Abandoned, Undrafted Night Train a True Underdog Tale

The fact that no one wanted the football player from Scottsbluff Junior College—that’s in Nebraska, by the way—and thus never drafted him turned out to be par for the young man’s course.

No one wanted Richard Lane, from the moment he was born. Literally.

Twenty-five years before showing up at the Los Angeles Rams’ training camp, looking for a job because the one he had at an aircraft factory was unfulfilling, baby Richard was taken in as an abandoned infant in Austin, TX.

True story.

The woman was named Ella Lane, and she raised Richard as her very own.

Richard Lane grew up with an athlete’s body: gangly arms and a long torso. No one wanted him at a four-year university, so he played a year for Scottsbluff JuCo.

The theme of no one wanting Richard Lane was a running one.

Lane was a defender and a receiver for Scottsbluff, but football didn’t really grip him. So it was off to the Army for four years, serving in that brief peacetime between WWII and the Korean War.

Lane got a job at an aircraft factory during the Korean conflict. That didn’t really grab him, either.

With his resume thin on experience in anything else, Lane decided to give football another shot.

So he shows up as a walk-on at the Rams camp in 1952, and the coaches look at him and think he’s got a receiver’s body: tall and lanky with those long arms.

The Rams were the NFL’s glamour team back then. They scored on the field and off it. The quarterback, Bob Waterfield, was married to knockout actress Jane Russell.

Lane even took a receiver’s number, 81, in anticipation of joining the Rams’ talented pass-catching corps.

It was the number he wore into Hall of Fame status—as a defensive back.

Richard Lane didn’t impress so much as a receiver, but he took to practicing with the defense, and it was realized that those long arms and that size could be just as useful in defending passes as in catching them.

The Rams had a receiver, Tom Fears, and he liked playing a popular song of the day on his phonograph (that’s right): “Night Train,” a jazzy number by Jimmy Forest.

The Rams players levied the nickname “Night Train” on Richard Lane because of the ferocity with which he tackled. Richard didn’t care for it at first, but the moniker grew on him.

It grew on him partially because one of his vicious tackles was described in print in the L.A. papers as “Dick ‘Night Train’ Lane derails Charlie ‘Choo Choo’ Justice.”

Just like that, Richard became “Dick” and “Night Train” in one fell swoop.

Night Train’s whistle didn’t alert ball-carriers nearly soon enough before they were leveled by a favorite Lane defensive method: the now-illegal clothesline tackle.

It became Lane’s signature move. He rarely made a tackle below the jaw line.

They even had a name for it: The Night Train Necktie.

Lane could tackle, yes, but in 1952, in his rookie season—the walk-on made the team as a DB with flying colors—Night Train set a league record for interceptions, with 14.

It was a 12-game season in 1952. And today, some 60 years later, with the NFL playing a 16-game season since 1978, Lane’s single-season interception record still stands. It hasn’t really been threatened in years, in fact.

Lane was traded by the Rams to the Chicago Cardinals in 1954. He played six seasons for the Cards before being dealt to Detroit. By that time—1960—Night Train was the unquestioned premier cornerback in football.

Lane played the secondary but tackled like a middle linebacker. He was feared for what he could do with the football in the air and with it tucked under a receiver’s arm.

Night Train made All-NFL in his first four seasons with the Lions. He had a tight end’s size and the countenance of a bear awakened early from hibernation.

After Lane retired from the Lions in 1965 at age 38, the defensive back position became less about brawn and more about elegance and style. Rules changed. The clothesline tackle was out, for example. Being physical with receivers didn’t earn respect, only penalty flags.

The position became dominated by players like another Lion, Lem Barney, and Mel Renfro of Dallas and Herb Adderley of the Packers—smaller finesse guys with catlike quickness.

And they wore numbers in the 20s, not 81.

And they were all drafted. And presumably not abandoned shortly after birth.

It’s not talked about a whole lot, but I wonder if Night Train Lane’s 14 interceptions in 1952 will be eclipsed someday. Today’s players have four more regular-season games to work with than Lane had, yet they still can’t touch his record.

Night Train died over 10 years ago, in January 2002. After his playing days, he became a champion of Detroit’s inner city kids, working especially closely with the Police Athletic League. With PAL, he tried to give drugs and gang life the Night Train Necktie.

Richard Lane comes to mind as we move closer to another NFL Draft.

The undrafted player is, at the very best, only the 225th-best college football player in the country, theoretically. Thirty-two teams, seven rounds, and that makes 224 drafted kids.

But when you consider how many young men play college football—including all the NCAA Divisions and the junior colleges—being no. 224 ain’t bad.

But it still isn’t likely to equal winning a job in the pros.

As for the undrafted players?

Vegas wouldn’t touch their odds.

Richard Lane probably wasn’t calculating odds or consulting polling experts when he showed up at Rams camp in 1952 as an undrafted, unfulfilled aircraft factory worker.

He just wanted to try football again.

Assessing the skills of college players in 1952 didn’t involve nearly the due diligence we see these days. But could even today’s NFL personnel gurus miss out on a Night Train Lane, with all their bells and whistles of preparation and surveillance?

Undrafted free agents flood NFL training camps every summer. Few make their respective teams. Even fewer become stars.

Richard Lane’s life before pro football was something ripped from a dime store novel.

Abandoned as an infant. Played one year of football for a junior college. Took four years off from the sport to serve in the Army. Arrived uninvited to the day’s most glamorous pro team’s camp. Tried out at receiver but was moved to cornerback. Set a new record for interceptions in one season, as a rookie. Became a Hall of Famer and was named the best defensive back of all time for the NFL’s first 50 seasons.

Wonder what Vegas would have given those odds.

Will there be another Night Train Lane, left unchosen at this year’s draft?

