Fear and Loathing in Lake Wobegon

Hi. Miss me? I could explain my extended hiatus, talk about dark days in the jungle with nothing but hallucinogenic berries to eat and my own urine to drink in order to survive, but frankly the details are boring and involve my brain overheating and my fingers telling me to go fuck myself every time I tried to make them type something about the Lions and so I won’t gibber on about it too much other than to apologize, tell you that it was needed and that from here on out, I should be back to posting regularly again. I mean, that’s the plan anyway. That doesn’t mean every day. Not for now. But once or twice a week for the next several months you can expect something new from me, and then when the season starts, it will be back to three or four times a week. Hell, maybe every day like I did a couple of years ago if I’m feeling frisky, but let’s face it, probably not. Anyway, get used to me being around again, like your psychotic uncle who lives in the attic and gets the cops called on him every couple of weeks because the neighbors hear screaming and chainsaw noises coming from his place.

Speaking of people calling the fuzz, I wasn’t really planning on writing about anything specific for my reemergence into blogger society but then the Lions turned themselves into an old NWA video and I’m pretty sure that Gosder Cherilus is going to be spotted rolling down the street strapped with an AK sometime within the next week so I should probably write about all that, huh?

Yeah. So anyway, it all started a couple of months ago when Johnny Culbreath was arrested down in South Carolina because some nosy hotel clerk smelled something funny and called the cops. Thanks to her snitchery, they found Johnny Culbreath doing what a lot of dudes his age do and rather than just being cool about it, they wagged the finger of the law in his direction and he was forced to prostrate himself before a judge, beg for forgiveness and then pay a dumb little fine. Sheriff Goodell will probably put him over his knee and give him a spanking – or at least he would if he knew who Culbreath was, which I’m assuming he doesn’t because Johnny isn’t someone who can get the Sheriff’s name in the papers – and that’s that. Who cares? Blah blah blah, life goes on and if you give a shit about this in any way you are very likely a moron and should be castrated with a butter knife to ensure that you don’t spread your dullard genes to the next generation. Hey, don’t blame me for yelling at you. Jesus said shit like that all the time in the Bible. At least the one I read.

Anyway, life in Lionsville was sleepy and prosaic after that. Martin Mayhew laughed in the face of The Great Cap Crisis of ’12, signed everyone he wanted to sign and we all rolled over and went back to sleep and dreamed of Matthew Stafford bent over his center, grabbing for balls and barking in a frenzied cadence meant to convey both leadership and a desire for dominance. We also dreamed about him playing football. No, but seriously folks, all rimshots and rimjobs aside, as Lions fans we have entered into a weird world in which we simply don’t have that much to worry about, which is disorienting as hell when you realize that worrying was pretty much our most cherished pastime. When I first started writing about this shit, it was a natural fit. Everything and everyone was on fire and so it made sense that some weird half-man/half-dragon from hell would be the one to try to make sense of it all. But now, it sorta feels like Garrison Keillor should be writing about the Lions, doesn’t it? Everything’s all apple pie and quiet sunsets and kids playing down by the lake while the Lions calmly go about their business and we all breathe fresh air for the first time in our fan lives and reflect on what it means to be alive and free in such calm and fulfilling times.

And then Mikael LeShoure ate a bag of pot. Nothing like that shit happened on the shores of Lake Wobegon so fuck off Garrison Keillor because it’s time for me to take the wheel again.

Naturally, everyone made jokes and the hysterical wing of the fanbase flipped out and demanded that he be fed to the Sarlac for his crimes against humanity but I just can’t judge him. I mean, after all, I ate an entire vat full of acid just this morning after I spotted a cop walking my way. Sadly, it turned out to be battery acid and not the fun, hallucinogenic kind and now I have no internal organs and all I am is a brain hooked up to a computer which translates my thoughts. So, I get it, Mikael. I get it.

This probably would have all went away if Nick Fairley didn’t just get busted for the exact same thing down in Alabama, which now has that hysterical OH GOD THINK OF THE CHILDREN wing of the fanbase clutching their pearls, claiming an epidemic and demanding that Jim Schwartz take these ingrates behind the barn and shoot them dead as an example to the rest of the cattle milling about. This is because we are a people used to worrying and hyperventilating about every little thing. In a way it makes us feel more comfortable because it’s familiar. It’s sad and pathetic but it’s familiar.

Look, we’ve all made jokes. I said on twitter that the next Tale of the Great Willie Young (yes, I’m going to write some this year) would have to be set in an opium den. People are sniggering and joking about Titus Young getting busted for operating a meth lab. That’s fine. That’s what we do when these things happen. But there is a very real and very sizeable portion of the fanbase that views this as a legitimate, significant problem. This portion roughly correlates to the same percentage of the general population who still think of weed as the demon drug from Reefer Madness.

