From Fontes to Patricia: An Ode to the Detroit Lions

*WATCH ON YOUTUBE* ... Kirk dives into his favorite sports team: the Detroit Lions, who are about to take on the San Francisco 49ers in their first NFC Championship game in 32 years. An organization marred by a lack of continuity and buried in futility, these Brand New Lions have everyone talking...and in this case, they've even got Kirk singing (a Lions-themed Neil Young parody).

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Transcript

What's up everybody. Today is Friday, January 26, 2024. Holy smokes. Look at my outfit. First off, if you're watching this,  it's football time. I can't believe I'm saying it. We're almost to the end of January and the Detroit Lions, our Detroit Lions,  are still playing  Meaningful games. I mean, they're still playing games.

Normally, they'd be in Acapulco right now working on their handicap  but here they are and holy smokes, it's been a fun ride and  You know, we've heard a lot of takes about this, especially if you're up here in the Michigan area, every reporter and every,  uh, celebrity, basically everyone's talking about the Lions.

That's cool. Uh, we're a hungry fan base. This has been, uh, just a, uh, organization just Buried in futility for a long time ownership that seemingly didn't really care about the product Fans that continue to support them even while putting out terrible products great players along the way of course Barry Sanders Calvin Johnson and tons of other players in between But that came here to try and get wins for this organization and left retired early, kind of at the top of their game in both cases.

And that just takes its toll on a fan base. And I don't want to sit here and say, this is great for the city, you know, but it is, it's good for the city. It's good for me personally. Um, and I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned by this lions team. First off, think about these rookies that are on this team.

There's four, four highly contributing players and even more. Uh, rickies that are playing occasionally as well, but there's four guys in Jameer Gibbs, Jack Campbell, Brian Branch and Sam Laporta for this complete impact players. Look, those guys have no baggage. They, you know, they're lumped in with the lions and they're sitting here breaking 32 year playoff drought, you know, records and things like that.

But this is their first year here. These guys don't know anything but NFL success. And what's the lesson to be learned there? Well,  how many of us are carrying around baggage that we really didn't create first off. And even if we were part of it, who cares? Move on, right? I mean, we can't dwell on it. And I was never one of those guys that talked about the SOL or the same old Lions, because I knew there was a rotating situation.

The rosters were changing. Fuck, for the, for the Lions, we're changing up coaches every couple of years, too. So disruptive. Um, terrible for the organization. But each new regime that came in and each new player that came in, either by draft or by free agency or what have you, Those guys aren't beholden to the baggage of the, the organization for the last 70 years or whatever it's been since we've been truly relevant.

And it just gets you thinking, you know, how do you apply that to yourself? Maybe your dad's an asshole or your, or maybe your family is made up of all assholes and you're carrying around their debts and you're carrying around their negative attitude. And maybe even owing some of the fines for what came before you, but fuck that  Brian branch came in, Jamir Gabes came in and they've came from an Alabama team.

That was a championship. They came here and now we're champs. And  I don't know. That's the lesson, right? Quit carrying around stuff that you are not responsible for. Okay.  Dan Orlovsky takes a snap runs directly out of the back of the end zone on his first play in the NFL, or at least in that game. And that season, um, takes immediate safety.

Lions end up going Oh, and 16 that year. That isn't fucking Jared Goff's problem. It wasn't Matt Stafford's problem. Wasn't even John Kitten's problem. That was a bad play by Dan Orlovsky, whatever, who cares?  But man, it's just been fun. I don't know. I, I,  like I was saying, I was never an SOL guy. Same a lion guy that said  I was because.

Until about halfway through last year, I kind of expected the Lions to find a way to lose and we all had that mentality and if you believe in manifestation or just general energy principles, if the whole fan base is sitting on pins and needles hoping they're not going to lose, you don't think the players are feeling that?

