I've begun blogging about the Lions with a series of articles under the "Ottoman Sports Empire" moniker.

You can check them out at the new Lions Fans Unite website.  The first one is about the way that great trade for Leigh Bodden is working out.

Listener David e-mailed this picture to me.  It's hard to argue with the logic . . .

The Lions are now 0-2 on the season, and fans are already shoving their own grandmothers out of the way to jump off the bandwagon.  But my question to all of the Lions “faithful” is simple -- why the heck were you on that wagon in the first place?  But maybe I shouldn't direct that question just to this team’s fans.  National pundits from ESPN to Street & Smiths to Sports Illustrated picked Detroit to be a surprise team this season, if not an outright playoff team.

The reasons I heard in the month before the season started were laughable at best.  Let’s re-visit a few, shall we?

 

With Favre gone, the Lions have the best QB and WR combo in
the NFC North.

I’ll tell you what, I COULD remind you that I predicted that Aaron Rodgers, Greg Jennings and Donald Driver would give Jon Kitna, Roy Williams and Calvin Johnson at least a run for their money, but for arguments sake I’ll give you that premise.  So what?!?  Every other team in the division is better at every other position group on the field.  You could put Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Lance Allworth in their prime on this team, and you know what?  They’d still lose more games then they win because you cannot build a winning team around one phase of the game.  Detroit’s offensive line and defensive line are like Swiss cheese.  Or to paraphrase the late great George Plimpton, they are Paper Mache Lions.  And you can try to convince yourself that there’s no way the secondary can be as bad as it was last year, but if you can’t get any pressure on guys making their first and second career starts respectively in Matt Ryan and Rodgers, even they will have time to pick you apart.

 

The Lions actually drafted for need this year, not just the dreaded “Best Player Available.”

Again, I’ll agree with that statement.  Detroit needed help on the offensive line, the linebacking corps, at running back and on the defensive line.  To this end they drafted tackle Gosder Cherilus, linebacker Jordan Dizon, running back Kevin Smith, and defensive linemen Andre Fluellen and Cliff Avril in the first 3 rounds of the draft.  Despite needing all of those guys to make an instant impact, only 2 of them have played in both games so far, and 2 of them haven’t even dressed on a Sunday yet.  I give Matt Millen credit for finally drafting for need, but apparently drafting positions you need doesn’t matter if you don’t draft players who can actually play.

The Lions were 4-0 in the preseason.  This team is learning how to win!

I love how much people put into the pre-season when it strengthens their argument.  If Detroit was 0-4, all of you would have said “It’s the preseason, it doesn’t matter.”  Well allow me to say this about the Lions perfect exhibition season -- it’s the preseason, it doesn’t matter.  Especially in this case.  Detroit’s starters (other than the offensive line) didn’t see more than 2 series in any of the 4 games.  They never had to bounce back from adversity, which is a big part of the NFL.  It’s not necessarily how you play, its how you play after something goes wrong, and Kitna and the others never had to play with their backs against the wall this pre-season.  All that 4-0 record meant was that Detroit’s third stringers are slightly better than the third stringers of the Giants, Bengals, Browns and Bills.  Well, congratulations.  That and $8.25 will get you a latte.

 

Which leads me to the best reason I heard why the Lions were going to be a playoff team . . .

 

They can’t possibly be as bad as they have been the last 8 years.

Yes.  Yes they can.  And I have 50 years of futility to use as evidence.

Just for you Lions fans I present . . .

THE CORNBREAD SAMURAI!!

Diesel found this, and i love it.  No idea WHY someone would make this, but enjoy.  And you KNOW these drops are going to be all over the radio station.

I don't like the rule . . . but by the letter of the law, Washington quarterback Jake Locker throwing the ball into the air over his head (you see it going up out of the shot at about :09, and on the replay from the other angle, you see it come down and hit him on the back of the helmet/ shoulder pads at about 1:40). 

I honestly don't believe that Locker meant it as an "in your face" moment against BYU.  I think he was just exuberant after the emotional score, and him turning to his teammates to celebrate before the ball even hits the ground confirms that in my mind.  But you can't expect the refs to be inside a player's head.  Especially after they (and the teams and coaches) were told before the seaosn that this would be a point of emphasis.

Awful rule . . . correct call.  And the Huskies could have made this a non-issue if they just hit the damn extra point.  35-yarder, sure, but still make-able.

Before I get into this, I want you to consider the source.  I don't like Jay Mariotti.  I think he's a blow hard who often says things just for effect.  And I also  don't respect sports media personalities who talk a bunch of crap, then never make themselves available to the players/ coaches they rip on because they never show their faces in the locker room.  There are a nubmer of them right here in Detroit, and the teams think they are jokes.  And I agree.

Anyway, Mariotti quit his job as a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times.  The biggest reason he gave was that newspaper are a dying medium, one of the few things he's said with which I agree.  Well, Deadspin seems to have come across the REAL reason he quit like a whiny little bitch.    Enjoy the mullett pic of Mariotti they had on their site, as well as the story below.  You can check out the original source fo the story by clicking here.



Details are beginning to trickle in on Jay Mariotti's sudden resignation from the Land of Newsprint, and it's pretty much what you would expect: Jay quitting in a hissy fit over a perceived slight. According to two reliable sources, Mariotti, just back from Beijing, wanted to write a column on Barack Obama. But it wasn't Jay's turn to write — it was Rick Telander's — and Telander also wanted to write on Obama. And we know how Mariotti feels about Rick. Sun-Times says no, Jay, wait your turn.

Here's Telander's column.

And so Mariotti, showing the maturity he's famous for, calmly assessed the situation and figured he was not going to let it bother him. Just kidding! He threw a fit worthy of a three-year-old. Then this bit of greatness: Mariotti resigned, and then headed to the Sun-Times office to tape his Around the Horn segment, only to find that his security pass had been deactivated while the paper was deciding whether or not to accept the resignation. They finally accepted it. Can't wait to tune in to see if Jay appears on ATH today from a local Starbucks.