Hot Taek: The Detroit Lions are perhaps the most consistently DFO Team in the league. Why?

1. Schadenfreude. They jettisoned Jim Caldwell for the sin of going 9-7 in consecutive years.

At that point, they hired Matt Patricia from the Patriots.  Bob Quinn had been hired from the Greatriots in 2016 and the Lions committed to becoming Patriots West.  Remember how well that turned out for the Scott Pioli-Charlie Weiss-Matt Cassel Chiefs? No one in Detroit did! Since Jim Caldwell’s last 9-7 season, the team has gone 9-22-1, making a series of ill-advised trades and other personnel moves in a spastic attempt to replicate NE’s success.  Hint: you can’t do it when you have to count all of your star quarterback’s salary against the salary cap.  Watching them try and fail to win The Patriot Way is a source of great amusement for us Patriot Haterz (read: all decent and God-fearing people).

2.     They validate the pessimism with which most of us approach our teams.

DFO Poet Posthumous George Carlin said “Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.”  Which is the personality profile of 99% of the degenerates, assholes, magnificent bastards and high-powered mutants who populate this site.  We want to believe. We desperately want the childlike validation that we live in a Just World and that Our Team just might pull it off this year.

We also have a deep-seated conviction that we will get pimp-slapped by the Universe if we actually allow ourselves to hope. So we take refuge in the negative, feeling that if we are prepared for suckitude we will not be disappointed.

I haven’t done the math, but I’m betting if we total up the win-loss predictions from all the Team Previews, the league as a whole would somehow have a .375 winning percentage.  That’s kind of messed up.  Is there an equivalent of antidepressants for an internet site?

Almost every year, there is something about the Lions to like.  Maybe they’ve got an intimidating defensive front (remember the Nick Fairley-Ndamukong Suh-Cliff Avril/Ziggy Ansah years?) or maybe they have the greatest receiver of his generation at the prime of his career.  Much as it pains me to admit, every year you have Fat Elvis Stafford at quarterback you have a puncher’s chance of making noise on offense.  Or last year, when Kenny “Doc” Golladay, Kerryon “My Wayward Son” Johnson, Marvin “Oh Man, I Shot Marvin in the Face” Jones and T.J. “I’m From Iowa!” Hockenson provided Stafford with one of his most complete supporting casts of his career.  Maybe this year is The Year!!!

But it’s never The Year.  They have made the playoffs 3 times since “hanging chads” entered the popular lexicon.  They bombed out immediately. They haven’t won a playoff game since 1991, which itself was the first win of the Post-Merger Era.  They are a joke. A farce. The Keystone Cops of the NFL.  They were the laughingstock of the league when they drafted fifty first-round receivers and still managed to break the 0-16 barrier.  They have since been overtaken by the Browns (overall incompetence) and Former Redacteds (sheer organizational dysfunction), but they maintain the NFL crown for doing the Least with the Most.

The Lions sucked badly last year.  They sucked so badly that my own pessimistic prediction:

was actually TOO POSITIVE.  To remind you:

5-11, last in the NFC North, Matt Patricia fired after Week 15 after he calls Martha Ford a slut.

In reality, they went 3-12-1 and neither Patricia nor Bob Quinn was fired.  They are Football Failsons; obviously and openly incompetent, but protected because they are 1. young(ish), 2. white and 3. part of the Patriots family tree.  I actually pity Detroit fans, having to watch the corpse of your franchise fished out of the water over and over only for the Ford family to say “Maybe if we tied it to a bigger rock, it would fly.”

Ok. Enough of that. Time for some Real Analysis.

Matthew Stafford is still Matthew Stafford, but more broken.  Last year his 136-game starting streak (dating back to 2011) was broken, because his spine was…uh…broken.  Non-displaced fractures in his upper thoracic spine.  Wikipedia informs me that this is essentially between the shoulder blades, which seems like a bad place for a quarterback.  Further reading suggest these were not fractures in the structural-spine-bits (technical term), but the bony projections and that he apparently played through such fractures in at least one prior season. Ok, respect for Fat Elvis, that sounds miserable.  He was actually having a great season before he went down and missed the second half of the season- 19 TDs and 5 INTs in 8 games, on pace to beat his best season (2011, when he threw for 5000 yards and 41 touchdowns).  The Lions were 3-3-1 when he went down, then lost every other game of the season.  Rumor has it that Stafford looks pretty decent coming into his Age 32 season, although Stafford doesn’t usually string together consecutive outstanding seasons.

After clarifying the running back situation last year by anointing Kerryon Johnson as Lead Back, the Lions are back to a committee.  Johnson also only played 8 games last year, racking up 503 total yards and 4 touchdowns, after losing a number of games in 2018 to injury.  Detroit therefore spent a precious second-round pick on D’Andre Swift, likely because “Swift” is a great running back name.  In true Lions fashion, Swift promptly got an “upper leg” injury and missed several weeks of practice.  Normally, this would not be a big deal for a running back- the reason so many rookie running backs have great success compared with other rookies is that most schemes make it a less technically-demanding position to learn.  But a big part of Swift’s game is pass catching, which requires both route running and pass protection skills if you’re in on passing downs.  Both of THOSE things take time and repetition to learn.

