"Oh no, I'm falling, someone get me a pile of cash."

The Detroit Lions had suggested that they’d be announcing a new, super huge deal for Calvin Johnson today, and they sure didn’t disappoint. Megatron is now the highest paid non-quarterback in the NFL with a deal that makes Larry Fitzgerald look like a slightly less wealthier man.

Johnson’s deal will keep him a Lion through 2019 and tops the eight-year, $120-million deal the Arizona Cardinals gave Larry Fitzgerald last fall.

According to ESPN, Johnson’s deal is worth $132 million and includes $60 million in guarantees. That makes him the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL.

It also frees up a significant chunk of salary-cap space that the Lions can use to pursue free agents this off-season. Johnson was scheduled to carry a $21.1 million cap charge. (Detroit Free Press)

That’s important, because the Lions could probably use a quality RB that doesn’t get injured on every other play, or maybe even some upgrades on the offensive line. Regardless, this is a much deserved deal for one of the game’s true phenoms, and I only hope that he’s celebrating his success in the best way possible…

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It's okay, buddy, we'll drive down to Cleveland this weekend.

Jokes about how Detroit is poor and sad are nothing new. The area has been ravaged by an economic downturn, lower versus lowest class warfare and “people from Michigan” for years. Hell, even the Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism videos end with an affirming “we’re not Detroit”, so it seems a little like kicking a man while he’s down to hear Lions cornerback Aaron Berry react to an asshole-stomping from the New Orleans Saints by telling the city he plays for to go f**k itself with a double-wide. But, here we are.

With a hobo hat-tip to Shutdown Corner:

There’s a reason we have an ATHLETES SHOULD NOT HAVE TWITTER tag. Like every unpopular tweet from a popular person, this one was taken down quickly (maybe he was hacked~) and an almost Faulknerian apology was issued. See if you can pinpoint the moment when the big WOOP WOOP hypocrisy alarms go off:

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If this ends up being true, it might be the greatest thing ever: during an interview with KXTG in Portland, Oregon, former Packers offensive lineman Matt Brock introduced the theory that Ndamukong Suh’s Thanksgiving stomp session may have happened because Green Bay offensive line coach James Campen told Evan Dietrich-Smith to untie Suh’s shoes. Seriously.

From the MLive.com transcript, with a hat tip Shutdown Corner:

The center, or one of his guards, he’s had like one or two starts in his career and he’s got to play against Suh. So he’s pretty puckered, right? So, he talking to James, the offensive line coach, going, “What do I do? What do I do?”

James is just in his mind going, “This guy is going to get killed. I got to take his mind off it, give him something else to do.” So he says, “Ok, every time you’re in a pile, I want you to focus on something. I want you to untie his shoes.”

He goes, “What?”

“Anytime you can, just reach in, he’s got floppy shoe laces, he doesn’t spat or anything, just untie his shoes. It will irritate him.”

He untied his shoes three times in the game. That’s why he stomped him. That’s why he banged his head on the ground and he stomped him. When (Suh) went to the sideline it looked like he was telling the coach, “I didn’t do anything” and he put his foot up like, “I didn’t stomp him. I didn’t do anything.” He was actually going, “The damn guy keeps untying my shoes.”

Two things come to mind:

1. Thank God Suh doesn’t play baseball, if an untied shoelace can set him off like that, who knows how he’d react to a shaving cream pie to the face. Roger McDowell would sneak up to give him a hot foot and get his skull crushed.

2. Suh should consider switching to velcro. You can’t tie it, and it makes an angry noise when you pull it apart.

You know, for some reason I thought Ndamukong Suh transmogrifying from the Bob’s Big Boy to humiliate the Cleveland Browns was going to be the best part of this video, but no, in the very next scene he uses a Spirit Bomb to attack Jay Cutler (which, while hilarious, doesn’t seem necessary … you had to break out the Spirit Bomb to defeat Jay Cutler?). And somewhere near the end, Suh gets put in a circus cage as punishment for killing Evan Dietrich-Smith, dismembering him and eating his bones, complete with Resident Evil 1 blood spray. A part of me wishes it’d actually gone down like that, just to see what the NFL would do.

I felt weird sharing the animated Taiwanese reports for the Jerry Sandusky thing, so I’m happy they’re back to making ridiculously-layered-with-reference mountains out of sports blurb molehills. I also love that they can animate someone being killed and eaten but can’t make the numbers on the football jerseys the right size.

Former “American Idol” contestant Lauren Alaina became the show’s latest singer to be shoe-horned into a NFL broadcast for the sake of synergy, as she sang the National Anthem before yesterday’s game between the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers. And as we have come to expect from today’s pop singers, she screwed it up.

Granted, Alaina didn’t complete botch it like some of the other derps we’ve seen in recent history, but she did pause and hesitate for a few seconds before finally remembering the words to the song that we all learned in elementary school. And much like today’s stars, Alaina took to Twitter to clear it all up.

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"HE HAD A BUG ON HIS SHOULDER!"

For the Green Bay Packers, the Thanksgiving against the Detroit Lions was business as usual. The Packers won 27-15 and remain undefeated, while the Lions now have to worry about the fate of Ndamukong Suh, who entered the game as the overwhelming players’ consensus as the dirtiest player in the NFL. With the game still well within reach for his team, Suh found himself tangled up with Packers offensive lineman Evan Dietrich-Smith, leading to a Thanksgiving tribute to Albert Haynesworth.

Suh, as video highlights will prove until another player does something even more stupid to top it, shoved Dietrich-Smith’s helmet into the ground as he stood up and then, for good measure, stomped his shoulder. Of course, us Friday Morning Quarterbacks have the easy job of watching video to determine what happened. We’re not down in the thick of it to experience what really happened. Take Suh’s version, for instance.

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