Last Week: 4-1-0
Season: 53-28-3
First of all, Happy New Year! I hope the entire holiday season was terrific for you and your loved ones. DIG IT: we have arrived at the end of the regular season. Still a couple playoff spots up for grabs and all but the top seeds remain like global geopolitics: unsettled. This column is gonna be chock full of jokes in that specifically cloying format, so like the Scar solo in The Lion King, be prepared.
When the NFL season was only 17 weeks long, it felt more than one week shorter than it is now. 18 weeks just seems long. I’m not complaining. I think part of a person’s mettle that football should test is their long-term physical endurance. Players should be like the MCU movie with Mickey Rourke: Iron Man Too! (If I got that title wrong I just wanna say in my defense I’ve only ever heard that particular movie’s title spoken aloud and I closed my eyes when the credits were playing in the theatre. And I never saw a poster or anything.) A longer schedule further separates the genuinely tough wheat from the flash-in-the-pan chaff. I think this is generally good.. but MAN. What a slog! And this is just from a guy who only casually writes about it. I’d imagine that for a player, actually playing a pro football season requires significantly more energy. I bet playing a whole season of football feels like the word you’d use when you’d give yourself a retroactive demonym after you moved away from the capitol of Texas: ex-Austin (exhaustin’).
I’m only gonna touch on it briefly, because like a ’96 Olympics chapeau, it’s old hat: the Lions got gooned by NFL referees yet again. And as Spider-Man would say if his vibration-based villain ever got cloned, here’s another shocker: the refs screwed us in a way that happened to favor the Cowboys (to the tune of turning a surefire L into an undeserved W) on what was apparently Cowboys night. I was watching the game with my Mom & Dad and I specifically told them in the first quarter, well before the chicanery in question transpired, “At some point tonight the Lions will have to overcome a completely ridiculous and unfair call. If we’re playing the ‘Boys or the Pack, there will be at least one time per game when we’re playing against their 11 and all the guys in stripes.” I purposefully said it in that long-winded way (I’m so rarely long-winded otherwise </s>) because I wanted them to remember it because I wanted the credit when it came true because I was FREAKING 100% SURE it would come true.
What makes this most recent of several dozen grave referee injustices more tolerable is how Motown Danny Soup (I’m trying to think of the clunkiest, least wieldy names for our coach) handled it. He barely even acknowledged anything had gone awry, he just said (paraphrasing), “We’re gonna get mad but we’re gonna make sure we get mad the right way — the productive way. And you’re gonna see us more pedal-to-the-metal than you ever have from now until whenever the season ends.” This is a small but positive change from regimes past. Other coaches would complain and even allude to “it always seems to happen to us”-level rhetoric, and we applauded it at the time because we preferred it to “thank you sir, may I have another?” But then ownership would also get involved. The late(s) William Clay and Martha Firestone Ford both slightly put their thumbs on that scale too and that immediately makes the whole organization look like whiners and losers. Campbell’s attitude is infinitely better, and I betcha this is the exact sort of productive, positive response to adversity that Hamp and Holmes envisioned when they chose Campbell. Just like blame for a terrible org ultimately lies at the feet of the owners, let’s give our top brass credit for a great season. They’re like root beer manufacturers in Reconstruction-Era Philadelphia: they made the right hires.
Which brings us to this week’s tilt (and our attitude concerning said tilt). The Vikes are starting Nick Mullens again. I’m not even sure if I spelled his name right there. I’m only 99% sure his first name is Nick! And honestly I don’t even care to check. A rare and profound sign of disrespectful apathy from your boy. Sorry Mullens, I just don’t see the point in wasting the calories required to commit your spelling to memory. You threw all over us last time, but that was when our pass deef in particular was having its roughest stretch of the season. We’re getting healthier in the secondary and on the D-Line, so I don’t expect a similar performance from Mullens. To be fair, I don’t expect him to throw four picks again either. And we needed those 4 picks to barely eke out the W two weeks ago. The distance between the Vikes and us isn’t as large as it feels at this exact moment. If Cousins was their QB this game would be a doozy.
