Who Knows?

I have no idea what’s going to happen in the game against the Cowboys on Sunday. None. I was talking to UpHere the other day and he mentioned that it felt like a game that the Lions could either win by 30 or lose by 30 and he’s absolutely right. Who fucking knows anymore? I have no expectations, no real hopes or dreams, just a morbid curiosity to see what will happen next.

This game will be telling, I think. Even more so than the Bills game. In hindsight, we should have known what was going to happen in that game. The Lions were utterly wrecked emotionally in the Jets game and they were starting the one armed man at quarterback. I actually feel kinda bad for Buffalo that they weren’t able to beat the Lions by 30. What happened was sadly inevitable, but I’m not sure it tells us much other than that the Lions were viciously hung-over following that brutal and cruel Jets game. Shit, these things happen, you know? Especially to us.

But the time for wandering on the sidelines humming Morrissey songs has ended. The season goes on, just as it always does, and you can’t just sit in your room in your fluffy pink bathrobe writing in your diary with the unicorn stickers on it and slitting your wrists and trying to overdose on those mysterious pills you found in your parents’ medicine cabinet that turn out to be your mom’s hormone pills or your dad’s boner pills. Teenagers! Amirite?

Ahem. Anyway, the point is, is that the Lions have to pull their shit together. Someone needs to ride up and down the sideline on a horse all game long and slap them in their dumb, placid faces with a dueling glove in order to get them fired up. Someone needs to stand on the Cowboys sideline with a huge placard showing them fucking the wives of all the Lions players in order to get their rage going. Someone needs to inject the team with horse steroids at the pregame meal. Someone needs to give them miniature shotguns that they can use during the game. – actually, that one is a bad idea since they would just turn it on themselves as soon as things started looking down. But someone has to do something to get these assholes moving in the right direction. I know losing sucks, and I know these dudes are just professional athletes playing for a paycheck and don’t really give a fuck either way so long as they get paid and then can go home and drown a gaggle of hookers in their hot tub and pee on a desperate stripper or two but shit, man, just . . . shit.

I know that’s not very eloquent, but I don’t care. I am too irritated for eloquence. It’s one thing to lose. It’s another to just say fuck it and embrace Lions Disease and to just lay on the field like Albert Haynesworth and shit yourself and wait for someone to show up to wash you with a rag on a stick like you’re some sort of obese, retarded zoo animal. If you lose because you’re no damn good, I can still at least respect that. It hurts my soul, but I can respect it. I can still get behind that shit. But if you lose because you become every miserable ass stereotype of a Detroit Lions player that there is, well then fuck that. I will get unruly and everyone will hate you and in our hearts and minds you will be dumped in the garbage bin of life next to Roy Williams.

And that’s why this game against the Cowboys will be telling. If the Lions come out and play hard, play like they actually give a fuck about being there, like they are still moving towards something – hell, anything, even if it’s just the promise of a ham sandwich after the game if they win – then I can get behind that shit and feel (relatively) good about where things are heading. But if they go out and wander around like God just shot their dog again and play like they’d rather be cleaning up Artie Lange’s bathroom after a 72 hour coke and whiskey binge, then shit, I’m gonna be pissed, you know? And not pissed in that “Awww, damn, I really wish we could get a win, but hey, things are comin’ along” way that I have been pissed throughout the last year and a half but pissed in that “Hey, fuck this bullshit, you thought me talking about Hope was wild, wait ‘til you get a load of this freaky shit” pissed.

So, yeah, even if this game feels meaningless, like some sort of cruel contest played in a dystopian future for the amusement of some terrible hell god, in reality this game might mean more than any other that’s been played this season. Look, I know that is hyperbolic as hell, and isn’t even remotely true on some levels, but on the level that I care about right now – the level upon which this team’s heart and character and grit and all that cheesy bullshit live – it’s very, very true.

We will learn a lot about our team this week, for good or for bad. I have this sinking feeling in my gut, a gnawing, clawing terrible feeling of dread that it will be bad. I hate this feeling but I don’t know if it’s real. I don’t know if this is because this is what is likely to happen or if I am just succumbing to The Fear again, the result of too many miserable ass seasons and a history of epic emotional torture which has robbed me of my senses and my ability to discern what is real and what are just malevolent devil spirits playing havoc on my poor, withered soul. I don’t know. I just don’t. All I can do is sit down on Sunday, hold my breath and hope for the best.

Obviously, the Lions are more than capable of winning this game. It was only a couple of weeks ago that everyone was all excited about how this team was playing and about where they were headed, and shit, at least some of that still has to be there, right? At least some of that has to be real, has to be concrete, has to be something that no one can take away from the Lions no matter how embarrassingly they lose or how heartbroken we all become. This is still the same team that whipped the shit out of the Rams a few weeks back.

Shaun Hill should be better this week with an extra week of practice and an extra week to give his poor, murdered arm a chance to be resurrected. He’ll be facing a Cowboys pass defense which has been a big bag of shit this season. Mike Jenkins, the Cowboys starting cornerback, has been particularly awful, and he’ll be the dude trying to cover St. Calvin, so if the Lions don’t utterly shit the bed emotionally, they should be able to have a lot of success there.

