I woke up this morning and proceeded to enact my usual morning internet routine: Check email, check Espn.com, check detnews.com, and then freep.com. As I was expecting, the Detroit News and the Free Press are beginning their extensive coverage of Lions training camp. While checking the Lions home page of the Detroit News I noticed two article titles that jumped out to me and made me laugh/sigh/groan/roll my eyes all at once. Those being, “Lions GM Martin Mayhew Raves about Kevin Smith” and “Offensive Line Needs Work”.
I have to say that I am excited that Martin Mayhew is excited for Kevin Smith, and no that is not sarcastic, well, maybe a little, but all in all I think Smith could have a breakout year. The key word there, though is “could.” And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that a breakout year for Smith hinges around that seemingly always a work in progress, the offensive line.
Seeing the two article titles side by side seemed like typical Lions. For as long as I can remember we Lion fans have shared eternal optimism at this point of year, excited over the possibility of a stunning breakout, i.e. Mr. Smith. Of course, this optimism is tempered by articles that explain that the offensive line couldn’t block the gangly 15 year old freshman who was put on the high school team solely because the coaches felt sorry for him.
The optimist in me wants to think that the reason our O-Line is sucking so bad right now is because our defense is so fierce and stunning. The Lions fan in me knows that is proabably not true and all this is doing is giving our defense false confidence that will explode in their faces if/when they get a 60 plus yard TD pass dropped on them in the first few minutes of week one.
At this point I am just happy that we can be optimistic about something, but as history has told us before it won’t last much longer.
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