Making Peace With The Past Through Vicious Bloodshed And Merciless Slaughter

I'm pretty sure that's illegal, dude. Also, I should probably note that I couldn't bring myself to post a picture of a dead dolphin. I mean, Jesus, I can't even imagine all the bitching that would have come my way had I posted that. I posted a dead buffalo prior to the Bills game and someone freaked out and no one gives a shit about buffaloes but everyone loves them some dolphins. The irony, of course, is that I am a vegan and so people probably shouldn't shit on me for being insensitive about cruelty towards animals but what the hell . . .

The Lions Farewell to 2010 Tour continues in grand fashion as they once again get the opportunity to don the robes of the Angel of Death and descend with a sword made of fire and righteous judgment upon another heathen team fighting desperately for their playoff lives. Sure, the Dolphins hopes are slim, but they are still there – barely – and it would make me giddy if my dudes from Detroit could fatally wound a team for the third straight week.

It has become progressively more vicious as the season has drawn nearer to the moment when the world ends, time stops and the wicked and worthless are called in front of St. Peter for their final judgment. Teams are scrambling, desperate and merciless, and only the strong will survive. The Lions most definitely are not strong. They are already counted among the damned, but that makes them the perfect executioners. Two weeks ago, against the Packers, they brought out their sword of fire and chopped off the Packers hands. They are still alive, but barely. Last week, they went into Tampa and they chopped of their heads. Those dudes are dead, dead, dead. This week, the Dolphins are barely breathing and the Lions are not content with merely chopping off their hands or even their heads. No, the Lions goal is to draw and quarter the Dolphins this week, to eviscerate them completely, hold up their innards and eat their hearts before putting their heads on pikes as a warning to the rest of the league. The Lions are not here to wound a team’s playoff chances. They are not here to be the thorn in the sides of the hopeful. No. They are here to be the ones who put their boots on the throats of the fallen while they lie bleeding, wheezing for help and for mercy.

I have yammered on like a damn fool all season about the symmetry of Fate and I will do so again here. There is something perfect about the Lions dying so heinously only to rise from the dead, wraithlike, with hearts of fire and souls of pure black rage and to see them utterly ruin whatever hope is left for every team they face. It is a reflection of our own pain, our own horror, and it’s only right and natural that it be projected onto every one of these damn teams who have deluded themselves into believing that they were worthy or that they were destined for something better than the hell in which we find ourselves. If paradise is closed off to us, then it will be closed off to everyone else too, or at least the unlucky fools who make the mistake of wandering into our path of vengeance.

Aaron Rodgers’ head is currently resting upon a pike outside of the House of Spears. There are dead pirates everywhere, greedy Buccaneers who made the mistake of trying to plunder the House of Spears. And now Chad Henne and his Dolphins are swimming up, already wounded, looking for mercy and the Lord of the House of Spears is standing on the shore, smiling, a spear gun in his hands, covered in the blood of the wicked, and soon the Lord Suh and his men will be feasting on dolphin meat and awaiting that day when the Ol’ Gunslinger limps to their door, haggard and beaten and begs for mercy and protection from the House of Spears and we will all laugh and we will realize that 20 years have been leading up to that moment and Lord Suh will smile down at the ruined Gunslinger and he will laugh when the Gunslinger draws his tiny Derringer and he will devour him there where he stands and then he will spit out his bones and will grind them to dust while the whole world watches and then, and only then, will the whole world, with its bizarre order and meaning and hidden symmetry, make sense to us, who have suffered long and are ready for a new day to finally dawn.

But I am getting wildly ahead of myself. It’s just that I can see it. I can see it happening and it just makes sense. Of course it is foolish of me to start gibbering about such things because after all, it is just a vision and nothing more. It is not real. It is what is laid out before us and it could disappear in an instant. And most people would rather not even acknowledge it for fear that their wounded hearts would not be able to take the disappointment of that vision dissolving into the ether, leaving them staring once again at nothing but the walls of hell, dancing with flame, while Failure Demons cackle in their ears. I understand that. I do. But as for me, I don’t want to be afraid. I don’t want to shuffle along, my eyes downcast, silently praying that the world doesn’t cave in on me. I want to stand and I want to stare into the future and I want to see that vision and I want to live inside of it and I want to bask in it and I want to believe, so very badly I want to believe, that it is real and that this time it will not dissolve and all I have to do is keep believing and then we will be through it and we will be looking back and that vision of the future will have become our past and we will know – forever – that it was real.