Wait, I should back up a little bit because honestly, that’s a whole different argument, a socio-political can of worms that would consume us all in a hurricane of dumb gibberish and worthless rhetoric. Regardless of your views on pot – and everyone has one, you can probably guess mine – the real argument seems to be one of personal responsibility. People just can’t understand why a young millionaire would risk everything just to get high. My take on it is this – who cares?

I would be creeped out if I found out that no one on the team smoked weed. That would just be unnatural and weird. This is not a case like Sam Hurd’s. Nick Fairley does not own a plantation in Colombia. Mikael LeShoure isn’t running guns and counterfeit money on cocaine boats out of Havana. Johnny Culbreath isn’t sucking dick in an alley because he’s hopelessly addicted to smack. These are just young dudes doing what young dudes do. You can’t really control it. If you went into every locker room in the NFL, you’d probably find that half the dudes in there smoked weed. To say the Lions somehow have a problem here is absurd.

The only thing that bothers me – THE ONLY THING – is that because people predictably overreact about this shit, this becomes an issue that has to be addressed, discussed, written about, etc. and all that is, is a distraction. The good news is that it’s early April and so who cares? This isn’t November and this doesn’t really mean a goddamn thing. All it is, is a tiny skirmish in the wider culture war which never seems to end in this stupid country. Two of these dudes were busted because some nosy uptight asshole smelled something suspicious and called the cops. The cops came and were all “Well, yeah, technically you’re in violation of the law, so . . .” They were essentially busted for jaywalking. Marijuana laws in this country have become so riddled with holes and shredded down to their bare essentials by shifting public sentiment that no one really cares about them anymore, not even cops, and the only way you’re going to get busted for it is if someone points it out and says “Hey, that’s illegal, you should do something about that.” Then the cops are forced to make a passionless arrest, someone pays a fine and then it’s forgotten about. I’m serious, it’s fucking jaywalking. If they see it, they’ll do something about it because, hey, that’s their job, but they’re not going to go out of their way to make more of it than what it is.

It’s hard to talk or write about this in any serious way without turning it into a cultural referendum on marijuana. That’s actually pretty telling. If these dudes were busted with bags full of coke or heroin balloons up their ass, people would be freaking out and there would be no arguing that hey, these dudes are fucked. But because it’s marijuana, the discussion immediately shifts to the culture war, to whether or not we should care because in the end, it’s just marijuana. This should tell you something – even the people who disapprove recognize on at least some level that this is not a big deal. They’re not arguing whether the act itself was intrinsically bad, but that it was bad because it exemplified poor judgment. That’s it. They don’t seem to really care that these guys were smoking weed. They care because they did something they’re technically not supposed to be doing and, in their minds, that raises questions about their overall level of maturity and decision making abilities. That alone should tell you that even the most ardent critics of these dudes understand that, in the end, none of this was a big deal. They’re pissed because these guys were arrested, not because of what they were arrested for. That distinction is important to understand.

The more I write about this, the more I hate it, and I hate it because I feel like it’s a stupid thing to have to write about and I suspect that this is what the majority of Lions fans are feeling too. They hate this story not because of what actually happened but because we have to waste time dealing with this bullshit. This is stupid and I feel debased for having to even talk about it. Some dudes smoked weed, they got caught doing it, one of them did something really dumb and really funny. The end. There. That’s all I should have to say about it. But I can’t because people are incapable of putting things in perspective and so it falls to someone like me to try to do it for them. I know that sounds arrogant and dickish but I don’t care. There are “journalists” out there (I put that in sarcastic quotation marks because Drew Sharp is a credible journalist like Snooki is a credible neurosurgeon.) who are blathering on about how the Lions should cut these dudes. That’s why I have to talk about it and fuck them because of it. Fuck you, Drew Sharp. Because you are an idiot and a worthless troll and because there are people who actually agree with you and listen to you, I have to waste my time dealing with this shit, like Batman dealing with the world’s shittiest Joker. I have to exist because you exist.

This is going to become a stupid meme, because that’s just what happens these days. I’ll get in on it too and make jokes about Jeff Backus shaking and shivering like a junkie every time he gives up a sack and I’ll do this because it is easy, because it is something to riff off of, but as a serious story with serious consequences, this is a story that can fuck right on off. Great, now I’m depressed. My first Lions piece in, like, three months and I’m already annoyed and telling people to get off my lawn.

