A Rare Opportunity For The Lions At Season's End

Usually when the topic of finding a head coach comes up, I usually throw Brian Billick's name into the mix, since he has shown an interest in coming back to the game as of late.  Others mention Jon Gruden, others mention Parcells.  But I want to focus on the group that calls for Bill Cowher.

*grumble grumble grumble*

Why would I be behind luring Bill Cowher out of retirement?  The recent firing of Ken Whisenhunt is why.  The Titans staff will most likely be in a state of upheaval at the end of the season.  The Lions could reform the head coach, the offensive coordinator, and the defensive coordinator that won the Super Bowl for the Steelers in 2005.  It'd be similar to when the Jets brought on a kind of Dream Team of coaching, Parcells as the head coach, Bill Belicheck as the defensive coordinator, and Charlie Weis as the offensive coordinator.  That staff took the Jets to the AFC Championship game, and was a quarter away from a Super Bowl berth.  Dick LeBeau has always been known as an excellent defensive coordinator.  Ken Whisenhunt has shown recently he's a better play caller then shot caller.  

A combined head coaching record of 60-104.  But as coordinators they won a Super Bowl.

Hiring Bill Cowher, and recreating that Super Bowl winning staff gives the Lions something they have not had before, a head coach who has won a Super Bowl.  Jim Caldwell is the most recent hire who has been to a Super Bowl and lost.  Bobby Ross before him had done the same.  Bringing in an actual Super Bowl winner would change the entire perceived image of the Lions from being just a house servant, to Cinderella.  

It would probably look more manly.

Some would say Steve Mariucci was supposed to do the same thing.  The difference is, Mariucci took over a pretty talented team, and never got to the Super Bowl with them.  Bill Cowher was in Pittsburgh for every part of the building of all of his Super Bowl teams, the loser and the winner.  Make no mistake about it, this is a total rebuild the Lions need to enter going into next year.  The offensive line is still young, but the scouting report on guys like Tomlinson and Warford are that they are maulers at the point of attack.  Bill Cowher loves his running game.  The Lions can help their two  youthful guards if they add a mauler at center and right tackle, and bring on Russ Grimm to bring the nastiness out of them.  Behind a strong running game, the Lions can afford to go one of three different ways; 1) keep Stafford and draft a quarterback the staff likes to develop, 2)trade Stafford and draft a rookie quarterback to start, 3) trade Stafford, sign a veteran quarterback, and draft a quarterback to develop.  Ben Roethlisberger in 2005 threw for only 2400 yards, with 17 touchdowns and 9 interceptions.  The Lions would do well to try to emulate that formula.  

This guy was not very effective in 2005, the year he won a Super Bowl.

The defense is also in a state of upheaval.  There are guys in key positions that are just old, or clearly starting to decline.  This might be the time to change from a 4-3 to a 3-4.  Ansah, going into the last year of his rookie deal, would yield a nice chunk of picks.  Levy could probably be able to be converted into a 3-4 scheme.  Slay could be a competent #2, Ihedibgo needs to be replaced, and Quin could probably be traded for some picks.  By the time the Lions are able to compete, he'd be at the age where he needs to be replaced also.  Now would be a good time to convert to a 3-4, and build from the ground up.

You have to start somewhere.

Before, I used to question whether or not Cowher knew how to find talent.  He can clearly coach, as he frequently got the best out of his players all the time.  But can he FIND talent?  The Steelers have a history of being pretty good drafters, and never spending a lot in free agency.  Part of the offer to bring him to Detroit would be that he would be able to hand pick his own general manager, and give him final say on the roster, similar to what Lovie Smith has in Tampa Bay.  

Bill Cowher has the respect.  He just needs to be persuaded by the power and money.

Give him all the power, a boat load of money, and cross your fingers.  If it doesn't pan out, then it doesn't pan out, and you lost nothing.  But having a chance to reform a Super Bowl winning staff should be an opportunity too good to pass up.

About That Game Of Thrones Finale *Spoilers*

Fair warning, if you haven't seen the season finale of Game Of Thrones yet, then you might want to come back to this later on.  If you have seen it, then you can skip the next few lines in this opening.  This sentence is just filler that doesn't matter, it's a preventative measure to make sure that any kind of preview shown with this link doesn't leak any spoiler information.  That being said, it's onto the theorycrafting.