It may seem a modest goal, to want to win the last 4 games of the season and end up with a sorry record of 6-10, but for me, for now, it means everything. I will understand if it doesn’t happen. I won’t break down and I won’t throw a fit and I won’t start singing funeral dirges or threaten to drink antifreeze or anything like that. I will take it and I will sigh and I will say “Oh well,” and then I will get ready for next season because that’s when we truly live again. That’s when the future arrives. But I won’t lie and say that this isn’t important to me though. These last couple games are all about the past. It is about closing up the circle of the past symmetrically. It is about resolution and acceptance. It is about knowing that this is just the way it had to be. I want to beat the Dolphins and I want to beat the Vikings because doing so would somehow make the circle complete. Their pain, their loss, are necessary as pale reflections of our own pain, our own loss. In them, the past can be trapped forever. Brett Favre getting carried off the field, vomiting on himself, as the arc of his career disappears into the shadows of the afterlife, will be the moment that sees our own tragic arc come to its end, in many ways where it began, with Brett Favre and 20 years of chaos and misery, the ultimate circle that we couldn’t understand or see until it was here staring us in the face. In a symbolic way, which is the way that is important here, our descent into hell began immediately after the Lions reached their apex as a franchise in the post-Super Bowl era, when they beat the Cowboys in the playoffs in 1991. We went into 1992 believing that the future was ours. But at the same time, a young, cocky, brash upstart showed up in Green Bay with a weird last name that no one knew quite how to pronounce and this is where both our miserable arc and his ridiculous and legendary arc began. And a little more than a week from now, in the first weekend of a new decade, those arcs, divergent for so long, will once again meet, and there, together, they will both find their end. That is symmetry, that is Fate and this is what I choose to believe in.

That is a lot of emotional currency to invest in two relatively meaningless games and I don’t expect anyone to come along with me. It is hilariously stupid. I understand this. But this is what lives in my heart right now and I would be a coward to deny it. So yeah, I could end up getting crushed and it will be my own damn fault. But this is a decision I have made for myself and I can live with the consequences. And so I will not bray like a jackass if things do not go my way. I will simply close my eyes, and I will smile and I will tip my cap to Fate for proving, once again, that I know nothing. This is about my own journey as a fan and that’s why these games are important to me. You don’t have to come with me. I only ask that you understand me.

Obviously, I have set up the season finale in my mind as something larger than life, which is monumentally stupid and delusional on my part, but what the hell, so is fandom, you know? If you’re not willing to take that risk as a fan, then what’s the point? That’s the beauty of it all, the terror and the grandeur living side by side, the naked fear and the wild hope dancing under the same moon. That is true fandom and you have to let yourself be willing to feel it.

Of course, again, I have gotten way ahead of myself here in ways that I did not intend. There is still a game to be played against the Dolphins this week. I am not overlooking this game, although it may seem that way. It is an important part of the arc – this is where all the gibberish about our pain being palely reflected by others comes into play – but the end of the arc is so near that it’s hard not to get overexcited and to start glancing ahead, you know?

But anyway, the Dolphins. It would not surprise me if the Lions lost this game. It wouldn’t. Everything that I have been talking about so far in this post is a wild hope, my vision of the perfect resolution of our tortured past. I have chosen to embrace it but that does not mean that I am so delusional or stupid to insist that it’s inconceivable that it might not play out that way. Fortunately, it also would not surprise me if the Lions won this game.

On the surface, it seems almost ludicrous to expect that they win. I mean, it would be their second straight road victory after not having even gotten one in the last three plus years. But, just like last week, this is just the way these things happen. The past does not own the present or the future. It is what it is, which is the past, a memory. It affects our perceptions and our beliefs but it does not affect what actually happens. So why couldn’t the Lions win a second consecutive game on the road? History tells us that it is improbable, but history is not real. What is real is that the Lions went into Tampa Bay with their third string quarterback and with a ridiculous amount of injuries and beat a team and a quarterback who are better than the team and quarterback they will be facing this week. If they could beat the Bucs, then they can beat the Dolphins. That’s the only history that this team needs to be thinking about right now, the only part of the past that should be shaping their perceptions.