On the other hand, I guess I should look at this more optimistically. It’s actually good that people are bitching about this because it shows that we have nothing else to bitch about. Instead of worrying about the actual team, we’re worrying about trifling bullshit like this. When it comes to what happens on the field – and that’s the only thing that matters – this is all meaningless. In that context, it is a story that basically doesn’t even exist. It has no bearing on anything other than our own tendency and need to bitch. This is good. It’s also really, really annoying. But I guess that’s the price to pay for living in Lake Wobegon. You get riled up by stupid shit, like your neighbor not mowing their lawn or the LeShoure kid eating a bag of weed. No one’s getting shot. There are no mass murders. There’s nothing to worry about and so you invent things to worry about, because that’s just what people do and people are dumb.

The bright side is this – we all trust the regime of Mayhew, Lewand and Schwartz. They have earned that trust and so we can trust them to handle this rationally and with a minimum of dumb noise. Wayne Fontes would have broken down into tears, retreated into his office and drowned himself in a bowl full of spaghetti while anarchy reigned in the locker room. Rod Marinelli would have cut half the team, gibbered about personal responsibility and pad level, had Jon Kitna lead the rest of the team in a prayer meeting and then called in a bunch of faith healers to cleanse the locker room of the pernicious effects of the demon weed. He then would have had Shaun Rogers beaten with a sack filled with quarters just because. And then the team would have finished 1-15 and Marinelli would tell everyone he was proud because they did it the right way. Jim Schwartz, on the other hand, I suspect will just shake his head and tell these dudes not to be dumbasses and that will be that. And that’s the right way to go. That’s the only way to go. You know how you don’t turn this into a giant distraction? You don’t treat it like one. And I think our dudes understand that.

And really, if we’re going to focus on anything it should be that – no matter what happens, our dudes have got this. They have it covered. That’s the story, that’s the only thing that matters. Everything else is just dumb noise. The kids have acted up and the parents will deal with it. Because that’s the sort of thing that happens in Lake Wobegon, and in Lake Wobegon everyone lives happily ever after. The end.

At Least Wait Until The Season Starts Before You Panic You Ninnies, Part II

“I’ve already swam the River Styx and I have already had red hot pokers shoved up my ass by the Failure Demons. I’ve seen 0-16. What else can they do to the football fan in me? (I know, I know, famous last words, right?)”

I don’t know how many posts I’m going to have to lead with that infernal quote, but I knew as soon as I wrote it that it would haunt me like the ghost of a deranged stalker. Indeed, the football gods apparently read the post that originally appeared in, smiled mischievously at one another and then started sending lightning bolts from the sky to zap our players and giant Thunder Birds with wings made of fire and hate to swoop down and carry their charred corpses off to Valhalla while we all wept and begged for mercy. Terrible, terrible.

The latest atrocity, of course, came yesterday when Mikael LeShoure’s Achilles was murdered with a single arrow shot by Paris (Lenon?) We can only hope that, like in that famous story of the fall of Troy, this one ends with LeShoure’s Achilles being avenged and our side being ultimately victorious. Hopefully, we don’t have to resort to shameful trickery like those degenerate Greeks and hopefully this doesn’t result in Matthew Stafford wandering the seas like poor, doomed Odysseus in its aftermath, but . . . this Homeric gibberish has gone on long enough. Just count yourself lucky that I didn’t find a way to tie Virgil and the Aeneid into this, which would have no doubt just led me to ranting and raving about Dante and his Inferno and none of us wants to travel back into that hell.

Anyway, anyway . . . sigh. So, yeah, Mikael LeShoure is hurt, his career might be over before it began, and naturally this caused the world of Lions fans everywhere to explode. Immediately, everyone went into hysterics over the news with people gibbering on about curses, others throwing their hands up like medieval doomsayers, screaming at the sky, hands outstretched, wailing that the end was surely at hand. Still others actually found a way to turn this into a bitchfest about Matt Millen, which I’ve gotta admit, is some impressive twisting of the facts, while many inscrutably managed to use it as a platform to revisit their fearful disdain of the Lions drafting strategy. For my part, on Twitter, I threatened to get drunk and try to ride a lion at the zoo, fight an ape in hand to hand combat whilst riding said lion, and then to steal that same lion, and ride naked onto the Lions practice field in order to quell our collective fears. So, yeah, it was a weird day.

