The Boiling Point

"It's reached a decidedly wicked point in this Detroit Lions' season. The injuries have been absolutely unreal in their frequency and severity. The gut-wrenching win-blowing has turned into something that defies articulation. The excess of penalties, both absent-minded and unfairly officiated, have ruined the enjoyment of watching a team more talented than any I've seen in the last...good lord, since the '90's."

I wrote that an hour or two before the start of the game at Green Bay. I, like probably many other fans, had just about had it with this season. Everything was going wrong at a wicked pace, and then Green Bay comes rolling into town needing a win, and the Lions just were crippled by placing Kyle Vanden Bosch and Alphonso Smith on IR. It was bleak.

But the Lions punched their way to a win. For a change, it was the other team suffering miscues, injuries, and bad luck. And the Lions, God love 'em, held strong at the end when they could have choked it away like they've done for weeks. It was very gratifying.

I enjoy how Packer fans have been all whiny and emo and pathetic following this loss, saying it was luck on the Lions' part that Aaron Rodgers was knocked out of the game. A little lucky, yes, but while he was in he wasn't playing that well, and for the love of Spiced Meats, how lucky were the Packers going into this game? They needed a win, the Lions were decimated by injuries and brittle confidence, and things had just been going their way for quite some time. They need to suck it up and stop making excuses.

It was also nice to see the product of such extensive work by Martin Mayhew come through. The defensive line, minus KVB and with Cliff Avril having to leave again, was still spectacular; their depth is uncanny, and it truly does seem to be one of the better units in the league. This is what he should be able to do with the rest of the time.

Good grief, hope feels weird again.

"pivotal"

Yesterday whilst obsessively scanning the internet, I came across a preview on the Detroit News from Chris McCosky. In it he said the game today wasn't a must-win, nor was it simply winnable, but that it was "pivotal," which sounds bad ass and quite true.

It's hard not to think of this game as a must-win, though in this day and age every NFL game seems like a must-win. But with a team that has been (and is still in the process of being) built from less than the ground up expecting win may be fool-hearty. It's kinda like what Brian Billick said last week in one of his brief and few moments of clarity in his otherwise banal existence in football: this team was LESS than an expansion team a few years ago. Matt Millen raped and plundered a franchise, worse than any GM ever had before in the NFL, and left the Lions in worse shape than the Panthers, Jaguars, and Texans when they entered the league. The fact that Lions could have won any of the previous four games is a testament to how well Martin Mayhew and Jim Schwartz have done.

Two quick thoughts:

1) On the cover of the most recent Sports Illustrated is a picture of Charles Woodson flying through the air into the end zone against the Lions last week. For a brief and futile second I saw the picture and thought maybe, just maybe, SI was going to do a story on the resurrection of this Detroit franchise...but then I saw it was just another Packers story. Now, A) if Aaron Rodgers is being fawned over by every media outlet in sports, doesn't that make him overrated? and B) Why wouldn't SI write about the Lions? A culture is changing drastically in the NFL, and you'd think they'd want to be one of the first journalistic venues to highlight and predict success for the Lions.

2) Man, I still feel like a dope for every being discouraged by (read: delusionally, psychotically, adamantly against) the hiring of Martin Mayhew. I wanted Floyd Reese something fierce, and seeing how this chump from under the Worst Regime Of All Time Ever was hired made me want to explode. I even read how several NFL executives thought that Mayhew was a spectacular choice, a sharp man with drive and intelligence to burn, but it all rang hollow. Now, seeing all he's done? Good grief, he honestly might be one of the better GM's in the league. SI would be wise to do a feature on this guy.

Guy: "Your stones are how big?"

Mayhew: "This big."

Guy: "This big??"

Mayhew: "This f'ing big, man."