If Josh Freeman wasn’t built like a mutant water buffalo whose genes were spliced with those of a young Favre, the Lions would have sacked the Buccaneers into oblivion and probably won that game fairly comfortably. Chad Henne is not Josh Freeman. He is immobile and he will eat a sack. He’s been dropped 12 times in the last 4 games. The Lions have eaten the hearts and souls of quarterbacks over that same stretch. The math says that there is a very good chance that Chad Henne will die at the hands of Ndamukong Suh, Cliff Avril, Corey Williams, Turk McBride, Lawrence Jackson, and the cast of thousands who have made the Lions pass rush so dominant lately. Of course, math sometimes does not tell the whole story, and in order to fill out the last few pages of that story you need to open your eyes and just look. And what my eyes have seen to be true, for a long time now, dating back to his days at Michigan, is that Chad Henne does not move particularly well. He is ponderous and he can get ripped apart by pressure and his weaknesses as a quarterback play right into the strengths of the Lions defense.

Of course, Henne just happens to be protected by Jake Long, just like he was at Michigan, and the former number one overall pick figures to throw a wrench into the Lions plans to sack Miami and leave it in flames while the air is thick with the snow of ruined mountains of cocaine, but Jake Long is also banged up. He has a dislocated left shoulder and a fucked up knee that will both require surgery after the season. If ever there was a time to have to come up against him, now is that time. The rest of the offensive line isn’t anything special. I mean, the other starting tackle is Lydon Murtha, the same Lydon Murtha who was the Lions 7^th round pick only a year ago and who the Dolphins poached from the Lions practice squad last season. It’s great that he has developed into a starter and it kinda pisses me off, especially given our own problems at right tackle, that he has done so in Miami and not Detroit, but let’s face it, the guy was a 7^th round pick and a Lions practice squad player for a reason. Even if he has developed over the last year, chances are incredibly good that this would make him no more than a substandard fill in. I mean, you don’t go from Lions practice squad player to awesome starting tackle in a year. You just don’t. Murtha is pretty representative of the rest of the Dolphins offensive line, which features dudes like Richie Incognito, best known for being a tremendous dickhead and legendary dumbass who also happens to be a barely adequate football player, and luminaries like Joe Berger and John Jerry. So yeah, I think the Lions defensive line should be able to eat Chad Henne’s soul.

If it seems like I have devoted an unusual amount of time and space to discussing the Dolphins offensive line and Chad Henne’s uncanny ability to eat a sack, it’s because I have. And that’s because this is the key to the entire game. This is how the Lions will win. This is how they have won the last two weeks and this week’s matchup looks even more favorable than either of those games did.

I haven’t even mentioned that the Lions offense is likely to receive a bit of an upgrade now that Shaun Hill seems likely to return as the starter – sorry fans of Ol’ Plucky – which at the very least is a boost to my own perception of the Lions chances in this game. Hill has been practicing for the last two weeks so it is highly likely that he won’t be as rusty as he was in the Bills game, which as far as I can see is the only legitimate argument someone might have that Stanton – who, remember, has a separated shoulder – should be the starter this week. Sure, sure, a lot of people will point out that Stanton is riding a two game winning streak and they will fall all over themselves to ask when the last time that could be said for any Lions quarterback, but those people are being dishonest with themselves, because down deep they know that Drew Stanton didn’t win either one of those games. A combination of the Lions defense playing out of their minds, Maurice Morris, Calvin Johnson and Scott Linehan’s play calling won those games. They won largely despite Stanton, not because of him. People need to remember that. I know, I know, I’m being kinda unfair to Stanton’s performance against the Bucs, but Shaun Hill could have easily replicated Stanton’s game. I feel absolutely confident in saying that. The chances that Shaun Hill has a game like that are much, much higher than the chances that Stanton repeats that performance, and that, if you’re being honest with yourselves, is the whole point. I have argued that point viciously over the past couple of weeks and so I won’t dive too deeply into it here. You know my stance and I know yours, Stanton fan. Obviously, I believe that I’m right and therefore, why wouldn’t I expect the Lions to be better with Hill at the helm?

Hopefully, the Lions can also build on their success running the ball the last few weeks, especially since inside linebacker Channing Crowder only has 31 tackles (31!) this season and his partner, fellow inside linebacker Karlos Dansby, hasn’t been practicing due to an injured foot. This means that Maurice Morris should have a decent shot at replicating his recent production.

Cameron Wake, the Dolphins starting outside linebacker, does lead the league in sacks, but the Lions have done a good job this season avoiding sacks. It’s the one thing the offensive line has done generally well this season and besides, the Lions have already survived the onslaught of the Packers Clay Matthews, who plays the same position as Wake and honestly is a better player in just about every respect.