Really, though, this wasn’t so much about a single injury as it was about our collective fragility, about the all too breakable paper hearts of this fanbase. It was just too much too soon for people to handle. Nick Fairley got hurt, the offensive tackles are going down like [choose your own obscene metaphor], Titus Young has been banged up and hasn’t been practicing, and now . . . this. Look, I get it. I understand that we’re all walking on eggshells, wide eyed and terrified, too scared to truly believe that everything is going to be okay. We are like a herd of easily spooked animals, slowly wobbling out of the Forest of Doom which has been our home for so long, and every little noise sends more and more of us scrambling back into its terrible but familiar canopy of sadness. Every time something has happened – injuries, assorted bad news, etc. - since the lockout finally ended and everything became suddenly all too real, people have turned and fled, with more and more running with each bit of bad news. But the core of our fanbase seemed like it was holding together. We decided to stay brave, to face the wild unknown and to march away from that terrible hell forest together. But then this news about LeShoure came down, and it was like a dragon swooped in with a shotgun and started firing indiscriminately into the herd. The whole goddamn thing broke and now there is mass fleeing. It is awful and sad and bloody and strange and I hate it. Meanwhile, there are a handful of intrepid shepherds standing their ground and screaming “All is well!” at the top of their lungs like Kevin Bacon in Animal House.

When shit like this happens, when people take a cosmic gut shot, they tend to retreat to polar opposite positions based on pure emotion. There is no room for reason or thoughtful honesty. You have people governed completely by Fear, who fall apart and start ranting and raving about all the shit that they rant and rave about. We’re far, far too familiar with these types and the things they bitch about. Then there are the others, who are completely governed by Hope, who start burying their fingers in their ears and whistling a happy tune of their own making in order to drown out the screams of the dead and the dying. We cannot afford to be either if we’re going to survive this season.

These injuries suck. They hurt. They make me angry and they make me sad and they make me shake my fist in a sort of empty, dumb rage. They make me mutter about Failure Demons and the wrath of the football gods and they make me at least consider the idea of digging up the corpse of Bobby Layne and setting it on fire. It’s probably still soaked with enough booze that the damn thing will burn pretty easily. To deny any of that would be dishonest and wrongheaded. That sort of swallowing of my fan feelings would just lead to a supersonic breakdown later.

But they aren’t the end of the world either. I mean, come on, settle the fuck down, you animals. LeShoure’s is the only injury which seems like it will have any long term effects, both for this season and beyond. By itself, it’s a brutal blow and we should mourn it. We should. But, it’s not part of some terrible, cosmic pattern wrought by invisible forces buried deep in the earth who inexplicably hate us either. At least, I don’t think so. (Insert nervous laughter here.) All these other injuries are relatively minor, things that should heal relatively quickly. Nick Fairley should be back at some point either prior to the season or early in it. Does it suck losing him for practice? Of course. But let’s not forget, it’s not like we’re relying on him like we were Ndamukong Suh last year. Titus Young’s injuries are more frustrating than anything else, minor little nags which should heal and ensure that he’s good to go by the time the starting gun goes off. The most important thing to remember about all three of these injuries? None of these players is a starter. They were all expected to be – and Fairley and Young still are – contributors, but they weren’t expected to be the last line of defense or anything like that. Their injuries suck. They aren’t crippling, either literally or metaphorically. Finding the truth in that is critically important if we’re going to maintain our sanity as fans.

Like I said in the post about Nick Fairley last week, injuries happen and injuries heal. This feels worse than it is. Trust me on this. The only one that is a true gut shot is the Mikael LeShoure injury. That one sucks. That one honestly hurts. Go ahead. Feel that shit. And then calm the fuck down.

Honestly, the more worrisome thing as far as its impact on the team this season is the situation at left tackle, where our dudes seem to be being hunted Final Destination style. We can’t afford to go into the season without these dudes getting healthy. We can afford to go into the season with Fairley and Titus Young banged up. Such is the magical nature of depth. But the offensive tackles, while not as flashy, while not as loaded with promise and not as emblematic of our grandiose dreams, are more important. At least right now. The good news is that none of these injuries seem to be all that severe and that by the time the season starts, they should be good to go.

So here’s the reality: Mikael LeShoure is done. At least for this season. Maybe beyond. Who knows? And that sucks. It’s disappointing and it makes me want to throw a mini hissy fit. Everyone else has injuries that should heal relatively soon, so that when the season starts we’ll be minus LeShoure and relatively healthy everywhere else. And, hell, today the Lions went out and signed Jerome Harrison and Mike Bell so, honestly, the loss of LeShoure really shouldn’t be felt that deeply. Both of those guys have shown they can produce and one of them should turn out to be an effective complement to Jahvid Best.

