The Hard Road of Truth

Because we need it.

I had a dream last night in which the Lions beat the Seahawks in a bloodthirsty playoff game so, uh, totally look for that to happen.  It was really cool too, with the defensive line completely taking over the game and there were a lot of awesome details that I was going to discuss here but then I forgot about them, and well, that’s just the way that shit goes sometimes.  Still, it was fun and it made me feel good.

It bummed me out that I forgot so many of the details because really, I’d much, much rather write about my fictional dream game than about what happened last night.  Oh wait, I just remembered one of the dream details.  The Great Willie Young was being interviewed after the game – because, naturally, he was the hero – and on live TV he screamed “Payback’s a bitch, mothafuckas!”  This is probably indicative of my fucked up brain more than anything else but, still.  But still.  That’s totally going to happen because I am a shaman and I paint the future with my brain.

Look, I don’t want to talk about what happened against the 49ers.  I just want to let it bleed, just like I said in the preview post, and eventually it will heal.  Today the Lions fanbase is alive with lynch mobs, stringing up various scapegoats from Matthew Stafford to Scott Linehan to Titus Young to Roary the mascot which is what happens when you lose on national TV and lose in a way that makes your team look kinda shitty.  Still, the predictability of it all makes me a little bit sad and like I said, I don’t even really want to be writing about this right now but what the hell, here I am and if I don’t do it now, the thoughts swirling around my head will only get weirder and this is a necessary step in letting go.

The Lions did not look good.  Let’s get that out of the way.  They sucked.  I don’t want to microanalyze the game any more than that.  I don’t want to dissect the coaching, the game plan or anything like that, mostly because every other Lions fan with a keyboard is doing that today.  I will say that Matthew Stafford specifically looked like dogshit for most of the game, a troubling thing that has left many Lions fans shivering and shaking like junkies, beseeching the old gods for answers but to be honest with you – and I know this is going to sound stupid – I’m really not that worried.

The thing is, is that we have seen this from Stafford before.  It happened last year.  Good friend of the blog, UpHere aka @Real_Interloper on Twitter aka legendary pickup artist Captain Jack (some might say this last one is a lie but until he denies it, I’m just going to throw it out there.) calls these Stafford’s “walkabouts” and, yeah, that pretty much nails it.  For a few weeks, for whatever reason, the dude just disappears, wandering around the Outback looking for his spirit guide.  It sucks when this happens and everybody worries but then in a week or two, Stafford will be led out of the wilderness by an intimidating Aborigine with tattoos and bones in weird places and then he’ll throw for five touchdowns with that fighter pilot smirk on his face, we’ll all play the theme to Top Gun in our head and then we’ll all rant and rave again about how he is the messiah and all that happy horseshit.  It will happen and so I’m not gonna get all worked up about this now.  Besides, last week the 49ers pretty much did the same thing to Aaron Rodgers and that game was in Rodger’s own building, so . . .

So . . . yeah.  That’s the thing that a lot of people are still inexplicably missing in their rush to lynch their least-favorite Lion: the 49ers really are that damn good.  I said it before the game and I’ll say it after.   I was abused for daring to speak against the wishes of the congregation but, well, you all watched the game, right?  So maybe y’all should lend an ear right now and listen when I tell you that the 49ers are probably the best team in the NFL right now.  You want answers?  Well shit, there’s a pretty big one.  They’re just better than the Lions right now.  They just are.  Sorry if that bothers you, but, well, Truth is not always kind.

I know there are some smart people out there who disagree with me, and I understand where they’re coming from.  I mean, hell, the Lions were missing virtually their entire secondary, Matthew Stafford played like the buttiest butt that ever butted and still the Lions were never completely out of that game.  Still, I think the 49ers are a big part of the reason why Stafford looked more like Dan Orlovsky and if that game was played 10 times this season the 49ers would probably win 8 of them.  It’s easy to see a path to victory for the Lions and that’s very, very encouraging, and because of that it’s easy to construct a narrative in which “Hey guys, the Lions are totally right there!” but it’s even easier to see a path to victory for the 49ers, one that doesn’t involve “If this happens then . . .” or “If this, then that, or if Player A gets new robot legs . . .”, and it’s that crucial difference that separates the two teams.  The Lions need certain things to happen to beat the 49ers.  The 49ers just need to go out and play to beat the Lions.