Meanwhile, again, I expect the Lions pass rush to be relentless and effective, which means that Chad Henne won’t have time to pick apart the Lions patchwork secondary, which is even more important since there is a chance that Louis Delmas won’t be able to play after suffering a concussion against the Bucs on Sunday. The biggest fear is that Henne will hit Davone Bess on short pass after short pass, something Bess excels at, while Nathan Vasher helplessly tries to stop him. That is the one way the Dolphins can neutralize the Lions pass rush, but at best that leaves the Dolphins facing a bend but don’t break style of defense and they will likely still get eaten alive in the red zone when the field compresses. This means that even if the Dolphins execute the way they want to against the Lions defense, they will still likely be staring down a bevy of field goal attempts rather than touchdowns.

The good news is that the Lions shouldn’t have to worry too much about the Dolphins running attack. It seems fearsome on paper and they still like to break out the Wildcat, but neither Ronnie Brown nor Ricky Williams have been any damn good this season. Trust me, my fantasy teams have proven this. The wildcard, again, is Delmas. If he plays, the Lions should be able to control the Dolphins running game, which should open up the pass rush for the Lions even more. If he doesn’t, then we’re probably going to have to grit our teeth and live with one or two long runs due to bad tackling and shitty angles.

Overall, I think this is a game that sets up well for the Lions. They are playing inspired football right now and they have done so against teams that have been fighting for their playoff lives. That’s an important thing to remember. The Lions haven’t beaten two teams that were playing listless, pointless football. They weren’t playing teams who had already given up on the season. They were playing teams going to war and the Lions won both games. Call me stupid, but I like the Lions chances against the Dolphins. A lot of people say that it doesn’t make sense and that the likelihood that the Lions win two games on the road is infinitesimal, but fuck all that. Like I said, this is the way these things happen. I am staring down the vision of a perfect resolution to our past and I refuse to look away out of fear. We cannot arrive at the end of our arc this week and the vision will remain in front of us, almost taunting us, but this is an important step on the journey towards the end of that arc and towards the fulfillment of that vision, and I’m willing to believe, perhaps stupidly, that the Lions can take that step. Fuck it, Lions win.

FIVE NO DOUBT TERRIBLE PREDICTIONS

1. Hill starts and is a little rusty, but not nearly as rusty as he was against the Bills. He completes 25 of 37 passes for 265 yards, with 2 touchdowns and 1 interception.

2. The Lions again manage to run the ball fairly effectively, picking up 150 yards total. Again, no one ball carrier will exceed 15 carries and Maurice Morris will lead the way with 75 yards.

3. St. Calvin will catch 6 passes for 95 yards and 1 touchdown. Just another day at the office. (Jesus, did I really just type the phrase “Just another day at the office”? The next thing you know, I’ll be gibbering about “Having a case of the Mondays” or some such bullshit. I’m so, so sorry.

4. Chad Henne will complete 27 of 42 passes for 270 yards with 1 touchdown and 2 interceptions. He’ll be sacked 5 times.

5. The Dolphins will run for a combined 110 yards, but neither Ronnie Brown nor Ricky Williams will look all that effective. One of them will break one frustrating run which sees busted tackles and poor tackling angles by the Lions secondary. Louis Delmas won’t play.

PREDICTED FINAL SCORE: LIONS 24, DOLPHINS 20

Angels Of Death

My thirst for blood has once again spiked and I suppose I could just creep through the neighborhood late at night and suck on the jugulars of stray dogs and alley cats or stalk deer through the woods and eat their hearts but that would be unbecoming. I am a gentleman after all. So instead, I have to sate my horrible, horrible bloodlust through the artificial and ceremonial construct known as sports, much like the Aztecs did with their crazy lacrosse games that always ended in death or the way that Lincoln did when he would wrestle his enemies in his basement, all sweaty and shirtless, until he finally finished them with a vicious rear naked choke that he would always refuse to let go of, and then Mary Todd would have to spend the night out back behind the White House, digging holes and spreading lime.

Wait . . . what? Who knows? The point is, is that my spirit and my heart have returned from the grave in time to watch these last few games. I’m not quite sure why it is. Perhaps the win over the Packers inspired me more than I thought. I don’t know. I think what that Packers game did was make me realize that we are capable of rising from our graves, like terrible wraiths and wrecking the seasons of would be playoff teams. The Packers? Fuck them. They rolled into Detroit thinking they were on their way to the Promised Land. Now, their quarterback is dead, Green Bay scientists (really, just a couple of fat guys whose biggest accomplishment is creating a cheese flavored beer) are busy trying to resurrect his brain via crude Frankensteinian experiments, and their people sob and weep and gnash their teeth and beat their breasts and scream across Lake Michigan at us, for they are on the outside looking in and they will have to face the terrible, terrible truth that it was us who crept up on them, invaded their fancy dreams and then slit their throats.