Well, there hasn’t been one in 60 years, so why should the streak end now?

Millen “Disciple” Mayhew a Self-Learner

As a pro football player, Martin Mayhew, being a defensive back, became used to going to work every Sunday trying to succeed with one arm tied behind his back.

Don’t let anyone tell you that the rulebook doesn’t play favorites.

In the NFL, receivers are given more benefits of the doubt than the teacher’s pet. The rules are tilted away from the defender and toward the pass catcher. It’s not enough that receivers are taller, faster, know where they’re going, and are running forward.

The pass defender is shorter, slower, has no clue which way the man he’s covering is going to juke and jolt, and he has to run backward, to boot.

Then the guys in the zebra stripes, not content with such a disadvantage, are prone to clutter the football field with yellow laundry if the defender so much as breathes on his opponent.

It’s poker with a marked deck; a carnival-midway pyramid of milk cans.

Playing defensive back in the NFL is a weekly, soul-sucking, often losing battle, mitigated only by the nirvana of defying the odds and batting a football away or, if the quarterback and the receiver are on Venus and Mars, respectively, actually intercepting a wayward pass.

Mayhew, the Lions general manager, played this game of loser’s poker for eight years in the NFL. He knows a little about working when the rules are not on your side.

It hasn’t gotten all that much fairer for him as an executive.

First, he learned the GM business by working as an underling of Matt Millen’s, which was like learning how to move a piano from Laurel and Hardy.

For years, Mayhew was Millen’s second banana, his silent partner. We knew only that Mayhew was in the organization; we didn’t really know what he did, nor did we pay much attention to him. We only thought that we knew one thing: if he was a Matt Millen hire, then how good could he really be?

Then one October day in 2008, Lions owner Bill Ford Sr. made the most overdue mercy killing since ABC canceled “Happy Days.”

Ford fired Millen, and shoved Mayhew into Millen’s seat as team GM.

Martin Mayhew! Another “MM” guy, to go along with Matt Millen and Marty Mornhinweg.

I hope we were all forgiven in our skepticism.

The tabbing of Mayhew was accepted cautiously by the fanbase, because they figured his ascension to Millen’s throne would be interim, that very sports word for “keep renting your house, don’t buy.”

Surely, the fanbase convinced itself, the Lions will wait until the end of the season and bring in a “real” GM—preferably a guy with a big name.

Bill Parcells, et al.

Now, back in the fall of 2008, the idea that Mayhew could be the long-term answer for what ailed the Lions’ front office was considered folly. Worse, it was considered incompetent and malevolent toward the fans.

The Lions were in the middle of a 0-16 season when Mayhew replaced Millen. To not go after someone outside the organization was looked at as a big old nose-thumbing by Ford to his patrons.

Yet just days after taking over from Millen, Mayhew fleeced Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys of a first-round draft pick in exchange for uneven receiver Roy Williams.

It was David fooling Goliath; some kid chess player placing Bobby Fischer into checkmate.

Beginner’s luck?

The Lions played out their winless season, and then the fans rubbed their hands together. Despite the fleecing of Dallas for Roy Williams, there still wasn’t much excitement at the thought of Mayhew staying on as GM.

Not with Bill Parcells out there!

Ford did another end around, as has been his wont as Lions owner. He went against public sentiment—another Ford trait—and hired Mayhew permanently, ripping the interim tag off him like a decorated officer losing one of his stripes.

Only this was in reverse—a promotion based on little more than faith, hope and loyalty—again, another Ford-ism.

Well, guess who’s pretty good at this GM thing, after all?

Mayhew had it all going against him—just like he did every Sunday lining up against the Jerry Rices and Cris Carters of the world—yet here he is, continuing to show deftness as an NFL executive.

Mayhew had his pedigree (Millen) going against him. He had his inexperience with contract negotiations going against him. He had the Lions’ losing culture going against him.

Mayhew as brand-new GM was like one of those disadvantaged kids who is born poor to bad parents, in a home situated in a bad school district.

Perhaps Mayhew took everything he saw and heard from Millen and pretty much started doing the opposite. Whatever, it’s working.

As a player, Mayhew lived for the fall and early winter. Once, his challenge was the quick slant; now, it’s the salary cap. As a GM, this is his time to shine—his time to set the pins up for coach Jim Schwartz and his players to knock down.

From the Super Bowl in February until training camp starts in July, the NFL general manager rides a greased slope. This is the time when guys like Mayhew truly earn their bread.

The Lions are no longer stained with 0-16. They have progressed nicely under Schwartz, going from 0-16 to 2-14 to 6-10 to 10-6 and the playoffs. Just like that—like a checker traversing from one end of the board to the other.

Almost—the Lions haven’t been crowned yet.

But with every step of success comes another hurdle. The further the Lions get from their inglorious decade of the 2000s, the closer they get to the pitfalls and land mines that must be navigated through in order to make the leap from a one-week playoff run to playing in February—and I don’t mean the Pro Bowl.

Martin Mayhew seems to be the guy that can take this thing from 0-16 to the Super Bowl. He has done a marvelous job of drafting, trading, signing and re-signing.

The latter—re-signing—has been far more important to the Lions’ future than any free agent from outside the organization they’ve signed in recent years.

Mayhew wanted to keep his own free agents in the fold, and rework the contracts of some of his star players to create the financial space in which to do all that re-signing.

His off-season, thus far, has been A+.

Mayhew reworked the contracts of QB Matthew Stafford, WR Nate Burleson and DT Ndamukong Suh. He then gave WR Calvin Johnson a contract extension that makes Johnson the richest receiver in league history.

Mayhew kept LT Jeff Backus and backup QB Shaun Hill.

And, very importantly, Mayhew managed to keep MLB Stephen Tulloch for four more years, preventing him from signing with another team.