I don’t mean to rub dirty salt laced with Fear into your all too fresh wounds but – and this has already developed for me as the key theme this year – it doesn’t do us any good to harbor delusions, to make love to unrealistic fantasies and dreams because when we wake up, Truth won’t care for such things.  No, Truth will just care about what is.  And what is, is that the 49ers beat the Lions not because of any sort of epic weirdness or injustice but simply because, well, right now, they’re the better football team.

I know a lot of you don’t want to accept that and you’re probably going to yell at me in the comments and tell me that I have lost faith but that is a hell of an accusation and you should not make it lightly.  I still have faith, it’s just that my faith is rooted in something real, something other than my own desperate desire, my own desperate need, to believe.  I talked about this in the preview piece.  That sort of gun to the head OMG THEY’RE GOING 16-0 AND BEATING EVERYONE 56-7 is rooted more in a fear of disbelief than it is in actual belief.  It is what happens when a fanbase is so terrified of the alternative that they grab a hold of Hope way too tightly and then squeeze the life out of that motherfucker until all that is left is just sort of a grotesque and macabre corpse, a twisted, broken version of Hope that looks an awful lot like the False Idol of the god Fear we worshipped in the dark for so long.  True belief is being able to look Truth in the eye, even when it tells us ugly and cruel things, and remaining strong.

You can see it today.  A lot of the same people who were riding the streets on Friday, clubbing everyone upside the head who dared to say “Hey, now wait a minute guys, I don’t really like this game . . .” are the same ones leading the lynch mobs today.  They can’t accept that the Lions just lost to a better team and so they need to come up with sacrifices, with scapegoats, with reasons beyond the truth, harsh and naked as it may be.  To them there has to be some awful and hideous reason why the Lions lost, some terrible fuck-up that needs to be exorcised before we can move on.  But the truth is that they’re just trying to tie a noose around ghosts.

I understand all this because, hell, it’s hard for me to just sit here and say “Yup, the 49ers are just better.”  And I’ll admit that’s a little oversimplified and troubling enough on its own.  I mean, it sucks that that’s the truth, and yet here we are.  After all, I’m not writing about how the Lions went in to San Francisco and beat the 49ers.  I’m writing about how the Lions lost to the 49ers, just like I thought they would.  I mean, come on, there’s a reason why I thought that would happen and I’ll be honest with you, the game looked almost exactly like I thought it would.  What else do you want me to say?  If I saw it playing out that way and it did, well, uh . . . maybe I’m on to something here.

The problem, though, with all of that, is that it doesn’t change reality.  It doesn’t suddenly make it okay that the Lions lost to the 49ers.  There’s no joy in saying “Well, I guess the Lions just aren’t quite as good.”  Trust me, I’m not sitting here taking some sort of perverse glee in that sentiment.  It sucks.  It would be far, far easier to rant and rave and construct false narratives in which the universe cruelly robbed us of our glory somehow because in that narrative the Lions are still that 16-0 Wonder Team of our dreams, even if they do have a 1 in the loss column now instead of that 0.  It’s harder to actually sit here and acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the Lions aren’t quite as good as our Fear-based Hope needs them to be.

