The Detroit Lions Go for the Super Bowl
Well sure, the Red Wings fell flat on there keisters in the very first round of the playoffs. It happens to them every so often. And now their long time captain, Steve Yzerman, has retired and their best scorer, Shanahan, has moved on. Then they bring back “The Dominator” to play goal. Hope he doesn’t trip on one of his crutches and pull a groin. Meanwhile, the Pistons struggled to get to the third round of the playoffs where they promptly played flatter than a pancake. Then they let their heart and soul, Ben Wallace, get away to Chicago where he will likely challenge many of Michael Jordon’s scoring records. Hmmm. But the real surprise are the Tigers tearing up the league. I really don’t follow baseball anymore, but it is still fun to keep track of them to see how far they can go. And then there are the Lions, who for decades have been my favorite team of the four. How and the heck that happened I will never know. They haven’t won anything since before they invented hula hoops and the Ford Edsel was introduced. The Edsel curse? Hmmm. Kind of explains why they have been going in circles for nearly the last 50 years.
However, if you are a Lions fan, hope springs eternal once again. We say that every year here. With the other three teams having swept through their respective leagues, that momentum can’t help but propel the Lions all the way to the Super Bowl. Super Bowl? I gotta check the spelling on that. That is a word forbidden to enter into the Lion’s vocabulary. Around here we like to settle for the best practicing team in the league. During the regular season, the coaches have always raved about how super the team practices have been during the week. Too bad they burn themselves out before game day with all those hard practices. But not this year. We have the team to get it done. Momentum is on our side. The odds are in our favor. Venus is aligned with Mars in the house of Aquarius. Brett Favre has lost his touch and the Vikes have lost Dante. The Bears will be cursed as the result of the Bulls stealing the Fro. Everything is lining up for the Lions to go all the way.
Well maybe. Short of the reincarnation of Bobby Layne, the Lions continue to play quarterback roulette. Can Kitna save the kitty cats? Joey, the previous crowned savior, has moved on to where he will spend his afternoons playing with Dolphins. Do we have running backs you ask? Despite the efforts of the BBB (bring back Barry) alliance, he continues to evade capture. The guy we have now, Kevin Jones, gives us some hope. We pray daily that he can survive the season in one piece running behind the non-offensive line. And the receivers are all class guys. That’s where they keep their game, in the classroom. Running routes, catching the ball, running with the ball after a catch…it all works fine when the coach draws it up on the chalkboard. It would probably help if before the game, the coach would take some chalk and draw some routes out on the field. Then the Lions could pretend the field was one big chalkboard. Not like the usual gridiron, where they have a tendency to get flattened.
Then there is our picket-de-fense. Pick the opening you want, and run through the defense. Detroiter’s were shocked when the Lions broke their streak of picking receivers in the first round of the draft. We chose a linebacker this time. He is Ernie Sims and I dearly hope he is some distant relative of Billy Sims. He was another great running back in the early 1980’s. So perhaps Ernie can help our line backing since the guys we have get injured so often. Boss “Bailout” Baily to name one. There are a lot of new faces, many of them free agents. Hard to say how they will perform. It has all got to mesh together somehow. With an inexperienced new head coach, Rod Marinelli, and several new assistants, it should be a bit Marty Morninwhegish around town for a while. If Rod ever takes the wind instead of the ball in overtime, I swear I will move to Bolivia. Hopefully the west coast offense has slid into the Pacific. The Lions best play last year was the check down. I hope they were smart enough to incinerate that play-less book. With our guys sporting the worse record in football over the last five years, you have to be thinking that things will reverse. Wow, to have all four major league teams finish with the best records in one year, would be really something. So Lions, it is up to you to. Break from tradition and win a few. Go,go, silver and blue. It’s time for you to come through! Well I can only hope that the next “Fire Millen” rally never gets ignited.
