Random Gibberish

Yeah, dude, I know.

This week is a little slower than normal because the Lions have a bye. The good news is that this will hopefully give St. Calvin, Matthew Stafford and everyone else missing a limb time to heal. The bad news is that we are stuck with the wretched aftertaste of Sunday's debacle in Green Bay for another week. And since we have nothing to do but wallow in the muck, let's just get on with it.

HOW DOES THIS DUDE STILL HAVE A JOB?

When That Fine and Decent Man we used to have as a head coach was stuck in a box and mailed to Chicago, it was obvious that it wasn't just him but his whole abomination of a coaching staff that needed to go. Naturally, that's what happened, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. Most of our coaches were new, and maybe, just maybe we could finally move on from the hellstorm that has been the last decade of Lions football. Sure, there were a couple of holdovers, dudes like Sam Gash and Shawn Jefferson who seem like promising young coaches, former players who have overseen mostly competent units that have somehow stayed afloat in the sea of despair, but there was one holdover whose stranglehold on the job seemed puzzling to say the least.

You see, once upon a time, the Lions special teams units were always very good. They kicked well, they punted well, they always had the best return game in the league and their kick coverage units were at least decent. And then Stan Kwan was named the special teams coach, the returns dried up, the coverage became abysmal and even the punting game started to become a little erratic. The kicking game has survived, largely due to Jason Hanson, who, as well know, is a robot created in a lab by Swiss scientists who were trying to develop the ultimate soccer striker. Unfortunately, Jason just couldn't kick a round ball and so the scientists, frustrated by their failure, decided to pull the plug. They tasked a young scientist with driving him out into the wilderness like the robot kid in that 100 year long movie AI, only the young scientist was moved to tears because robot Jason, who didn't know he was a robot, thought they were going to the county fair and he was so excited. So, the young scientist hustled Jason out of the country, driving all night until he stuck him on a freighter out of Marseilles, which then made it's way to the United States where he was adopted by a sweet couple unable to have a child of their own. A few months later, young robot Jason found that while he couldn't kick a round ball, he was more than capable of smashing the shit out of an oblong ball, and a few years after that, he found himself enrolled at Washington State and the rest is history.

Where the fuck was I? Oh yeah, Stan Kwan. Anyway, ever since Stan Kwan took over as coach, nearly every phase of the special teams has been a disaster. How in the hell did this guy get to keep his job when Jim Schwartz took over? I will not be hackneyed and make a lame joke about incriminating photos, so . . . I dunno, maybe he's a warlock?

Sure enough, so far this season, the Lions have been repeatedly punched in the balls by long returns from the opposition while our own return game has once again stagnated in the horrible marsh of failure. And still, ol' Stan keeps his job. Sounds like a warlock to me. Someone check the locker room for entrails and eyes of newt. Good Lord, what a debacle.

There has been so much misery and so many things that have needed to be fixed in this decade of infinite pain that it was all too easy to overlook the perpetual putrescence(alliteration~)of the special teams. Well, now that many of those other, bigger problems have at least been stabilized, the problems of that shittastic unit stink even worse. It was like they were a pile of dog shit buried in a sea of cow shit. Everyone bitched about the damn cow shit and so they sold all the cows and cleaned up all that shit, only to find that the fucking dogs were still running around stinking up the place.

I'm sorry, that was a weird and terrible analogy, even for me. Anyway, every week that this goes on, the more maddening it becomes that, somehow, Stan Kwan is still our special teams coach. I'm assuming he'll get to the end of the year and then he'll find his shit boxed up as soon as the last game ends, but fuck it, I figured that would be the case last year too, so what the hell do I know? He could be here for a thousand years. Remember, it's possible that this man is a warlock, and if that's the case, the possibilities are both terrible and endless.

CAN WE PUT THIS SHIT TO BED NOW?

Anyone who thinks that Daunte Culpepper is a good quarterback in 2009 is an idiot. The end.

ARE OPPOSING TEAMS HIRING SNIPERS?

After every other play on Sunday, it seemed like another Lions defensive lineman was lying on the turf while the announcers talked about how low they were on numbers at the position. It was terrible to watch and by the end of the game, the Lions were sticking Stephen Peterman in the goal line packages simply because he was appropriately fat. I mean, come on, haven't we suffered enough in this terrible decade? We finally start to climb out from beneath all of the rubble, dust ourselves off, and then everyone's knee caps explode and shoulders get torn out by angry demons and I'm left gibbering about monkeys and time traveling wide receivers.

The injuries so far this season seem staggering. There's not a single position group that has come away unscathed. It seems like everyone has been hurt at some point this season. Even Jason Hanson, who has played for 126 years, went down for a while in the preseason. And he's a robot. For fuck's sake. Maybe this has something to do with Stan Kwan's witchcraft. You mess with dark magic, Stan, and there are bound to be consequences.

By the end of the year, this team might look like a collection of fucked up zombies, staggering through their games, all stiff and bellowing about brains while everyone runs right by them and no one needs to see that. Goddamn. I think they need to hire the scientists who created Jason Hanson and make all of our dudes bionic. It's the only way any of them will survive. That way, we can get cool shit like Ernie Sims shooting lasers from his shoulder or Kevin Smith springing over tacklers like he is Inspector Gadget or some asshole like that. We have suffered for so long, we deserve this. COME ON GIVE IT TO US WEIRD SCIENTISTS WHO CREATED JASON HANSON.

Okay, this whole post has been strange and utterly without merit. I don't apologize for any of it, though. These are strange and terrible times, and these things happen. Vaya con dios.