Aaron Berry And Why It Matters To The Lions
By: Eric Thomas
Maybe they should just avoid cars. That would be a start. For members of the Detroit Lions football team, cars are not friends. The list became exhaustive this season and Aaron Berry is just the latest. The Lions can't get past the second round of the playoffs, but the roster that can close a bar.
You will find no judgment in the following paragraphs. If you think this a series of letters that add up to a wagging finger you will find nothing of the sort. I don't care. Thousands of people have been killed by drunk drivers, but thousands more have been killed by sober drivers, texting drivers, and elderly drivers. The roads are a crap shoot and everyone who gets behind the wheel bellies up.
Cue the parents who rue today because they have to explain this to their children. I am so tired of hearing that song and dance. Use it as a teaching moment. Talk about how good people make bad decisions. If you didn't want to have a conversation with a child, you probably shouldn't have had them. I know parents who like talking to their kids.
Let's just talk about how this affects the team. The team will open the season decimated by suspensions. I cling to a Pollyanna belief that there will be no more, but that just isn't the reality. At this rate, there will probably be two or three more. Perhaps Jim Schwartz can move the start of training camp up a couple of weeks. Maybe we need to explain to the Lions players other places in the country actually have staffed police departments. It's not Blade Runner everywhere.
If they get 12 wins than nobody is going to care about this off season. But if they win 8 the off season will be the reason. This a really bad sign for a team that looked like it was finally waking up from a decade we would all rather forget. The problem isn't really the arrests. The problem is that when teams start getting arrested, that has never, ever translated into wins. The early 90s Cowboys started falling down when they started getting arrested.
Let me tell you about another organization called the Cincinnati Bengals. They were a hapless organization. Still are. Many people called them the Bungles. For the decades after Boomer left, they occupied the basement of the NFL. Often, they were the worst pro team in Ohio and that is saying something. They endured decades of bad draft picks, even a quarterback that was promised for stardom and turned out to be a giant bust. Then they got the chance to draft a quarterback first overall. They got a defensive minded coach. They got incrementally better. Then they put it all together. They slay-ed the demons of their past, won 11 games and got into the playoffs. They lost in the first round, but everyone saw it as a temporary setback. The Bengals had arrived in the NFL and there was nothing that could change that.
Then they started getting arrested. A lot. Chris Henry, Odell Thurmon and a dizzying list of players found themselves bound in the off season. The team never recovered. They went from being the next team in line to posing for mug shots. The 11 win season in 2006 was listed as an anomaly and the Bengals never lived up to the promise they showed. Carson Palmer plays for the Raiders and Chad Johnson was known as OchoStinko in Boston.
I don't really care about the arrests. I never participated in the wails of the moral or engaged in demagoguery. I just point out that the Lions must do everything they can to not be the Bengals circa 2006. There are ghosts of that team all over this one. If the team wins no one cares but when you see every single symptom of a disease, it's a pretty good indication you have it. The Lions have Bengals-it is and that would be too bad for a fan base that was finally beginning to believe.
I watched every single game of the 2008 Lions season as a fan so I am begging the team to pull it together. The uncoiled joy of a 10 win season can't be an anomaly. I understand that it can't happen every year, but the Lions look poised for a mighty collapse.
Right now, all signs point to disaster and Aaron Berry is only the latest in the list of evidence. You can't keep getting arrested and suspended. Maybe you could in the past but you can't now. The Lions need to pull this problem together or risk collapsing into the sucking void that they spent the past decade wallowing in. Can Jim Schwartz stop the bleeding? I don't know. He certainly hasn't yet.