Acknowledging that is an extraordinarily difficult thing.  It involves looking at the whole of this fucked up story of the Detroit Lions and facing the hideous thing that terrifies us the most: the dread specter of Fear.  It’s too hard for most of us to do that without letting it consume us, without letting it embitter us and start gibbering bullshit about the Same Ol’ Lions and all that nonsense.  Fuck all that.  But it’s hard.  I understand.  Believe me, I understand, and that’s why no one wants to do it.  They either want to force their eyes to stare straight ahead, never looking back, never even considering that things, well, that things might not be exactly as they picture it in their dreams, or they want to bury their heads beneath a mountain of shit and wallow in their own perpetual misery machines as they burrow down into hell.  The true fan, though, and this is what I am begging you to do with me, turns around, looks at Fear and says “I know you’ll always follow me, but I won’t let you own me anymore.”  We have to accept reality for what it is and then move on from there.  Doing anything else is an injustice to our own hearts, a betrayal of everything that we’ve been through as fans.  We have to acknowledge reality because we deserve to.  We owe it to ourselves because that is the only way we will ever break free of the acid-tipped talons of The Fear.

I don’t want anyone to think that I’m just shrugging my shoulders and saying to hell with it, because I’m not.  I’m pissed off that the Lions lost.  I’m pissed off that they’re not as good as the 49ers right now.  I swore at the TV last night, tried to make deals with the old gods and I may have even thrown a shoe.  I’m tired of losing these types of games.  I’m tired of showing up on national TV, in big games against big teams, and coming up just a little bit short.  It’s great that I can see a path to victory in these games, but I actually want to start walking down that path, you know?  That’s the next step in this story, the next stage in the evolution of this team.  We’re not there yet but if we just try to stay a little more patient, and acknowledge and accept that as reality, it will make it that much more gratifying when we watch this team start to travel that path.  They will win these games.  One day.  Maybe even this season.  But right now, in week two, they’re still just standing at the foot of that path and no matter how much we try to push them forward with our brains and hopes and wishes, they still have to start walking it on their own.

The good news is this: for all of my bluster here, and for all of the SERENITY NOW SERENITY NOW angst in the fanbase, if you look at what my comrade Whiouxsie wrote below me here, there is a real sense that this Lions team brings the fight.  Sure, the Lions might not match-up with the unrealistic expectations of our fever-dreams but they’re still in the goddamn game.  They still made Alex Smith bleed and they come with it hard enough to be considered legitimate rivals and not just some chump team like the Rams or Panthers or some shitbag team like that.  I mean, hell, for as bad as they looked, the Lions were still in it for most of the game.  That’s the thing none of us can forget.  That too is a part of standing in the crossroads and looking both backwards and forwards with open eyes and open hearts.  If we acknowledge that the Lions just aren’t quite as good as the 49ers yet we also have to acknowledge that, hell, they’re not that far away either.  This game wasn’t a full-on beatdown as some feared it would be, and while that may seem like cold comfort to most of you, take comfort in it nonetheless because it’s true and if I haven’t beaten it into your skulls yet, Truth is this year’s buzzword.

So . . . where do we go from here?  Well, we play next week and we win that game.  And then we win the one after that and then the one after that, and eventually we’ll play this team again, or a team like it, and we’ll get to see how far the Lions have come, and hopefully next time it will be different.  I’m actually kind of excited, as stupid as it sounds, to see what happens next.  I feel like I’m in a good place as a fan right now.  I feel like I know what to expect and so I’m not riding the great Peaks and Valleys that I have the last couple of seasons.  I know what this team is and I know what it isn’t.  What it is, is a legitimate playoff team.  What it isn’t, right now, is a Super Bowl champion.  But there is a lot of time in between now and the Super Bowl, a lot of time for what is and what isn’t to change, and I’m looking forward to that day when the Lions can strut into San Francisco and win, not because of some miracle, not because A, B and C all had to happen in the right order, but because they deserve to, because they’re finally ready to walk down that path and take the next step in their glorious evolution.  And it will be that much sweeter when it happens that way because it will be the Truth.  And in the glow of Truth, nothing else matters, not Fear, not the past, not the future, nothing but what is real, and that’s what I want.

Belief

Belief isn’t just a word.  As frustrating as that game today was at times there was never a moment when I didn’t believe that the Lions would win it.  Okay, perhaps that is a bit of an overstatement.  I mean I definitely wondered “Wait, could the Lions actually lose this damn thing?” I am a realist after all.  But even though the idea that they could lose the game entered freely into my head, set up shop and started drinking heavily with its friends Fear and Madness, there was never really a time when I thought the Lions would lose that game.  That’s what belief, real honest genuine belief, will do for you.

