Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Dearborn RIP - Pope Marinelli

Nobsnubber - glad you explained the origin of the choo-choo Jokes on M-live (and here). I like to throw comedy in, and he had a heck of a wit. I looked through my files and found a post he made last July. It rightly summed up the sentiment of many fans about how the Lions would do -- and really highlights how high above expectations they performed last season, when all was said and done. So an after-St.Patty's-Day Pint in honor of Dearborn, and his sharp, creative wit. You are missed.

"Just imagine if Rod Marinelli starred in Liar Liar and had to be totally honest at a press conference:

Q: How do you think the Lions will do this year?
Marinelli: Look, we were lucky to go 3-13 last year, and my best defensive lineman is about to get suspended for mishandling a stripper...How do you even do that? My GM rides a short bus to Ford Field, finger paints with his own poop, and likes to draft receivers because he says "Dey run fast like choo choo!!!" In two years I've tried every offensive lineman outside of Norm from Cheers and they still get pushed around more than all the shopping carts at WalMart combined.
Worse, my best running back is barely able to jog, I can't find a return man, my defensive coordinator has never defensively coordinated a game in his life, and I can't fire him if he's awful because if I do my daughter will break my balls, my speed rushers have no speed, and my secondary made significant improvement in the off-season when we drafted Mr. Irrelevant.
Look, all I've got is one pro receiver and a promising rookie wideout and a 35 year old quarterback that does an above-average job of throwing at them right before getting a good ass kicking. And worst of all, with this pile of garbage I have to keep repeating at every friggin' press conference that we're looking for "character guys" so no one rips the front office for failing to consistently bring in talent.

So you want to know how I think we'll do? We'll bust our asses until we are so busted we have a line halfway to Kansas with guys on the IR list with busted asses, then we'll lose another boatload of games and I'll have to stand up here and pretend we're going in the right direction even though I know I'm going nowhere until my GM gets hit by a train and I can start trying to run a football team for once.

If this team wins 5 games I should be appointed Pope Marinelli. "

Still makes me laugh. Looking at it though, heading into the draft -- Millen may not have been hit by a train, but it does look like he is letting Rod run a football team for once.

Have an enjoyable day fellows! BTW - I did this as a post versus a comment because I cannot post comments at work - only blog entries. Speaking of - Adios til this evening!

Go Lions! Go "Pope" Marinelli! (7-9)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I always read the Mlive forums and comments ripping every single interview and comment from any of the Lions roster and staff and wonder to myself "so what is it these guys WANT the Lions to be saying??". Apparently they aren't satisfied in sitting around and listening to each other talk about how bad their team sucks, but they want to hear it from the team itself too!! Does it every dawn on anyone that perhaps that isn't the best way to go about creating a winning program?
Has Millen had some shortcomings, definitely. Are they all his fault? Not necessarily. The one thing I do fault Millen with completely is his poor coach selection. However, with Pope Marinelli he has finally found a guy who's going to stay a few years, let him mold this team, and see what he can get done. Now, in regards to the poor talent choices the Lions have had over the last few years, how much of that can you put on Millen? I think we can safely agree that C. Rogers, K. Jones, and perhaps even Harrington were not a result of Millen's poor talent evaluation. All of those players were highly-touted, great college performers, and suffered some unfortunate setbacks (injury for Rogers/Jones, and playing for a crappy team with an impatient fanbase as a rookie for JH).
Millen needs to allow Rod to take over a lot of talent evaluation (and he seems to be doing this). I think Rod has a great feel for what players can bring to this team, and he needs to be the one behind the wheel the 2008 Draft. It appears that this has been the case the last couple drafts (Sims, C. Johnson, Bullocks, IAF, Alexander, etc.) and hopefully that trend continues. Marinelli might not pick the flashiest guys who perform out of the gate, but you have to remember, he's not building a flash-in-the-pan team, he's trying to build a program. Some of these players might require a bit of time to come around.
On a side-note, I'm extremely glad you run this blog as it seems to be a well-balanced and reasonable place for us Lions fans to have non-hysterical analysis and discussion about our favorite Football team, without having to be flooded with gloom-and-doom of our Lion-fan brethren who have lost what hope they had.

Anonymous said...

That was a great Dearborn excerpt.

He was full of them, and was hilarious.

Thanks for making everyone's day.

--nobsnubber

Anonymous said...

Thanks, that was priceless and I don't recall that post the first time around but throughly enjoyed it.

-Lik