would be a little naive to think that a guy who couldn't stay healthy or dominate at the college level would be able to do so once he took the enormous step up in competition that he'll be forced to do here.

Still, Murtha has outstanding measurables, and if everything breaks right for him, maybe, just maybe he'll be able to put it all together and become something worth, well, something in the NFL. The killing fields of that brutal league are filled with the bodies of the exceptionally talented and gifted, who, for one reason or another, didn't live up to their potential. This is probably the fate that awaits Murtha. But, hope is a funny thing. It clouds your judgment, makes you see stars in seventh round picks, and makes you think that the world will break right. And I have hope. For the first time in years, since St. Barry juked his way out of town - and really, if I am being honest here, a while before that even happened - I have hope, and even though my head is screaming at me to stop being an idiot, reminding me of all the vicious and terrible trials I have been forced to endure as a Lions fan, my heart wants to believe. It is a terrible battle, and Lydon Murtha is just another frontline in the war between head and heart.

My head tells me that he is a seventh round draft pick who didn't dominate in college. And even though he was a highly rated recruit, offensive line recruiting is notoriously a crapshoot. And what we're left with is a fine athlete who was a good high school football player and little else. Harsh? Certainly, but my head is a dickhead and a cynic.

But my heart sees that athleticism and begins to wonder. My heart thinks that all this dude needs is a break, that with the right coaching he can put it all together and use those raw tools to become a franchise left tackle. My heart tells me that it's a new day, that the old guard has been vanquished and beaten and we should celebrate this new era by excusing old injuries, forgetting the horrible and the profane, and moving forward. My heart sees Lydon Murtha and thinks that maybe his injury plagued college career was a fluke, that maybe his time in the NFL will be different. Nauseatingly rosy? Certainly, but my heart is an optimist and a gentleman.

So, who wins the war? Obviously, I am torn. I like Murtha, I really do, and for a seventh rounder, he's a great pick. Let me say that again. He's a great pick. Unfortunately, given the need along the offensive line, and the horrors of the past - specifically those of last year, I fear that Lions fans will want him to play like a first rounder instead of a seventh, It is unfair, it is brutal, but that is life as a Detroit Lion.

What they could have done differently: Picked a lineman earlier, like Oher. But they didn't, and so we're left with what could have beens and those are always awful and stupid. Then again, I have devoted a whole little section here to what could have been and so I will give it some space to breathe.

What we can expect this season: Not much. Murtha is a seventh round pick and a rookie. Those don't typically steal starting jobs and drive their team to the Super Bowl surrounded by a sea of groupies. I think we'll see Murtha stashed fairly deeply on the bench - at least to start. The Lions probably like what they have as far as his raw talent goes and they will do their best to develop it slowly. But, the situation being what it is, there is a good chance that at some point or another in the season, if Murtha shows them enough at practice, that he'll be thrown out there and asked to do something. I just hope he doesn't fall flat on his face or blow out a knee or start vomiting on himself.

Early Pick Grade: A-. I know this seems high, but I'm trying not to grade here based on what the Lions could have done earlier in the draft. For a seventh round pick, Murtha is a terrific pick - tremendous upside with little financial commitment. If he works, hey, sex and candy for everyone. If he bombs, well, it's a seventh round pick that didn't pan out.