The NFL Draft, The Fear and The Long Road Out of Hell

Well hell, everybody else is doing it, so I might as well too. Not only is that the very reason why I jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and smoked copious amounts of crack with hoodlums in my callow youth, but it is the reason why I have decided to give an overview of this year's NFL Draft. And like all activities spurred on by peer pressure, it will likely leave me in tears, my body broken and bleeding, like that time I sucked that werewolf's dick in a back alley for crack money before I was viciously assaulted by a gang of street urchins who then robbed me and left me naked and shuddering in the streets. I was then taken in by a kindly old Korean gentleman who nursed me back to health and freed me of my horrible addictions. Our relationship sadly ended when I tried to thank him by blowing him, and although he understood this was the only way I knew how to show positive emotion, he felt that it was time for me to be moving along. Yes, this post will be exactly like that.

I have no idea what just happened. I just started writing and then a bunch of weird bullshit came out and for that I apologize. I would go back and delete all that nonsense, but that would be inauthentic and would give things a polished sheen that, while much prettier, and much more coherent, would be nevertheless dishonest and how could you trust me again, kindly reader, once you realized that I was lying to you?

But that is all irrelevant, just mere noise screaming from somewhere deep inside my fucked up brain, and I don't blame you if you tune all that out. You're here to read about football, and more specifically what I think about football, and more specifically even than that, you're here to read about what I think about the Detroit Lions. Unfortunately for you, my own weird neuroses and strange ramblings are part of this package, and well, what the fuck, what are you gonna do, you know? Wait, don't answer that. I know exactly what you could do, and that's to just shrug and get the hell out of here before you are subjected to anymore of this weird bullshit. I'd kindly request that you not do so, but I won't beg. No, sir. You do what you have to do and I'll do what I have to. Deal? In the end, we can come to some sort of understanding, some middle ground where you can learn to live with my nonsense because you know, deep down, that underneath it all, I am a man of staggering genius and the words that I impart upon you are like the songs of an angel, too beautiful for this world and filled with a light and a truth which will leave you breathless and . . . aroused? No, that's not right. Uh . . .

Ahem. Enough of that nonsense. Jesus, I think I took things to a whole new level there. Anyway, I am just an idiot who likes to write about the Lions and sometimes I get out of control, and, well, these things happen and this is just the way it is. I guess I could ramble on some more in lieu of a real apology or explanation, but that would just lead us down yet another strange road that I would end up apologizing for and before long we would all be stuck in the middle of some strange maze, wondering how the hell we got there, and incapable of getting out. Oh shit, we're already there, aren't we? Well fuck, since there's nowhere for us to go, let's just sit down, relax and talk about some football, shall we? Okay.

I have already talked about how Lions fans and the universe at large celebrated en masse and seemed to undergo a radical personality shift following the first round of the draft. There was still hooting and hollering but they were hoots of joy, and for a change people hollered so that others might here the good news instead of the usual foul noise about failure and death. I was caught up in this wave of hysteria, the wave of Suh and Best and Schwartz and Mayhew, and even though I felt vaguely self conscious about it all, aware that I was going over the top a little bit, I couldn't help myself. Nor did I want to. You see, when you have been denied something - anything - for so long, when you finally get it, you cannot enjoy it responsibly. You are like a complete idiot, a water-brained fool, a starving man suddenly given a five course meal. You will eat and you will eat until you vomit and then you will eat some more, the whole time laughing and clapping and gibbering about your good fortune while others stare at you, both amused and horrified.

This is how Day One of the 2010 NFL Draft affected Lions fans. Ndamukong Suh was ours and although we had no idea how to behave, it didn't matter, because at the end of the day he was ours and no one could take that away from us. Of course, it wasn't long before we remembered that we were used to starving and after we had finished gorging, we sat back and that's when The Fear took hold. We began to remember what it was like to starve for those many years and we were terrified that we would go right back to starving once we pushed away from the table. It's a terrible feeling, but it's one which me must control.

The Fear is a toxic thing, a deadly thing. It will eat us up from the inside out and leave us just a husk, a shell of a fan too broken and hollowed out to really care when anything good does happen to us. We have to fight The Fear, rebel against it even as it tries to gnaw away at our hearts and minds. And the harder we fight it, the more vicious that son of a bitch will become.

