Cue the Final Jeopardy Music

The category is Any Given Sunday. Alex Trebek reads the answer: Dan Orlovsky, Drew Stanton, or Jon Kitna. No one really knows right now.

Detroit4lyfe responds in perfect cursive-- "Who is going to start for the Detroit Lions on Sunday at Minnesota?" Alex says, in a French accent, "that is correct-a-mundo." Our wager--the three Dan Orlovsky signed rookie cards seen above. According to a Becket Magazine that would be only approximately two and a half cents.

Seriously, though. Who is going to start for the Detroit Lions on Sunday? Jon Kitna has missed practice all week, and all indications are pointing to Dan Orlovsky making his first NFL start. Rod Marinelli however, says he won't make his decision until Sunday morning. Ah, the suspense is killing me! I'll never be able to sleep tonight. Here's what I think:

Dan Orlovsky???? Is he Russian or Polish? No one has ever really cared to find out. People care so much about him actually, that his 3 'different' rookie cards were pictures obviously taken on the same day of practice, during the same play. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they were pictures sent in by his mother. How many loose leaf papers did Dan sign during biology class lectures to prepare for these three autographs? Probably a lot. I practice my signature all the time.

But why the hell would we start Dan Orlovsky? I guess logically it's what a team is supposed to do when their starter goes down. Start the backup. I understand he's been on the team for four years as the backup, but he's a free agent at the end of the season and we drafted Drew Stanton to be our future QB, didn't we?

I know the majority of fans would rather see Stanton because he's a hometown guy with a much brighter upside. He can move around the pocket and has a really solid arm. I've seen him throw first hand actually, in high school when he was a pitcher for Farmington Hills Harrison. I stood 60 feet 6 inches away from him up in the batter's box, spitting my chew on homeplate daring him to come into my wheel house. He threw four pitches to me, all high and outside. He walked me. I dropped my bat for the batboy to pick up, stuck my chest out, and strutted slowly to first as I stared him down like he was Fausto Carmona and I was Gary Sheffield. Drew Stanton was embarrassed and never missed a target again after that. We lost, I'm blogging, and he's now in the NFL.

That was almost 7 years ago and now Stanton is arguably the future Detroit Lions quarterback. Why not start him? Let's see what he can do. We've seen what Orlovsky can do. He's thrown an INT on each of his first passes in both games in relief of Kitna this year (although one was reversed). He's flat out not that good and he was never expected to be our starting QB anyway. In addition to all that, he's probably not going to be back with the Lions next year. Therefore, starting him would be absolutely worthless. Let's give Stanton a shot and see if he's the hometown hero that can save us from the bottom of the NFL water well we continuously find ourselves stuck in.