All this and it’s not even April yet.

That’s when the draft happens.

Another area in which Mayhew excels.

Who knew?

Eli’s Coming

The supposedly vaunted New England Patriots, the closest thing to an NFL dynasty since the 1980s 49ers, haven’t won a Super Bowl in seven years.

Meanwhile, Eli Manning and the New York Giants have won two in that time frame—actually, in the past five NFL seasons.

Both times, the Giants made the Pats their patsies.

Is this a baton passing we’re witnessing? A changing of the guard? Out with the old, in with the new and all that rot?

Eli Manning is all the rage now, as he should be. He’s up, 2-1, in Lombardi Trophies over his big brother, and is just one behind Hall of Fame-bound Tom Brady, whom Eli victimized twice.

Could Eli follow both those quarterbacks into Canton? Will we one day see the kid toting his own bust, posing for photographers in front of the Hall?

As Keith Jackson would say, “Whoa, Nellie!”

Super Bowl success does not, as some would have you think, punch you a ticket into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But it could help you scalp your way in.

Eli Manning has the most time left in the NFL of he, Peyton and Brady. And as impressive as Eli has been, growing up before our very eyes, any HOF talk is premature.

Let’s see if he can grow some facial hair first, for example.

Remember when the Giants were the team all Lions fans wanted to play in the playoffs? Remember when the Lions’ loss to the Packers on the regular season’s final Sunday was rued, because it meant a trip to New Orleans instead of New York?

Remember the fury in Motown when it was announced that Eli Manning was named to the Pro Bowl instead of Matthew Stafford?

Hey, remember when it looked like the Giants might not even make the playoffs?

From such humble post-season beginnings did Eli lead his team to Super Bowl XLVI glory.

There’s something different about Eli as a Super Bowl-winning quarterback.

He’s got a lot of “Aw, shucks” about him, number one.

The championship quarterback is supposed to be a cocky, reckless gunslinger who is in TV commercials and on the covers of video games. He is supposed to be tall, Hollywood-handsome and frequently seen with a striking beauty on his passing arm.

He makes guarantees and kicks his offensive linemen in the shins when they don’t block. He tells the coaches how to coach and gets into the face of a receiver who breaks off his route too early.

The championship QB isn’t supposed to shake his head in wonder of what he just accomplished—he knew it all along.

Eli Manning still looks like the 12-year-old little brother whose hair the adults ruffle after they realize that he’s in their presence—after fawning over the big brother.

“That’s cute, kid, the way you throw a football,” the adults say. “Now go take a bath while we talk to your brother.”

Eli Manning plays in New York. That’s about as bodacious as he gets, and that’s just a matter of geography. He wanted to play there, of course—but mainly because he didn’t want to play in San Diego.

Truth is, Eli would be out of place in both cities.

He’s not a New Yawker and he’s not a California beach bum. Unless the NFL opens up shop in Des Moines, I don’t know that he fits in anywhere.

But he has authored two stunning, gripping, game-winning Super Bowl drives, in the final minutes, staring down the barrel of Brady’s gun both times.

Eli Manning doesn’t fit in anywhere, except under center.

Is he a Hall of Famer? No, not yet.

But, to quote Three Dog Night, “Eli’s comin’!”

Lions’ Playoff Loss is GM Mayhew’s Mulligan

They say you should never bring a knife to a gunfight.

Well, the Lions didn’t; they brought a shotgun. Trouble is, the New Orleans Saints have a howitzer.

The Lions, 45-28 losers on Saturday night in New Orleans, didn’t get blown out because they don’t have a good offense. The Lions lost big because the Saints’ offense is better, and the Lions’ defense is still a work in progress. If the Lions defense was a freeway, three lanes would be shut down and it would be filled with orange cones.

Did you notice any glaring differences between the Lions and Saints, when it came to having the football?

Don’t look at the quarterbacks; Matthew Stafford and Drew Brees are pretty comparable.

Don’t look at the receivers; the Lions have the best one on the planet, but the Saints have a cache of good receivers in their own right.

Did you happen to notice that the Saints have something called a ground game?

Oh, what the Lions offense could look like, if they had someone to run the football with any consistency.

My kingdom for Stephen Jackson of the St. Louis Rams.

But we’ll just have to settle for a healthy Jahvid Best and Mikel Leshoure; which should occur next season, if Mr. Outside and Mr. Inside recover from concussion and Achilles injury, respectively.

The Saints gashed the Lions’ supposedly dominant defensive line with the run all evening, as if Brees needs any help.

And as if the Lions’ could have stopped him, even if your Aunt Mary were running the football.

Brees’ surgery on the Lions secondary was complete. The Saints quarterback wielded his scalpel to the tune of 466 yards passing and three touchdowns. He left the Lions looking like Gerry Cheevers’ goalie mask.

Now it’s up to GM Marty Mayhew to make sure another scene of carnage never happens again to the Lions in a playoff game. This was Mayhew’s Mulligan. He’s allowed this implosion, because his team is still just three years removed from 0-16.

But next year, and the year after, and the year after, it will no longer satiate the fan base to simply qualify for the playoffs. We’ve fallen for that once before, in the 1990s, when the Lions went one-and-out in the post-season five out of six seasons in the decade.

That won’t cut it, with a franchise quarterback and an All-Universe Receiver.

Mayhew’s charge, in a way, gets simpler with the more success the Lions find, yet it also gets harder.

It gets simpler because the holes are fewer on the roster, thanks to Mayhew’s astute drafting and slick trading and signings.

Yet it also gets harder because expectations have now been ratcheted up.

The Lions got carved up on Saturday and 626 total yards later, they were nothing but a carcass, the bones licked clean by the Saints’ well-balanced offense.