Um, of course they are, and About halfway through the year last year, I think it was the Buffalo Bills game, which Jessica and I went with a bunch of our friends on Thanksgiving Day, and we actually lost that game, but that just felt different, it just didn't, it felt like we had a team, and it felt like we had a group of guys that was separating itself from the baggage, from the same old Lions bullshit, and they changed my heart, and now to the point where I'm expecting that we win against San Francisco, um, Of course, they're a great team.

They've been a great team for a lot longer than the Lions have been, have been relevant, but I don't know. It's just that it's a mentality and it's a feeling, and I'm going to make sure that  I keep thinking positively. If a, if a ref makes a bad call, we can't get all negative about that. They feel the players feel that shit, stay positive.

And it's been fun. We're kind of playing with house money at this point. Anyway, we're playing deep into January. I'd love to win this game. I expect that we will, uh, but no matter what happens here down the, down the stretch. Thanks to the Lions and all the players and the organization and everyone for, for making this fun and making us kind of realize what,  you know, Pittsburgh and Boston and,  uh, Dallas fans have been feeling for a long time.

Frankly, you guys are spoiled.  Try it. Try 30 years of futility. Uh, if you want to pretend like you're a good fan. Okay. If you're still there after 30 years of futility. Then you're as good as the Lions fans. But hey, it's been great. I have so many memories from when I was a kid going to games. Uh, I think the first game I remember, and when I say I remember, really I remember a picture of us at this game,  but I remember being at the Silverdome.

I think we were playing the Colts. It was probably the late 80s. They were playing at the Silverdome at the time. And if you haven't been to the Silverdome, um, it's just cavernous. It's massive. There's no character to it whatsoever. Uh, you know, when it was still standing, but we, my dad had somehow landed tickets that were fourth row from the top.

I don't know how we pulled it off. Don't know how he pulled it off. It had to be a hot ticket in town, but holy shit, we were probably,  I don't know, 800 feet, a thousand feet from the game action. I felt like at least I felt like that you would see a big collision, like at the end of the first quarter, it would be halftime before you'd actually hear that thing.

That's how fucking far we were. It was just a different kind of experience. But of course. At the time it was dope. It was crazy. It was cool. Um, Barry Sanders, you know, came along shortly thereafter and that was a fun team for a while. Uh, then we got cocaine, Wayne fonts, who's comes from Bay city of all places, or at least has some history in Bay city.

Um,  that dude was just, I don't even think he wore a headset. I don't think he knew what the plays were or anything. He was kind of just like a figurehead and not even a very motivational one, but Hey, he got a lot of results. And after he left, we just, we just had a huge laundry list of just rehashes and just Just bad coaches, you know, bad coaches.

It was rough. Um, Steve Mariucci had been great somewhere else, couldn't, couldn't overcome the burdens of the Detroit organization and the lack of support he was getting from ownership, whatever. And then we had Rod Marinelli, who was like a Walmart greeter, but with less football knowledge. Um,  Who came after that?

Jim Schwartz. Hey, Jim Schwartz came in and actually did adjust the attitude. He was the first guy in my lifetime that I felt like, holy smokes, this guy is changing the culture here. Unfortunately, his culture tended to be criminal, you know, uh, he like tried to fight Jim Harbaugh in his first game.

Harbaugh and the Niners were running off the field. Watch what happens next. There's a quick handshake between Harbaugh and Jim Schwartz. Schwartz says something to him briefly and then this ensues. 

If you guys remember that and then, and Dominic and Sue and a bunch of those guys were just dirty kind of players. They were highly penalized, relatively undisciplined, but Hey, at least they were tough.  And he did get us in a position where I felt like this is an organization on the cost. We got Stafford.

Uh, we got Calvin Johnson and.  You know, our defense was coming around, Darius Slay and our DeAndre Levy. We had a good, we had a good team. Who's that, uh,  Ansa, Ezekiel Ansa, the African dude. He was, he was a beast out of nowhere, but yeah, that team had it. And then they brought in Jim Caldwell, who was, who was successful.

He got us into the playoffs, but those teams limped into the playoffs. Caldwell was great. I think the players loved him. He did have good results with us and throughout his career, but he wasn't necessarily  a highly, uh, motivational.  I'm not going to even say that because, you know, he was a, he is a black coach in the NFL.