So, really, when the season starts, what’s changed? What’s all that different from a few weeks ago, when we were all puffed up, drunk on our collective hopes and dreams, carrying on like wild eyed fools about Super Bowls and parades and all that shit? Not much. The thing that’s taken the biggest hit is our fragile and all too delicate sense of belief. It feels worse than it is. And it feels worse than it is because we’re predisposed to freaking the fuck out and crying and shaking like retarded baby deer whenever the slightest bit of noise comes along to startle us. But the good news is that when it comes to winning and losing and what actually happens on that football field all that shit doesn’t really mean a damn thing. This is about us and our own battle with ourselves and the past more than it is about anything on that field.

On some level, I think most of us know this. I’m not mad at the people freaking out right now. I get it. I understand. We can’t turn on each other like dumb and uncivilized cannibals. We’ve had enough grief as fans without whipping on each other and making it all worse. It’s okay to feel bad about all this. What’s not okay is how some people have cravenly turned this into an infomercial about SAME OL’ LIONS AMIRITE?

Fuck those people. Honestly. Fuck. Them. The people gibbering on about this somehow being related to Matt Millen are being fucking absurd. These people are already lost and we’ll never get them back and so just ignore their bullshit. Don’t even bother arguing with them about it. Their belief that somehow this is proof that the Lions drafted poorly this past year and that Martin Mayhew is just an extension of the same ol’ same ol’ Millen bullshit is so cosmically stupid that I don’t even know how to argue with it. It would be like arguing about Shakespeare with an illiterate circus bear with a brain rotted by syphilis and despair. Like arguing about fine art with a drunk vampire ape. You’re sitting there making compelling and logical points and they’re just sitting there hooting and growling, spitting dumb rage bullets and wondering what your face tastes like. There’s no fucking point.

Honestly, the idea that somehow these freak injuries validate any criticism of the Lions drafting is the most ridiculous and outlandish bullshit I’ve heard since I went back and reread some of my posts about The Great Willie Young. I could sit here and write several more thousand words just picking apart and wading through that insipid bullshit, but why bother? It would just irritate me and make me crazy and the people who actually believe it, who have been so mutilated and ruined by Fear and Failure, wouldn’t even be capable of understanding it anyway.

I understand that not everybody is going to agree with me on this. That’s fine. But to throw your hands up and declare this draft class ruined and completely without promise is utterly absurd. Everyone is acting like Nick Fairley and Titus Young will never contribute a thing because they’ve each suffered a minor injury in training camp. Jesus Christ, would you people please calm the fuck down? You’re like hysterical old ladies. I feel like I need to splash you in the face with water, and slap you a few times to bring you back to your senses. Nick Fairley and Titus Young both have their whole careers ahead of them. Nothing about that has changed. The Mikael LeShoure injury is another issue, but even he is just one player. If you’re willing to slit your wrists because one rookie running back was grievously hurt, then I suggest digging around in your pants for that missing set of balls. (Lady dudes, I’m not sure what to tell you to do. Uh, dig around for that missing set of ovaries? No, that doesn’t work. Dig around in that [redacted for gross indecency.])

I’m not going to minimize the loss of LeShoure. It hurts. He was drafted to be the complement to Jahvid Best, but more than that, he represented another bullet, another chance for greatness. There was the possibility that he could break out and finally be the answer at running back. Now, that bullet has fallen out of the gun before it could even be fired and disappeared into a deep, dark pool and we’ll likely never find it again. (Or not. The truth is that no one knows how LeShoure comes back from all this.) That fucking sucks. But I won’t overstate his loss either. The Lions were not relying on him to carry the load, either for the offense as a whole or for the running game. Jahvid Best is still the guy here and he’s still a dude who showed a shitload of promise before his toes betrayed him early last year. Let’s not forget, this was a dude that had 5 touchdowns by the time Week 3 rolled around and he had already implanted the memory of a bunch of awesome runs into our brains. Behind him, Maurice Morris is still there and he’s always been more effective than people want to give him credit for. And now Jerome Harrison and Mike Bell have joined the fray, the same Jerome Harrison who once rushed for 286 yards in a game –which is the third highest total of all time – and the same Mike Bell who ripped us apart in the 2009 season opener. We should be fine at running back.

Once again, it’s our collectively fragile sense of belief which is the thing that has taken the biggest hit this past week. I can’t stress that enough. We’re just feeding off each other’s panic, each other’s fears. Everybody chill the fuck out. There is no use – absolutely none – in trying to retroactively claim that this is some sort of evidence that Martin Mayhew messed up. That is so much needless noise, dumb and willfully negative and destructive, that the people saying it should be ashamed of themselves. We have enough bullshit to deal with as Lions fans without you assholes making shit up. I understand that you want to start talking about “opportunity costs” and all that, trying to act like this is somehow about losing three players rather than one (because, remember, we traded up for LeShoure and therefore, somehow, we can now retroactively claim that this means that we’ve also lost the hypothetical players in the form of draft picks that we traded for him.) but again, that is so much speculative bullshit that has no real meaning other than as a way to channel disappointment and sadness and fan rage into some petty argument.

