[INTERIOR, STAGE WITH CLOSED CURTAIN. From offstage, muffled and slurred shouts are heard, mostly inaudible but include variations on “Not goin’ outthere!” and “You an whose army, cock-knocker?”]

[Eventually, REVEREND MAYHEM is shoved through the curtain and stumbles into frame, one hand clutching a bottle of brown liquid labeled “JJ Fozz & Spawn Original Recipe Baltimore Bourble.” After a final vicious epithet directed at the curtain, he turns to the audience and adjusts his battered and askew Carnac hat, only making it look more pathetic.]

Good evening, gentlemen and gentlewomen of the Commentariat.  It is my verrrry great honor and privilege to be presenting to you…this present…the present state of…

[looks down at something written in the palm of his hand, swaying slightly]

The Stand Up Straights and Don’t Slur!

[looks back down at hand, squinting this time]

No! The Detroit Lions! That’s who I’m here to tell you about. Lions. Big fuckers. Sharp teeth.

[looks blankly at audience, waiting for some sign of recognition]

You know, like this! [places two hooked fingers in front of his his mouth and mimes biting a gazelle. His face grows sullen and resentful at the lack of feedback]

Ignorant fucks. Wouldn’t know their Felidae if one bit them in the face…

[begins to giggle drunkenly once he realizes the joke. The curtain parts and an urgent whisper is heard from backstage]

No, you’re making a scene! I’m out here, trying to tell these lovely people about big cats despite their obvious educational and intellectual deficiencies, and you start yell-whispering at me about Detroit…

[looks back down at hand]

Detroit Lions. I’m supposed to talk about the Detroit Lions. Well that makes much more sense on a football-and-dick-joke-emporium such as this.

[swigs out of bottle, causing hat to fall off completely. He does not notice.]

So: the Detroit Lions. My old friends. The banes of my existence who are not garden gnomes.  A ceramic pox on those little guys.

The Detroit Lions are the inglorious bastards of the NFL right now. Not in that the lead characters both have ridiculous Southern accents; Matthew Stafford seems to have largely shaken his.  No, this is the more literal sense of the unplanned and uncelebrated.  The Lions were almost universally (including by yours untruly) picked as the dregs of the NFC North, largely because they were a warm bucket of horse piss in 2018 and made no significant moves in the off-season to indicate that they would be anything more than a somewhat cooler bucket of said horse piss. Fourier’s Law, you see. Equilibrium. Entropy. Whatever.

Aaaaanyway, the Lions opened the season with a performance that was totally in line with those deeply pessimistic expectations by tying the moldering-diaper-mountain Cardinals in Week 1.  Up 18 in the 4th quarter, Detroit managed to let rookie quarterback Kyler Murray and sub-rookie head koach Kliff Kingsbury back into the game and then managed only three points in overtime, largely due to defensive lapses, a general inability to run the ball and two lost fumbles.  Matt Stafford characterized it as a “[t]ough one to swallow,” which I invite you to make your own Fat Elvis joke about.

Then they went and beat King Laserface and Real Carson F.C.– who are/were popularly expected to contend for the AFC Wild Card–  through a fairly solid defensive effort, holding His Fertileness to 293 yards and an interception and the rushing game to 137 yards total. I attribute the win to the defense only because the offense was largely craptacular, with Stafford throwing two picks to go with his two touchdowns and the running game generating less than 100 yards.  Honestly, they should have lost this game if San Die…er, Los Angeles had bothered to hire a replacement kicker for the injured Michael Badgley instead of assuming that punter Ty Long could fill in on the cheap. That decision cost them 6 points and the game, when Long missed field goals from 39 and 40 yards.  Two Chargers touchdowns were nullified by penalties on one drive, which ended with Austin Ekeler’s freak fumble on the goal line. The bottom line is that Detroit was gifted a win against a clearly better team even on an off day.

The same held true in their next game, a 27-24 squeaker against the Philadelphia Iggles. The Lions’ offense was again putrid, with Stafford throwing for 201 yards and a team total 86 rushing yards- more than half of which came on a single run by J.D. McKissic. The defense forced three fumbles and recovered two of them.  The Eagles had something like seven dropped passes, not to mention a fumble on a catch that both killed a drive and resulted in  a Detroit field goal.  THIS NELSON AGHOLOR, I CALL HIM ROBERTO DURAN BECAUSE HE’S GOT HANDS OF STONE AND WANTS NO MAS. The only real excitement, besides Agholor inexplicably catching two touchdown passes, was a 100 yard kick return by the Lions’ Jamal Agnew. THIS JAMAL AGNEW, I CALL HIM SPIRO AGNEW BECAUSE HE TOOK KICKBACKS. I don’t know either, kids- I had to Wikipedia him for something resembling a joke.

But then the Lions were almost heroes this last weekend against the Chefs. They came in with that deeply-ambiguous, frankly misleading 2-0-1 record against the reigning People’s Champion and stuffed Patrick Mahomes in a locker. Well, as much of a locker as anyone has– Mahomes still threw for 315 yards, its just that he didn’t have any touchdowns for once.  What’s more amazing is they did it without cornerback Darius Slay, by far their best defender.  It was a deeply weird game, with five (5) fumbles lost in the third quarter alone- three by KC and two by the Lions.  The Detroit offense finally showed up, although that looked more like a further indictment of the inexplicably poor Kansas City defense rather than any reason for hope for the Lions.  At the end, the inevitable happened and Mahomes picked the Lions apart to set up a 1 yard touchdown run with 20 seconds left.

So here the Lions sit, with a 2-1-1 record that should by rights be 1-3.  On the one hand, I give the team credit for bucking expectations, and I credit the defense with keeping them in games– an odd sentiment given their late meltdown against Arizona and average yield of 23.8 points per game.

On the other hand, fuck these guys. I have a reputation for near-infallibility to maintain, and 5-11 is no longer a valid permutation.  Looking ahead, they have 2-3 cupcake games that they have no business losing despite their flukiness: Washington, the Raiders and Week 16 against a Broncos team likely led by Drew Lock and Mike Munchak.  Of course, the way things are going all that means is that they will lose two, tie one and inexplicably beat the Bears twice.

So where does this leave us?

[Bends down to grab the beaten-up Carnac hat and places it back on his head, looking like a sad, Bedazzled™ dildo]

I have consulted The Spirits of the Beyond, and they have told me to sod off.  I fucking give up. The Detroit Lions will finish the season 5-5-6, setting a record for ties and ruining things for the rest of us as we listen to Golic and Wingo try to puzzle their way through playoff seedings.   Kenny Golladay will retire in the middle of the third play of the Bucs game- he’ll be in the middle of running a post route and just…keep…going.  Matt Patricia will keep his job in spite of calling Martha Ford a slut, because she respects his “moxie”.  Shan’khlor help us, amen.