But Christmas is a season of joy and good cheer. A time for peace on Earth and goodwill. It is also a time of hope. A time for the downtrodden Lions fans to find that glimmering flicker of possibility of how this franchise can finally be turned into a contender.
This is when we plot our own personal draft strategies, look up who will be free agents and find those perfect matches for the Lions. Yet it is not unusual for this poor, desolate fan base to take a step even further. After all, desperate times call for desperate measures.
This is where my own daughter comes into play. She is not stricken with the Honolulu Blue bug as bad as myself or other poor souls that inhabit the Lions fan base, but she does care about seeing the team win.
With that in mind, my straight A’s, teen-age, honor student daughter decided to go right to the top for help; Santa Clause. Now I should clarify that the magic of Santa has already left her. As a matter of fact she told me once that she thought it was kind of creepy for some guy to climb down peoples chimney and leave gifts.
Let’s just say she’s precocious. Nevertheless, desperate times call for desperate measures as I said before. So she wrote a letter to Santa asking for his help since no mere mortal man has been able to fix this train-wreck called the Detroit Lions. This is her unedited letter she wrote:
Dear Santa,
I know this is probably a tall order to fill, but what I’d like for Christmas is for the Detroit Lions get what they need to be contenders. Big draft picks are nice, but please have them choose wisely and please get whomever they choose to turn out well. In the past they’ve drafted people with top picks who ended up being busts.
Anyways, over this season the defense has gotten a lot better, while the offense has crashed and burned and then somehow tripped and impaled itself.
Please get the Lions to use their picks to help both the offense and the defense. Please don’t let them focus entirely on the offense, even though it flopped fantastically. Obviously it needs help and obviously they need to be able to score something in order to win, but considering that defense wins championships and that there’ll always be players who get injured during the season, the Lions need to make some investments in the defense as well, come the draft.
Even if they had an elite defense (which isn’t exactly the case), it would do them no good to be like, ‘OK, we good there, let’s get offensive players!’ If and when the starters get injured, they’re gonna need people who know what the heck they’re doing to fill in.
Having good starters is awesome, but if your backups are a bunch of clueless dudes who are gonna screw up when they come on the field, you’re not gonna win.
In conclusion, Santa, the Lions need to look carefully at their options with each draft pick they’re gonna make. They’re gonna need a lot of pieces before they can hope to see the unknown golden light of the Super Bowl in their future.
Please guide them in all the choices they’ll make in the offseason and the draft, so they may craft a team that will see this light.
Thanking you in advance,
A young Detroit Lions fan who has some hope in her heart.
P.S. – Alternatively, if you could use your magic to transform them overnight, that would work too.
Did I mention precocious?