Mayhew has to draft for secondary help this spring, and he needs to find a new center and left tackle, to be on the ready when Dom Raiola and Jeff Backus retire.

There needs to be more roster massaging before the Lions can truly call themselves Super Bowl contenders. No one gets bumped out of the playoffs in the first round, as soundly as the Lions did, and comes back with the same cast and crew and expects to make progress.

This was no fluke loss. You can’t blame this one on the crazy bounces of an oblong pigskin.

The Lions were beaten, and beaten good, by the Saints, who are legitimately elite. The Saints are what the Lions would like to become, in short order.

The Lions can now check off “Make the playoffs” on their to-do list under the Mayhew/Jim Schwartz regime.

Next is, “Advance beyond the first round.”

The biggest challenge yet for Maywartz.

Like Steelers of 1970s, Lions Need to Take Playoff Lumps Before Success

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So here they come marching into New Orleans, this previously bedraggled pro football franchise, in seek of something which has eluded them 53 of the past 54 years.

It’s funny, in a way, that the Lions will be looking for just their second playoff victory since 1957 in New Orleans, a city that has vexed them and which has been the scene of many a crime against football humanity.

The Saints are winners now, and almost annual Super Bowl contenders these days. But from their inception in 1967 to nearly the dawn of the second decade of the 21st century, the New Orleans Saints were the Los Angeles Clippers of the NFL.

The Saints were slapstick, back in the day—a laughable franchise with a beaten down quarterback named Archie Manning, and with yearly won/loss records like 3-13. In 1980, the Saints managed to go 1-15.

The Saints were the ones getting their shirts and wallets lifted, like those audience participants at a magic show. Teams came to New Orleans for some gumbo, a little fun in the French Quarter and a 27-10 victory. The city’s nickname, The Big Easy, was perfectly apt—for opponents.

The Saints were the league’s coupon to a free victory.

Yet despite the pockmarked nature of the Saints franchise, the Lions suffered perhaps their most inglorious defeat of all time in New Orleans, on November 8, 1970, when Tom Dempsey thwacked a 63-yard field goal at the final gun to lift the Saints to victory.

In keeping with the times, the dramatic—and record-setting—victory was one of just two wins the Saints had in 1970.

The Lions haven’t won much in New Orleans, and just last month, the Saints ran away with a 31-17 victory.

The Saints have shaken their losing image like a caterpillar doing its butterfly thing.

No longer do teams fly down to Louisiana for a Big Easy win.

The Saints went 8-0 at home this season, and the scoreboard rings up like a pinball machine when they get into rhythm.

The Saints are 11-point favorites in Saturday night’s Wild Card game, and the NFL rarely sees those kinds of point spreads in the playoffs.

The game could turn into a disaster for the Lions, who have precious few players on their roster who’ve stepped onto the field for an NFL playoff game.

So the Lions will use that lack of experience to their advantage, or so they’ll try.

They’ve already talked of enjoying the underdog role, and that they have nothing to lose and that all the pressure is on the Saints.

The typical things teams who run the risk of getting run out of the building say as their execution approaches.

I look at the Lions now, just three years removed from the ignominy of 0-16, and I can’t help but think of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Steelers, the Team of the 1970s, were a wayward franchise in the 1960s, usually an also-ran and finding that football games were harder to win than a husband’s fight with his wife.

The bottoming out came in 1969, when the Steelers won on Opening Day for their bright young coach in his first season: Chuck Noll.

Then the Steelers lost their remaining 13 games.

From the ashes of 1-13, the Steelers drafted their franchise quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, in 1970. This was one year after the Steelers selected a brutally dominant defensive tackle named Joe Greene.

The Lions, just months removed from 0-16, drafted Matthew Stafford in 2009. In 2010, they added DT Ndamukong Suh.

The Steelers got better, and with defter drafting, they built a defense that became dominant, and an offense that could compete, too. By 1972, just three years from 1-13, the Steelers were in the playoffs.

The Lions are in the playoffs, just three years after 0-16. They’ve managed to do it with good drafting and smart free agent signings.

The Steelers began arming Bradshaw with weapons, adding a tough and fast runner, Franco Harris, in 1972 from nearby Penn State. They drafted a gazelle receiver in Lynn Swann in 1974.

The Steelers, via the draft, added pieces yearly. Trades were few and free agency didn’t really exist.

From the ruins of 1-13, the Pittsburgh Steelers won four Super Bowls in the 1970s—from 1974 thru 1979.

The Steelers won a miraculous playoff game in 1972—the famous Immaculate Reception game against Oakland. From that experience, the Steelers, with all their smart and brilliant draft choices, parlayed their Super Bowl credentials.

That’s how winning, perennially successful NFL franchises are built—through the draft. It has been the blueprint of the Steelers of the ‘70s, the 49ers of the ‘80s, the Cowboys of the ‘90s.

It says here that this same blueprint will be the success of the Lions of the ‘10s.

Lions GM Martin Mayhew is a smart man who learned from a dumb guy.

Mayhew, longtime second in command under the dunderhead Matt Millen, was promoted to GM after Millen’s firing early in the 2008 season. Quickly, Mayhew proved adept at the job. It was obvious that Mayhew took everything that Millen did, and did the exact opposite.

Wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall in meetings that Millen held with Mayhew in attendance?

I can only wonder how many of those meetings Mayhew emerged from, shaking his head.

The 1970s Steelers didn’t take the NFL by storm right away. It took a couple of playoff losses before they found their footing. You know the rest.

The Lions have no business winning a playoff game in New Orleans, of all places, on Saturday night. They are three years removed from 0-16. Their quarterback is very good, but he’s all of 23 years old.

The Saints won the Super Bowl two years ago and could darn well do it again this year.

Only a delusional optimist would think the Lions can win this game.

And they probably won’t.