But the good news is that I have already seen our fans make great headway against The Fear. That bastard is still in there, and he still jumps up and starts screaming at us every time we dare to be happy, but fuck him. This is the message that some of us have begun to impart, if only because we understand that The Fear will own us if we do not. A lot of our fans, though, are still beholden to The Fear, worshipping him in the dark because they do not understand the light, but even they have begun to at least acknowledge that the light exists, saying that although they are still afraid, they trust the ambassadors of the light now, men like Jim Schwartz and Martin Mayhew. This is a good thing, and it means that one by one, we will all be led out of the darkness and one day, hopefully soon, we can begin to understand the light.

The truth is, is that although I have rebelled against The Fear, I am still terrified of him, and I am still trapped in the dark along with everyone else. I will arrogantly say Fuck Him, but this is bravado, a fear of The Fear if you will, and this is not in itself the end goal. The end goal is the light, the end goal is victory, and unfortunately we will all be slaves to The Fear up until that very day when we see the light, when we win.

It's that stark. Win and people will believe. No matter what else you do, no matter how much people want to trust you, want to believe in you, winning is all you can do to make that happen. Great drafts are awesome. But without winning, it's all still dark. Victory is the light and light dominates the dark. Victory is the only thing that can slay The Fear. And there, in light and in victory, lies the true answer, the true road to salvation. Right now, all we have is hope. Hope is not salvation. Hope turns our eyes to the long road ahead. Hope lets us believe, lets us trust that there is a road out of the darkness and into the light. And we have begun to go down that road. But until that light hits us, and until we are embraced by victory, The Fear will always be chasing us, always be hunting us, and before the end of the road, he will take some of us. That's just the way it is.

But the good news is that we have gotten off to a great start down that road. And every time we have a draft like the one we just had, we start to put more and more distance between us and The Fear. Ndamukong Suh is our champion right now, the man who sits in his House of Spears and guards us from The Fear. Jahvid Best encourages us as he runs from The Fear, too fast and too elusive to catch. Together, they make us believe that we can escape.

But then we look around and we wonder where the hell are all the other Suhs, the other Bests? After all, there are seven rounds to the NFL Draft and surely we should get more soldiers to help us fight The Fear than just the few we were able to collect over the weekend. But this is The Fear whispering in our ears, confusing us, disorienting us, hoping that his voice will make us lose our way and begin marching backwards towards the heart of darkness and the stink of death that The Fear lords over.

But what some don't see is that we already planted soldiers in our ranks before this weekend ever got here. Rob Sims, Chris Houston, Tony Scheffler and Corey Williams are already here. This is how we spent our fifth and sixth round picks. Most teams, most fans, hope that they can get a couple of starters, one or two solid warriors out of a draft. We got 7 or 8. Those four are already starters in the NFL. Suh and Best join them. Amari Spievey, our third round pick, a cornerback out of Iowa, could potentially start as well. Jason Fox, an offensive tackle out of Miami that we nabbed in the fourth round, is an intriguing prospect who could be the long term answer at left tackle.

You see, The Fear is full of shit. This was a great draft, an amazing draft, when you look at how the Lions spent their available picks. They picked up four starters with third day picks. Many experts and fans think that the Lions had the best first day out of everyone, nabbing both Suh and Best. What many of them have failed to grasp is that the Lions also had the best third day. It's just that the Lions third day of the draft came long before the draft even started.

I will have an in-depth breakdown of each Lions pick in the coming weeks. In this post I just wanted to do a quick rundown and show how this past weekend affected the narrative as a whole. I think I have shown that it affected it in a good way - in a very good way - and hopefully The Fear doesn't seem quite so ominous at the moment.

Of course, The Fear will still be here tomorrow and the day after that and the week after that and the month after that and probably the year after that. It's a long road, the road that leads to the light, and we have just begun to travel down it, but we are tough people, noble people, and as I have said before, we are warriors of light and we will gnaw on the bones of the wicked and the foolish before it's all over. The Fear may be a terrifying bastard, but we are Lions fans, we can take it.