This bye week gives all Lions fans a chance to reflect on where our team is and where it is headed. We can also think about why we remain loyal to the Lions or why we will abandon them for a team that is more successful, has cooler uniforms, has your favourite player, is in your previous home town, etc.  Being a Lions fan is a choice, a completely free and easily reversible choice. Most of us picked them when we were young and have [at least on this site] stuck with them through thick and thin. Unfortunately more thin than thick. But we could leave them behind in a split second. Why not?

For myself, I will not continually look back on the past and moan about what could have been if we had drafted differently or hired a different GM or Coach. That's history and there is nothing we can do to change it. Looking to the future I see better times ahead, primarily due to one person.......Coach Jim Schwartz.

If you see the 2009 draft and offseason as an extension of the Ford/Millen era, you are saying that Coach Schwartz is either a willing buffoon or a powerless figurehead who has no say in the players selected or, for the first six games, played. The Stafford pick and starting has been the key decision of the Schwartz era. If he did not make it wholeheartedly, then the pessimists and naysayers are right. Then the Ford conspiracy theorists are right and all is lost until Mr. Ford and possibly his whole family sells the Lions.

I see the future a lot differently. I see a team on the rise, led by a Coach who is willing to make tough decisions and not rely on old formulas. I see Coach Schwartz as an independent thinker who looks at football in a different light, and is willing to take short term pain for long term gain. I see Martin Mayhew as a bright young exec who made the right choice with Schwartz and who wants to work with someone long term to restore this franchise to its late '50s glory. I see the Fords staying out of the way, as they always have, and let these two guys run the team. I see a QB that is light years ahead of any Detroit QB in my lifetime. I see a new era of competitive and winning football. And I see a Super Bowl with some of the current Lions leading the way.

So, where do you stand?