Even after the Rams kicked the field goal to take the lead with just under two minutes left, I believed.  Actually, to hell with that.  Forget about “even after . . .”  Especially after the Rams kicked that field goal, I believed that the Lions would win.  My biggest fear was actually that the Rams would be able to bleed the clock down to nothing and then kick the field goal.  When they were forced to settle for the field goal with two minutes still left on the clock, I smiled internally and thought “Good, you just fucked up.  Game over, motherfucker.”

That’s because we had Doc Holliday at quarterback and even though Doc was tubercular and had earlier blown his own toe off after getting drunk and stumbling on his way to the OK Corral and was seen spitting up blood for much of the second half, he was still Doc fuckin’ Holliday and when it came time to draw down on those cowardly Clanton boys . . . well, he’ll be your Huckleberry.

Goddamn right.  I believed.  I believed because he has earned it, because this team has earned it.  I believed because they believe in themselves.  You could see it on the face of Jim Schwartz after the Rams kicked that go ahead field goal.  The dude didn’t even flinch.  Instead he just had this confident sort of look on his face, like “Okay, well I guess we’ll just have to do this the hard way,” and then they did.  Less than two minutes later Doc Stafford was running around without a care in the world while the Rams lay on the street, shot down by the best, and Jeff Fisher hung his head in utter defeat.  That’s what belief will do for you.

It wasn’t just in those last two minutes either.  You can tell this team has sort of an otherworldly confidence in itself now.  Yesterday on Twitter Lawrence Jackson was carrying on like a real life character from a Tale of The Great Willie Young and then all game long Chris Myers couldn’t shut up about The Power of Calvin, the team’s new mantra, which let’s face it, sounds like something I’d make up.  It’s kind of surreal, seeing this team and my vision for it meeting in some strange, fucked up hyper-confident Glory Land where players like St. Calvin are deified not just by me and the rest of the fans but by his own coaches and teammates.  It’s strange and wonderful to know that we’re all on the same page, that we’re all a little crazy, smiling bloody smiles and laughing in the face of death all because we share one common thing: belief.

Of course there was plenty of reason for that belief to be shaken, what with Doc Stafford’s aforementioned Tubercular misadventures with a traitorous shotgun, but if anything I just felt like what had gone on was just really fucking weird.  I wasn’t so much worried as I was thinking “well, it’s just one of those things . . .”  And it was.  It was just one of those things.  (How’s that for analysis?)  No matter how much Tim Ryan wanted to talk about Matthew Stafford being off, the reality is that during the first half he was really, really fucking on.  How can I say that about a dude who threw three interceptions?  I don’t know, except that it’s true.  He was both awesome and horrible in that first half, but it wasn’t like he was especially inconsistent or anything, missing on throws and all that.  It’s just that his three bad throws were really fucking bad.  Actually, it’s not even that they were that bad, it’s just that the Rams played human chess and made the right move a few times.  It happens.

Look, I’m having a hard time describing what Matthew Stafford’s first half looked like because, well . . . like I said, it was just fucking weird.  The dude was a goddamn master surgeon most of the time, effortlessly dissecting the Rams on the way down the field and it was glorious to watch.  But then the master surgeon kept knicking arteries and, well, you can be a brilliant surgeon 99% of the time but the moment blood starts spurting in everyone’s eyes that other 1% of the time all that shit doesn’t really matter.

I’m not worried about Matthew Stafford.  I have seen shit like this from him before.  Like I said, it happens.  I don’t think it’s any great harbinger of what’s to come, but rather an isolated bout of weirdness that we can thankfully put behind us since the Lions managed to actually win the game.  If they had lost we could spend time wearing hairshirts, lamenting the fall of mankind and whipping each other with chains made of Fear and Regret, but they didn’t and so fuck it, who cares?  It is what it is.

