Why the Vikings will pillage the Lions...

Before I get to another diatribe on the Devil who wears #4, the unholy fruit of the blasphemous union of Beelzebub and Wrangler Jeans, let me first say some things about C. C. Brown.

I thought his name was Can't Cover Brown, but Sunday showed it's actually Can't Catch Brown. Whatever his name really stands for, he is a huge liability. He takes horrible angles, rarely covers anybody well and tackles for crap on most plays. He is a typical "big hit over solid tackle" guy and the worst part is when he's trying to lower the boom on a receiver, he's just as apt to miss or hit his teammate as he is to hit an opponent.

Brown should be taken out behind the huge practice facility and beaten senseless by six guys with pillowcases full of bars of soap.

The Lions secondary is awful in general, but C. C. is abysmal and needs to be sacrificed to the football gods for his inept play. Let Randy Phillips play, he's a rookie, at least he has a built in excuse.

The Devil Rises Again...

It doesn't matter that Sidney Rice and Percy Harvin are out and highly doubtful respectively. The Devil doesn't need receivers when he plays the Lions. It doesn't matter anyway, because the Lions don't have anybody that could cover them anyway...

When playing the Lions, a team he owns like a pimp owns prostitutes, Farve could throw the ball to shadows and still manage completions. I half expect the actual numbers painted on the grass to peel themselves off the turf and catch his passes and then struggle for at least an extra ten yards on every completion.

The Lions only hope against this abomination is The Kong. Or maybe Kyle VandenBosch. The demon must be slain. His ridiculous string of games played must be broken and desecrated. The defensive line must bury him and burn his foul bones.

Adrian Petersen.

In actuality, the Lions have always done a very respectable job of stopping Petersen, but with the missing wide outs issue currently happening in Viking land, the Vikings will be forced to lean even more heavily than normal on "All Day."

Petersen is a danger to score on any play and with the amount of rushes he is destined to get on Sunday, it'll only take two or three mental or physical breakdowns by the defensive line to provide a significant margin of victory for the purple ones.

The Williams Wall.

Sure Jahvid Best managed 78 yards on the ground last week, but more than half of that came on two runs. The Lions have not shown a consistent ability to make yardage on the ground and facing arguably the best defensive tackle pair in the game won't make it any easier.

The Kansas Kid.

Shaun Hill showed how poor his accuracy can be this last weekend. Until Stafford gets back, the quarterback play is a crapshoot.

Items of note for Sunday and beyond...

The Kansas Kid vs The Dark Lord

Let me paint a picture for you....

In a field of golden wheat, only a scant week or so from harvest time, a lazy wind wanders over the wheat stalks rolling like amber waves of...something. I'm not sure what. I think I've heard something like that somewhere before.

Anyway, in that field of rolling grain stands a man. Not an old man with too many years of riding the combine, nor a young man with stars in his eyes thinking about how some day he's going to shake the dirt of this town off his feet and see the world!

Nope, this guy standing in the Kansas wheat field, twirling a football in one hand as he looks off to the west, is roughly thirty years old. He's still got a few years left to realize his dream of becoming a Superbowl winning quarterback. But truthfully, he knows that his time is running out.

He's thrown a million footballs through hanging tires in his lifetime...

But right now, he just needs a job.

This journeyman didn't even start out with dreams of playing the NFL cathedrals on Sunday afternoons. He grew up as a basketball star, playing for his dad the coach. But he did play high school football. And he used that to play a little at the local junior college and he played well enough there that he got a full ride scholarship to an ACC school (Maryland).

He went undrafted though. He hadn't put up particularly brilliant numbers, but a guy who worked for the Minnesota Vikings (Scot Linehan) thought maybe he'd just give the guy a try out...let him throw the ball around the Metrodome for fun for a few days...send him home with a smile, some great stories, and maybe, if he's lucky, a signed jersey.

But that coach saw a little something in the Kansas basketball player and the Maryland QB managed to stick it out for a few years on the bottom of the Vikings roster.

But then there was a coaching change in Minnesota and the kid didn't have any kind of connections with the new staff...he was out on the road again.

This time he ended up in San Francisco with the hope of backing up a #1 overall pick in Alex Smith. A funny thing happened however, Smith never really played that well and the Kansas Kid had to step in and do mop up duties. He even managed to start a few games over the highly touted franchise quarterback.

A quarterback controversy bubbled up in the first year and then raged for another two years before the organization decided they were going to stop wasting the bajillions of dollars they'd given to Alex Smith and handed the starting job over to "star quarterback."

