Lions want more than just strong regular season, but lack of experience could hurt
GREEN BAY – This Week 17 at Lambeau Field was much different for the Lions than the last time. Almost exactly three years ago, Green Bay applied the final historic blemish on the NFL’S first 0-16 embarrassment.
Three years later, there’s actually a Week 18 for the Lions.
“It’s a sign of how far we’ve come from three years ago when we were here wondering what might happened next,” said center and captain Dominic Raiola. “We’re frustrated that we lost. We wanted to end the regular season on a high note. But what’s most important is that we’re still alive.”
It might only be life support considering that the Lions’ inexcusable 45-41 loss to the Packers’ B squad sends them to New Orleans on Saturday night. Unleashing Drew Brees on an already flammable Detroit secondary is like forcing a fire-eater to do kerosene shots.
The Lions still have a tomorrow, but they must understand that playoff tomorrows overshadow the immediate past.
They had a nice regular season at 10-6. But it officially became a distant memory as soon as they departed Lambeau Field.
The Lions are no longer the team that didn’t make the playoffs for the last 12 years. They’re now the franchise that has won only a solitary playoff game over the last 54 years.
If you’re tired of hearing about the past, then it’s incumbent upon you changing the present.
“When the story of this season is written,” defensive end Kyle Vanden Bosch said, “nobody’s going to talk about what happened this week. They’re going to talk about what happened next week.” He’s absolutely right.
Vanden Bosch is one of the few players with actual playoff experience. He understands the extremely short shelf life of regular-season laurels when you stop being one of 32 and become one of a select fraternity of 12.
The rematch against New Orleans (13-3) defines the entire season. Beat the explosive Saints on their own launching pad and it formally stamps 2011 as the best Detroit Lions season in more than 50 years, even better than 20 years ago when they advanced to the NFC championship game against a far superior Washington Redskins team that won the Super Bowl.
Lose Saturday and simply add it to the pile of playoff failure over that same half-century.
“I think we’re playing a little bit more sound football” than a month ago, quarterback Matthew Stafford said. “We’re not shooting ourselves in the foot as much as we were then. We had some penalties [against the Packers] that cost us. We’ve got to iron that out, keep making that a big issue and big point moving forward in the playoffs.”
The Lions emotionally melted down during their first visit to New Orleans on a nationally televised Sunday night showcase. They couldn’t handle the attention, couldn’t cope with the expectations and imploded. That’s all about maturity. And now we’ll see if they have grown up enough, if they have learned from past self-induced mistakes – or if they will crumble under the added weight of this unfamiliar phenomenon known as playoff pressure.
Wide receiver Calvin Johnson said it’s the little things that would make the biggest differences now. They can’t have false starts on third-and-3. They can’t jump offside on third downs, foolishly extending drives. They can’t drop passes or miss tackles.
“We’ve got to get on a run here,” Stafford said. “That’s what it’s all about in the playoffs, playing hot, and hopefully we can get that going.”
Brees vs. Stafford might deliver a pyrotechnical display that could make the Superdome look like the Fourth of July on the first weekend of January. They totaled more than 10,000 passing yards. Brees broke Dan Marino’s single-season record for passing yardage. Stafford threw for 5,000 in his first full regular season and couldn’t even get enough support to be a second Pro Bowl alternate.
Both personify what the NFL wants in its playoff quarterbacks – relentlessly pushing their offenses forward. Winning a shoot-out is the only way these Lions can reverse their predecessors’ postseason misfortune. But that will require first not shooting themselves in the foot.
(Detroit Free Press/mct)