Stafford actually looked a lot shakier in the second half, which I attribute directly to those three first half interceptions.  He was overthrowing everyone – a result, I think, of not wanting to get picked again – and when he wasn’t, his receivers were dropping everything.  It sucked but, again, I don’t think it’s indicative of anything other than him being a little fucked in the head from the first half.  But by the end of the game, all that shit was just so much noise, the whisper of some terrible memory, Stafford pulled his shit together and blew those fuckers away.  The end.

Really, that’s what I’m taking away from this game.  No matter how ridiculous or weird things got – I mean, come on, the Lions trailed at the half even though they didn’t have to punt until the third quarter – I still believed and so did all the Lions players and coaches.  And no matter how shitty things got, no matter how much Stafford’s head was fucked with and nuked, in the end he was able to overcome all of that and win the damn game.  Did it suck?  Yeah, I groaned and swore at the TV and beseeched the old gods just like everyone else, but when you can suck and still win the game, well . . . things are looking pretty good.

But again, it wasn’t even like the Lions looked inept or anything.  On a down to down basis they looked like a fucking machine.  Stafford was able to move the ball pretty much at will for large chunks of the game and Kevin Smith even ran the ball effectively.  Meanwhile, the defense kicked ass for most of the game and beat the hell out of Sam Bradford while holding Steven Jackson almost completely in check.  There were just those few crucial and damn near catastrophic mistakes, and they almost cost us.  But I’ll say it again, in the end the Lions still won the game, so . . . who really cares?  I don’t think they’re mistakes that are likely to reoccur – at least not with the same frequency or freakishly back to back to back like they did – so in the end, I think they’re just a weird anomaly and I refuse to let them taint this simple and irrefutable truth: the Lions won.

Really, nothing else matters.  The Lions won and they won because they believed.  They believe and I believe and The Power of Calvin is a burgeoning religion.  This game didn’t fuck with my head the way you probably think it did, and that’s a testament to that belief, to the tenets of that religion which have given my life structure and meaning, or at least peace on Sundays.  You can complain all you want about what went wrong but really, I think even the complaints and general bitchery surrounding this game are a sign of our collective belief.  We no longer fear losing to the Rams – sure, it almost happened but deep down I think most of us kept our faith – but we’re still fans, prone to misery and so in the absence of that fear we have come to desire perfection.  It’s not enough that the team wins, they have to be perfect.  Matthew Stafford doesn’t just have to throw the game winning touchdown pass, he needs to throw five of them and then levitate before impregnating every woman in the crowd using only the power of his mind.  This is a sign of how far we’ve come.

Matthew Stafford will be fine.  For fuck’s sake, the dude is only 24 years old and last year he threw for 5,000 yards.  Anyone seriously bitching about him or wringing their hands in agony is just making love to their own misery, their own masochistic need to dwell in the fires of hell because it’s easier than believing in the cool waters of heaven.  Matthew Stafford will be fine.  Repeat that to yourself, say The Power of Calvin three times in a row, huff from your ether rag (I’m assuming you all have one, especially if you’re reading this.) and then tweak your nipples as the Good News overwhelms you in both body and spirit.

The Lions won, the Lions won, the Lions won.  And I never stopped believing.  And that’s the only story of this game that really matters.

The City Of Our Dreams

Draft day is getting closer and with that everyone and their mother’s uncle’s roommates’ dog’s turds are opining about who the Lions should take with the thirteenth pick. My opinion? I don’t really have one right now. Of course, of course, I wouldn’t mind seeing the Lions pick up a player who fills a position of immediate need, like cornerback, but I’m not stressing about it either. I’m just not. It’s a weird feeling. I’m so used to expecting the Lions to accidentally draft a ham sandwich or a waffle with their first round pick that it’s easy to let my anxiety spike and to start gibbering like a lunatic on a cocktail of speed and fear.

