The Detroit Lions just couldn’t bear it. The knew the pain, torment national embarrassment and gut-retching feeling week after week. They gazed across the field and saw the St. Louis Rams and took pity.
So they took pity on the Rams and allowed Steven Jackson to bowl them over time after time. They allowed receivers free reign to run open down the middle for important grabs in the fourth quarter. And they gave the Rams the joy no team allowed them to have in 2008. They couldn’t bear to watch another team go through a winless season like they experienced.
It is the only explanation for a team that took the former Super Bowl champs to the ropes to lay an egg over and over to a winless, despondent team from St. Louis.
It was a St. Louis team that couldn’t muster the fight of a one-winged fly, and caused one NFL Network producer to tell me two weeks ago, “The Rams look worse than the Lions ever did last year.” Thanks?
Yet the Lions fell to them at home without so much as a threatening roar.
Against a team that had been gouged by offense after offense the Lions took the paper cut approach. The racked up a measly 123 yards on the ground from three running backs — a total Jackson surpassed alone with 149 yards. Quarterback Matthew Stafford looked Staff-infected on his return from a knee injury, completing 14 of 33 for 168 and an INT giving him a QB rating of 46.0 (which is the same passer rating a group of eight-year-old got playing pin-the-tail on the donkey at a Halloween party).
Oh the Rams were just as bad, aside from Jackson. Marc Bulger’s passer rating was 51.6 with and INT. But at least it looked like it cared down the stretch.
The first half was so bad for the Lions their only scoring came on and interception. You would think it would be a good omen when you get picked in the end zone and the other team runs it out (all-time dumb move No. 1) then retreats back into the end zone to get tripped up by a running back. Really that was all your scoring of the first half? A safety on an interception? Maybe football isn’t the sport you should be playing. Maybe badminton or curling is a better choice — but you might want to check the record for number of losses before you switch sports.
Then Detroit gave up a play that only the Lions would give up, a 36-yard touchdown pass by the kicker. It truly was a remarkable pass by Josh Brown, rolling to his left and lofting an awkward pass to back-up tight end Daniel Fells who chugged untouched for the score.
The Lions had one drive where they looked like a team improving. After an interception by Dewayne White (welcome back to football Dewayne, we missed you this season) they marched down the field and made several plays leading to Stafford’s four-yard TD run. After that drive and two-point conversion, the Lions looked like they might pull victory from the jaws of defeat.
Instead the jaws just swallowed them.
Several possessions later they had the Rams backed up on their own two yard line, and had several shots at tackling Jackson to keep the Rams pinned down. Instead they missed three tackles and got stiff-armed by the running-back for ten yards, then watched the Rams march to the 50 before quitting.
The drive didn’t provide points for the Rams but it changed field possession and gave the Rams momentum that was on the Lions side for much of the fourth quarter.
The Rams final drive was about as predicable as any. With the score tied and plenty of time left the Rams could lean on their bulldozing back to carry them down the field. Jackson ran over everyone, including the ref, and carried the Rams into the end zone.
Against the winless Rams the Lions needed to come out firing early and get a lead to cut Jackson out of the Rams offense and make Bulger beat them. They did no such thing and the defense took a beating because of it.
Then again maybe the game plan included a heavy dose of sympathy for a winless team.
Pop the champagne bottles boys, everyone has a win this season, your record is safe.
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Kevin Patra lives by the adage: Those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t do or teach, write. Currently, he is a graduate student at the University of Southern California studying Online Journalism, after spending four years at the University of Michigan obtaining a bachelors degree from the school of Language, Science & Fun. Patra grew up watching the Honolulu Blue and Silver every weekend, so he is an expert on what football is not supposed to look like.
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