The Steelers needed a miracle play to win their first playoff game of 1972. Then they stumbled, and eventually learned how to win.

The Lions will likely lose on Saturday night, blocks from the French Quarter. It will be a necessity, almost, in their learning process.

The Team of the ‘10s?

Why the hell not?

Lions’ Theft In Oakland Biggest Win In Years

The man with half a foot and a stump for an arm trotted onto the field at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans on November 8, 1970. The least likely pro football record holder was a pudgy, roly-poly man with what looked like a block of wood for a right foot.

As Tom Dempsey strode onto the field, with two seconds remaining and the ball on his Saints’ 44-yard line, his team trailing the Lions, 17-16, chortles began in the Lions defensive huddle.

Alex Karras has confirmed it, on many occasions. He and his teammates openly mocked the Saints and Dempsey for attempting a 63-yard field goal, when the current record was merely 56 yards.

But the Saints only needed three points for the win, and new coach J.D. Roberts (he took over for the fired Tom Fears that week) figured the chances were just as good, if not better, of Dempsey getting a good “foot” into one, rather than tossing a Hail Mary pass.

So the Saints lined up for the kick. In Dempsey’s own words, as told to the Detroit Free Press’s George Puscas back in 1992, “The goalposts looked far away.”

They were.

Dempsey’s kick was square and true. His club foot made a sound like a cannon going off, according to those who were there that day, when it made contact with the football.

The pigskin traveled like a missile instead of a kicked football. It didn’t really go end-over-end, like a normal kick. Rather, Dempsey’s shot kind of sailed with the ends of the ball parallel to the field. Only at the very end did it return to end-over-end status, and plopped just over the crossbar.

The Saints beat the Lions, 19-17. Karras, who moments earlier was among the mockers, had actually tried his damndest to block the kick but barely missed it with his outstretched hand.

It was impossible for old goats like yours truly to not flash back to that November day in 1970, when Sebastian Janikowski jogged onto the field in Oakland on Sunday, preparing to swing his left foot into a 65-yard field goal attempt.

The CBS announcer in New Orleans was Don Criqui.

“Dempsey will set a new National Football League record,” Criqui said into the microphone, which can be relived courtesy of YouTube. “In addition to winning the game.”

Janikowski would have set a new National Football League record with his kick. In addition to winning the game.

Could the Detroit Lions fall victim to such crapola twice?

If any franchise could, it would be the Lions, right?

Not this time.

Ndamukong Suh, compared by I earlier this season to the great DT Karras, succeeded where old no. 71 failed. Suh blocked Janikowski’s kick, causing it to flutter harmlessly away from the goalposts.

And the Lions had sealed an improbable 28-27 win.

In the euphoria of such a win, i.e. the 24 hours or so after it happens, it’s easy to overstate its importance, and its place in history.

It’s so easy for those who rap on keyboards and who blab into sports talk radio microphones to get overly giddy about a win like Sunday’s, in which the Lions trailed by 13 points with 7:47 remaining.

Go ahead. Get giddy. Everyone has my permission.

This wasn’t just a win, after all. The bloggers and radio hosts are right this time.

The Lions franchise has turned the corner, I tell you. Four comeback wins of 13+ points in the same season—never before done in the 90+ year history of the NFL.

It’s a team that can look maddeningly undisciplined and neutralized on the one hand, but then look like a juggernaut on the other.

But the NFL is perhaps the most “bottom line” of all the four major pro sports leagues. There are only 16 regular season games, and every one of them is the most important game of the year, starting with opening day.

So the only thing that matters in the NFL is this: did you win, or did you lose?

Period.

The Lions have been able to say they won nine times this season. Which, after 14 games, puts them on the precipice of their first playoff appearance since the 2oth century (1999).

The Lions are winning games this season like they’ve never won before. And the best part is that they haven’t really lost like they used to lose, i.e. games they shouldn’t have lost.

Look at who’s beaten the Lions this season.

The 49ers, who are 10-3.

The Falcons, who are 9-5.

The Bears, who were riding a hot streak at the time.

The Packers. Enough said.

The Saints, who are 11-3.

So it’s not like the Lions are losing to chopped liver.

You win for a reason in the NFL, and, more telling, you lose for a reason, too.

No team can look at their record after 16 games and say that luck or flukes played a factor.

You’re 3-13 for a reason. And, conversely, you’re 13-3 for a reason as well.

The Lions are 9-5 and that’s that. They are a 9-5 team for a reason.

And they are tantalizingly close to that elusive playoff appearance. A winning record is already secured, their first since 2000.

Also in the 20th century, by the way.

The Lions are, like so many teams in the NFL, a flawed, imperfect platoon. They are capable of so much greatness, and so much exasperating play, too.

Just like every other team in the league, even the Packers.

A win like Sunday’s in Oakland can do so much for the psyche of a football team, just like the crazy comeback wins engineered over the Vikings and Cowboys earlier this season, on successive weeks, both on the road.

Matthew Stafford leading a 99-yard drive with just over two minutes to play, sans timeouts, brazenly throwing the football to the man who everyone in the stadium knows shouldn’t beat you (Calvin Johnson), was like Justin Verlander striking out three straight All-Stars with first base open to seal a win.

It shouldn’t happen. But it did.

Stafford is the best quarterback not named Bobby Layne in Lions history. Already.

He’s just getting started, and when you look at the Lions’ young talent and developing depth, it’s hard not to say the same thing about this team.

Go ahead, get giddy. It’s about damn time.

Lions Win, But Not Before Their Playoff Hopes Flash Before Their Eyes

The penalty was for one yard. Three measly feet. Yet it seemed like a mile, and it felt like a reminder to us of Lions ineptitude and bad timing.

One more act of stupidity, right? One very Lions-esque thing to do, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and turn what had been a fun, festive Sunday afternoon into something that Stephen King might have penned.

