What Else To Say About Lions — Especially When You Don’t Watch The Game?

31-21? To the Indianapolis Colts? The 10-4 Colts with the seven-game winning streak, and just one season removed from a championship? And it was tied, 21-21, early in the fourth quarter? And Peyton Manning only threw for one touchdown pass?

What, did the Colts all have one hand tied behind their backs?

I didn’t watch this one. Correction: I saw the Colts’ opening drive — the expected hot knife-thru-butter, 78-yard affair that ate up half of the first quarter. Then I saw the Lions’ cold-butter-on-bread, three-and-out struggle, then I saw the Colts muff the ensuing punt. Then the TV got switched off and it was time to head out for a school affair with our daughter and the grandmoms. The DVR was used, but I doubt I’ll watch it. The game only got recorded because the last thing I would have wanted to happen was to come home and find out that the Lions pulled off a miraculous upset and I had no evidence to confirm it. So I’m sure the game will fall victim to the “delete” button soon.

No need to write much about the loss. It’s no. 14 on the way to the infamous Sweet Sixteen. Another game in which the Lions’ opponents sandbagged their way through much of it, only ratcheting it up when absolutely necessary. They really almost can beat the Lions with one hand tied behind their backs.

Yet it would be soooo typical if the Lions went into Green Bay at 0-15, and fouled everything up by beating the mediocre Packers, simultaneously avoiding 0-16 and snapping their 0-17 streak in Wisconsin. I don’t know what to say about it except that there would be all sorts of irony in there, among the muck of this season.

But this winless campaign sets up maybe the most interesting off-season in franchise history. Never before has owner Bill Ford Sr. had his hand forced with the coaching situation. Head coach Rod Marinelli isn’t going to be fired by Ford — he’s going to be fired by circumstances. 0-16 gets the coach fired, even in Detroit — to answer Darryl Rogers’ legendary question about what it takes to get the ziggy. So Ford will have no choice but to broom Marinelli, asking him to pack up his rock and his shovel and take his thoughts about invisibility with him. That much is certain. But what’s not so certain is who the next administration will be. I can’t wait for the hot stove league to fire up.

Meanwhile, get a good look at this bunch, because you’re not likely to see more than a handful of them ever again. I reckon that as many as 20-25 of the current Lions will be released into the private sector before next football season, joining the rest of us stiffs who are trying to earn a dollar. Maybe half of the remaining 30 or so players will wind up as backups elsewhere or on some team’s practice squad, and the other half might stick around, temporarily. Like I said before, I’d keep Calvin Johnson, Jason Hanson, and take my chances with 51 rookies, free agents, and the like.

It’s getting boring writing about the Lions. This is the time of the year where you run out of things to say about all the losing. But at least there’s the historical implications that two more losses — just two more! — will bring. That’ll liven things up a bit, at least.

Quarterback Dan Orlovsky says there are 15 plays out there that happened this year that, had they gone the Lions’ way, would have transformed them into a .500 team. I’m serious. He really said that after yesterday’s game. It’s a nice sentiment, but as was pointed out, the Lions don’t have the requisite talent or skill to have turned those 15 mysterious plays in their favor — and that’s why those plays, whatever they were, went against them. He may as well have said, “If only we had better players, we would be a .500 team.” At least he would have been spot on in his assessment. Instead, he just looks like a boob — just like his head coach.

I don’t know what Marinelli said to Colts’ coach and longtime friend Tony Dungy after the game, but I hope some of it included, “Hey — if you need a d-line coach next season, ring me.”

Don’t recent former Lions head coaches seem to land on their feet? Marty Mornhinweg with the Philadelphia Eagles, Steve Mariucci with the NFL Network. Dick Jauron with the Buffalo Bills. Hey, even Bobby Ross ended up with Army. Come to think of it, Marinelli is a military man. It’s food for thought.

