Now What in the Hell is This Gibberish?

I have no idea what in the hell this is all about, but as both a vegetarian and a Lions fan, I am both amused and intrigued. The truth is, is that I am some fucked up combination of these two dudes.

With the bye week here, the sheer inanity of my predictions can linger, aging like a fine wine, ripening until all there is left to do is uncork that son of a bitch and savor the bold rich . . . oh, oh God, I have made a mistake. The correct simile here is a stale fart, not a fine wine. So, let's, uh, drop our drawers and see how bad it really smells.

PREDICTION THE FIRST

WHAT I SAID: Stafford starts and has a nice game, throwing for 260 yards and 2 touchdowns. He also throws an interception which is taken to the house by Charles Woodson.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Uh . . . well . . . so yeah, okay, this one was in flames right from the start. Stafford's knee cap refused to cooperate and he spent the game on the sideline, wrapped in a parka, while his replacement, the 2004 Fantasy Football MVP, assed his way around the field until his body told him to go fuck himself. That left Drew Stanton, who . . . well, let's not go down this road again. Anyway, Culpepper's final numbers were 6-14 for 48 yards and 0 touchdowns. He also threw a horrible interception to a defensive lineman. Yeah. Meanwhile, Ol' Plucky's final numbers were 5-11 for 57 yards and 0 touchdowns. Ol' Plucky managed to one up Culpepper with 2 interceptions. For the game, Lions QB's were 11-25 for 105 yards, 0 touchdowns and 3 interceptions. Both Culpepper and Stanton had QB ratings of 22. TWENTY FUCKING TWO. Ahem, sorry, I just shit my pants and spazzed out a little. The orderlies have zapped me with a cattle prod and the dude who thinks he's Napoleon just slapped me around a little so everything should be okay for a while.

Well . . . uh . . . what can you say about this shittastic performance that I haven't already said? It was a terrifying and nauseating throwback to the killing fields of last season and everyone involved in this debacle should be ashamed of themselves. For fuck's sake, I even heard a rumor that Ernie Sims' poor monkey tried to hang himself while watching this game. Awful, just awful.

If there is a positive to all this it is that I was wrong about Charles Woodson picking one off and taking it to the house. Well, thank God for small miracles, right? Excuse me while I drink this can of lighter fluid and then suck on a candle.

PREDICTION THE SECOND

WHAT I SAID: Calvin Johnson doesn't play. Bryant Johnson has a decent game, catching 6 passes for 90 yards and a touchdown. After the game, St. Calvin mystifies a horde of reporters by reciting a monologue from Hamlet. There is a rush by many to claim that this is proof that St. Calvin is somehow depressed, a notion which is dispelled when it is revealed that he is actually the man who wrote all of Shakespeare's plays and he is just showing off. There will be much confusion as to how this all happened, until it is revealed that St. Calvin exists outside of the space time continuum and moves at will through the universe and it's various ages. One dumb reporter tries to compare it to Back to the Future, but St. Calvin verbally smacks him down, saying "Do I look like some geeky ass white boy on a skate board to you?" Someone else makes a Doc Brown crack, causing St. Calvin to say "The last time we had some white haired crazy motherfucker running shit here, y'all ran his ass out of town and then we went 0-16." The next day, Mike Martz buys himself a DeLorean. He spends a full day just sitting behind the wheel and weeping.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Hey, what do you know, I was right. At least about St. Calvin not playing. You'll excuse me if I don't break into raucous celebration. I might sing, I might dance a little bit, I might get drunk, and I might take a baseball bat and smash the shit out of something resembling a piñata, but I can promise you that none of those things are related to one another. Well, the smashing with a baseball bat might be related a little bit to the drinking and to the St. Calvin situation, but other than that, no.

Meanwhile, Bryant Johnson only caught 2 passes for 27 yards, and, well . . . fuck this. GOOD LORD, these shitheads were fucking terrible and as I look at the stats the horrors of that game are just rushing back, and . . . okay, I'll be good. No, you don't have to get the shock collar. I don't wanna take the red pills. Okay, okay fine, just put away the batons, please.

Ahem, anyway, St. Calvin spent the game chilling next to Matthew Stafford while everyone else played like a bunch of retarded tree sloths against the Packers. Okay, I must admit that I have never known a retarded tree sloth, but all of the tree sloths I have known are kind of dim anyway, and they are really uncoordinated, so I will not apologize for making that leap.

Sadly, St. Calvin has yet to come out and admit that he authored Shakespeare's greatest works, but I am confident that this will come to pass sometime in the very near future. Or perhaps it has already happened and St. Calvin, using his powers, went back in time to erase all of our memories. He is just toying with us, laughing at us behind our human backs. Also, I was wrong about Mike Martz buying a DeLorean and then weeping behind the wheel. It was an '87 Ford Tempo and he wasn't weeping, he was just afflicted by allergies. My mistake.

PREDICTION THE THIRD

WHAT I SAID: Kevin Smith runs the ball 25 times for 91 yards and a touchdown. He wears a patch on his uniform in support of Ernie Sims' monkey, who is still hiding from the authorities.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Smith ran the ball 15 times for 61 yards. He didn't score, but those numbers actually kind of shock me. The Lions were so terrible on Sunday - see all of the above gibberish - that in my head, I pictured Smith's final numbers being much, much uglier. He was thirty yards shy of my prediction, which I thought at the time was fairly optimistic, but his yards per carry was actually slightly higher than what I called for. In the apocalyptic sea of shit that the Lions were collectively drowned in on Sunday, Smith actually managed to keep his head above water enough to put up average, and dare I say it, respectable numbers.

