I thought about using a picture of a wall of shit. I mean, that's much more apt, right? But a wall of shit is a pretty abstract image, and let's be honest here, that would be pretty gross.This epic clusterfuck of a review continues on with the offensive line, and let me just get the hackneyed joke out of the way now . . . yes, the line was offensive. Thank you, I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitress. And by your waitress, I mean me.
Okay, lame stand up routines aside, just how bad was the offensive line? I will assume that we can just skip right past the part where we decide whether it was bad or not, because, well . . . have you seen a Lions game in the last, oh, I dunno, 20 years?
Yes, it has been almost that long since Mike Utley engaged in his legendary sit-in and Eric Andolsek found out that you need to look both ways before, uh, doing some yard work. Indeed, those freak accidents crippled(no pun intended for any Mike Utley fans I may have just enraged)the Lions burgeoning offensive line, and although they were able to cobble together something functional for several years, they could never quite recover from those twin blows. And so, for the last decade, once the Lomas Browns and Kevin Glovers and Jeff Hartings of the world got wise and caught a bus out of town or hid themselves as stowaways in a car trunk or faked their own death, or . . . you get the point, the Lions were left with a collection of stiffs who would have trouble blocking a coked out Holocaust survivor. Get it, because they would be super skinny and frail, and . . . and . . . I apologize.
So, coming into this season, there was little hope for even the barest hint of mediocrity. The idea that the line would be actively good was so fanciful and ridiculous that no one dared even think it. It would be like suggesting that the Cardinals and Saints would reach the Super Bowl in back to back years or that someone would attack healthcare reform in the year 2010 as a Bolshevik plot. Wait . . . what? Those things actually happened? Well, shit. Okay, well something else appallingly ridiculous then.
Indeed. It is difficult to properly describe the level of misery and utter hopelessness which permeates every Lions fan's brain when it comes to this sad sack offensive line. It is something we have just learned to live with, a terrible constant, like herpes or Jay Leno.
In this decade of great torment and terrible anguish, two players have emerged as the leaders of this moribund line, the personal embodiments of mediocrity, the avatars of suck if you will. Yes, year in and year out, no matter how terrible it gets, no matter the number of dead bodies littered on the side of the road, no matter the number of underwear thieves and take the wind Martys and jazz hand quarterbacks, Dominic Raiola and Jeff Backus remain, constant reminders that . . . well, that we can't get anyone better.
Raiola isn't horrible. In fact, he's a fairly decent player. He's agile, he's quick, he's smart, and this makes him an asset against quicker defensive tackles. However, he's small, gets bullied by bigger and elite defensive tackles, he likes to bitch at the fans and, well, this hasn't exactly endeared him to a fanbase predisposed to looking longingly at the ol' suicide booth.
Backus is similar - a perfectly adequate player who gets his ass kicked by anyone better than perfectly adequate. These are not bad players to have. It's just that when they are your stalwarts, your bedrock, dudes who have been around for almost a decade, it's easy to turn on them. It's like being stuck in a loveless marriage. At first, it's okay. The other person is no great shakes, but hell, at least they're someone, right? Occasionally, they might make you laugh, the sex is okay, you aren't outright disgusted by them or anything, you know? But by year ten, you just want to strangle the shit out of each other. Not because the other person has gotten any worse, but because you hate yourself for being stuck with them, and you don't know how it has come to this. Everything they do gets on your nerves, every flaw gets blown up and magnified to the billionth degree. By this point, you are completely irrational, completely incapable of looking at them with an objective eye because you can no longer see who they really are. You just see the anger, the dismay, the wasted years and the symbol of everything you wished your life hadn't become.
Whoa. This shit just turned kind of heavy, didn't it? I apologize. But the fact remains that it is an apt metaphor for the relationship between Lions fans and both Backus and Raiola, and with that as the backdrop, let's see what transpired this past season.
Backus retained his usual position at left tackle despite constant pleas from fans for the Lions to do something - anything, really - to replace him. Everyone wanted an offensive tackle picked somewhere early in the draft, but hell, I think a lot of Lions fans would have celebrated if the team signed some fat hobo and stuck him at left tackle. I mean, you could probably just pay the dude in booze. I'm not sure how that would figure under the salary cap, but perhaps there is a Bottle of Thunderbird a Week tag like the Franchise tag or something. I don't know, it's just a thought.
And for the season, Backus was Backus, which is to say that he was a dude who most Lions fans wanted to see get dragged off by the Smoke Monster from Lost. Shockingly though - improbably - Backus was rated by one scout(I can't find the link, which is lazy as fuck on my part, I know, but you'll just have to believe me)as the best tackle in the NFC this past season. What the hell? And then Jim Schwartz came out about a month ago and told us all to stop being idiots because Backus was the team's best offensive lineman. Well, okay then.