Lions Are Not Only Winless On The Field, But Losers In Their Minds

Shortly after becoming the general manager of the Pistons in December 1979, Jack McCloskey realized the enormity of his task. The team was awful. Its two stars — Bob Lanier and Bob McAdoo — didn’t want to be there. Lanier’s trade request was the most public, and the most poignant, for Big Bob had been a Piston his whole career, which was in its tenth year.

Knowing he had to trade Lanier, McCloskey then got an idea. A BIG idea.

“I looked at the team as an expansion team,” McCloskey told me in an interview many years ago. “We were really an expansion team.”

Ex-coach Dick Vitale stripped the Pistons bare of draft picks, thanks to bad trades — one of which was McAdoo. The team was lucky to win one of every four games. So McCloskey picked up the phone and called his old friend and boss, Lakers GM Jerry West.

“I thought that if we could get Magic, that would have been great,” Trader Jack said about Lakers rookie Magic Johnson.

So McCloskey asked West if he was sitting down.

“Then I told him that he could have every player on my roster for Magic,” McCloskey said, chuckling.

EVERY player?

“Every player. We would have taken Magic, signed a bunch of free agents and CBA players, and built from there,” McCloskey said.

West ran the outrageous offer past Lakers ownership, but it was rejected.

“But they were thinking about it,” McCloskey said with a grin.

It’s tempting to say that the Lions, today, might want to take a look at Project Magic that Jack McCloskey put forth in early 1980.

Tempting to want to walk into the locker room and rip every single name plate off the stalls, save perhaps Calvin Johnson’s. And Jason Hanson’s.

Keep Calvin and Hanson, and find 51 other players, and go from there.

You think I’m joking?

What’s happening with the Lions now isn’t just a talent chasm between them and the rest of the NFL. That’s well known and hard enough to overcome. What’s also going down is a mentality, deep and ingrained. The thought, indeed even the belief, that it’s never going to happen here — from among the players themselves.

The Lions monkeyed around and found themselves with a nifty little 17-0 lead after the first quarter yesterday against Tampa Bay. They were making plays, on both sides of the ball. The Bucs, no doubt, were a little nauseous, wondering if they’d be the first team to lose to the Lions this season.

No worries. There were still 45 minutes left to play, after all!

The Lions imploded, and lost, 38-20. If this was basketball, we’d say that the Bucs closed the game with a 38-3 run.

But beyond that, some of the Lions players started using words like “here we go again” and “we don’t know how to win.” Doesn’t matter who said it; but it was said, and more than once.

It’s clear: the Lions players may talk about being embarrassed and being angry and determined, but not only are they outclassed, talent-wise, they are beaten mentally before the ball is even kicked off.

So it’s not enough, anymore, to bring a player in, here and there, to address needs. The Brian Kellys and Leigh Boddens aren’t enough.

There’s been a lot of talk about “blowing it up”, and starting over. Much of that talk has come here, in the form of the Eno Plan. But the talk has primarily revolved around the front office and coaching situation. The personnel part of it has been brushed aside, probably because it seems too daunting right now. It’s a lot easier to change a few heads than 53.

But we gotta keep thinking big here. What would be wrong, really, with a super duper serious turnover in personnel? Something huge, like 60 percent or more?

Think of it: 30+ players wearing Lions uniforms in 2009 that aren’t doing so right now. More, if you can do it. The more new faces you get in here, the more players you have that look at you cross-eyed when you start talking about recent history of Detroit football, the better. The more who will pin a pencil-necked sportswriter against the wall and sneer, “I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say ‘losing mentality.’ I’m a winner and I don’t think like that,” the better.

The Lions need a mental enema.

You can’t do it with this current bunch, because these guys have no idea what it’s like to handle any degree of success — not even a good first quarter, for cripes sakes. Even a new GM, a new coach, isn’t going to be enough with the current roster. Because a lot of these Lions have been through that before, too — at least the new coach part. They’ve seen and heard the brave words of the new man at the helm. They’ve been told that the bar is high and the West Coast offense is the way to the Promised Land and to pound the rock and dig for the light. And still they know, deep down, that they will come out at the wrong end of the score at the final gun every Sunday.