Cliff Avril was the Lions player this time. He was the one looking to the heavens, shaking his head, wondering why he had just done what he had just done.

It’s been a question asked too often by and about Lions players of the past.

What did Cliff Avril just do?? Are you kidding me?

Avril had inexplicably jumped offsides, as if he’d been shot out of a toy cannon, with the Minnesota Vikings on the Lions’ two-yard line, sans time outs, and the clock heading for single digits.

The blunder stopped the clock, of course, with nine ticks remaining.

The infraction moved the Vikings merely a yard closer to paydirt, but that yard carried a big stick.

It was but a yard, but it appeared to represent so much more.

Avril’s gift of a yard to the Vikings looked like it would be the three feet that QB Joe Webb needed to march his team to the winning score. The Lions led 34-28 but never before did a six-point lead look so fragile. It wasn’t a lead, it was a fraying rope with a piano tied to it, hovering over the Lions’ playoff hopes.

And Avril, it looked like, had just held a blowtorch to that fraying piece of rope.

He did WHAT?

Tell me that your thoughts didn’t go back to Bobby Ross going for two or Marty Mornhinweg taking the wind. Tell me they didn’t and I’ll call you a liar.

Tell me, as the Vikings lined up at the one-yard line with nine seconds left, on the verge of wiping out a 21-point deficit and squeezing the life out of the Lions’ season, that you didn’t think back to the Matt Millen Era and the Paul Edinger field goal on the last play of the 2000 season which led to said Era.

Avril’s random act of madness caused a packed house at Ford Field to cease breathing, which the faithful didn’t re-commence doing until Avril, of all people, finally pounced on a football (aka the greased pigskin) that bounded some 50 yards downfield after it was slapped from Webb’s hands by a blitzing DeAndre Levy.

The final play of Sunday’s game was like the final scene of a horror movie—the kind where the girl is about to get killed and the hero shoots the villain from behind, when you didn’t even know the hero was around.

It was a stunning finish to a game that the Lions should have had in their back pocket, except that pocket had a hole the size of Joe Webb in it.

The Lions had no clue as to how to deal with Webb, who bounced around like a pinball in the Vikings backfield, rattling off one would-be Lions tackler after the other, and always ending up in a bonus cup.

Webb ran around and around and around—sometimes appearing to run half the length of the football field, except horizontally and in zig-zag fashion.

As Lions coach Jim Schwartz said afterward as he was still catching his breath, his team tried everything against Webb. And still Webb almost led the Vikings back from a 31-14 second half deficit.

Webb started the comeback by managing to gallop from the pocket to the end zone, some 65 yards away, with no Lions defender within a 10-yard radius. He made Denard Robinson look like Scott Mitchell.

It all came down to the Vikings at the Lions’ one, with nine seconds left. Three feet away from a tying touchdown and the near-certain go-ahead PAT.

Three feet from the apparent end of the Lions’ season, or certainly the beginning of the end.

Three feet from another brutal loss that this town would be talking about for years to come.

Then Levy struck, blowing up Webb and the Vikes’ hopes of an improbable victory.

“I was nervous, watching that football,” Schwartz said afterward of Webb’s game-ending fumble, his words captured by Fox 2 Detroit’s post-game show camera. “I thought (Webb) would pick it up and start running around with it again.”

Good thing Webb didn’t. I don’t think football fans can hold their breath that long.

The Not-Ready-For-Prime Time Players

October seems like eons ago.

It was a grand time, October was.

The Tigers were thrilling us in the playoffs. The Red Wings were about to begin another Cup Quest. The Pistons were forcibly removed from our thoughts, thank God.

And the Lions?

The Lions, in October, were on a nine-game winning streak, in a broken arrow way dating back to last season. They were shoving memories of the “same old Lions” further into the recesses of our minds.

They seemed to be handling their new-found success just fine under head coach Jim Schwartz, a humorless sort who really should have been a Secret Service agent.

The Lions got off to a 5-0 jackrabbit start and their heads seemed of the proper proportions. They appeared to understand that Super Bowls aren’t won in October, though they can be lost that soon.

Even a two-game stumble at home against San Francisco and Atlanta seemed to be tolerable after the Lions went into Denver and made those who believed in Tim Tebow look foolish.

Then came the bye week.

For whatever reason, the Lions came back from their week off as if they’d been brainwashed at a commune.

“Discipline bad. Thuggish behavior good,” is what must have been drilled into their heads.

Since the bye, the Lions are 1-3, their star d-lineman has been shamed, suspended and ridiculed and they’ve twice embarrassed themselves on national TV with this Bad News Lions act that isn’t cute anymore.

The Lions are disintegrating before our eyes, their playoff hopes dying a slow death as their play has been one part dumb, two parts exasperating.

The latest meltdown occurred last night in New Orleans, with all the world—and Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth—to see.

It was a night that saw three—THREE—offensive pass interference penalties on the same receiver. A night that saw the Lions shove, throw footballs and slap face masks. A night with 11 penalties for over 100 yards.

The Lions have had two consecutive shots to show the nation what they’re made of. Two straight chances to validate their 5-0 start, and prove that it was no fluke. Two straight games on a big stage, against big time opponents—golden opportunities to wipe the smirks off the faces of football fans outside of Detroit.

The only thing that got wiped on anyone’s face was egg on the Lions’.

I’ve said it before: NFL games are lost far more than they are won. The teams that make the fewest mistakes win on a ridiculously consistent basis.

The Lions’ 31-17 loss to the Saints on NBC only stoked the fire that is raging about how the Lions play football on the brink of disaster.

They are like the guy in that old kids game, Tip-It. Remember him? The one who precariously balanced on top of the pinnacle, always destined to fall?