There has always been a bizarre disconnect between scouts' and coaches' assessment of Backus and what the fans see on the field every week. This explains why the dude continues to keep his job year after year and why it drives most fans nuts. It's inexplicable really, and it points to one of the great hidden truths when it comes to football - when it comes to linemen, particularly offensive linemen, none of us know a goddamn thing. It's simply too hard to accurately judge their play. There are so many moving parts, and so many different little things that can happen to influence the effectiveness of a particular play, that all we can do is point and guess at what is going wrong. Unless of course you break down the game film and watch it over and over and over and . . . well, 99.9% of us aren't doing that, you know?
But, what we do have are peripheral numbers that help us get an idea of the overall picture. These are numbers like yards per carry by the running backs or number of sacks taken by the quarterback. Unfortunately, these still don't really help us with the individual parts of the line. For that, all we have are our eyes, and apparently, according to scouts and to the coaches, when it comes to Backus, our eyes are about as functional as poor Stevie Wonder's.
So, Backus is sort of a mystery. The people who matter like him. Everyone else hates him. What do we make of that? Fuck if I know. Yeah, yeah, I know, trenchant analysis there. I apologize but it is what it is. A monumental copout on my part? Perhaps - okay definitely - but you see, I have an explanation . . . LOOK, OVER THERE, A PANTSLESS WEREWOLF.
*runs away*
Ahem. Lining up next to Backus, at left guard, was . . . uh, well, it kinda seemed like there was a different dude there every week, didn't it? That's never a good sign. Indeed, the Lions struggled to find a workable solution to the black hole of suck which was the left guard position. When the season started, the Lions chose to insert free agent pickup Daniel Loper into the spot. Loper was a career backup who was regarded as sort of a swing linemen - someone capable of playing multiple spots on the line, sort of like a utility infielder in baseball - which meant, of course, that he wasn't good enough to play consistently at any one spot. Sounds like a keeper to me! Predictably, Loper struggled and was soon replaced in the lineup by Manny Ramirez - no, not that one, although shit, would that surprise you at this point? Ramirez, a former late round pick who seems to have decent ability but for some reason has never quite put it together, also struggled miserably and the Lions went back to the drawing board, inserting everyone from career tackle Jon Jansen to your grandmother in the spot, with no success. Seriously, your grandmother, she can cut block like a motherfucker.
Perhaps the complete lack of functionality at the left guard position helps to explain the negative perception of Backus a little bit. I mean, the dude is kind of alone on an island out there with nobody but your grandmother to help him out, and I know you love your grandmother, but man, decent cut blocker or not, it's hard to appear anything more than overwhelmed when that's the kind of help you're getting.
Raiola was his usual self in the middle, which is to say that he was perfectly adequate. He didn't really do anything all that well, but there was never a point like there always is with Backus that the fans turned on him and started blaming him for everything from the struggles of the run game to the failure of the Weimar Republic in post World War I Germany. Seriously, look at a history book sometime. I think you'll be shocked to see photos of Backus being hauled off by irate Germans caught in a nationalistic fervor. It wasn't Herr Backus' fault that reform failed. He didn't cause hyperinflation, he just worked there, and . . . okay, anyway, enough of that nonsense. The point is, is that while Backus often takes a ton of heat, Raiola never really gets blamed for much.
Unfortunately for Raiola, there is not another Detroit Lion who has had his brain melted more by the trauma of the events of this past decade. Poor Dominic always seems like he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, like one more loss will turn him into Private Pyle or send him flying down the field, a gun in his hand like that dude in The Last Boy Scout.
In the Year of Unnumbered Tears, Raiola had that famous quote about being afraid to give fans his address after bitching them out because they might show up "with metal." Naturally, it wasn't long before Raiola flipped out this past season and started bitching out fans who were booing Matthew Stafford. You get the real sense that Raiola detests a lot of the Lions fanbase, which harks back to the loveless marriage metaphor from earlier. Once upon a time, we were cool with each other. Now, all we do is argue. So sad.
Raiola is an okay player. He is. It's just that the poor dude could probably use a change of scenery more than anyone else on the team. Unfortunately, even though we no longer love one another, getting a divorce would just leave us broke and with alimony payments we can't afford so fuck it, we're stuck with each other. We will try to love you if you try to love us. Remember, once upon a time we stood in front of an altar, and . . . I'm sorry, this is getting too weird. You get the point.
Next to Raiola, the Lions were fairly comfortable with Stephen Peterman at right guard. Peterman is no great shakes - he's too stiff, slow, bulky, etc. - but he is tough and he will fight you, which aren't bad attributes to have for an offensive lineman. He's the sort of guy who you can get away with playing so long as he develops a rhythm with the other dudes around him. Unfortunately for Peterman, his ankle committed suicide in November and he was placed on injured reserve, meaning that the Lions had to get through the rest of the season with Dylan Gandy and Loper handling the right guard spot, meaning that both guard spots were filled by your grandmother and the dude too shitty to start in front of your grandmother. Not a good thing.