Let's just jump into the big one.  Jon Snow is dead.  He's clearly dead.  This is Game of Thrones version of the death of Julius Caesar.  Then there was the growing pool of blood under him.  Jon Snow is dead.  So here's where things get really interesting, and it's not a spoiler until it's proven.  So Melisandre rides into Castle Black the day of Jon Snow's death, and is visibly shaken.  Probably by the fact that her fortune telling isn't as accurate as when she is actually able to read people.  In a scene in an earlier season, Melisandre is speaking with Stannis's wife Selyse and mentions how she just kind of nudges people in the direction she wants, and also don't touch that one vial because it'll kill you.  She doesn't really see the future in the flames.  That does not mean, however, she is without power.  She gave birth to a shadow, and she very clearly can read minds when she touches someone.  Melisandre is manipulating men of power, and she does it through religion and sex.  That being said, she clearly read something about Snow with their interaction earlier this season.  However, she very much misread what she gleaned from him.  So here she is at Castle Black, after fleeing the battlefield of a sure loss, looking pretty damn upset.  Why did she ride for Castle Black though?  She could have rode off anywhere else, but instead, she goes back to Castle Black where Jon Snow is because there's something about Jon Snow.  So Melisandre will wake up in the morning, have her coffee, light a candle and try to read the flame like a newspaper, and then be told Jon Snow is dead.  Her main mission, in all the seasons, has been to get an army together to stop the White Walkers.  She can't lose both of her champions on consecutive days.  So clearly, Melisandre will get Ser Davos to help her out, get Jon Snow's body, get out of Castle Black, and then resurrect him.  He died in the service of the Night's Watch, so technically his debt is paid.  He doesn't have to go back, and because resurrection takes a piece of you away, Jon Snow is going to be different from here on out.

I see what you did there!

Or...

Maybe he did warg out into the body of Ghost.  This would be horrible.  For one, it seems like warging is a very rare thing.  So to have multiple wargs from the same father, who couldn't warg,  seems very unlikely.  For the sake of argument, let's say he is now in the body of Ghost.  Now what?  He just runs off and becomes a dire wolf version of Lassie?  His body is dead, so he can't just shift back, and even though I'm unfamiliar with the rules of warging, I highly doubt he can shift his mind into another body that is occupied.  The obvious retort to this is Bran and Hodor.  Well, Hodor is simple.  No one has also heard of a person warging into a person until Bran did it.  That likely means Bran is one powerful warg.  So now we would be expected to believe that there are two wargs in the same family, AND are both so powerful they can possess people?  The only way to salvage this is to have Melisandre resurrect Jon Snow, and then he wargs back into himself.  That seems kind of awkward, because Snow would be alive, but comatose, until he released his grip on Ghost?  The whole warging theory just bogs down the story.

What is it Jon?  Did Bran fall from another tower?

Or...

Jon Snow is actually dead, there's no coming back this time.  The showrunners have told Kit Harrington he is dead.  One of the showrunners, Dan Weiss, has said "dead is dead."  If this holds true, then at this point, I think we know where the show is going over the next two seasons.  The White Walkers come, the White Walkers destroy.  The only people left are the ones not on that side of the world.  With a mass exodus from Westeros, reports will be received in Essos, and no one will attempt to reclaim Westeros because of the lack of military.  Definitely a lack of military.  Every person killed by the White Walkers is a new soldier.  That's the endgame.

Do we know how to swim?

What I want to happen, and I have no inside information, and I haven't read the books either, is Melisandre and Ser Davos smuggle Jon Snow's body out of castle Black and resurrect him.  Being free of his servitude of the Night's Watch (he died,) he's free to move South to gather up resources and support for the coming war with the White Walkers.  Because being resurrected takes a piece of your soul away, Snow would be less honorable, and more vicious, like a moodier Ser Bronn without the humor.  You could establish this by having him, once resurrected, march back into Castle Black and kill the traitors.  It's not like he'd be taking on a full regiment, it looks like around 20 men.  Since he'd be sneaking back in and laying everyone to waste, that's not too hard to pull off for one man with a working knowledge of the guard shifts, and the layout of the castle.  Removing the Bolton's from Winterfell would give Snow an army.  With Melisandre hanging around, he might actually be able to find out who his mother was also, but that's not overly important.  I know there's been some news lately about how Kit Harrington cut his hair, and he wasn't able to cut his hair while he was still on the show.  Could there be a better visual change for a character who died, was resurrected, and lost a piece of his soul in the process, then to have him cut his mane down?

