SI's Banks gets a mouthful of Matt Millen

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/don_banks/06/17/millen/index.html?eref=sihp

A column seriously devoted to the possible rehabilitation and return of Millen as an NFL executive.

We learn from Millen that he was unfairly scapegoated by insecure Detroit residents (you know, people who actually live there, as opposed to parachuting in three days a week):

You don't suppose being the worst general manager in the history of major league professional sports (you can look it up) might have had something to do with it, you shit-slurping cocksucker?

 

I liked the Nixon comparisons in Banks' story.

You can't make that kinda shit up.

Dick Nixon didn't rehab shit, least of all his image.

 

"Are you saying that an NFL general manager can draft three wide receivers in four years in the first round of the draft, and not be an idiot?"

"I'm saying when I do it, I'm not an idiot."

Yes, I know it never really went down that way, but the opportunity was there.

 

What do you expect - Banks is Peter King lite.

 

Is he going to call the games from his farm in Pa. while whittling ducks?

 

Millen thinks he's just a victim. Awesome. Maybe he can take over as Vikings coach when Brad Childress is fired.

 

If you don't know who the simpleton is at a poker table after half-an-hour, you're the simpleton.

Millen's executive life, in a nutshell.

 

All the usual caveats about how I suck and have never written for anybody with a fraction of SI.com's readership apply. But am I the only one who thinks Banks' work has really taken a nosedive in the last year or so? I always thought he was pretty good, but it seemed like he became the master of the obvious last season. Just paint-by-numbers stuff.

Or it could just be me.

 

Millen is cut out to be a talking head on TV. It's far easier to analyze and criticize. I suspect Millen will have a much better time not losing sleep over such trivial affairs as wins and losses.

No, he wasn't a great GM. Then again, the team he ran wasn't exactly a model franchise before he got there, either. I'm convinced that the Lions are eternally cursed, never to again make the playoffs in my lifetime. They are the NFL's version of the Clippers, Pirates and Thrashers rolled into one. It really doesn't matter who is the GM or who is coaching.

 

We have a bad guy. He was the mayor!

 

You say that cat Kwame was a baaaaaad mother.... ??

 

Before Millen showed up in 2001, the Lions made the playoffs in 1991, 93, 94, 95, 97 and 99 and went 9-7 in 2000. Of course a guy named Barry Sanders had something to do with that, but the Lions, while shitty this decade, haven't had the prolonged, institutional shittiness of a Bengals or Clippers