Long- suffering Lions fans finally have reason to hope
Let’s start with the tackling. No NFL team misses fewer of them than the Detroit Lions. This isn’t easy to believe, I realize, much like it wasn’t easy for flat- earthers to buy that the planet was round.
We’ve been so conditioned, for so long, to think of fundamentals as antithetic to Detroit football that it takes a while for our notions to catch up with reality.
So take a deep breath and let this reality settle in: The Lions can tackle. They also can play defense. Play offense. Play special teams. And win games. They did all this Sunday in New Orleans, in the most complete and promising effort of the season. Heck, in years. And that’s ... exciting, right? Or at least damned intriguing. Admit it, you drove to work Monday or walked from your bedroom to your home office thinking differently about the Lions. For the first time in months, you believe. If you don’t, you really, really want to. I don’t blame you. What we saw from the Superdome challenged our version of reality. The Lions looked good. Better yet, they looked like they might be on to something much bigger than squeaking into the playoffs. When was the last time you thought that?
Formany of you, never. For those of you with a little gray, the early 1990s.
I’mnot suggesting the Lions will win the Super Bowl. But I am saying it’s time to start re- evaluating the team’s ceiling. It’s certainly higher than it was even a week ago. Yes, they were winning. Yes, they showed character and grit in all those fourth- quarter comebacks.
But this? This is how good football looks. The New Orleans Saints, who had hung 49 points on a solid Los Angeles Rams defense a week before, never had a chance vs. Detroit. Drew Brees, a future Hall of Famer, looked uncomfortable all day.
Matthew Stafford, meanwhile, did and continues to harness all that natural talent. In the parlance of the NFL, he is playing like a veteran, reliable game- manager.
This combo has propelled Stafford into the league’s quarterbacking elite. He has al-
ways made a few throws every game that cause announcers to trip over themselves in admiration. He did this against the Saints a half- dozen times, squeezing passes of impossible velocity into keyholes. None more impressive than when he hit tight end Eric Ebron over the middle for a first- down catch.
His arm missiles make him compelling. Yet it’s Stafford’s leadership and late- game magic that have helped give this team an identity. This is his team, and that’s how Jim Caldwell likes it.
The Lions coach is content to stay in the background, study books on leadership and imbue the calming elements of his personality into the fabric of this squad. Call it luck, but it’s working.
So well, in fact, that Caldwell is reluctant to talk about it. “The minute you start talking about how well you’re doing something,” he said Monday, “next week you have all kinds of problems.”
Caldwell would rather talk about vague concepts and philosophies. Like “productive paranoia” — an atmosphere he aims to cultivate during practice as a matter of preparation.
The idea comes from leadership building author Jim Collins, whose books Caldwell devours. Collins has explained productive paranoia thusly: “How you perform in bad times depends on how you prepare in good times.”
His ethos — and Caldwell’s dedication to it — is surely responsible for some of the season’s improbable comebacks. But it doesn’t work so well for the Lions’ long- suffering followers.
Yes, maybe the “paranoia” part of it. I’m guessing you’re feeling some of that, even after the big win in the Big Easy. It’s not easy to buy into an organization that has wrecked your soul for so long.
So here we are, watching a quarterback in bloom, watching a group of defensive players start to make plays. Is it enough to take that leap of belief? To shed decades of paranoia that whatever glimmer of hope is nothing more than a ruse? Well ... why not?
Whether or not they reach the Super Bowl is beside the point. That they have a chance to make a run is what matters.
Might as well jump on board. The Lions won a road game the week after Thanksgiving for the first time since 1974, and you already know how disillusionment feels.
The opposite of that could undo a lot of suffering.