Detroit Lions vs. Chicago Bears Song of the Game: All the Young Dudes

Youth is all about the trial and error. You touch the stove, you learn not to do it again. You blow off studying for a final, you get hit with an F. You take the first job offer on the table only to realize that is not your calling.

In your infancy, you deal with far more errors than successes. That’s why for so many of us, our younger years are our toughest years. The learning process is vital, but sometimes it’s really frickin’ hard to endure.

You 2021 Detroit Lions are hard to stomach. They are young, they are stove-touchers, they are mistake-makers, and while you certainly hope all the trial and error leads to lessons and growth, sometimes it’s hard not to want some results now. Lions fans can only delay gratification for so long.

Lions vs. Bears Week 4 Song of the Game: “All the Young Dudes” by Mott the Hoople

Mott the Hoople was an underappreciated band that could just not catch a break in the early-1970s, despite the fact that everyone in the business knew they were a talented band. They were on the verge of breaking up and calling it quits when the one-and-only David Bowie—who was one of the many who saw their potential—handed them “All the Young Dudes” on a platter. The song was a huge hit, but eventually landed them in one-hit wonder territory.

We never got if off on that revolution stuff
What a drag
Too many snags

The Lions aren’t even in one-hit wonder territory right. They’re wandering around trying to figure out who they are and what they’ve got. But that’s been the plan from the beginning. They’re playing All the Young Dudes, and hitting far too many snags.

Week 3’s emotional loss to the Baltimore Ravens was good for the team, but horrible for the fan base. It accelerated expectations when it shouldn’t have. Dan Campbell wasn’t going to get this team into contention by the bye week. We all knew this in the offseason, but it’s easy to lose that focus when you’re a failed record-breaking field goal away from taking down of the NFL’s top contenders.

It’s safe to say those expectations aren’t coming back anytime soon. The Lions are 0-4, they’re losing their best players to injury at a rapidly increasing rate, and they laid a turd against a beatable Chicago Bears team.

So what’s left to watch? More young dudes.

The television man is crazy
Saying we’re juvenile delinquent wrecks

I’ll leave you with a warning. You may not see it yet, but the Dan Campbell critics are coming. If it weren’t for Urban Meyer’s incredibly predictable tire fire over in Jacksonville, it’d already be here.

But the Lions are going to lose more games this year—a lot more games. And all the people who questioned the Campbell hiring to begin with are going to be running their premature victory laps. It’s best to ignore them. Block them from Twitter, not because you need an echo chamber to feed you only positive things, but because you know, in your heart, this was always going to happen in 2021.

The Lions are young, they’re bad, but they’ll be better for all of this in the future.

Each week, we’ll be providing a Song of the Game to create a full-season playlist. You can listen to previous year’s soundtracks right here: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

You can find the 2021 playlist here (or below):