So to a lot of folks, I'm sure that was highly inspirational. So good on him. Good for him, but he was not the guy. Uh, no, everyone kind of felt it, and when they got rid of him, they brought in Matt Patricia, the old pencil, um, and just a bad coach. He, the players did not like him. He tried to come in with a Bill Belichick discipline, but he's walking around carrying 150 extra pounds.

Like, why don't you get your fucking shit in order before you tell me how to live, right? And I'm not saying that you better, you have to be built like Dan Campbell to get respect from your locker room, but it helps.  You know, being a slob when you're not getting wins is not going to get anything there.

I'm not fat shaming. I just, that guy sucked. Um, what they did do though, that regime, including Bob Quinn, the GM at the time, who also came from the Patriots dynasty, you know, they did know how to draft offensive linemen and that's paying dividends now. I  mean, Taylor Decker and I believe Graham Glasgow originally, um, Frank Ragnow,  uh, maybe Jonah Jackson. 

Anyway, those guys did set the foundation that we ran him out of town. They sucked  It was brutal. I thought it was extra funny that this year when the Eagles were starting into their defensive down downfall They made an emergency move to make Matt Patricia the defensive coordinator And if you know the Lions history like I do and you know Patricia That kind of made you smile because it kind of felt like, all right, maybe the Eagles aren't to be worried about anymore in this playoff scene and they weren't.

They suck. Their defense was bad. Not all on Patricia, but I'm sure he didn't help pencil, whatever. Um, so then they bring in in 2021 Dan fucking Campbell. He was a former middling, you know, block first type tight end who spent some of his career in Detroit and in Dallas and other places, I believe. Uh, you know, I remembered him as a player.

He was cool. He was tough. He was awesome. Kind of seemed like a Southern wild man back then. He didn't really seem like a particularly cerebral guy, at least from the outside looking in with, by the way, I had a smaller understanding of. The world when I was, when I was making those opinions, but then he comes in, of course, he has his famous kneecap speech.

We're going to get up and on the way up, we're going to buy the kneecap off that kind of his pan. People make fun of it. I even kind of teased it to some degree, but I was willing to give this guy a chance. And lo and behold,  a year and a half in the dude has not won many games. I think there are four and 20 or something like that in the first 25 games, but.

Like I said, that Bill's game was right around the time where they started turning it on. And since then, they've won 22 out of 27 games, right? Is that what it is?  22 out of  28 games? That's crazy. That's gotta be the best record, um, since the midway point last year in the entire league. And you just feel it.

It's a culture shift. They, they're not the same team. They expect to win. They put in the work. They don't make excuses. They have each, they have each other's backs. They're accountable. They don't play the blame game. It's literally the opposite of what I see in your boy Donald Trump and when I say your boy, hopefully none of you listening, but hey, if you are listening, you do like him.

I still prefer that. Yes, but for that you listen, then you don't, but maybe reconsider your vote. But anyway, imagine a Dan Campbell versus a Donald Trump, uh, debate, right? And one guy is willing to take the blame and the other guy doesn't want to blame and it would end up just being Donald Trump blaming Dan Campbell.

And then it would probably devolve into, you know,  Dan Campbell just throwing that fucker off the stage, which I think  the only thing bigger than, than Dan Campbell, bringing a Superbowl Lombardi trophy home to Detroit would be him  picking up Donald Trump  and just tossing him into the crowd of a debate.

That would be fantastic. And, uh,  so I don't know, I don't want to get ahead of myself here.  But it's been fun back in the day when they were playing at the Silverdome and I have another memory here back in the day, there was a blackout policy in the NFL and maybe it still exists, by the way. I don't know.

But the blackout policy was any homes or addresses within 100 miles of the home stadium. If that home NFL game was not a sellout, then any houses 100 mile radius or whatever it was, could not see the game. And so, you know, I think. Seemingly to incentivize us to drive to the game. We're a hundred miles away, and we're, you know, in junior high.