It’s basically the cousin of the whole “Hey, guess who’s not in a walking boot? That’s right, Prince Amukamara” bullshit argument that I tore into last week. And hey, by the way, guess who is in a walking boot now? That’s right, Prince Amukamara, who broke his foot during practice with the Giants. The whole point is that the whole thing is speculative and therefore dumb and inane and utterly without merit. Nobody knows when a guy is going to get hurt. That goes for Nick Fairley, for Prince Amukamara and for Mikael LeShoure. To listen to you jackanapes, the responsible General Manager would never draft anyone at all for fear that that player might suffer an injury one day. Hindsight is not 20/20. Hindsight is pointless and dumb and as blind as it is stupid. I mean, sure, it would be great to get ahold of a Sports Almanac from 60 years in the future like fucking Biff in Back to the Future II, but unless you’ve got a DeLorean, a whole shitload of extra Plutonium lying around and a crazy scientist with an unhealthy interest in the lives of teenaged boys ready to put that shit to use, then I’m afraid you must deal with reality just like the rest of us, and in this reality you do the best you can with the information you have and sometimes you get unlucky and a dude gets hurt or flames out or whatever, but that doesn’t mean that you stop trying, or that you stop reaching for greatness. That’s some cowardly shit right there.

Matt Millen’s drafts were failures because the dudes he drafted failed on the football field. If you can’t see the difference between that and a dude suffering a freak injury, well . . . please, crawl back in your miserable little hole because you’re just in the way and some of us actually want to move on.

I hate these sorts of posts. I hate it when everybody gets all hysterical and dumb and starts hooting like deranged chimps and I feel the need to hoot back. It’s so much worthless noise. I can’t wait for the season to get here, for there to be actual football to be played. This is some shameful shit. We look ridiculous, like a bunch of whinnying ninnies with our panties shoved a mile up our ass cracks. And before you start accusing me of having rose colored glasses or of being drunk on Kool-Aid or whatever other dumb bullshit cliché you can think of, just remember that I have always – always – called it exactly how I see it. Go back to my posts from 2008. I absolutely savage Rod Marinelli. And right from the start too, back when everyone else was calling for ten wins and a spot in the playoffs. I have never – never – been one to mindlessly cheerlead. But I’ve also never been one to just mindlessly bitch either. I am neither a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of guy. I just see a glass and I see that there’s still some water left and I see that some is missing. See both. See the good and the bad. Think, damn you. Think. And when you do, I think you’ll take a deep breath and you’ll see that we’re still okay. We’re still okay.

At Least Wait Until The Season Starts Before You Panic You Ninnies

“I’ve already swam the River Styx and I have already had red hot pokers shoved up my ass by the Failure Demons. I’ve seen 0-16. What else can they do to the football fan in me? (I know, I know, famous last words, right?)”

I wrote that a couple of days ago and right about the same time, on cue, a Failure Demon sprang from the earth, no doubt fueled by the desire to eat what’s left of my soul, stomped on Nick Fairley’s foot, cackled and then disappeared in a cloud of smoke and tears. Now, Nick Fairley is sitting in front of a North Carolina specialist who may or may not be telling him that he has a stress fracture which has kinda given my brain a stress fracture.

But while Nick Fairley is busy shuffling around in a giant walking boot, Lions fans are busy straining their fingers mashing away at their keyboards in pained despair, telling anyone who will listen that this is why you should never believe in anything, why life is utterly meaningless and why the Lions and all of its fans are doomed to suck the devil’s dick in the lowest circle of hell. This incredible display of ninnyism is actually kind of understandable. I get it. Believe me, I get it. We’re still so incredibly fragile that any little thing that goes wrong has us weeping tears of blood, tearing out our hair and seeing Failure Demons with whips made of fire and hate everywhere we look. We are a broken, paranoid people and that’s part of why this upcoming season is so fascinating. If you thought last year was bipolar and strange, you haven’t seen shit yet. Just wait until the Lions lose a game this year. People are going to freak the fuck out and start screaming about SAME OL’ LIONS and I’ll probably even threaten to drink drain cleaner again. Then we’ll win and we’ll all puff out our chests and pretend that we’re going to win the next six Superbowls and somehow we’ll all end up talking about how good it will feel to shit our pants in joy because that’s just what we do here.

