Detroit Lions Weblog

Ghoulish Garcia Drives a Stake through the Heart’s of Lion Fans

What in the hell is there to say? The Lions squandered a major opportunity yesterday, giving proof to the notion that this has been the WORST organization in the National Football League for 48 years and counting. Yesterday’s loss, obviously troubling, is indicative of the fact that team will remain in its same sorry state as long as ineptitude, Matt Millen’s performance as team president, is rewarded with five year contract extensions. Hierarchical organizations are evaluated from the top down to the bottom. Or to you use a holiday reference, you have to shoot a zombie in the head, not it’s feet in order to stop it.

The amazing thing with Sunday’s horror show is that you get the feeling that you were viewing the same epic story with a different cast of players subsituted into it’s constituent roles. Immediately, Jeff Garcia’s bone-headed “intentionally-grounded” pass could have been just as easily an errant Scott Mitchell lob, a Ty Detmer loft, or a Stoney Case disaster. Garcia waxed even more Mitchell-esque with his ill-advised scrambling pass when he threw across his body to Mike Williams, who was left standing there dumbfounded, ala ghosts of receivers past, Mikhail Ricks or Scotty Anderson. Most disappointing about that interception, was the overall lack of effort by Williams on the play. He didn’t come back to to the ball, allowing “Peanut” Tillman to jump the route. In that situation, Williams should have done everything within his power to disrupt the play, but instead was left standing just as aghast as Lion’s fans across America, who had their collective hearts ripped out straight through their throats.

If it wasn’t already clear, Jeff Garcia is not the answer at QB for the Lions. What is becoming even clearer, the Lions have wasted their last five or six first round draft picks and their team’s future after this season is dubious, at best. If any of the Lion’s highly-touted receivers, the “Ones” as they have been referred to, had half of the hunger or tenacity of the exciting journeymen WR Scottie Vines, the Lions may not be in this predicament. You can live with a lack of execution, no player is perfect. What is becoming patently obvious is that team suffers from a lack of effort, will ,or some other intangible substance that separates contenders from pretenders.

In my eyes, it is an indictment upon the coaching staff that they have not been able to nurture or draw from these qualities that may be within these individuals as players. Furthermore, the coaching staff has been a massive failure in the implementation of what skills and abilities these players do possess. Until that situation is rectified, this team will struggle to reach 6-10 by season’s end and Lions fans will suffer from the recapitulation of the organizational turmoil that has rotted this organization from the inside-out over the course of the last fifty years. What else is there to say?