I take immense pleasure in that. Now is the time for vicious pride and the shedding of heathen blood. We will gnaw on the bones of the wicked and we will dance in the wake of their broken dreams. We have no hope because we are already dead, but we know this and no longer care. We have mourned. We have cried. Now, we are just out to take everybody else down with us, with a cruel, mad smile and with blood caked teeth. We have escaped from hell and now we are swirling around like zombie vampires, ghosts with chainsaws for hands, and when the final gun on the season sounds, we will return to hell wearing the skins of those whose dreams we have crushed. We will stand before the devil and we will laugh and the world will shake and tremble and wonder “What next? What next?”

Ah, what next indeed. But that is all a long way off. Next season is next season and right now, we are still stalking the killing fields with evil intentions and woe be unto any fool who is dumb enough to walk our way. This week, it is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who stand at 8-5. Right now, they are on the outside of the playoffs looking in and one more loss will likely sink them for good. I say we hand it to them.

If that is not enough motivation, consider this: the Tampa Buccaneers this season are everything that we should be. They are a young team, a rebuilding team, with a young quarterback who has shown the uncanny ability to close out tough games. They have stolen our destiny. They are pretenders and fakers, charlatans wearing our faces and gladhanding with the angels and the pure of heart while we roar and spit blood in the darkest parts of hell. I have no time, no sympathy for these bastards. This is our time to rip those false faces off and to horrify the innocent. This is a time to knock them to their knees, beat them about the head and then bind them in chains made of defiance and the hideous wailing of the doomed to be dragged back to hell with us.

They are scared. They even admit this. Here is a quote from their head coach Raheem Morris, on the prospect of his team having to guard against the wrath of the House of Spears:

“That healthy fear is always a good thing. It keeps you on top of your toes, it keeps you detailed, and it keeps you razor sharp throughout the game.”

He may be framing it as a good thing, but the one thing I am taking away from that quote is that he knows that his offensive line is already dead. Their starting center has been lost for the season, and the guard who will be going opposite of Ndamukong Suh is a rookie from Bumfuck University. Everything I have read about the Buccaneers this week suggests that they are, in the words of that great orator, Cicero, shook as fuck.

Raheem Morris knows that his guys can’t block Suh. They seem obsessed with the idea. It’s Suh this and Suh that and OH GOD PLEASE DON’T LET HIM EAT MY CHILDREN AND STEAL MY WIFE. There is an undercurrent of utter fear running through everything they have to say about Suh. But they are so focused on Suh, that they forget that the last couple of weeks, the defensive line as a whole have kicked everyone’s ass. The defensive ends, whether it’s Cliff Avril or Turk McBride or Lawrence Jackson, have absolutely beaten the shit out of opposing quarterbacks and offensive linemen the last couple of weeks. Everyone was worried that the Lions would miss Kyle Vanden Bosch, but so far, uh . . . no. And I haven’t even mentioned Corey Williams or Sammie Hill or the possibility that this could be the game that sees The Great Willie Young take the field, sack the quarterback and usher in a new age of world peace like Bill & Ted did at the end of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. Fuck you, Chuck Denomolous! No one cares that you were the sit-up champion of the 27^th Century! Ahem. Sorry.

Anyway, weird Bill & Ted references aside, the point is this: the Buccaneers offensive line is fucked. Even if by some miracle they managed to block Suh, there are still 5 or 6 other dudes who are perfectly capable of eating Josh Freeman alive. His screams of pain and terror will be heard in the deepest darkest parts of hell. They will be heard in other dimensions. Aliens will shake with unexplainable fear when they hear it.

Of course, offensively, it’s not like the Lions are likely to fare much better, considering they will be led into battle once again by Ol’ Plucky. I have already vowed to not speak of Ol’ Plucky anymore and so I will just say that our chances to do anything on offense with him at quarterback drop precipitously. Hopefully, Scott Linehan continues to call an inspired game from the sidelines. He got slammed a bit last week because the Lions only scored 7 points and St. Calvin rarely saw the ball. Well, here’s the thing: that’s a bunch of horseshit. The Lions essentially played that game without a functional quarterback. Scott Linehan knew this and he adjusted accordingly. A million different guys got the ball in a million different ways as the Lions searched for creative ways to run the ball. And you know what? It worked. The Lions had their best game running the ball all season. They ran for 190 yards in 41 carries, which translates into 4.6 yards a pop. They did this even though no one player ran the ball more than 13 teams. This is all because of Scott Linehan and the creativity of his gameplan. Without an actual passing threat – let’s not forget that at one point in the 3^rd quarter, Ol’ Plucky’s QB rating was 0.0 and the Lions had 0 yards passing – the team still managed to run the ball effectively thanks to a constant series of changeups. Here’s Maurice Morris, and oh, hey, shit, that’s Stefan Logan! Wait, is that Stanton running the option? What the fuck? Oh hey, St. Calvin just got the ball on a reverse! It was fun to watch and it was effective as hell. It kept the Packers defense off balance just enough that the Lions were able to somehow pull the game out.