So I understand the hysteria on display following Fairley’s possible injury. What I don’t get – well, I do get it but I think it’s just hysterically stupid – is the shameful sect of people who are using this to somehow retroactively justify their bitching when Fairley was drafted. Fuck right on off with that shit. I’ve already seen people drop the whole “Well, Prince Amukamara isn’t in a walking cast . . .” and I’ve seen people actually claim that “This is what happens when you draft a fat, lazy guy like Fairley. He suffers a fat man injury.” Boooooo! Booooooo! Come on . . . really?

We’ll start with the Amukamara isn’t in a walking cast shit. Yeah? So what? You know who else isn’t in a walking cast? My neighbor, Phil. Or me. I’m not in a walking cast. I’m pretty sure you’re not in a walking cast. Neither is my neighbor’s dog. Alright! Wait . . . what does any of them not being in a walking cast have to do with Nick Fairley? Not a goddamn thing? Well, neither does Prince Amukamara not being in a walking cast. What the fuck does one have to do with the other?

Okay, okay, fine . . . yeah, they could have drafted Prince Amukamara. So, I guess your reasoning goes that the Lions should have drafted him because . . . because . . . what? Why? Do you think the Lions had access to some sort of super-secret time machine that let them see four months into the future so they could see who would suffer a random, freak injury? Because, if they did, then yeah, I guess you’re right. But if not, then, uh . . . what’s your point? To be honest, if the Lions do have some sort of super-secret time machine, then to hell with arguing about who they should have drafted, I’m pissed that they haven’t used it to go back in time and punch out Matt Millen at the Under the Sea Dance. Is Doc Brown the new General Manager? Did I miss something?

As for the whole “This is what happens when you draft a fat lazy guy” . . . look, injuries happen. They happen all the time and usually they aren’t related to anything at all. They’re just freak accidents. They suck. I’m sorry that you’re angry. I’m sorry that you have to reach for reasons to justify your anger. That’s lazy as hell and I’m sorry about that too. I’m sorry that you have to channel your anger and your disappointment into something profoundly stupid so that you have something tangible to rage against. That might all sound self-righteous as hell on my part, but here’s the thing – I feel the same sense of disappointment that you do. I feel the same cosmic anger about the whole thing, the same “Why???” that you do. I get it. But I refuse to let my anger make a dumb asshole out of me. I refuse to let it rob me of my wits. Shit happens and sometimes there’s nothing and no one to blame. You just have to live with it.

But the thing that makes this even more hilariously dumb is that Fairley is 291 pounds, which is damn near anorexic for a defensive tackle. And Jim Schwartz has said that Fairley reported in excellent shape, so . . . keep tilting at windmills with your lance made of hatred and bile, dude. Nick Fairley hurt his foot. Shit happens.

The good news is that this really shouldn’t hurt the team all that much. I won’t say that it won’t hurt at all because that would be absurd, but this is why you build depth. This is why you draft dudes like Nick Fairley even though his position is already one of strength. Let’s flip the script. Let’s say the Lions did draft Prince Amukamara. And let’s say he just suffered a stress fracture and was limping around in a walking boot. What would the shrieking banshees be wailing about then? Good Lord. They’d probably find a way to say that it was proof that we should have drafted Nick Fairley. Because that’s what they do. They bitch just to bitch and they tailor their arguments to whatever their bitchery demands. But if the Lions did draft Amukamara and he got hurt, wouldn’t that be a far, far more devastating blow than the one we just suffered with Fairley? This is why you don’t draft just to fill immediate holes, because guys get hurt and even if they don’t they’re still rookies and putting all your hopes in a rookie is utterly foolish.

Okay, onto some other news. Apparently, Zack Follett has saddled up his Spirit Horse and ridden off to Valhalla. This is sad. Mostly because Zack Follett seemed like a legitimately awesome dude. He had a bizarre sense of humor that appealed to weirdoes like us, he wasn’t afraid to taunt his enemies, he played with actual lions, and he loved – loved – to hit people. He was almost the blue print for the fan favorite. He was slightly under-talented (he was white), he hustled his ass off (he was white), he loved to play football, he had a look people liked (he was white), and he was good for a quirky soundbite. Oh, and he was white.

I’m sad to see him go. My friend, the esteemed Monsieur Rose, who followed Follett back in his days at Cal, is inconsolable. I had to tie him to a tree to keep him from hurting himself. I have to stop by three times a day to feed him with my own hands and spray him with a high pressure hose so that he doesn’t start to smell. I refuse to change his pants though. It’s awful. This is what the retirement of Zack Follett has wrought.

