The Lions' Dan

 Today four football teams better than the Detroit Lions play win valuable prizes, and also for a Super Bowl trip to Tampa. Which means this is probably as good a time as any to examine the sadsack-y Lions and what sort of sadsack-y things they're up to these days.

For one thing, the best quarterback in the franchise's history, Matthew Stafford, has finally had enough. 

For another, a couple of days prior the Lions introduced their new head coach, the Black Knight from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

OK, so Dan Campbell didn't exactly say you could cut off his team's arms and legs and they'll reply "Right! I'll do you for that!" But the former position coach did say his Lions would laugh if you punched them in the face (a frequent occurrence in Lions' history). And if you knock them down, they'll get up! And, and, aaaaaand, on the way up, they'll BITE OFF YOUR KNEECAPS!

No, really. He said that. Go watch the video, it's hilarious.

Not quite so hilarious is the fact both Campbell and the Lions openly admit he's not much for all that X-and-O junk, despite the NFL being an X-and-O, scheme-scheme-scheme league. To hell with that. Campbell, see, he's a motivator. Enthusiasm is his meat and drink. Getting the lads to play with heart and will and soul like Rockne used to, that's his deal. 

Also, he calls himself the Dude, like in "The Big Lebowski." Has it on his office nameplate and everything.

Now, none of this means Campbell won't get the lads to play for him up there in Detroit. They likely will for a time. The new-car smell that comes with a coaching change almost always tends to invigorate at first.

But history doesn't lie, and what history tells us is the rah-rah approach only goes so far in the NFL. Eventually players get burned out on it and stop responding to it. Eventually, you've also got to win some games, which has always been the best motivator of all.

This will be harder to do without Stafford, who's still only 32 and could very well wind up a few hours south in Indianapolis. So this means the Lions either take a quarterback with the seventh pick in the April draft, or go hunting in a trade/free agent market that, outside of Stafford and perhaps Deshaun Watson, is relatively thin.

Of course, however it turns out, it isn't likely to turn out. Every long-suffering Lions fan -- and no fans have suffered longer -- knows the reason why, and will repeat it with the usual complementary sigh: "It's the Lions."

Official team motto since 1957. No, really.