And still people bitched, mostly because St. Calvin didn’t get the ball enough. You know what would have happened if Linehan would have called a bunch of passes to St. Calvin? A bunch of three and outs broken up only by the occasional interception from Stanton, because you are absolutely delusional if you thought that Stanton would be able to connect with St. Calvin with any sort of regularity. (Note: I originally wrote St. Clavin, which made me laugh and had me considering some weird Cheers/Lions crossover fanfic. It would have been horrible.) You can call those plays all you want but it doesn’t matter if your QB can’t throw the damn ball more than 5 or 10 yards.

Shit, the Lions tried to get the ball to St. Calvin early in the game and what happened? Stanton turfed a couple of throws. So much for that shit. On the one ball St. Calvin did catch, that 44 yard bomb, the ball was hilariously underthrown and Calvin had to run back to get it. If the Lions spent the Packers game trying to get the ball to St. Calvin, do you know what the final score would have been? 3-0, because the Lions wouldn’t have scored shit. Running the ball and running it creatively was the only chance the Lions had. The offense wasn’t exactly on fire against the Packers. I mean 7 points is still only 7 points, you know? But if it wasn’t for Scott Linehan’s play calling, the offense would have gone from bad to HOLY SHIT THIS IS THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN AND I SAW 0-16. Anyone blaming Linehan for the offense’s non-performance against the Packers is missing the point so hilariously and so egregiously that they should probably just start watching Croquet or Competitive Basket Weaving or – ugh – Bass Fishing, because they sure as shit don’t understand football.

Anyway, that rant aside, if the Lions have any chance of winning this game they need two things to happen: first, they need to be able to run the ball with the same sort of multiplicity which kept the Green Bay defense off balance and second, they need Stanton to be at the very least the Drew Stanton of the Giants game. It’s alright if he is still largely a butt. They don’t need him to be great. He just needs to not throw shitty interceptions and be accurate enough on the short throws that it gives the Lions a chance to move the ball whenever the run is stuffed. The good news is that the Lions should be able to run the ball, which will take a lot of the pressure off of Stanton. If they continue to run the ball from a million different angles with a million different players, it will be hard for the Buccaneers to key in on any one play. Helping matters is the fact that Gerald McCoy – the Sam Bowie to Suh’s Hakeem Olajuwon - is out. Last week, the Buccaneers tried to replace him with a defensive end and were torn up for 170 + yards by Ryan Torain. This week, the Bucs are throwing people into the lineup who never play and are planning on shifting the defensive line around in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding.

The Bucs are a team very much like our own. They are young and they have some talent but they are very, very thin. There is no depth. Sound familiar? So far this season, they have gotten lucky because they haven’t had to face the consequences of injuries. The last couple of weeks, they have seen numerous guys get hurt, and now they have to deal with what we’ve been dealing with all season. The difference is that the Buccaneers have even less to plug in than we do. On the offensive line, they are down to their backup center and a couple of rookies at guard trying to slow down Ndamukong Suh and the Lions defensive line. Along their defensive line, they have lost Gerald McCoy and are down to replacement players grabbed off the street and wishes and prayers. Their best defensive back, Aqib Talib is lost for the season. Their season has been a miracle, held together by hopes and dreams and rainbows and candy and smiles and lots of other things that in the end just aren’t real. They are finding this out now. They survived last week, mostly because they were playing a team that is imploding in the Redskins. (Poor, poor Raven Mack . . .) But for teams like the Bucs, the clock always strikes midnight and when it does, poor Cinderella gets run over by a runaway carriage and is kidnapped by a vicious pimp who sells her ass on the street until he gets her all strung out on heroin and she OD’s. The end.