But neck injuries are a terrible thing. I think we all at least suspected that this moment was coming the moment he had to be stretchered off the field against the Giants. It’s better this than if he ends up a delusional simpleton in a wheelchair by the time he’s 35. And, awful as it may sound, it’s better for us too. Look, we all loved Zack Follett but this is not a goddamn day care center. This is not the Island of Misfit Toys. Not anymore. This is a real, live NFL team, with real, live hopes and dreams. There is no room for soft hearted compassion. That is the trade-off that we all must make. Sure, everyone loves the loveable loser, those dudes who aren’t quite good enough but try really, really hard. The problem is, is that those guys don’t win. It sucks but it’s true. The reality, sad as it is, is that someone like Jimmy Johnson would have packed Zack Follett’s remains in a box and shipped him back home to his family the first moment he proved that he was a step too slow. And people would have bitched and hated him for it, but the thing is, is that a dude like Jimmy Johnson also wins. A lot.

I want to win. A lot. So do all of you. We’re not fucking around anymore. We all have to come to terms with that. As much fun as a dopey dude like Zack Follett is, we simply need better players than him if we’re going to become the monster that we all so desperately claim we want to be. I loved Zack Follett. I thought he was a useful special teams player. By no means did I want him in the running to start at linebacker, or hell, if I’m being honest, to ever play linebacker again for the Lions. I was fine with seeing him run down the field like a berserk cannibal let off of his chain a couple of times a game but that was about it. It’s hard and it’s cruel and it’s the price we must all pay for greatness.

Still, all that said, I’m going to miss Zack Follett. I am not made of stone. I laughed when you laughed. He’s a good dude and I hope he has an awesome life. If nothing else, we’ll always have the memory of him murdering Danny Amendola. In the end, like in everything else, I blame Dick Stockton. After all, who was calling the game against the Giants that fateful day when young Zakarian was brutally murdered? That’s right, it was Dick Stockton. I rest my case.

And finally, in more pleasant news, there have been rumblings from camp that none other than The Great Willie Young has shown marked improvement, especially as a pass rusher. This makes sense, since The Great Willie Young has spent centuries sacking his enemies. History remembers these disembowelings with names like the Sack of Constantinople and the Sack of Rome. Obviously, I am delighted by this. Almost as delighted as The Great Willie Young is by the idea of catching a fat catfish. (Seriously, good Lord, my dude loves to fish.) What does all of this mean? Well, that’s not really for me to say. That’s for The Great Willie Young to show the world. If he so desires anyway. For The Great Willie Young has nothing to prove to this world or to this time. He is a being of pure light and if we do not see the light, that is not his fault but it is the fault of the weakness of our own mortal eyes. He flashes with dazzling brilliance every day, like a billion diamonds reflecting the light of a billion stars. He sacks 10 quarterbacks in the span of just one of our mortal breaths. If we do not see it, it is only because he moves in dimensions which we cannot perceive. I’m just glad that he slowed down long enough to indulge the mortal eyes of Tom Kowalski and therefore give us all reassurances that he will emerge on our mortal plane and smite our enemies for us. No Willie Young, no peace. Know Willie Young, know peace. It’s as simple as that, friends. It’s as simple as that.

I said some harsh shit in this post. I didn’t really mean to be an asshole. Forgive me if I was too dickish, but these are what these times have wrought. My patience is as frayed as everyone else’s. I just don’t have it in me to suffer the same old bullshit anymore. We can’t turn and flee at the first sign of resistance. We’re not cowards, are we? No. We are warriors of lights, dudes and lady dudes with hearts made of thunder and fire. It’s time we start acting like it. This doesn’t mean we should bury our heads in the sand and press on stupidly either. I’m not saying that. We need to look at everything as it comes for what it is, and not let our fears and the horrors of the past define everything anymore. Nick Fairley getting hurt is what it is, nothing more and nothing less. It sucks but it is not some grand sign that we should never believe in anything or that picking him was some sort of cosmic mistake. I was in a walking cast once, after destroying my ankle following a particularly weird round of golf (It’s true. I swear.) and a couple of months later, I was walking and I was fine and the world kept turning. I know, I know, I wasn’t tasked with chasing down opposing quarterbacks like our man Fairley is, but the point is that injuries happen and injuries heal and one day we’ll all laugh and smile and gibber like overexcited babies when we watch Nick Fairley throw Aaron Rodgers to the ground and then all the people who panicked and pissed themselves will feel like jackasses, just like they did when they bitched about Ndamukong Suh holding out last season and he responded by going Murder Death Kill on the whole league. When a man slaps you in the face, you can do one of three things. You can cry and slink away or you can rage and snarl and scream nonsensical gibberish. He wins either way. You look like a fool. Or you can take the slap, smile, wide eyed and crazy, and refuse to let him win. And then you can rip his throat out. Let’s smile and start ripping throats.