The 2009 Lions must be drastically different from the 2008 version — and not just with the guys who wear suits and ties and whistles around their necks. The dudes in pads have to be broomed, too. McCloskey only had to try to unload 12 players with the Pistons; the Lions must somehow jettison 30 or 40. But they simply have to try. This is one case where change for change’s sake is warranted. You know how many men are out there dying for a chance to play pro football? Guys who were maybe the last cuts in other training camps, or those looking for that “big break”? Guys with a pristine, blank memory when it comes to Lions football.

Think of it as throwing away your virus-infested computer with a fresh new one.

The Lions are not only beaten on the football field, they are beaten between the ears. The latter must be corrected before you can see any improvement on the former.

Marinelli Has Already Channeled Bobby Ross, So Why Not Joe Schmidt, Too?

I highly doubt that Joe Schmidt, still among us somewhere in metro Detroit in blissful retirement, even remembers the exchange. But since it was captured by the TV news cameras, and since the man holding the microphone was the acerbic Al Ackerman, and since I have a steel trap for this sort of stuff but have difficulty remembering where I placed my keys, I recall it for you now.

I’m recalling it because Lions head coach Rod Marinelli had some frustrated words for the media after yesterday’s 31-22 loss to the Carolina Panthers, and the words were hauntingly familiar to the mini-diatribe that Lions HC Schmidt had against Ackerman, way back in the early-1970s.

Ackerman was haranguing Schmidt — Al did that a lot to the coaches and players in his prime — about the Lions’ linebacker situation in training camp at Cranbrook. And Al had finally gotten under Schmidt’s skin (another frequent occurrence) when the exchange broke into something similar to the following.

Al: Do you feel comfortable with the linebackers you have right now? You seem to be a little thin at linebacker.

Schmidt: What are you saying, Al?

Al: I’m saying that it seems like you’re a little thin at linebacker.

Schmidt: You want to find me one, Al? You have a linebacker you’d like me to play?

Al: But–

Schmidt: Where am I going to find a linebacker, Al? You gonna find me a linebacker?

You gotta love it.

Marinelli came perilously close to reenacting that “discussion” after the game Sunday. He was trying to explain his team’s 17th loss in its last 18 games, which brought his record to 10-32 as Lions coach. The issue, in Marinelli’s mind, seemed to be talent, if you glean something from his choice of words, which were very Joe Schmidt-like.

“There’s nobody else out there,” Marinelli said. “There’s nobody out there. You want to go out on the street and look for me? If you bring somebody back, I’ll look at him. No, no. You go out on the street and find one. So these are the men I have.”

Now, I would never expect a football coach to admit that his team isn’t talented enough — at least not on the record. That’s expecting a little too much honesty. Besides, that’s what the media and the bottom-feeding bloggers are for, he wrote, being a member of both camps.

But these may also have been the smartest words to come out of Marinelli’s mouth in a very long time. Of course, it’s all for naught. He’s to be fired moments after the final whistle this season. Make no mistake.

Rather, the Lions better make no mistake.

There’s going to be, maybe, quite an off-season around Detroit when it comes to its pro football team. Team president Matt Millen has been fired, and he needs to be replaced. Interim GM Martin Mayhew may be one of the brightest young executives around, but it hardly matters.

Here’s the deal: the Lions have no face. They generate no excitement. They are hemorrhaging fans. They’re like the Republicans, for gosh sakes.

But they have two chances to make one, just like the old NBA free throw system. They have two vacancies to fill: permanent GM, and head coach. They need only to get one right to start shoring up their fan base.