I have a weird feeling. I don’t know. It just seems like we have spent the whole season white knuckling it and braying about hope and crying about the death of hope and all that noisy horseshit. Now, there is nothing but acceptance and football, and it is at times like these that weird things happen and true hope is born. We had to burn in hell so that the flames of this world would mean nothing to us. They cannot hurt us because we have already been roasted alive in front of the devil and his Failure Demons. There is no fear here, and no real hope, nothing but a grim and violent streak of naked bloodlust in our hearts. The hopeful have everything to lose and their eyes are widening with fear. They are tired and ragged and they have been running, running, running, just as we ran before we fell and gave into our terrible fate. But now we are rising from hell, terrible and monstrous, ugly and mean. We are scarred and charred, our bodies and faces burnt and blackened and we carry a mighty war hammer and we speak in grunts and our eyes are vacant and bored and indifferent because this world can show nothing to us. It can offer us nothing and it can do us no harm. We have risen from the smoke and the fire and the world may still laugh when it hears our name, the Detroit Lions, and they may cackle and they may taunt but their laughter will die in their throats and their smiles will freeze on their faces and then fade into horrible fear because now is the time for vengeance, terrible and cruel. We have been reborn as Angels of Death. This is our fate. Heaven is closed to us, but fuck with us and it will be closed to you too.

FIVE NO DOUBT TERRIBLE PREDICTIONS

1. Stanton will bounce back – for him anyway – and complete 15-28 passes for 195 yards, with 1 touchdown and 1 interception.

2. No one player will run the ball more than 15 times for the Lions, but the Lions rushing attack as a whole will be effective, racking up 175 yards. Maurice Morris will be the team’s leading rusher with 45 yards.

3. St. Calvin will catch only 4 passes for 85 yards because Stanton will struggle to get him the ball. He will have one huge catch which will be crucial to the outcome of the game.

4. Josh Freeman will throw for 265 yards on 22-36 passing with 1 touchdown and 2 interceptions. He will be sacked 6 times.

5. The Bucs will struggle to run the ball and after the game Ndamukong Suh will ceremonially eat LeGarrette Blount’s heart at midfield.

PREDICTED FINAL SCORE: LIONS 17, BUCCANEERS 14. THE STREAK ENDS IN TAMPA, BECAUSE THIS IS THE WAY THINGS LIKE THIS HAPPEN – RANDOMLY AND WITHOUT REASON. THE FUTURE MAY NOT HAVE BEGUN BUT ON SUNDAY, THE PAST DIES, ONCE AND FOR ALL.

The calm before the storm

Professional Football: Serious Business.

I have to apologize to you, the apparently 98 people who read Armchair Linebacker, for my blog laziness as of late. There's really no good explanation for why I keep waiting for the Saturday before the next game to talk about the previous game; shit just happens sometimes. And since it was a week ago and pretty much irrelevant to the interests of people who LIVE IN THE NOW~, I'm not going to bother with a full nerd recap of the Lions game. The Bears came to town, the Lions showed up to play, the Bears survived the trap game, and somewhere along the line, another screwed-up penalty happened. And since people still haven't shut up about that thing there, I suppose I should say something.

PICTURED: Special behind-closed-doors look at the Bears' halftime adjustments.

So yeah, Detroit's rookie defensive tackle and new contender for World's Most Terrifying Human, Ndamakong Suh, scored a 15 yard unnecessary roughness penalty - plus a thousand dollar fine for every yard penalized - for a hit on Jay Cutler in the fourth quarter. And the whole thing seems to be centered on the ideas that he hit Cutler in the head and/or hit him with a forearm. Thing is, if you watch the footage all slowed down the way a referee isn't seeing it out on the field, he hit him with the palms of his hands in the upper back. Roughness? Yeah. Unnecessary? Maybe. Unnecessarily Rough? Doubt it. It's football, dudes hit other dudes with their hands, and if you're a 300-plus pound beast, you hit people with your hands really hard. BUT, here's the thing: The hit happened on first down, after a pretty decent gain, with nine minutes left. Had there not been a penalty, the Bears would have had a second-and-two from about the fifteen yard line during a pretty healthy drive. Chances are, that penalty had no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the game, except to maybe give the Lions a little more time on their next drive. So the NFL needs to take back their bulshit fine, and the radio and newspaper types with nothing better to talk about need to ease the fuck up with acting like the refs handed the Bears another Lions game. Just let it go, and let the healing begin. Whew.

PICTURED: Happier times.