So we're not gonna go to the game, we just wanna watch these guys. Seems like a bad business decision at the time. But anyway, there was a game when, uh, the Lions had not won a ga I think they were 0 8 to start the year. They were playing the Vikings, and it was a blackout.  And what do you do in a blackout?

Well, in the Ross family, you gather up your buddies. And you talk my parents into taking this down to the Ratzkeller, the rat, which is really a place, you know, for, for  cheap alcohol and, and cocaine consumption ultimately down the road. But, um, at the time it was just a place that had the direct TV NFL season ticket package or Sunday ticket package, whatever it was.

And we went and we're watching this game. It's filled with drunkards, the typical Ratzkeller clientele and.  First, it's funny thinking back, even that a bunch of kids that can't even drink go in there and maybe buy a basket of fries or something like Ratzkeller did not make much money off us that day. 

There were plenty of other people crushing drinks, making up for it. And  there's a couple of stories here. Number one, Charlie Batch was the quarterback at the time and he had been sacked multiple times and  he drops back on a play. They're getting their asses kicked at this point. It looks like they're not going to win.

And he drops back on a play and doesn't even have a single second really to consider what to do. He's immediately tackled on the blind side, sacked, uh, and this drunk guy stood up in front of us in front of the one kind of bad, poorly lit projector screen in the entire Rathskeller.  And he He stands up and he goes,  TRO DE BALL, BATCH!

1, 2, 3, TRO! And that's, that's a thing that my friends and I still talk about. You know, next time I see them, when the Lions come up, this will come up. And we'll just implore Charlie Batch to TRO. The ball on the kind of tree, right? Um, so that was great, but even better than that, at the end of the, at the end of the game, we were getting a big snowstorm during this whole thing to making it even harder for us to try and go drive down to the fucking Silverdome to see this.

Um, and we're getting a big snowstorm. So the entire game. The DirecTV Sunday ticket at the Rat Skeleter is kind of intermittent. It's like dropping out for a split second, color is going away at times, you know, it's kind of like shifting. You'll see like the, the sync NTSC sync lines happening and you're kind of, it's on the cusp the whole time that we're going to lose the  signal.

You know, maybe the Rat Skeleter didn't have a perfectly clear view of the Southeast sky or whatever it is, but it was threatening the whole time. And then the fourth quarter comes, we're mounting a comeback. Batch started throwing the ball even earlier than on the con of tree. The guy was, was firing it around.

We're mounting the comeback. We're, we can feel our first win of the season coming. It's the end. It's the last couple of plays and batch drops back. It looks like he's going to throw a perfect ball on the, uh, probably on the kind of tree or four and. As he winds up to toss, the feed goes completely black, and the entire crowd of the Rattsteller, you know, which was lubed up and ready to see a W.

Uh, just went nuts and when the game came back on 45 seconds later, we had, we had scored a touchdown and I think we were kicking the extra point to win or at least to put us in a position to win. And then there was a couple of plays, Dante Culpepper and Randy Moss came out. They couldn't make it happen and we won the game.

So that was a special day because not only did we hear about throwing the ball on tree, but we also.  Technically missed the first one of the season. Uh, and that's the kind of, you know, when you have a fan base as hungry and starved as, as the Detroit lions fan base, those are the memories you have growing up.

It's not, Oh, I remember seeing Franco Harris and Terry Bradshaw win back to back super bowls. And I met fucking  Tom Brady at a golf course and he was, you know, whatever. It's not that it's us. Remembering, uh, getting our first win and having to miss the play, uh, nine weeks into a season and remembering drunk guys yelling at, uh, eastern Michigan products trying to, uh, take an NFL franchise to the home.

It wasn't gonna happen. It wasn't gonna fly. But those are the things we remember. And because of that, our fan base is a little bit cooler than some, you know, I personally believe  like throwing batteries at Opposing players and stuff. That's just, let's never do that kind of stuff. That's something that spoiled fanbases do when they actually have to create their own negativity.

