Burn Them All

I’m in a belligerent mood. I don’t feel very articulate and I kind of just want to fight someone. So, if this is just a raving, incoherent mess, vaguely dumb, laced with epic amounts of testosterone then hey, that’s just the way it’s gotta be. Also, if I wander off half way through and start ranting at Jared Allen like Hulk Hogan, well . . . at least you’ll be prepared.

Anyway, fuck this. Fuck this. And by this, I kind of mean everything. My initial plan was to write some Morrisseyesque WHY ME LORD? screed that would have ended with me telling you not to worry because I’d just huff some ether but to hell with all that nonsense. I just want to see my Lions beat the shit out of the Vikings. Is that so wrong? Everything else can just go to hell.

Take everything that’s been said over the past couple of weeks, put it in a box, set that box on fire and then shoot it into the sun. The world is expecting us to grovel right now, to beg their forgiveness like bleating sheep because our football team has acted the fool the past couple of weeks but goddammit, after everything we’ve been through we don’t have to apologize for anything. I’m sick of feeling like I have to nod my head somberly just because Cris Collinsworth or Al Michaels or Troy Aikman is Tsk Tsking us (I would have included Joe Buck but it has become abundantly clear that Joe Buck just doesn’t give a fuck anymore. About anything. I’m pretty sure he saw some weird, heinous shit in the offseason, like he looked into the Ark of the Covenant and now all he has left is a nihilistic understanding that he and all that he cares about are just specks of dust on the pimple of the ass of a god that doesn’t even know he exists.) I’m sick of it. We all know what’s going on, we all know what has to change and that’s that.

We have been collectively shit on for so long that people don’t seem to understand that deep inside we are snarling wolves. We’ll play nice for a while but as soon as you start piling on, we’ll rip your fucking throat out and I think that’s where I am now, right at this moment, as a fan. My team is hilariously dumb and they have embarrassed me and themselves the last couple weeks, but they are still my team and everyone else can go to hell. I told you this would not be eloquent.

The last few weeks have felt like a slow maddening push from some cruel, bastard force, one which has driven us backwards, backwards, backwards, no matter how much we have tried to fight back. And we’ve spent all that time fighting back and fighting back and fighting back, desperate to avoid . . . well, the place we are now. But now we’re here, pressed up against a wall and there’s nowhere left for that fucking thing to push us and Ndamukong Suh just crashed a helicopter and then ate a white woman and Pat Robertson just went on the 700 Club to tell all his followers to spray us with Holy Water and to pay him $79.95 for a special “blessing” that would keep them safe from the blood soaked Detroit Lions and Jared Allen, that ignorant fuck, is hee-hawing his way through some shitty, hackneyed routine about Detroit and ENOUGH GODDAMMIT. Enough.

Nothing else matters now other than watching my team maul the Vikings. Everything else is irrelevant and stupid and debasing. The Lions have once again become some sort of lame joke, a shitty punchline on the lips of every smug asshole with even a passing interest in the NFL. This joke is different, though. It’s not laced with a sort of pathetic pity, the kind that we have grown all too used to, but rather with a smug sense of self-satisfaction, a lazy sort of condemnation which is both thoughtless and vicious. Neither sort of joke is funny. I’m not laughing. Fuck you.

Does Jared Allen think he’s the first son of a bitch to ever make a lazy ass joke about Detroit before? Shit, I make jokes about Detroit. But there is something particularly worthless and petty and pathetic about making jokes about Detroit when you know it’s okay to do it, when you know that everyone will Haw-haw and back your cowardly ass up just because it’s Open Season on the Lions and everything about them, including their city. Well, fuck you, Jared Allen, especially because your hillbilly ass is scuffling along in last place, taking cheap shots wherever you can, getting away with it just because nobody gives a fuck about you or the Vikings right now. If Jared Allen kicks a man in the balls, but no-one is around to see it, did it really happen? Apparently not, judging by his 0 game suspension.

But enough of all that. There is football to be played on Sunday, Lions football and no matter what anybody thinks right now, that’s worth something. Yeah, the last couple of weeks could have gone, uh, a little better, but shit, who the fuck do the Vikings think they are? Who the fuck do people think we are for that matter? Right now, it seems like everyone is laughing at us and saying how we just can’t get it done, all the while tonguing Tim Tebow’s anus like it was a fucking trumpet and they were Louis Armstrong. Well, here’s something you might have forgotten – before St. Tebow and his choir of angels started on their stairway to heaven, what happened? Yeah, that’s right, the Lions beat the shit out of them. Hell, they fucking embarrassed them. These Lions are still those Lions. Understand that.

The Lions are hurt. They’re angry. They’re embarrassed. And if they are worth anything in this world, now is the time when they will fight, when they will rip the throat out of whichever fool team is unlucky enough to wander in their path. Maybe the Lions are fatally flawed. Maybe they have now suffered one too many casualties on this Road to Redemption, but you know what? They’re not dead yet and you don’t fuck with a wounded lion unless you want your face torn off and eaten. So poke away, Jared Allen. Poke away.

Of course, I’m sure the Vikings are confident. I’m sure they’re telling themselves that they should have beaten the Lions earlier this season, and you know what? They probably should have. But they had their chance and they blew it. Now they have some child quarterback and a hurt Adrian Peterson dragging the dumpster fire that is their season into our home, into Ford Field, into Detroit, and the Lions are angry and carrying giant cans of gasoline to throw on that dumpster fire. You think the Lions don’t remember that game? You think the Lions don’t remember Jared Allen trying to kill Matthew Stafford? You think the Lions don’t understand what’s on the line here? The Vikings are playing for nothing. They just want the season to end. The Lions are playing to shut everyone the fuck up. At least for one week. Laugh at the Lions. Shit on them all you want. But right now the Lions are a playoff team – a goddamn playoff team – and the Vikings are just a collection of aimless shitheads drifting towards the welcoming arms of oblivion.

There is nothing left to talk about. Nothing left to say. There is just football, glorious football, and then when the Vikings are dead, we burn Oakland. And that's just the way it is.

Lions win.

Predicted Final Score: Lions 42, Vikings 17