The Detroit Lions aren’t just disappointing. They aren’t just frustrating. They aren’t even just embarrassingly predictable.
They are a black hole, an infinite and greedy fissure that sucks all the goodwill and hope in the “this-time-it-could-actually-be-us- universe” and never, ever, returns it.
That too much?
Well, the heart can only handle so much. But then it’s not my heart, it’s yours, and I’m guessing, as much as you want to quit this team and this franchise — as much as you want to quit the part of yourself that brings you back, year after year, to the same cautiously optimistic place when training camp begins — you can’t.
Or won’t.
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No matter how often you call your favorite radio host to tell them you’re done, no matter how often you email your favorite writer and tell them the same. It’s in your bones. And someone else — Mom? Dad? An uncle who sent a Lions’ onesie for the shower? — put it there.
That’s the real rub, right?
You didn’t choose this. You didn’t choose this life of unrequited love. Yet here you are, smiling when the new coach talks about kneecaps and grit, hoping, desperately and utterly, that this time things will be different.
But then that endearing man, that self-effacing man — that man who used to wear the uniform you were born with, that man who said from the start he felt your endless cycle of hope and pain — that man asked his offense to pick up nine yards on fourth down in the second quarter near midfield when your Lions were trailing by:
Six … points.
SIX POINTS!
Naturally, the Lions did not manage those nine yards. And if they’d fallen short and turned the ball over on downs and the Patriots had been given a break in field position well, that’s how it might have gone for every other franchise in the NFL.
Just not your team.
No, your quarterback, cast aside in Los Angeles but playing about as well as any quarterback in the league, took the snap, scrambled back and fumbled.
Though he didn’t just fumble. He fumbled in such a way that a New England defender was able to pick up the fumble and run untouched to the end zone.
Ball game. Season. Again.
About all you can say is that the leaves are still on the trees.
Oh, you could say more. Dan Campbell could say more, too, like that he wouldn’t go for it if he’d had to do it over. But he didn’t.
He said the comfort level for trying a field goal was too low. And that the strength of the team is the offense, especially the offensive line.
And that while he might have taken a couple of delay-of-game penalties and punted the ball “up in the air,” well, he didn’t.
At least he didn’t say he had more regrets.
A minor victory, I suppose, because the regrets have to stop. If they don’t, Campbell will be out of a job. Because there are only so many times the Lions head coach can step to the podium after a loss and say: “That’s on me.”
He did that again Sunday after the demolition in New England, suggesting he didn’t have his team ready to play. A cliché, to be sure. But it’s the truth — he didn’t.
Charisma and sincerity will buy almost anyone a little extra time in a job when they are flailing, but the NFL is a results business, like any other business, and Campbell isn’t getting results. No amount of “my bad” on repeat will change this.
At some point soon, he has to show progress in the win-loss column. It’s that simple. He also has to show progress in the Dan Campbell-can-manage-a-game column.
For the fourth time in five games, Campbell made a decision that put his team in a bad spot. Which is confounding for a coach that has such a good feel for his players.
Maybe punting instead of going for the fourth-and-9 wouldn’t have changed the direction — or the outcome — of the game. That’s fine; the offense couldn’t move the ball consistently enough.
Yet the confounding decisions must stop. The repetition of “it’s my fault” must stop. The “let’s try fourth-and-9 because I desperately want to win” must stop.
It’s fine to show confidence in your offense. It’s fine to show confidence in the analytics that suggest going for it. It’s fine to show confidence in yourself and to lead the league in fourth-down attempts.
“I’m a little more aggressive by nature,” Campbell said Monday.
That’s fine, too.
It’s also fine to take the safe play, the smart play, the wise play. And the wise play for a coach is often to accept the team they have and stop asking it to do things that are too risky.
Leave that part of this equation to you, the fan, to the one taking the risk with your heart every fall.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@shawnwindsor.