Those are Valyrian scissors.

As for the rest if the episode, Brienne establishes once again why I find her kind of blah.  Sansa and Reek (or is he back to Theon now?) take a leap of faith over the walls.  That's not so much of a cliffhanger.  It's Winterfell, there's snow on the ground, I'm willing to bet they landed in the snow that was piled up at the base of the wall just from wind blowing it around.  The Sand Snakes were a big let down this season.  This might still happen, but Myrcella just died of poison.  The boat is probably fifteen to twenty minutes away from the docks they just left.  So, why not turn around, drop the corpse at the foot of Prince Doran, and have things settled right then?  Granted, Jamie isn't the smartest man in the world, but do you really want to go back to Cersei with the news that you failed, and there was no retribution?  The whole Dorne storyline was a pretty big letdown.  I'm crossing my fingers about this, but, I hope the Arya story arc just proved a theory I had.  There is no Jaqen H'ghar.  Jaqen H'ghar is just the name associated with the face being used.  So anytime Arya uses that name, any member of the House of Black and White can shift into that form.  So while the actual person is nameless, and nobody, the identities they assume have names.

So much thought has been put into this show, and books for that matter, that I enjoy the theorycrafting about the endgame of the series, and the fates of the characters,  With nine months (give or take) until the new season, it leaves fans plenty of time to speculate about all of this, and keep them hooked in and wanting more.

Maybe It's Time To Turn Bills into Taxes.

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."  Originally said by Benjamin Franklin.  You know what else is certain?  That people in this day and age need electricity and water.  If you can't clean yourself or your clothes, you'll never get a job, or hold one.  If you can't cook your food, how else are you going to eat?  If your power is off, then it's probably safe to say you can't afford to eat out.  So why not have the government take over providing electricity and water for everyone, and charge a weekly tax out of your paycheck?

Now I realize proposing a new tax is not the most popular of ideas.  You know what also isn't popular?  Getting hit with a $300 or $400 electric bill because the average temperature in New York in February was 24.1 degrees, and the coldest it's been since 1934..  I'd like to point out that this does not include windchill.So of course people are using more energy to stay warm.  Can you blame them?  There's only so much you can do to conserve energy, but using as little light as possible won't save you $200 on your bill.  But it's not just the Northern states using all that energy.  The average temperature in Dallas in July of 2014 was 96 degrees.  So of course those air conditioners were working pretty hard.  So it's not out of the realm of possibility to think that those electric bills shot way up also.  The national average electric bill in 2014 was $107.48.  Divide that by four, and the weekly tax is only $26.82.  So now you have no surprises coming in the mail because of a super cold, or super hot, month.

Turning the electric bill into a tax would also eliminate one major piece of assistance that gets handed out, HEAP.  If everyone pays an electric tax right out of their paychecks (including unemployment) then there's no need for HEAP, because no one would get their power turned off.  The money that taxpayers pay that go into programs like HEAP, can be reallocated to other areas of need.  There's all kinds of complaints on social media about people getting assistance.  The problem is, not everyone is scamming the system, and not everyone is able to work to get off the assistance.  There's a huge gain from someone only paying $26.82 a week, as opposed to paying $142.53 a month.  That extra $35 a month, $8.75 a week, means you don't have to ration out the milk, or you can provide better lunches at school, or just go one more day to payday for gas.

Ideally, however, the tax would be created so that everyone is paying what would be considered fair.  The formula as to how to calculate the tax would involve the size of the residence, the total net earned the year before, and the size of the family.  The family with a four bedroom home should be paying more then the person living in a studio apartment.  The family that brings in $75,000 a year should be paying more then the person making $19,000 a year on minimum wage.  With this formula in mind, people would still have an affordable electric bill, without any giant leaps in costs due to the weather.

No one likes paying taxes.  Like Death, taxes are inevitable.  So if it's something that is always going to be around, they why aren't necessities like water and electricity a tax, that can be better regulated?  The power companies are just a bunch of crooks, there's no reason at all an electric company should have a net profit of of almost $4 billion dollars.