Optimism and Your Detroit Lions

Lions 21-34 Falcons

Ahhh, the new season is finally here. After all of the draft picks, free agent signings and philosophy changes we have a whole new edition of the Detroit Lions to blindly follow into the wilderness of the NFL once again. For Lions fans, it's the best time of the year because our optimism is at its peak. We can be nervous and on-edge while still enjoying the team we love without too much to think about. It's just us versus them and everybody's undefeated. It's Week #1 and time to once more turn over a new le --

Oh you're fucking kidding me. His first NFL pass? A touchdown? Just like that, 7-0? I couldn't even get through the fruity opening soliloquy without Matt Ryan coming face-to-face with his best case scenario? 1 for 1, 62 yards, 1 touchdown...this blows.

Wow. Guess we'll just have to shake that one off, huh? Can't do anything about it now, no matter how bad you want to hit the reset button this is the same shitty defence we have to live with year after year. 7-0 after 3 plays to a rookie QB is no way to start a season, but if it's a shootout they want, a shootout they can have. Calvin Johnson, Roy Williams, Jon Kitna, the emerging Kevin Sm --

Dammit! 14-0! There's no way, just no fucking way. This is supposed to be the worst team in the league. At least, they're the worst rated team in Madden so that has to count for something. New overrated QB, new head coach, Michael Turner as the running back....this team is supposed to suck. I can't believe we got our hopes up with this team and not even halfway through the first quarter of Game 1 the season feels like it's over. If we can't beat the Falc --

Son of a bitch, can I finish a damn sentence without them scoring? 21-0. In the first quarter. This has to be record for shortest time into a season that any team has given up on their season. There's no recovering from this. Not when you fail to show up against the former worst team in the league (that honor was shifted to Detroit after the first 10 minutes) and blow what was probably one of the first "must-win Week 1" games ever.

We needed this one and nobody on this sorry defence had it today. The tackling was attrocious. Pathetic. Embarassing. So terrible that I can't even pick a good enough descriptive word to settle on. Rod Marinelli must be some kind of fraud to pass himself as an NFL coach and not have his defense ready for fucking Game 1 of the season. 318 yards rushing for the Falcons: that says it all.

And for all of this talk of the running game, we saw all of 62 yards to hit back with. Although, after going down 3 touchdowns early running wasn't really the first option. Calvin Johnson had a fine game with 7 catches for 107 yards. Roy Williams had 3 catches and a great touchdown catch. That's about all there is to remark upon.

We Lions fans have this inexplicable quality about us that allows us to simultaneously hate and love this team at the same time. Equally inexplicable is our renewed optimism at the start of each season. We see success stories of other teams that have come from nothing and challenged for division and conference championships and think that could be us someday. But God this team sucks.

0 for 1. Go Lions.