But we’re not gonna turtle in Week 18. Come on. I have every expectation that we’re gonna give the Vikings our full effort. We might be a tiny bit banged up. Maybe no Jamo. But we’re only favored by 3? We’re favored by less points than we are games ahead of them in the standings? I don’t know. I don’t see us limping into the playoffs. I see us striving for a decisive, thorough, knife-sharpening victory and holding out hope that the late game results shoot us into what would be at that point our rightfully deserved #2 seed. Take the Lions! Lay the points. Enjoy the last game of what’s been a really gratifying ride. We all thought there was a chance the Leos would be good, but around mid-August the national media darling cycle flipped on ‘em and so many chuckleheads started to clown on our boys before the season started. But we ruined KC’s Super Bowl party. And then the wins stacked. We have a legit team. We have a chance. That’s all we ever wanted. Enjoy the last lap in this season’s nirvana.
OTHER WEEK 18 ULTIMATE DOOZERINOS
Bears (+3) @ Packers — Right here’s where I admit my love for the city of Chicago. So much fun. Great city. So many lifelong memories with cherished friends made in the terrific neighborhoods of Chicago. A small part of me wants to see their sports teams succeed if it’s of no cost to Detroit. If it’s to the detriment of the Packers, all the better. For real though I’m kinda stupefied by this line. I’ve seen both these teams play a pretty fair amount recently. The Bears are like hit singles from Britney and Kelly Clarkson: stronger. Bears win this one, and I’m officially worried about their challenge for divisional superiority next season. Gotta hope they totally biff their draft.
Texans (-1.5) @ Colts — This is a tough one to pick. Most of this week is tough to pick, really. The Texans are a cooler story and if league thumb on the scale is a real thing you gotta figure they want Stroud in the playoffs over Minshew. But Houston’s a lot like the interior decor in that weird guy’s mansion in that one episode of How To with John Wilson: banged up. I feel like Minshew and the home Colts are tailor-made to goof up this half-Cinderella story. But I’ve been SO wrong on my Houston picks all year long, so I’m Costanza-ing. IYKYK. My name is George, I’m unemployed and I live with my parents. The Texans are the pick!
Rams (+4) @ Niners — One team that feels good to bet on almost regardless of circumstance is the Niners. Bet on that infrastructure. Bet on their 2s looking to show out and cast a damning pallor over the Rams’s season. Bet on Shanny feeling like he’s a better coach than Seany Mac and being pissed he’s in the position of chasing his lesser, ring-wise. I like all these factors. You’re giving me the Niners and I only have to give up 4? Like I said, it feels good to bet on them regardless of circumstance. I’ll take the prospectors, which may be how I refer to the Niners from now on. I like that old SNL sketch (cut, never aired) where Will Ferrell is a prospector.
Bills (-2.5) @ Dolphins — It has happened so many years in a row it’s easy to take it for granted, but how great is it when game 256 is a winner-take-all or winner-take-most? Really such a fun way to punctuate the marathon spectacle that is an NFL season. Flex scheduling is just terrific. The Bills totally waxed Miami early in the season. And a big part of me wants to pick the Bills because of Curse of Lake Erie brotherhood. But I think this Miami team responds well to the ebbs of their season. McD has proved to me this season that he’s a completely masterful, world-class communicator. He just comes across as weird because his mannerisms are atypical (and largely inscrutable). I think he’s football’s more affable version of Rajon Rondo. A high-functioning savant, perhaps. I think the Dolphins win big in a revenge/statement game and set themselves up for a big playoff run.
That’s all for the regular season! What a journey. Thanks for reading these Previews and Picks columns all year. If you mail me all 17 UPCs from the previous columns with a self-addressed stamped envelope you’ll receive an “all 18 columns” sticker. Just a small token of our appreciation for your readership. In return, I ask each of you reading this to locate and stalk the physical location of major sports media on-camera personalities and/or executive producers. Tirelessly chase your quarry wherever they go in physical space while screaming as loudly as you can, “HEY! MY FRIEND MIKE HAS A WEBSITE WHERE HE MADE A FEW GREAT PICKS HOW ABOUT WE SET HIM UP WITH A RUNNING SEGMENT.” You don’t have to say exactly that, but get the general message across and keep repeating it non-stop until they eventually relent — shouldn’t take more than a few hours — at which point show them the website and tell them to email me. [email protected] I appreciate what I’m sure will be a yeoman’s effort in this task from all of you. Next week, we’re back here for playoff picks. Playoffs in which the Detroit Lions have a spot!!! A home game!!! Holy smokes!!! My friends, Auf Wiedersehen!
