The NFL's Undisputed Worst Team Is...Your Detroit Lions

We're going to call this a blessing in disguise.

I'm referring of course to Sunday's comical impersonation of an NFL game between the Detroit Lions and St. Louis Rams, being blacked out locally.

It was a joke. In one corner we had a team that had lost 17 consecutive games, coming dangerously close to surpassing the Lions recent 19-game disgrace.

In the other corner, we had a team that had lost 28 of their last 30 games, one of the longest streaks of futility in NFL history.

This was quite possibly the most pathetic matchup the NFL has ever endorsed. Yes, thank God we didn't have to see it.

So without many seeing this game, and knowing only that a banged up, obviously not healthy Matthew Stafford started his first game in three weeks, and that the Lions biggest offensive weapon in Charles Johnson was again absent, what did we learn?

The Detroit Lions are again (or should I say still), unquestionably, the worst team in the NFL. How can they not be?

They wouldn't be anything more than awful had they won, and they don't really move any further down in the pecking order by losing, but this does begin the train-wreck. From here on out, the ugliness gets worse.

The Lions may not win another game this season.

Losing to the lowly Rams is a complete confidence killer. Goodbye confidence in Jim Schwartz, goodbye Matthew Stafford's confidence.

The team is already starting to turn on the fans, and we haven't even reached the halfway point yet. As fans taunted Stafford's horrible performance, center Dominic Raiola lashed out at the fans. This just weeks after he personally thanked them after the Lions lone win over Washington.

The self destruction begins.

It was an idiotic move marching an obviously hobbling Matthew Stafford out there in a meaningless game like this. In doing so, Detroit only set their expensive young star back.

There is an ideal situation to use Stafford. This team cannot offer it, but the best they can offer is a healthy Stafford with all of his weapons to utilize.

No Calvin Johnson? It should have been No Stafford as well. This was a Daunte Culpepper situation.

By no means is Culpepper a better quarterback, quite the opposite. He's the more expendable quarterback. He's the least valuable commodity on this team.

There is nothing but more failure in this team's future. When Detroit inevitably gets a top 3 pick again this year, they should refuse it. This team cannot afford to pay another $50M for a rookie player that they probably will not develop properly. $100M tied up in two players? That is lunacy.

The NFL of course was never built to assume such a situation would ever happen, but happen it will. Leave it to the Detroit Lions.

Will Schwartz last beyond one season? Will 1-15 suffice as improvement? I suppose we'll find out. Fire him or keep him though, it doesn't matter. It's been a revolving door of coaches since 2000, and the result remains the same.

What new laugh-fests await? The Cleveland Browns visit in three weeks. How will Detroit lose that one? That is the only intrigue for this team—what new creative ways can they lose?

There is no player development. There is no improvement.

Perhaps Matt Millen's wife was correct in her final assessment of this team to the media.

Welcome to football hell.