Easy To Mock Kitna's Prediction, But Why?

The easiest thing to do is laugh. To mock. To roll your eyes. To go searching for Kool-Aid mustaches on their lips.

In recent fits of boosterism and bravado, undaunted by the pearls of history's wisdom, Lions quarterback Jon Kitna and receiver Mike Furrey have put quantitative labels on their expectations for their football team this autumn.

"I think we can win 10 games, at least," Kitna has said on more than one occasion about the 2007 season. One of the first people he told that to was me. I was interviewing him wayyy back in March for my former employer, when he laid it on me. The question was, "If you could say one thing to Lions fans about 2007, what would it be?"

That's when Kitna, fearlessly, made the 10-win prediction. I reminded him that his words would be printed. "That doesn't scare me one bit," he told me.

Not long after, Kitna repeated the assertion at Lions HQ in Allen Park, during one of those mini-camps. Then it started to get legs. And soon afterward, of course, it got derided.

Furrey, perhaps intoxicated by the success of his first ever golf outing that was a fundraiser for his foundation, last week told the Free Press that he concurred with his quarterback.

"If you look at us on paper, we should absolutely win at least 10 games," he said. "All of us (teammates), if you ask us, feel we can win at least 10 games."

The grandiose numbers didn't stop there, at least not with Kitna.

How many touchdown passes, Jon, will you throw in 2007?

Everyone knows that the QB campaigned for the selection of WR Calvin Johnson from Georgia Tech with the #2 overall draft pick. He said as much to me, back in March.

"Boy, if he's available, I don't know how you pass him up," Kitna said over the telephone from Washington state. "He's the best receiver prospect to come along in 10 years."

So with Johnson nestled as a Lion, Kitna talked about TD passes recently to some media.

"In the huddles during mini-camp we were kind of tossing around the number 50," he said.

Excuse me?

"Fifty touchdown passes."

The NFL record is 49, set by Peyton Manning in 2005.

OK, laugh if you must. That's fine. Squawk that Jon Kitna lives in a dreamland, some sort of football Shangri-La. Maybe even order a drug test immediately.


So Kitna and Furrey believe in their team. You got a problem with that?

But here's the deal: I don't recall any other Lions quarterback, or receiver, or anyone else for that matter, who attached hard numbers to their formulaic words of optimism.

Greg Landry didn't say such things. Nor did Gary Danielson, or Eric Hipple. Or Erik Kramer or Rodney Peete. Certainly not Scott Mitchell, and definitely not even Joey "Blue Skies" Harrington.

No Lions quarterback has had the footballs to lay a win total or a TD pass figure out there, to be consumed and regurgitated by the media and the blood-sniffing bloggers. No one has dared to talk so boldly.

So what if it all seems like a delusional fantasy?

At least the quarterback believes in the team, and so do, apparently, many others.

"Coach Marinelli has the people around here now who believe in him and what we're doing here," Furrey said. The inference was that that wasn't the case last season, which is probably very accurate.

I'll take Jon Kitna and Mike Furrey's brave predictions, with big numbers attached, than the usual, generic (read: boring) words that come out of the offseason. So what if it causes eye rolling and snickering? So what if it's very likely that those predictions won't come to fruition -- and maybe not even close?

They laid it out there: 10 wins. 50 touchdown passes.

Do I believe them? Doesn't matter. It only matters if they believe in themselves. They clearly do, so who are we to scoff at that?