Which brings us to tomorrow. The goddamn Patriots come to Chicago as pretty much the best team in the NFL right now. Whatever you could have said about them losing to the Browns or "oh, but that was the Lions" or whatever was laid the hell smooth to rest when they played the 9-2 Jets a week ago and fucking smeared them. Destroyed them. Humiliated them. Dragged the Jets to the center of the field, put them in the Camel Clutch, broke their backs, and then bent them over and humbled them the old country way, right there in the middle of Gillette Stadium. Bill Belichik is at his embodiment-of-pure-evil cheating finest, and Tom Brady is who everyone's going to vote for the in the League MVP race, probably right after they get done talking on ESPN about how Michael Vick is the likely MVP. Whatever momentum the Bears have right now, the Patriots have times a thousand. The Bears still have The Doom of 2010 block for Cutler and Forte, and the Tampa Two defense is pretty much optimized to face the Death of a Thousand Cuts from the kind of "throw it short to the white dude" offense that the Patriots run.
Not to mention that you just KNOW Belichik already probably has video footage of anything that the Bears would rather have kept secret until Sunday. Which, along with bullshit fines on players like Suh and the impending 2011 lockout is yet another reason why Roger Gooddell might be the worst commissioner in the history of sports to not have the first name "Bud" or the last name "Selig." A thousand Russian gymnasts could train from the age of six years old, and not a single one of them could ever bend backwards as far as Roger did in letting Belichik and the Patriots off the hook for the whole Spygate thing. A small fine and that was it, as they scramble to literally burn all the tapes before anyone could find out how truly bad it was? Jesus, man. If Pete Rozelle were still around, the only way Bill Belichik would be getting into an NFL game now was if he was buying a ticket, and even the crooked-ass NCAA would have just left blank spaces and asterisks next to 2004 and 2005 on their list of champions.
But oh dang, I just went off on a tangent there. Wow. Back on track. The Patriots come into this game with a better record, a better coaching staff, better players, and a complete lack of ethics. Speaking logically, the Bears have about as much of a chance of winning this game as I have standing flat-footed and jumping to the moon.


But you know what? You know what, fuckers? Fuck logic. I am a MAN, dammit, so I leave the logic to the Vulcans. Because I am still riding this wave of uncharacteristic positivity, and I'm not giving it up until either the balloon pops or the Bears prove themselves to truly be the team of Retarded Destiny that I believe them to be. So goddammit, LET'S GO TO THE MOON. We defeated the Dark Lord, we took Dog Hitler down a notch, and we didn't fuck up too bad against Ol' Plucky. So why not Tom Brady? I mean, the pass rush is there, the defensive backfield is the best it's been in years, and the Patriots rarely even bother to hand the ball off. Let's take Golden Boy down. Destroy him, break him, crush him, sack him until there's nothing left of him hut memories and a pair of Ugg boots with steam coming out of them, Star-Trek style. Put an end to his stupid hair, his stupid teeth, and those stupid, fake "fiery" sideline pep talks he does to create the illusion that he's not just a pussywhipped metro-douche who's probably one puppy-dog look from Gisele away from signing ten-year endorsement deals with Tampax and Bratz Dolls.


It's time to remind those Boston fuckers what it was like in 1986, when the Bears humiliated them in the Super Bowl, because it's not like any of their fans now were watching any of their games prior to 2003 or so. Fuck them; they've never known Hard Times, because when Hard Times arose, they quit paying attention and turned their backs while Vincent Brown and Bruce Armstrong were playing their guts out to half-empty stadiums. Fuck them. Fuck them right in their stupid, spoiled, fair-weather fake-fan mouths and asses. Make the bullshit "Patriots Nation" lose the faith and stop pretending to like football and go back to pretending to like the one white dude on the basketball team until it's time for Red Sox season to start and they can leave the real sports alone for a while.

Listen. As a football fan on the internet, I'm monumentally stupid enough to act like the players and coaching staff are actually reading everything some piss ant says, so long as it's addressed directly to them. So listen, dudes. I believe in you. I believe in this team, and the Retarded Destiny that fate has laid out before you. Now, put your hand against the screen. I don't care if it'll smudge it up, now, just do it. Look, I'm gonna reach out right now. My hand is touching your hand. Feel the love. Feel the POWER. This game means everything, dudes. Lose, and you can still make the playoffs. Yeah, you can do that. But if you win this game tomorrow, you will show the world and the rest of the universe that you can beat anyone, on any day, at any time, and that this isn't a team that's just going to lie down and die peacefully once the playoffs start, like what happened in 2001 and 2005. As far as you're concerned, this is the great battle of our time; a mini-Super Bowl for 2010. It's time to either put up or shut up. It's time to leave nothing on the field but the glorious dead. And goddammit, you have it in you to make certain that more of the dead belong to them than to you.

PREDICTION: Bears 37, Patriots 35.

RIDE TO RUIN