The Lions have had a lot, given us plenty of negativity to deal with. And now, let's just let this good times roll. Let's be happy about this. Let's fucking go to San Fran and win. I feel like we're gonna, and if we don't  I don't even want to put it out there.  What a fucking year. It's been super fun. I just winged this episode again.

I, I don't know. Hopefully I didn't ramble too much. But the only thing I really had planned  Is I do want to talk about Neil Young early in the year, right before the KC Detroit opener at Arrowhead, where the Lions kind of surprised the nation and knocked off a hobbled KC team on banner night. It was great.

It's a good start for the year. Show that we can win on the road, which should have come in handy this week. That. If you remember Honolulu Hype, it was a Neil Young parody all about  my feelings heading into the season, and it ended with the Lions hoisting the Lombardi Trophy, if you remember. Here, I'll play a clip of it right now.

Well, I dreamed I saw the Detroit Lions  win in Super Bowl LVIII  I dreamed I saw the Detroit Lions win in Super Bowl LVIII 

It's come true. It's pretty much come true. And so  now I kind of want to run it back. I want to do a reprisal of, uh, Neil Young. It's a new song.  This one is going to be based on from Hank to Hendricks. It's called from fonts to Patricia.  Okay. I'm going to play it on my piano. I'm actually going to dress up like Neil Young,  but on my cowboy hat, I'm going to kind of angry. 

By the way, I always liked Neil Young. He's super, uh, he supports the marginalized communities. You know, he, he, uh, 

He stands up for the little guy, and you may say, you're a middle aged white guy with a podcast. That's about as basic as it gets. Yeah, but I was a Neil Young fan. I am a Neil Young fan. And that's a marginalized group, you know, especially when you're a 12 year old boy. You know, nobody wants to hear Neil Young, so  You know, I'm not going to put the plight of the young Neil Young fan on,  on par with the transgender, you know, issues and things like that.

It's not quite the same, but  it's something. So, I'd appreciate it if, uh,  you'd give us Neil Young fans a chance,  give us the same opportunities that, you know.  A Bieber fan would get in this day and age or whatever, what have you. So, I'm going to play from Fonz to Patricia. 

I'm going to be sweating my ass off, by the way, from this outfit.  Okay. Just got to do a couple things and I'll be ready to go. 

From  Farns to Patricia,  I stayed rooting for you. I was this close to giving up, couldn't bring myself to.  So many new coaches,  it was an endless how.  So hard to believe in them  until Dan Campbell, 

who finally got it  together's, 

built a culture here through 

Sky Mitchell to met Stafford.  Sure. They both made me smile.  Now we're headed to the title game,  San Francisco style. 

I found myself thinking  why it felt so odd. 

Turns out we needed more. 

Finally got us a cubey one who takes care of the ball. 

Come as a cucumber,  plus he's pretty tall.  I'll turn it there. Plus he looks like a Ken doll. Gosselin. Sometimes it's Montgomery,  other times it's Jameer.  Sun, God, la Porta, or leave  with no tacklers near  defense getting better.  Finally, heading a stride  if the dues of branch in Cam  Hutch. 

This roster's so much better, younger, faster, and tough as nails. 

Plus they're gritty as fuck,  and gritty never  fails. 

Signing off from Canada, Neil Young. Go Lions! And go Argonauts. Alright, peace out everyone. That was fun, I don't know. I hope you enjoyed that. I sure did. Go Lions, have fun, drink that Kool Aid baby, support them, be nice,  and let's all take a page out of the Lions book.  You can only control yourself, you're not responsible for 30 years of futility, you're not responsible for your parents, or your family, or your friends bullshit, it's just you, and you can get up every day and be disciplined and do what you want to do, the way that Dan Campbell clearly has done throughout his life and that he's clearly motivated this team to do, it's fucking awesome, let's do it boys. 

Salute. Go Lions. Peace out, everybody.  This is a Stanley. I actually, uh, I murdered someone to get this from Target, actually. Salute.