I suppose it is fitting. After all, this was a vintage Lions performance, ripped straight out of 2008. And Smith's game was very much like his 2008 season. It didn't seem all that decent until you look at the numbers. In 2008, Smith somehow managed over 4 yards a carry, same as in this game, and just like in 2008, while everything else went to hell around him, Smith kept churning forward until, at the end, he was one of the few who had something to point to and say "See, I tried. I did my part." The unfortunate thing about all that is while it sounds good, it's a bad sign that I am continuously surprised to see Smith's numbers reflect a better showing than I remember. It's not like I watched him take control of the game - this one, or any one last year - and move the pile forward. He wasn't keeping the Lions in the game or exerting his will like the best running backs do. I would rather think "Wow, this dude is getting the job done," and then be surprised that his numbers aren't all that spectacular than think "Man, we can't run the ball again," only to see that his numbers are actually semi-decent. What I saw and what the numbers tell just don't mesh.

Okay, let's look at this a little differently. Smith's long run for the game was 20 yards. That's not much, but when his total is 61, that's pretty much a third of his yardage right there. I remember that play. It was a good run, and I think it was part of a semi-functional series by the Lions which featured a pair of decent runs by Smith, a couple of slow balls by Ol' Plucky and an end zone interception. Take that run away, and Smith's numbers suddenly look much worse - 14 carries for 41 yards, or slightly less than 3 yards per carry.

The point to all this nerdery? Smith had one decent run amidst a sea of general ineptitude. I still like him, but, really, he has had one good game this season, in the loss to the Vikings where his shoulder up and left, and I am kinda disappointed in what we have gotten from him this year. This is probably due to my wild and irrational expectations coming into this season, wild and irrational expectations that were partly fueled by Smith's surprising final numbers last season. After watching this game, which seemed like an echo of last season both for the Lions and for Smith, I am now vaguely uncomfortable with those expectations. It's possible - even probable - that Smith will end up with surprisingly decent final numbers yet again. Unfortunately, those numbers just don't seem like they are translating all that well to the field. I'm not sure if that really makes sense, but well, there it is.

Sadly, Smith did not wear a patch on his uniform in support of Sims' monkey, and if the rumors that I mentioned earlier about the poor little guy trying to hang himself are true, well then Smith should be ashamed of himself. All the monkey wants and needs are the support of his friends.

PREDICTION THE FOURTH

WHAT I SAID: Aaron Rodgers throws for 350 yards and 4 touchdowns. He is only sacked once, and after the game he prank calls Brett Favre, who just smiles and admires his Wranglers because he is just havin' fun out there.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Rodgers threw for 358 yards and two touchdowns to go along with an interception. He was sacked 5 times, which makes his final numbers that much more ridiculous and makes the Lions secondary look that much more awful. If Rodgers would have had a decent offensive line in front of him he probably would have gone over 400 yards for the game, and . . . oh Jesus, I just pictured what that would have looked like and . . . and the orderlies are back and this time they have giant needles and even the little dude who thinks he is Napoleon is scared of this shit. He is cowering in a corner, and . . . let's just move on.

PREDICTION THE FIFTH

WHAT I SAID: Ryan Grant is held somewhat in check. He goes for 80 yards on only 17 carries. He scores a touchdown. After the game it is revealed that St. Calvin, using his Godlike powers, has managed to put some sort of bizarre force field into play which causes opposing running games to falter. When asked why he doesn't just keep them from gaining any yards at all, St. Calvin grows exasperated, saying "What the fuck do you want from me? Have you seen the shitheads on our defensive line? There is only so much even I can do." One intrepid reporter keeps digging into the story until it is scandalously revealed that Calvin Johnson was the inspiration for Dr. Manhattan. When it is questioned how this is possible, St. Calvin just laughs and once again breaks out the "Lord, what fools these mortals be."

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Grant ran for 90 yards on 24 carries. Basically, I was right about this one. A lot of Grant's yardage came in garbage time, when the game was long over and everyone just wanted to get the fuck out of there. Okay, okay, to be honest, that could mean any time after the halfway point of the first quarter. But, really, before late in the fourth quarter, Grant's numbers were pretty dismal. The Lions once again largely shut down an opposing running game, which is mystifying since the Lions defensive line for the game was made up of homeless people, a statue of Vince Lombardi they found before the game and a couple of fat people they dragged out of the crowd and stuck uniforms on. I have no idea how they continue to do this, but they are doing it. Part of it probably has something to do with the recognition that they absolutely cannot stop the pass and so they are devoting as much of their energy as they can to stuffing the run. You might as well do one thing well. Another reason is because other teams recognize that the Lions couldn't break up a pass if they had flamethrowers and throwing stars to use on opposing receivers. This means that teams are willing to forego the run and just pass all day long. There is no real need to establish the run because, fuck, why bother? You can just throw all over these doofuses(doofesi?). They aren't going to stop you. Why bother with five yards here, six yards there, when 20 will do just fine?

Once again, I was disappointed that St. Calvin remained demure about his obvious superpowers, but I am confident that we will all learn the truth in time. That is assuming my earlier concerns about him manipulating us all through the space time continuum aren't true, and man, let's just hope they aren't, because we need a beneficent St. Calvin on our side. If he is seduced by his power or loses touch with the wants and needs of the ordinary man then we are all doomed. DOOMED. Okay, shit, gotta go, the orderlies are back and this time they brought with them the one the other patients call Dr. Pain and that motherfucker looks like he's in a bad mood. NO . . . I'll be good. PUT DOWN THE TAZER . . . I BEG YOU. NAPOLEON . . . HELP!