At right tackle, the Lions were hopeful that Gosder Cherilus would improve in his second season. This did not really happen. Cherilus struggled through another season, and was pulled at times for Jansen, leaving me pining for the days of my man Lennie Small. Sure, Lennie sucked too, but at least he was someone I could lean on when I wrote about this bullshit.
I'm not sure what the future holds for Cherilus. At this point, it's not looking too good, a problem because the Lions really can't afford to have a recent first rounder go bust. Although seeing as how Cherilus is the last first rounder picked by Matt Millen perhaps that is entirely appropriate. Still, the Lions aren't exactly in a position to be able to pay too much attention to the right tackle spot. There are simply too many other holes to fill and so I wouldn't be surprised to see Cherilus get shot after shot after shot to make something of himself. I mean, what have we got to lose? Oh. There are games to lose? I see. Excuse me while I douse myself in gasoline and then get this campfire going.
So, as you can see, the line was a fucking mess once again. And, shock of all shocks, the only really stable elements in the line were once again Backus and Raiola. This either speaks well of them or incredibly poorly of the rest of the team. Perhaps both. It's possible that Raiola and Backus are actually pretty decent players. It's just that we can't see it anymore. We are too caught up in the magnification of their flaws to be objective. That's not to say that they are all that good though. Their continued presence just points out one sad and undeniable truth: we don't have anyone else. We may be sick of being married to them, but GOOD LORD have you seen the vapid whores knocking on our door instead? If the other flaming wrecks who make up the line are any indication of what awaits us should Backus or Raiola be pushed aside, well . . . then let's hope they never leave us. We will never be in love, but what the hell, at least we have an understanding.
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN FOR THE FUTURE?
Chaos. Pain. Sadness. Honestly, this line is way too fucked up to fix, like that lady who got her face eaten by a chimp. We can try to patch things up, but when people look at us they will just keep thinking shit like "Man, it looks a little better, but THAT FACE WAS GNAWED UPON BY A CHIMP." That's a hard thing to forget, you know? And so it is with the Lions offensive line. It has been gnawed upon by a chimp, and no matter what we do, it's going to take a while before anyone begins to forget that.
Backus and Raiola are here for the long haul. They will never leave us and we will just have to hope that our kids don't notice our seething hatred for one another. Cherilus may in fact be a turd. I do not want this, but these are strange and terrible times, and we cannot afford to be naive about such things. But he is still young, he will finally get some degree of consistency in his coaching and maybe he can turn it around and be a long term answer at right tackle. The guards are a fucking mess. Really, there's not much else to say there. Both spots need to be upgraded. Peterman is probably someone who we can get by with given ideal circumstances, but circumstances are not ideal, and if our effectiveness hinges on him developing a mind-meld with Cherilus then we may in fact, as Socrates would say, be royally fucked. Left guard is an absolute must improve and I would look for the Lions to grab somebody fairly early in the draft that they can plug in there right away.
Honestly, the picture is not so rosy and it hasn't been for years and years and years - I could almost say decades at this point - and no matter what the Lions do in the offseason, it is unlikely that the offensive line will be anything resembling a strength next year. There is little in the way of prospective greatness here - no young studs or diamonds in the rough waiting to shine - just a collection of overwhelmed journeymen, failed prospects and unloved spouses. Oh, and your grandmother too. Can't forget her. Even if we infuse some much needed talent and hope, that is a talent and hope that will need to be nurtured. Maybe it will blossom in a couple of years, but in the meantime, well, you're just going to have to put up with a lot more ridiculous gibberish like this. I wish it were not so, but what can I say? This is just the way of things and I am merely a messenger.
WHAT I SAID BEFORE THE SEASON: GRADE: D+. I was prepared to go a little higher until I realized there is no depth and the left side of the line is probably going to be pretty awful.
FINAL THOUGHTS/GRADE: Well . . . the left side of the line was pretty awful, but then again so was the right side. On the other hand, the team was able to reduce its number of sacks taken from 52 the year before to 43, while the yards per carry average jumped from 3.8 to 4.0, so there was a little improvement, which looks even better when you realize the anarchy which gripped the line for much of the season. Still, they weren't very good. Kevin Smith struggled to find any room to run for much of the season and Matthew Stafford's Passion Play of a season didn't exactly inspire a whole lot of confidence in the line's ability to protect him. The lack of depth was apparent and harmful, and it all results in what I am going to call a nice round D.
Oh, one final note: I just realized that I forgot to do this whole last part for the receivers in my review of their season, but let's chalk that up to overwhelming grief on my part due to their sheer incompetence and just move on. Deal? Deal.
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