Forget about running the ball. Fuck it. That shit isn’t going to work the rest of the year so the Lions might as well just accept life as a passing team. Hopefully Hill will be sharper this week with the extra time to heal and practice, which will allow him to target Brandon Pettigrew and Tony Scheffler on short, safe routes that will take the place of the running game. Get that working and then find St. Calvin deep or Nate Burleson running over the middle after the Cowboys move their safeties up to account for Pettigrew and Scheffler. That should be the offensive game plan. Will it? The fuck if I know.

Defensively, the Lions have the ability to shut the Cowboys down. Tony Romo is dead after having one too many pins stuck in his voodoo doll by Jessica Simpson or one of the other painted whores he spurned in his role as America’s Cocksman. I apologize for the senseless misogyny on display there, but I just like the term “painted whores” for some reason, probably because I am just jealous because society would look down on a man like me leaving the house covered in garish makeup. Wait . . . did I just say that out loud?

Ahem. Anyway, Romo is out which means that our old friend Jon Kitna is in, and hey, fuck him, you know? That may be cruel and harsh and unfair and hey, He’s A Good Man, but I was soured on Good Men during those loathsome Marinelli years and also by that sweet talking man who promised me the world and then left me in a bathtub full of ice missing my kidneys and with a baby in my belly. Ricky Dale, you gotta little one out there, you sonofabitch! Don’t think you kin jus’ live the high life while me and yer baby boy are tryin’ to get by with no help from anyone but the lady from the welfare office and the nice old broad next door who watches the baby for free when I’m tryin’ to scare up some business in the alley behind the Costco. Even yer mama sent the baby a card on his birthday, and damn, I don’t gotta tell you that the five bucks she sent went to some good use. That was some good ass crank, and . . . I, uh . . . I have no idea what just happened there. I blacked out for a moment and when I awoke all that gibberish was on my computer screen. Frankly, I blame the Four Loko. For everything.

Okay, so where was I before whatever the hell that was happened? Oh yeah, Jon Kitna. Kitna can throw the ball around the field – we know this – but he is also a damn fool who will throw a billion interceptions. We really know this. The Lions defensive backs have shown a propensity for picking off passes at crucial times, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what swings the game in the Lions favor.

Of course, the Cowboys passing attack and Kitna are helped by the fact that Miles Austin is running around out there, making plays and kicking ass like he doesn’t understand that his team is a collection of worthless turds just out for a paycheck. We could use a dude like him, but he belongs to the Cowboys and the people of Dallas and not to us and that is that. And by “belongs to” I don’t mean in a slavey kind of way because that shit is wrong even though there are probably a lot of Cowboys fans who are legit racists who would be cool with that sort of thing.

But the Cowboys also have that cocksucker Roy Williams running around out there, and that may be a harsh adjective to throw out there, but for some reason Roy Williams is the living, breathing avatar of the term Lions Disease and so fuck him. We saw him waste away before our very eyes here in Detroit until he became a petulant black hole of loserdom who infected everything else around him and eventually caused our entire world to collapse. It’s good to see he’s turned things around in Dallas and infected them with his winning spirit, eh? Eh??? If I had a sarcasm button on my keyboard I would be mashing that fucking thing until my fingers bled.

But really, Roy Williams has helped to suck the life out of that team and that should only help us on Sunday, so, uh, thanks Roy. If indeed the story of our season is completely damned at the hands of Kitna and Williams, then . . . then . . . I don’t even know what in the fuck, you know? I just had a horrible chill travel up my spine, and unless it is the syphilis fucking with me again, I do believe that is because I cannot even imagine how terrible it would be to have what is left of my heart ripped out and stomped on by the successful teaming of Kitna and Roy Williams. Fuck that. That is too terrible to even contemplate. It is horrible and rage inducing. I kind of want to punch myself in the face for even thinking of it. Goddamn, just . . . Goddamn, you know? Still, I am a Lions fan, and I can already hear Fate laughing at me, and thus, this is probably the most likely outcome. If you’ll excuse me I need to go cryogenically freeze my tears so that I never forget them and why they exist.

Realistically, the Lions should be able to stop the Cowboys running game, largely because like the Lions, the Cowboys running game has basically ceased to exist this season, which is puzzling given that they have three very capable and talented backs in Marion Barber, Felix Jones and Tashard Choice. Who the fuck knows what it is wrong in Dallas? They finally harpooned Wade Phillips and then stripped him of his blubber which is now being used to power their new Megachurch of a stadium. Seriously, Jerry Jones is just sitting in the basement, half naked, laughing maniacally and shoveling piles of Wade Phillips’ blubber into a huge furnace. How else do you think they get that heretical scoreboard to work? That thing is so big it is an affront to God, the sort of thing that would cause The Big Dude In The Sky to split open the earth and swallow up Edward G. Robinson while Moses looks on all self-righteous as shit from the mountain top. Shit, maybe that explains the Cowboys problems this year. Who knows?

In any event, the Lions should be able to beat the Cowboys in just about every phase of the game. But, history is a horrible hell bitch, and history just laughed like a goddamn fiend when I wrote that last sentence. Like I said earlier, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t have a fucking clue. The Lions could win by 30 and everything will feel like it’s okay and we’re back on track and hey, look, a rainbow! Or the Lions could lose by 30 and then it’s Thunderdome time and I’m wearing the skin of a hobo and riding naked through the desert on a motorcycle made of bones and fueled by hatred. I just don’t know and neither do any of you. So, no predictions this week. I’m just going to sit down on Sunday with an open heart and hope that somehow it is not torn completely out of my chest by those assholes we know as History and Fate.