I'm not entirely sure what's going on here, but it seems oddly appropriate. I think they are fixing that dude's skull fracture, but I'm not sure why his tongue is hanging out like that. Maybe his skull fracture made him retarded. I don't know, I'm not an expert on skull fractures. I am familiar with all things retarded, but then again, you all knew that already. The point to all this gibberish? Must there always be a point?As usual, the one thing that we can take away from these ridiculous predictions is that I am an idiot and should just stop making them. But, being the idiot that I am, I will continue to press on through this wilderness of stupid pain and wild inaccuracy. Why not? We are all fools and charlatans in these dark and troubled times and my idiot voice might as well be added to the swirling chaos of noise and nonsense. Anyway, let's see how dumb things can get.
PREDICTION NUMBER ONE
WHAT I SAID: Kevin Smith will be the focal point of the offense, rushing 30 times for 155 yards and two touchdowns. After the game, he makes up for his previous shunning of Ernie Sims' monkey by donating his salary for the game towards the building of a habitat for run away and at risk monkeys. He is hailed as a model philanthropist and is honored by Congress.
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Smith was the focal point of the offense, at least until he was apparently hurt. He shuffled in and out of the game in the aftermath of said injury. Was he at all effective? Well, let's see. Smith ran the ball 16 times for only 45 yards and he didn't score. That's a grand average of 2.8 yards per carry. Against the Rams. Yeah. It's safe to say I bombed the shit out of this one and it's starting to look like Smith is following right along with me, bombing out in his second season in the league. I mean, that shit is terrible. Okay, maybe he was running a little hurt and maybe the offensive line is made up of simpering goons, but again, it was against the Rams. I mean, come on.
What makes this failure even more glaring are the numbers put up by Maurice Morris after Smith was hurt. Morris ran the ball 14 times for 63 yards, or for 4.5 yards per carry. Last time I checked, Morris was running behind the same shitty line, so . . . yeah. That's kind of damning there, isn't it? Smith has struggled all season long, and I have tried my best to excuse it as the result of nagging injury or sheer incompetence by the offensive line. I am a Kevin Smith fan. I talked him up before the season. I even drafted him for my fantasy team in two different nerd leagues, taking him higher than he probably should have gone in both. So, I'm not exactly looking for him to fail here, you know? But as every week goes by, there is a creeping dread regarding Smith. I touched on it last week, and I explained that I was starting to get worried. Well, now I'm really worried. Smith has been continually ineffective - the Minnesota game weirdly aside - and I'm not sure if it's because he's hurt or because he's just playing like shit. It's probably a combination of both. Still, I was willing to blame everyone else, from the line to Hitler to Bigfoot for Smith's struggles. This is hard to do when the backup running back comes into the game and significantly outperforms the starter. I don't know exactly what's going on here, but, man, this doesn't look good.
Unfortunately, because Smith struggled so mightily, the monkey advocates rejected his donation towards the building of an animal habitat, citing his money as unclean and tainted by the stink of failure. I even heard a rumor that an army of howler monkeys freaked out on Smith and showered him in shit. A terrible thing, if true. I doubt it is, but we live in strange and terrible times, so who knows?
PREDICTION NUMBER TWO
WHAT I SAID: Matthew Stafford will go 15-23 for 206 yards and two touchdowns. After the game, he will have an emotional reunion with his kneecap, which the cameras lovingly capture until things become a little too, uh, heated and uncomfortable and FOX has to cut away in order to avoid fines from the FCC.
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Stafford went 14-33 for 168 yards with 0 touchdowns and 1 interception. He did run one touchdown in on his own. Clearly, this wasn't a good game by Stafford, and clearly, I was horrifically wrong yet again. What makes these numbers even uglier, and what makes me want to pick out which of my neckties would make the best noose, is that they came against the Rams. So far this season, the Rams have been destroyed by every quarterback they have faced. It is eerily similar to the death and destruction rained down upon the Lions during the Season of Unnumbered Tears. I mean, Bobby Layne would have a field day against those turds and he's been dead for over 20 yards. Sure, Layne's corpse could probably be roused to action with the promise of a nice Scotch, and who knows what kind of zombie superpowers he would have, so maybe that isn't the best example, but you get my point. Virtually anybody could torch those worthless turds from St. Louis. And yet, Matthew Stafford didn't.
To be fair to Stafford, his receivers did drop a ridiculous number of passes. They were awful, just terrible, and it just made Calvin Johnson's absence that much larger. The play calling also left a little to be desired, which I mentioned yesterday. So, if the Lions actually took more shots down field, his receivers actually caught all of the passes that they could have and if Calvin Johnson would have played, I think Stafford would have had a nice day. Let's not forget that it was his first game back after his kneecap abandoned him in Chicago and that he was probably out of rhythm with his receivers. Plus, he's a rookie. Add it all up, and you just had too many things to overcome. Still, you would think that he could still shred the nonexistent St. Louis secondary. You would like to think that, but this is the Detroit Lions we are talking about, and their foundation is built on failed wishes and shattered dreams.
