I both love and hate this time of the year in the NFL calendar. I love it because it feels like anything is possible, and with this sense of possibility comes an optimism which even the most downtrodden of us can grab and hold on to for dear life. This is the one time of the year when your team actually gets a chance to get better, and for Lions fans, that tiny window where we can actually imagine that we will somehow get lucky and end up with a T-Rex at defensive end and a pissed off werewolf at linebacker provides us with a rare opportunity to actually feel like things will be okay. Eventually, that window will close, the roster will be set and cold reality will slap us in the face when we realize we have no cornerbacks and our combined record over the past two seasons is 2-30, but for now, anything seems possible. There are free agents crawling all over the streets, just about everyone is rumored to be on the trading block and the NFL Draft is coming up and we can allow ourselves to imagine that in the 7th round we will draft the mutant offspring of Hercules and a vampire ape who will lead us to glory.
But that also is kind of why I hate this time of year. We are so desperate for something good to happen that we all become like a bunch of single women in our late 30's, clinging desperately to any possibility because Goddamn it, WE NEED A MAN. Our biological clock is ticking and so when some drunken loser comes stumbling out of an alley, all hunched over and reeking of piss and failure, we jump all over him and beg him to marry us. It's obscene and completely undignified, but this is what years of failure have wrought.
Every time some team shitcans some marginal player, we get all excited and start imagining scenarios in which that player ends up being the missing link that will take us to the Super Bowl. It's ridiculous. Look, I understand that we need to build a solid foundation and that takes a lot of little moves that don't seem like that big a deal at the time. I am good with this. Really, I am. But just because some other team has an extra offensive tackle doesn't mean we should give up a second round pick for him and then trade away Gosder Cherilus and lynch Jeff Backus. It's a bunch of crazy reactionary bullshit and while it's sometimes hilarious, at other times it veers into the absurd.
Apparently, it's been rumored that the Bears are about to toss Alex Brown on the scrapheap. The immediate reaction from Lions fans is to sell the first born child of every citizen into slavery so we could buy Brown a giant gold statue and a house made out of platinum in the hopes that we could lure him here. The second reaction is to take Cliff Avril out behind a shed and shoot him. Never mind that Avril is younger than Brown and that as a pass rusher, his future is probably brighter, Brown is the unknown, and we are getting older and we still don't have a ring on our finger. Christ. We are only days away from a story coming out about a Lions fan caught in the middle of the street wearing an old wedding dress, sobbing and holding a mop and calling it baby, aren't we?
I am all for excitement and hope and improvement and all those fun buzzwords, but there has to be some reason behind it, right? I mean, we can't constantly be looking through other people's dumpsters in the hopes that we will find a half eaten piece of pizza when we have a perfectly good box of ramen back home. Sure, that shit gets old, and we want better someday, but we're not going to find a lobster in that dumpster. Besides, I am a vegetarian and I won't eat it anyway. What does that have to do with anything? Nothing, but what the hell, everyone else is ranting and raving and carrying on without reason, so why not me?
This is not a shot at any one person, or even a condemnation really. I mean, I get it. I do. Believe me. If anyone understands the delirium and crazy mood swings that come with being a Lions fan, it's me. We are crazy creatures, wild beasts who don't know how to behave ourselves because we have been degraded and beaten to the point of wild lawlessness. We are feral and we do not know how to control ourselves and so all this is to be expected. But, please, we are still technically human, and with that in mind, let's try to embrace at least a semblance of that sweet little thing called reason. It's still there, somewhere, and while it may be utterly ridiculous for me of all people to urge us to be reasonable, this is sadly just a sign of these strange and terrible times. My voice may be wild and my brain may be strange, but my heart is true, it is honest, and it only speaks the truth. And the truth, dear friends, is that we need to get our shit together and stop falling to our knees every time some crackhead tells us we look pretty. Come on, we're better than that, even if the brutal vagaries of history have made us forget this. We may not be the prettiest girls, but Goddamn it, we are still worth loving and we deserve better.
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