But I’m not going to do that this year. Fuck that. I trust the dudes in charge. I trust Martin Mayhew and I trust Jim Schwartz. I believe they know what they’re doing, I believe that they have a plan, and I believe that whoever they draft with the 13^th pick will be someone who they feel confident can help the team. Or they could trade the pick. I’d be cool with that too. You see, it’s not just that I trust them, it’s that for the first time in years it doesn’t feel like this pick is a desperation pick, a winning lottery ticket that the Lions absolutely must cash in if they want to ever become anything more than the screaming shitheap on fire that they’ve been for so long. Joey Harrington, Charles Rogers, St. Calvin, The House of Spears, these were all dudes who had to pan out. They were all potential saviors. A couple of them didn’t and, well, we saw what happened.

Those have been the stakes for us as Lions fans whenever draft time rolls around, but it’s not like that this year. The Lions are as close to being a complete team as they have been in a long, looooooong time. Are there obvious holes? Definitely. Especially on defense. But they are holes that – for once – seem like they’re capable of being filled with minimal effort. (I’m trying really hard here to not fly off the rails and take this filling holes talk in a really weird direction. Just so you know.) That’s sort of the point. The Lions holes now are not really any different than any other team’s holes. In the past, the Lions had to move heaven and earth and also parts of hell to try to fill even half of their holes. It was an unwinnable battle, an impossible fight and we all knew it. The best we could hope for was that we could drag our corpse closer to Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. But that also meant that the holes that we prioritized - those positions which we felt had to be filled, even if it came at the expense of other holes – had to be filled without fail. We couldn’t afford to miss. The dudes we picked had to come through. If they didn’t, it was back to screaming and clawing at the dirt while the Failure Demons dragged us back down to hell.

It’s not like that now. It just isn’t. We can afford to be a little more choosey. We can afford to take the guy who’s the right fit rather than the guy who’s just available right now. We don’t have to be desperate. We don’t have to be frightened. We don’t have to be manic. We just have to be smart. Fortunately, I think that describes our dudes in charge pretty damn well. They’re smart, they’re patient, they’re calm and they believe in what they’re doing. That’s the necessary formula for building a quality NFL football team and it’s amazing to realize that this is honestly the first time I have ever been able to say that about the dudes running my favorite team.

It’s amazing and it’s unfathomably sad. But it’s also calming and it also fills me with an almost indescribable sense of sports fan giddiness. I have spent so long agonizing over the past that I just don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to focus on the things we’ve never had. I just want to smile and be happy that we have them now. Mayhew and Schwartz aren’t gonna fuck this up. They just aren’t. I feel incredibly confident about this. I just do. It’s a hard thing to explain. It really is. But when I think about the Lions right now, I am overcome by a tranquil, peaceful easy feeling.

Is this all just a hilarious setup concocted by Fate? Maybe, but fuck it, I don’t really care. This may just be a way to get me in a place as a fan where Fate can destroy my football hopes and dreams once again, but I want to be in that place. I want to have faith. I want to believe that this time everything will be okay. This not a stupid dream, not some half-assed and desperate attempt to grab hold of something just because I’m afraid of the nothing. This is a calm, reasoned outlook. I’m not half expecting the ground to suddenly open up and to be sucked down to hell to be poked at by laughing hordes of Failure Demons, which is how I have always felt as a Lions fan, even during those rare times when I’ve been cautiously hopeful. There is no caution here. There is just certainty that the ground beneath my feet is real and safe and that all I have to do is to keep standing, keep walking on it, and the city of my dreams will be glittering on the horizon before I know it.

It’s happening. I can feel it. You should believe me. I am an enlightened truth warrior. (By the way, fuck Charlie Sheen for biting my style. You son of a bitch, you may have tiger blood, but I am a fucking tiger and I will gnaw on your wicked bones.) I am in tune with the universe and I can interpret its cosmic energy for you. Never in my life as a Lions fan has that energy felt right. But it does now. I may be crazy. I almost certainly am. But crazy people are always the first to know when a change is going to come. They’re the ones standing on street corners gibbering back and forth with unseen voices. Dumb animals are the ones freaking out and shitting on the floor whenever disaster is about to strike. There is something subhuman about it, something elemental that the great big human brain refuses to accept. The brain overrides the instinctual and tries to reason with the world. But the world can’t be reasoned with. It is strange and it is whimsical and it doesn’t give a fuck what you think. That’s why only the dumb and the mindless – or at least those willing to tap into that part of themselves that exists below the brain – understand when the shit is about to go down.

