Finally, we Detroit Lions fans have something to celebrate. Yes, Jason Hanson set two NFL Records for field goals from 50 yards or more. Yes, Calvin Johnson led the NFL in touchdown receptions this year. Oh, and perhaps you’ve already heard? The 2008 Detroit Lions are the first NFL team to finish a season with zero wins and sixteen losses.
I have to agree with my roommate (who usually knows nothing about football): watching the Lions lose today, for the 16th time this year, it was kind of like going to a funeral. It’s a celebration. Yet you don’t really feel like celebrating.
The Lions have been terrible for a long, long time. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been almost hoping to see the 0-16 record ever since our first huge blowout loss (for the record, that was Week 1 to the Falcons, when I lost twenty real dollars to the sports book at the Las Vegas Venetian). Ordinarily, fans don’t want to see their teams lose. But being a Lions fan is different. We’ve been so bad for so long, I feel like I’ve developed some odd coping strategies. Rooting for disaster, so that we’re not just bad but epically abysmal, seems kind of logical to me.
So right now, at this moment, when my team has reached a historic low that matches the worst performance for any team in any sport, I feel vindicated. Lions fans have for years talked about the inexcusable mistakes made by the front office. Things got so bad that a social movement sprung up years ago to fire Lions General Manager Matt Millen. The calls of outraged fans were finally heeded this year, but it was obviously too late.
I mean, we can go through about 5 years’ worth of failed draft picks, pathetic trades, and missed free agent opportunities. I could run through the key mistakes Millen made in 2007 that set us up for the ultimate fail (trading away Dre Bly and Shaun Rogers; letting Fernando Bryant go with no one good to replace him in the secondary; drafting offense before defense, etc etc). But none of this matters any more.
Looking to the future, the Lions are at best three years from being respectable. With any luck, we’ll actually finish within 5 games of .500 next year. It’s time to fire everyone and start over. That’s going to be a lot of hard work. And that’s what we have to look forward to.
As for today, it’s time to celebrate. This is the Lions’ 75th year as a team. It’s one for the history books.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Aristides // Dec 29, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I’m inclined to feel sorry for you guys, but as a Cowboys fan I look at you guys and see a team that can only go up from here. Which is, apparently, more than I can say for the Boys.
2 dragnet // Dec 29, 2008 at 6:44 pm
“It’s to fire everyone and start over.”
Yes, this is exactly what needs to happen—but it won’t. Clay Ford has already made it clear that most of the front 0ffice is staying. Fucking incredible. What Ford is not understanding is that the Lions are currently not an NFL-caliber organization. Like the auto industry, Kwame Kilpatrick and everything else in Detroit the only solution is to wipe everything out and start clean.
As a Bears fan, the Lions’ abysmal performance has been beneficial to us—we look forward to those two largely hassle free wins on a yearly basis. But as a proud supporter of NFC North football, yesterday was a day of sorrow.
3 Jay // Dec 29, 2008 at 7:38 pm
WCFord’s incompetence makes Al Davis look like he knows what he’s doing. My condolences.
4 Elrod // Dec 30, 2008 at 2:19 am
Just think, in 2003 the Detroit Tigers lost 119 games. Three years later they were in the World Series. Nobody thought they’d turn it around that fast.
Could it happen to the Lions?
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