The Kansas Kid was out on the street again, but now he's thirty years old and the life of NFL quarterbacks after thirty is typically very, very short --unless you're the devil who wears the number 4.

But that old coach, the one who saw something in the Kansas Kid those so many years ago had gotten a new gig with this lowlife organization that hadn't won in 50 years....Linehan talked the Lions into trading a sixth round pick for the guy the forty-niners were going to toss on the trash heap.

And so, the Kansas Kid is once again backing up a #1 overall pick, but this time he's wiser. He's seen the writing on the wall and he's come to terms with it. He realizes now that even if he never is the MVP of the SuperBowl...backup NFL QB is a damn good paying job and he's more than happy to have it.

So he took up his clipboard and put those million passes through the hanging tire in the back of his mind.

But last week, The Franchize was disassembled by a fire breathing defensive end named Julius Peppers. That #1 overall pick may be a few weeks away from taking another snap. So the Kansas Kid puts down the clipboard, strings up the shoulder pads and picks up the old scratched and dented helmet.

It's time to play again for the Kansas Kid...

Meanwhile...

The Philadelphia Eagles team plane taxis the runway as the malevolent and dark one, Vick, leans back in his first class seat. Banished once already from the NFL for killing defenseless dogs in a sick and twisted form of sadist sport, Micheal Vick is getting a second chance at life.

He was supposed to be backing up the new "future of Philadelphia" in Kevin Kolb, but the new guy was pounded relentlessly against Green Bay the week before. So Vick gets a chance to take the reigns...

Sporting a darkened visor, black and foul as his soul, Vick will come into Ford Field and do battle against the dregs of the NFL, the Lions.

He claims to seek redemption. He claims that he has paid for his foulest sins, but there is no bleach strong enough to white wash the depths of evil from the man's soul.

Good vs Evil

I could break this game down by positions and talent levels, schemes versus schemes...but this battle, this legendary contest, is not about 34 defenses or 43 defenses, spread offenses or two tight end sets...this is return of the Kansas Kid, just looking for another chance at glory, against the Dark Lord of Evil...

Go Lions!!!! They're probably going to get killed...

Why the Lions can beat the Eagles...

Shaun Hill

Upon the pedastals of honor in my own personal hallowed halls of the Lions Hall of Fame, there is a high place of honor for a quarterback that was fondly known by both his teammates and his fans as "Brass."

I remember reading in the back pages of the Detroit Free Press sports section one early Summer morning in 1991--in those days, that was pretty much the only time you got Lions news was in the tiny "transactions" blurb buried in the back of the paper-- that the Lions had signed a quarterback named Erik Kramer. Personally, I never thought about it again until training camp, afterall the Lions had just drafted Andre Ware and had gotten the depressingly injury prone Rodney Peete just two years before. Kramer was camp fodder in my mind.

But Erik Kramer turned out to be special.

He beat out the #1 draft bust, Andre Ware, for the backup job that summer and then...as was per usual, Peete got injured, Kramer had to step in.

1991 was an incredible year and Kramer's role in it cannot go unheralded...

Which brings me to Shaun Hill. Kramer was an unheralded, undrafted nobody QB out of an ACC school (North Carolina St.). Hill is an unheralded, undrafted nobody QB out of an ACC School (Maryland).

Hill managed to beat out Alex Smith, another highly touted draft bust in San Francisco building a 10-6 starting record while with the Niners.

In other words, he has found ways to win, despite otherworldly talents. He doesn't possess a massive "throw it through the moon" arm. He doesn't run like a gazelle. He isn't "strong like moose." He's just a quarterback...a football player...who has found ways to win despite his shortcomings.

Jahvid Best will not be so excited this week...

Word on the street, after days of film review, is that Best played like a rookie against the Bears last Sunday. The going theory is that he was too excited and too eager, not letting running plays develop like he could have. He left yards on the field, by not allowing an extra beat or two before plunging head first into the holes provided.

I don't know how much I buy that, but I'm not a professional football coach and I don't have game film to watch...so, if Schwartz says so...

This should not be the case come Sunday. This week the Lions will need Best to break a few and return to the promising young running back stud everybody thought he was in training camp.

We're due...

Calvin Johnson made that catch against Chicago and the Lions were robbed of a victory. I'm looking for a slue of "make up calls" this week. If there is any justice there will be more than a couple "questionable" calls that will amazingly be called for Detroit...perhaps a few holding calls that the refs will miss, an offensive pass interference that is blatantly ignored.

I think it is very possible the Lions win this week, because for every reason on Earth but a faulty, vague and despicable rule the Lions DID win last week.