What the fuck am I even talking about? Who knows? All I’m saying is that I feel okay – shit, better than okay – about what’s going on with the Lions right now. I feel it in my bones. I have spent my whole life trying to interpret these football feelings. I became so in tune with the pain of being a Lions fan that I am aware of even the tiniest changes. And this is not a tiny change. This is a great sea change. This is a seismic shift that even the most tone deaf of Lions fans should be able to feel and hear and see. This is not hope for hope’s own vain sake. This is a hope built on truth, built upon an inescapable feeling that the world has changed and that the future is ours and all we have to do is . . . is be.

I am well aware that I sound like Deepak Chopra on mescaline and angel dust. It’s kinda embarrassing but fuck all that. There is an element of truth in the midst of those ridiculous words. All we need to do is be. I firmly believe that. We don’t have to panic. We don’t have to freak the fuck out and demand that the Lions airlift Albert Haynesworth in using one of those giant harnesses they use to haul elephants. We don’t have to wring our hands in fear about what’s going to happen next. We just have to be. We just have to let it happen and live it when it does. Otherwise we’re gonna end up missing it all. I don’t want to be pissed off all the time, and miss the good shit. I don’t want to shit my pants and then throw the resulting feces at my fellow fans just because I’m worried that the Lions didn’t take an outside linebacker or tackle or whatever with their 3^rd round pick. Fuck all that. I don’t want to bury my head in my hands and insist that the Lions will fuck it up because that’s what they always do. We’ve done that for too goddamn long and it has to stop. I don’t want to find myself watching a playoff game with the Lions in it and turning and sneering to my friends about how they’ll blow it because I’m a pussy. Because that’s all I’ll be if that happens. That’s all any of us will be if we allow ourselves to be consumed by all of our petty fears and deep seated misery.

I just want to watch this all play out, from beginning to the end. I want to be able to look back after it’s all over and smile at my memories of the beginning. I want to be able to say that I knew it all along, that I saw it happening and that I saw how the pieces on the chess board all fit together. I don’t want to have to look back after it’s all over only to realize that I didn’t enjoy any of it. After all, I have spent my entire life as a fan twisting in agony, bitching and moaning, beaten by misery and pain. I’ve had enough, goddammit. Enough.

The Lions will draft someone in the first round a month or so from now and we will all pick apart whoever it is like he’s the lone survivor of a UFO crash site. People will bitch and wring their hands and wonder aloud if the Lions should have done something else. They just will because that’s what fans do. I understand that. I will probably do this too. Fuck it. It’s how we stay invested as fans. It lets us feel like we have some sort of ownership in the team. But until then, I just want to sit back and see what happens next. I don’t want to miss to a thing. I just want to keep my eyes and my heart open and I want to feel the full force of what is coming next. That may make me a fool and I will be destroyed as a fan if things go badly, but there comes a time in every fan’s life where he needs to stand up out of the trenches, look across the field at his enemy, at the Failure Demons armed with machine guns, machetes and evil intentions, and smile defiantly because it’s better than dying of disease in a hole filled with the piss and shit of you and all your miserable comrades. If I’m going to die as a fan, I am going to do it on my feet, with a smile on my face, fire in my eyes and thunder in my heart. If I’m carried off to Valhalla on my spirit horse then at least I can look back and say that I lived as a fan and didn’t just cower in fear in my dark little hole.

I believe in the future. I believe in the now. The past is dead and the world is open and beautiful and there is a city glimmering on the horizon and all we have to do is be. All we have to do is keep looking at it and keep looking at it and keep looking at it and pretty soon, we will be at its gates and The Lord of the House of Spears will smile at us, swing those gates open and then everything will be beautiful and the world will finally belong to us.