Wide receiver looks to be the strength of the team, with the top three (Golladay, Jones and Danny Amendola) returning.  They also lead the league in Marvins, having a surprise deep threat in Marvin Hall, a career journeyman who averaged 37 yards per catch before injury took him too.  Unfortunately for Hall and fantasy players, that 37 ypc were on only 7 catches.  Statistics will lie to you, my friends.  TJ Hockenson rounds out the regular pass catchers.  Depending on who you ask, Hockenson is either poised to make the Second Year Tight End Leap Forward and become a star after a disappointing first season or will join Brandon Pettigrew and Eric Ebron in the list of First Round Tight End Careers Killed by The Lions.

The O-Line is in flux, having lost well-regarded right guard (and possible used car salesman) Graham Glasgow and less-well-regarded-but-possibly-his-sales-manager Rick Wagner to free agency.  They did invest heavily in their tackles, having re-signed left tackle Taylor Decker and recruited notorious vowel-hoarder Halapoulivaati Vaitai from the Iggles.  Their center remains master plumber Frank Ragnow.

Their defense was a fucking disgrace last year, which makes it doubly amazing that Defensive Mastermind Matt Patricia kept his job.  They were in the bottom third of the league in essentially every major defensive category, thanks largely to a back-seven (linebackers and defensive backs) unit that scrapes the bottom of nearly every column.  New England castoff Trey Flowers and three-time Pro Bowler Darius Slay were the only consistent players, and they shipped Slay off to Philly for third and fifth round picks.  Slay had played the good soldier for a long time, but when the team inexplicably (or maybe not inexplicably-see below) shipped his best friend and eventual Pro Bowl alternate safety Quandre Diggs to Seattle for a fifth round pick, the dam burst and Slay let it be known he needed out.  To replace this bounty of young Pro Bowl talent, the Lions spent the third overall pick on Jeff Okudah and signed the faint echo of Desmond Trufant for 2 years at $20 million.  Trufant had 4 interceptions in only 9 games for Atlanta, after missing games due to turf toe and a broken forearm.  This is either very encouraging or an indication that giving a lot of money to a 30 year old corner who depended largely on blazing quickness is a terrible idea.  This is a Lions Decision, so it’s probably the latter.

Speaking of Lions Decisions, Patricia and Quinn have gone all-in on their Collect All The Patriots The Patriots Didn’t Want strategy to try and improve their defense.  Former Patriot Danny Shelton is now the keystone of their defensive interior.  Two-time Patriot Jamie Collins is now their linebacking centerpiece, while the Lions traded the fifth round pick they got for Diggs to (you guessed it) the Patriots for perennial backup safety Duron Harmon.  It’s like the John Frum movements after World War 2, building symbolic airstrips in the middle of the Pacific believing it would make the airplanes come back. This can only turn out well.

Darrell Bevell is back.  Bevell’s 2019 doesn’t look tragic on paper, especially in light of the injuries to Stafford and Johnson.  Top 10 in a lot of passing categories.  On the other hand, fuck Darrell Bevell. If you and Big Pete hadn’t decided to play favorites and try to make Russell Wilson the Guy on the Wheaties Box, the Patriots are 5-4 (at best) in Super Bowls.

Defensive coordinator Paul Pasquiloni “stepped away” from his position after the season, after a lot of Patriots-style cloak-and-dagger shit about whether he or Patricia was calling plays.  Whoever was calling them, they didn’t fucking work.  Cory Undlin, who (surprise!) got his start with the Patriots, was hired as DC after four years coaching the Eagles’ defensive backs. He’s never called plays before, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s not really calling them now. Or maybe that’s just what they WANT you to think…

Because that’s what it comes down to: Quinn and Patricia trying to replicate the Patriot Way without apparently understanding the three primary pillars thereof:

1. A brilliant coach who excels at planning and mid-game adjustments
2. A willingness to shamelessly cheat to gain every advantage, from video surveillance to ball deflation to intercepting and jamming opposing teams’ communications and exploiting the league office’s extra-cozy relationship with the owner.
3. A quarterback who is brilliant, accurate, willing to take money under the table to preserve salary cap space, and had access to the finest performance-enhancing drugs.

The Lions lack 1 and 3, and are apparently not competent enough at 2 to make an impact.

Patricia is playing dress-up, trying desperately to make people believe he is Heir to Darth Hoodie.   In addition to bringing in a bunch of former Patriots and expecting them to magically replicate their success, he’s trying to replicate The Gruff One’s demand of lock-step obedience without the success to back it up.  Diggs’ ticket out of town was apparently punched because the team wanted to “control voices in the locker room.” So in order to enforce total control, the Lions literally swapped a young Pro Bowl team captain who had signed a relatively team-friendly contract for a 29 year-old career backup in the last year of his deal.  In doing this, they also alienate their young All-Pro corner to the extent that he demands out of town and get a relative pittance in the deal. So they spent a lot of money and a solid-gold draft pick to get somewhat worse at a position of weakness. What can possibly be keeping them from success??????

I weep for you, Detroit.  Like the GOP, the shitty and uncaring organization you fell in love with has become a maniac death cult run by the demented, the deranged and the delusional.  And like the GOP, hopefully your shitty-ass fuckwit leadership gets fired into the Sun in early November.

And in that, perhaps the Lions are not just DFO’s Team, but America’s Team.

PREDICTION:

1-1-14.  It’s gonna be a weird fucking year for everyone, so buckle up, Buttercup.