Sadly, because of the loss, Stafford's estranged kneecap snubbed him after that game and was later seen palling around with Marc Bulger in the Rams' locker room. Such a deceitful son of a bitch. Can't he see what he's doing to poor Matthew? A terrible thing.
PREDICTION NUMBER THREE
WHAT I SAID: Steven Jackson rushes 25 times for 96 yards and a touchdown. After the game, Sammie Lee Hill and Grady Jackson get into a brawl when they can't decide which one of them gets to feast on Jackson's detached leg.
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Jackson ran the ball 22 times for 149 yards and a touchdown. This was the worst performance of the year for the Detroit run defense. Jackson is having a great season despite the general putrescence of the Rams, and against the Lions it was clear why. He ran like a damn maniac, breaking tackles and humbling dudes all over the place. It was an epic performance and the Lions were run the fuck right over. The final numbers weren't all that huge - they were big enough, but not ridiculous or anything - but they don't tell the story, which is that Jackson managed to gash the Lions in a way that no other running back has this year, with the exception of Mike Bell during the first game of the year. He willed the Rams to a victory in a way that our dudes never can. It was impressive. It was depressing.
Fortunately, Sammie Lee Hill and Grady Jackson did not get into a brawl after the game. Unfortunately, that is because they were both whipped and beaten by Steven Jackson, who taunted them with his succulent leg meat all day long only to laugh at them and run away after the game, leaving them in tears, starving and desperate. There was a weird rumor about the two of them and Ernie Sims' monkey that ends with Grady Jackson chasing the little guy around the locker room with a fork, but it is too strange to be true and I will not dignify that sort of odd bullshit by discussing it. After all, I am a serious man, and I only discuss serious things here at Armchair Linebacker.
PREDICTION NUMBER FOUR
WHAT I SAID: Marc Bulger throws the ball 25 times, completing 15 passes for 187 yards. He is sacked three times and throws two interceptions to go with one touchdown. After the game, he is found weeping and alone, naked in the shower, staring at a group photo of him, Torry Holt, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, and Marshall Faulk with Mike Martz
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Bulger attempted 35 passes, completing 17 of them for 176 yards. He failed to throw a touchdown and threw one interception. He was never sacked. Okay, so this one was sort of close to what I predicted. Bulger and the Rams struggled to pass the ball. That is not that big of a surprise. I mean, they would be stymied by a gang of pygmies with Down's Syndrome(oddly, they are quite stout against the run though). Still, it's kind of nice that, at least in this one area, the Lions did their job.
Is this a sign of progress for the pass defense? I don't know. I mean, yeah, they did an okay job, but it's the Rams. I'm more inclined to think that the failure by the Rams to consistently move the ball through the air is more a function of their own general incompetence than anything the Lions were doing to stop them. There were still too many instances where the Rams' cavalcade of non-stars ran frustratingly free in the secondary, catching wide open passes that the Lions could do little about.
Because the Rams won, I'm sure the above gibberish about Bulger being found naked and alone, weeping while looking at an old team photo never happened. But, this is only because they won. I am sure that photo exists somewhere, and I am sure that it is always within arm's reach for Bulger these days. So sad.
PREDICTION NUMBER FIVE
WHAT I SAID: Calvin Johnson once again doesn't play, and after the game it is revealed that he is sitting out on purpose. When asked why, he claims that he is teaching humanity a lesson. They need to learn to solve their own problems instead of relying upon him and his otherworldly powers. One reporter scoffs at the idea that St. Calvin is superhuman, and so Calvin turns him into a small chicken, which is then devoured by Grady Jackson, still hungry after being forced to split Steven Jackson's leg with Sammie Lee Hill. St. Calvin then goes back in time and writes a play based on the incident which is credited to Shakespeare, a comedy titled A Fowl Feast. It is renowned for its groundbreaking use of the fart joke.
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Johnson didn't play, so fuck everyone, I got one of these infernal things right. YEAH! Of course, it is hard to celebrate when the one thing I got right is the one thing that I wish would have been terribly wrong. You will also notice this is the one prediction that I didn't bother predicting any stats for. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps it is the ennui born of constantly being wrong about these sorts of things, or perhaps I didn't really care what trivial numbers Bryant Johnson and Dennis Northcutt put up in St. Calvin's place. In either case, it doesn't speak well of my overall mindset right now. Losing will do that to a man.
I am saddened to announce that St. Calvin's lesson was unheeded by mankind and the rest of the Lions, who failed to solve their own problems while he stood on the sidelines. A terrible thing, but one that was sadly predictable. There have been no reports thus far of St. Calvin turning anyone into a chicken, but these things can take time to get out. We must be patient before rushing to say that this was wrong. I did, however, find the time to read A Fowl Feast. It was delightful. I wasn't sure about the inclusion of the gag about the explosive diarrhea, but who am I to question the Great Bard?
FINAL SCORE PREDICTION
WHAT I SAID: Lions 31, Rams 17
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Rams 17, Lions 10. Well, at least I got one of the numbers right.
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