It was always just a matter of time when the Tip-It dude would come tumbling down.

The word is out on the Lions. The book on players and teams in the NFL spreads like wildfire. It doesn’t take long for your opponents to catch on, and once they do, you’d better change your ways, and fast.

The book is this: the Lions can be baited. They can be toyed with, almost, until they do something suicidal in nature.

An ill-timed personal foul. A cheap shot. An unsportsmanlike foul. Just a little trash talk, or a slight shove after the whistle, and you can get the Lions off and running—toward their own goal.

One of the Packers players said as much after the Thanksgiving Day game.

Just be patient, the player said, and the Lions will do something stupid.

“They’ve done it all year,” the Packers player, so wise, said.

Indeed they have, but it’s getting worse as the year goes on, not better.

In the salad days of October, I heaped praise on Coach Schwartz for keeping his players on an even keel despite the heady 5-0 start.

But then Schwartz himself went sideways against 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh after that loss in Detroit, and ever since his team has followed suit with mind-numbingly stupid play.

If one is to give Schwartz credit for what happened in September and October, then he has to take the heat for the shameful play that has taken place since.

The Lions are 7-5 and even though their playoff chances are tenuous, they have pretty much lost games that we expected them to lose and won most of the games we expected them to win, i.e. against the bad teams.

They will likely beat Minnesota next Sunday and move to 8-5. After that it’s a crap shoot.

So it’s not that they’re doing anything completely unexpected when it comes to wins and losses. Did you have them beating the Bears in Chicago, the Packers on Thanksgiving or the Saints in New Orleans?

I had them losing all three—and they obliged.

It’s one thing, though, to get beat by superior teams. It’s another to commit football Hari-kari and show yourself to be, in a way, the “same old Lions.”

It’s not like this is the first time stupid penalties and dumb play has vexed them.

It’s just happening when the stakes are higher, that’s all.

Lions’ Suh Wears NFL’s Black Hat, and the League Loves It

Ndamukong Suh was born about 40 years too late.

Suh, the Lions’ defensive tackle with a fuse shorter than Verne Troyer, would have been right at home playing in the NFL of the 1960s and ’70s.

Suh would have been just one of many players back then who had the disposition of a bear awoken during hibernation.

The league some 40-plus years ago was filled with defenders who bent the rules like a double-jointed thumb.

None of them got suspended.

Dick Butkus made no bones about his intentions. The Bears‘ middle linebacker didn’t try to sidestep anything. He didn’t try to vex the media with double talk and sugarcoat his motives. Butkus tried to hurt his opponents—physically and mentally. Usually the fear of the former led to the latter.

Butkus was interviewed by NFL Films early in his career and expressed his fascination with the film “Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte.”

Butkus described a scene from the movie, and as he did, his youthful, cherubic face started to display an almost psychotic-looking smile.

“I kind of liked it when that head come rolling down the stairs,” Butkus told Ed Sabol’s camera. “I like to project those things happening on the football field. And not to me.”

Like I said, there was no question about Butkus’ mindset when he stepped onto the gridiron.

Butkus used to verbally taunt Lions center Ed Flanagan. Then Butkus would spit on Flanagan’s hands as the center grabbed hold of the football prior to the snap.

There have been multiple stories told of Butkus’ antics, like the ones they tell of Bonnie and Clyde, or Ivan the Terrible.

There are tales of biting, scratching, stepping onto torsos, eyes being poked; some of Butkus’ opponents recall him literally growling before the snap.

Butkus was like so many of his brethren—the maniacal defender on the field who was soft-spoken and cerebral off it.

Defensive lineman Deacon Jones, another of Butkus’s contemporaries, has been credited with coining the word “sack” in reference to leveling the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage.

Jones has also been tagged with the label of mad man on the football field. Jones wore the black hat and loved it. Deacon ate up the reputation—and even propagated it—of a dirty player whose intention was to maim.

Conrad Dobler was an eccentric, nasty offensive guard for the St. Louis Cardinals, New Orleans Saints and Buffalo Bills. Dobler, for several seasons, was widely recognized as the dirtiest player in the NFL for most of the 1970s. The things that Dobler did beyond the range of vision of the officials would have him up on charges in all 50 states.

Yet Dobler never got suspended, let alone arrested.

Neither did Butkus, Jones or any of their partners in crime. They didn’t even try the political spin. Suh, had he played in those days, would have been held up as part of the NFL legacy of dirtiness, which is now folklore and winked at.

But Suh plays today and the NFL loves this kid. I believe that the more he transgresses, the more he’s liked by the league.

Don’t be fooled by the veneer of disgust and scorn that the NFL will publicly cast on Suh. Privately, the league can barely contain itself. The NFL, more than any of the four major sports leagues, subscribes to the words of literary giant Oscar Wilde.

“The only thing worse than being talked about,” Wilde once opined, “is NOT being talked about.”

The NFL welcomes all publicity—good, bad and ugly.

The league does a marvelous job of keeping itself in the public consciousness all year round. From the 24/7 NFL Network on TV to the games on Sundays, from January to December the NFL keeps itself on the forefront of its fans’ minds.

It doesn’t matter if the publicity is positive or negative. The NFL loves Ndamukong Suh because, for the first time in decades, the league has a Bad Guy.

Suh’s entry into the NFL is the best-timed debut of any pro player since Magic Johnson and Larry Bird splashed onto the NBA scene in 1979. Before Magic and Bird, the NBA was scrambling for media attention. They were like the NHL has always been.

Prior to Magic and Bird, the NBA used to televise its Finals games on tape delay. No fooling.

The NFL has been desperate for a marquee name on defense for several years. The two guys who most fans think of when it comes to tough defense—Brian Urlacher and Ray Lewis—are on the back end of their careers.

