Great stories have great villains. Star Wars has Darth Vader, Batman has the Joker, Austin Powers has Dr. Evil. The NFL wants to turn good football stories into great stories so they’ve manufactured a great villain—because in real life, people aren’t purely evil.
It just took the perfect player to make the bad guy. They found that player in Ndamukong Suh.
You don’t think he’s villainized? Cheap shots on Suh are ignored, the media goes on about how dirty he is, and the NFL fines him way out of proportion with the rest of the league. $31,500 for that hit on Weedon in Week 6? Come on. Why not just ask Suh to play two hand touch or flag football!
So why is Suh the perfect player for villainization? 3 reasons.
1 – Suh is powerful.
Great villains strike fear into hearts because they are ominous threats to heroes.
Suh dominates. He’s physical, fast, strong, powering through offensive lines and hitting quarterbacks hard.
If I were a fan of any team facing the Lions, I would already have plenty of reason to fear, maybe even hate, Suh. Why not use that momentum?
Being a prolific talent makes Suh perfect for an NFL villain.
2 – Suh’s a Detroit Lion.
Having never gone to the Super Bowl, not being league champions since the Bobby Lane days of the 1950’s, makes the Detroit Lions an unlikely team to have a lot of bandwagon fans.
Add to that a somewhat diminished market down to a population in Detroit of 700,000 compared to over 1.8 million in the 1950’s, the Lions aren’t likely to have one of the league’s largest fan bases.
Much of the country has written off Detroit or made it a punch line. What better team for the league villain to be a part of?
The Lions’ emergence as playoff contenders with top tier talent means they could foil any team they face. There’s plenty of good football stories to make great by putting the villainous Detroit Lions against the fan favorites.
3 – Suh gave opportunity.
Suh was already gaining something of a reputation for the hard hits he put on quarterbacks and flags he wracked up, but then he made a mistake on the national stage that’s hard to live down.
Yes, the infamous Thanksgiving Day stomp.
Suh, who has handled the cheap shots, the double teams, the excessive flags and fines pretty well, lost his cool and stomped an opponent on the field. Bad move. Big mistake. It was a perfect opportunity for the NFL to solidify and spotlight him as its villain.
But that’s fine. Label Suh a villain. Label the whole team if you want. But know Suh and the Lions are coming for you, for your team. They won’t stop. I called them to take the Super Bowl before the season started when everyone else was saying they’d do slightly better than last year’s disappointing season. If I’m proved right, it will be largely thanks to Suh.