The NFL has wanted a shining light on defense for a long time—and it doesn’t matter if that light has a dirty tinge.

The league is filled with high profile heroes on the offensive side of the ball. There is no shortage of quarterbacks, receivers and running backs who catch the fans’ fancy.

But on defense? Not so much.

Suh is a villain in the eyes of his colleagues, who recently voted him as the dirtiest player in the league. He’s a villain in the eyes of the hypocritical media, who will lambaste Suh out of one side of their mouth, and privately ask their colleague, “Isn’t this great?” out of the other.

Suh is even a villain among the fan base—some of them Detroit Lions supporters, newly on board the “Suh is Dirty” train after his shameful behavior in Thursday’s nationally-televised game against the World Champion Green Bay Packers.

But here’s the rub: it doesn’t matter if the aura surrounding Ndamukong Suh is negative in nature. The league only cares that there is an aura.

Suh has people talking. He has people sneering in disdain. He even has folks who had previously defended him calling for suspensions in the wake of his stomping on Packers offensive lineman Evan Dietrich-Smith, which got him booted from the Thanksgiving Day game.

Suh will likely get suspended for his actions, even though Butkus, Jones, Dobler et al never did and they committed worse atrocities, more often, than Suh has so far in his young career.

The NFL will publicly assail Suh for his lack of anger management. Then the league will retreat to its private bunker and be positively giddy with the realization of what they have.

The NFL has a big name on defense who no one can stop talking about. The fact that the reason no one can stop talking about him is because of his violent, almost criminal behavior, is of no concern to the NFL.

The NFL has its new Dick Butkus.

The difference between Butkus and Suh is that Butkus didn’t offer up delusional, lame excuses for his sadistic ways, as Suh did after Thursday’s game.

If you think the NFL is legitimately outraged by Ndamukong Suh’s out-of-control behavior then you’re almost as delusional as Suh is.

The league loves this stuff. They have a Bad Guy on their hands and no one can stop talking about him. And he plays defense.

Ndamukong Suh, in a twisted way, is good for business.

Don’t you think otherwise.

Lions’ Smith A Story Too Good To Be True?

The Lions have a shiny 7-3 record because of a quarterback who came to Detroit after 0-16 and a defensive tackle who came a year after that.

The Lions are 7-3 because of a GM who followed the abysmal Matt Millen and began cleaning up almost as soon as Millen was fired.

The Lions are 7-3 because of a head coach who came from Tennessee, where he learned under the consistent and tenured Jeff Fisher.

The Lions are 7-3 because of three successful drafts and some deft personnel moves by the aforementioned GM.

The Lions are 7-3 because they have infused their roster with talent not seen in Detroit since the jolly Wayne Fontes coached here.

The Lions, though, are not 7-3 because they make it a habit of signing re-treads and bringing back reminders of that ghoulish 0-16 record.

Kevin Smith, you could say, is both of those things—a re-tread and a sour reminder of that dreadful 2008 season.

Smith, the running back who ran wild over, around and through the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, was a Lions rookie in 2008—the season of OH! and 16.

A couple weeks ago, Smith was a running back in training, and a doting father. He was watching the Lions from his sofa, like so many of us.

On Sunday, Smith was exactly what the doctor ordered for the Lions.

You could practically hear the Lions fans weeping in thanks.

A running game!

Smith gashed the Panthers for 140 yards on 16 carries. That’s an 8.8 yards per carry average. The last time a Lions running back had numbers like that, he was wearing no. 20 and taking our breath away.

Smith scored two TDs on the ground and a third via pass. He was heaven sent, really. It’s an old joke: the Lions have wanted to run the football in the worst way—and that’s exactly how they’d been running it (cue rim shot).

I’ve had my eye on Stephen Jackson, the bruising runner for the pathetic St. Louis Rams, a team beneath his talents. Jackson is someone who would look delectable in Honolulu Blue and Silver.

But that’s food for thought sometime in the future. Next year, maybe. For now, Kevin Smith looks to be the man lugging the football for the Lions the rest of the season, with Best apparently nowhere near ready for clearance.

If Sunday was any indication, the Lions may not miss Best at all.

Smith isn’t as quick or explosive as Best, but he can run between the tackles better and the man looks energized and fresh—which you would expect of someone who has been playing with his kid, not with a football.

“Get up at 7 a.m., train till noon, play with my son,” Smith told the media afterward about his daily regimen this autumn, before the Lions brought him in for a workout during the bye week.

Unless that kid of his hits like a 265-pound linebacker, you had to be surprised to see what Smith did on the gridiron on Sunday.

“I think the NFL would be hard-pressed to come up with a better storyline than Kevin Smith,” Lions coach Jim Schwartz told the press after Sunday’s game, in what surely must be considered a candidate for Understatement of the Year.

This performance of Smith’s was about as unexpected as Clam Chowder served on a Tuesday.

But this is the NFL, which has a shelf life of seven days. The league is as crazily unpredictable as it’s ever been. A team can look wretched one week and then look like Super Bowl contenders the next.

The NFL might not hear of Kevin Smith the rest of the season. In the Lions’ remaining six games, Smith’s production may turn pedestrian and insignificant.

Sunday’s game might be it for Smith as far as productivity. Who knows?

But if it’s not, and if the Lions have stumbled upon a Godsend here, then all of a sudden the team’s one-dimensional offense in Jahvid Best’s absence isn’t so one-dimensional anymore.

If the Lions can somehow turn Kevin Smith from Flavor of the Week to the Special of the Month, then the running game may be solved—or at least just good enough to make Matthew Stafford and his receiving crew dangerous enough to be playoff-ready.

Which means that despite all the Lions’ offensive weapons, their playoff fortunes might be resting on a player who was running Daddy Day Care just two weeks ago.

The NFL is a funny, funny league.