If they stick with Mayhew (which would be a mistake, but that’s a whole other blog post) then the Lions had better snare a high-profile head coach with success sprinkled all over his resume. No more position coaches or “highly regarded” coordinators. But if the new GM is high profile and has credibility, then he might be able to pass the smell test if he were to hire a lesser-known guy as head coach. That’s because the fans would be listening to the new GM, not the old administration, tell them why the new coach is going to be just terrific.

There are columnists and colleagues of mine, who I respect, who’ll tell you that they’ve never called for a man to be fired and they never will. Fine. But what about accountability? Shouldn’t that be demanded?

Rod Marinelli, if he finishes the expected 1-15 or 0-16 this season, will be either 11-37 or 10-38 as Lions head coach. You cannot — can NOT — have such a record after three seasons and not be held accountable, i.e. fired. At least, you can’t if your bosses are serious about running a business.

Bill Ford Sr. didn’t make his money in pro football. He made it in the auto industry. Luckily for him, football isn’t his main source of income. Of course, the whole auto industry thing isn’t looking too good lately, either. Regardless, the Fords are businessmen, first and foremost. And I would hope that the businessman in them would recognize that you can’t bring back both halves of this current GM/coach partnership in 2009. It would be a disaster, from public relations to customer service.

How many season ticket holders have the Lions lost in recent years? And how many more would they lose if they try to come back in 2009 with Martin Mayhew as GM and Rod Marinelli as head coach?

No, one of them, at least, must be replaced — and for sure it must be Marinelli. To be 11-37 or 10-38 and still be on the job is heinous. I’ve written it before: everywhere else in pro sports, if you lose you get fired. Why shouldn’t it be true in Detroit with the Lions?

And to my compadres who get icky over calling for a coach’s head: there are only 32 men in the world who hold the title of head coach in the National Football League. So shouldn’t these 32 men be the best of the best? And if they’re not, shouldn’t someone else get a shot at being one of those elite 32?

Marinelli, it appears, is at his wit’s end. He doesn’t have the guys to compete for sixty minutes in the NFL. So it should be the players who go, right? Perhaps, but in Miami, where the talent isn’t all that different this year than from 2007, the Dolphins are 6-4 one year after being 1-15. They changed coaches, in case you didn’t know. Now look at them. So maybe the Lions don’t have the talent to compete for sixty minutes with this head coach. Oh, and they changed presidents too, to a guy named Bill Parcells.

The problem isn’t just talent. Marinelli is in over his head, from clock management to game planning to in-game decisions. That’s no crime; maybe he’s better suited to be a position coach. That’s not against the law, last I checked.

So don’t tell me that turnarounds are impossible, or that the fix can’t be quick. Not if you make the right hires — and dismissals.

Lions, Bengals Should Decide #1 Overall Draft Pick The Manly Way

It used to be a hackneyed line, found in the B-movies of the day, when color was still reserved for the big budget “pictures”. Typically, it was uttered by men in fedoras who all sounded like Jimmy Cagney.

The line was: “That’s just crazy enough to work!”

Oh, you can still see it pop up from time to time. Sometimes I even like saying it; I’ve had a pretty good success rate of getting laughs when it spills off my lips.

As I was sitting here, trying to figure out what to write about another Lions loss — this time without the, ahem, benefit of having actually seen the game — the idea came to me out of the blue.

The Lions are 0-7. The Cincinnati Bengals are 0-8. They would appear to be on a crash course to see who will get the #1 overall pick in next year’s draft, especially since they don’t play each other. It’s still highly likely that they will end up with identical records, be it 0-16, 1-15 or something.

So here’s the idea. Instead of using some silly little coin flip or sucking ping pong balls through a vacuum and into a rotating cylinder — or any other supposedly “random” little trick that you can come up with — in order to determine overall pick #1, why not hold the first annual Toilet Bowl?

You heard me.

As part punishment, part fairness, part grotesque sadism, make the Lions and Bengals suit up the week between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, pitting them against each other in the Toilet Bowl. At stake? The 2009 #1 Draft Pick. The winner of the game gets the #1 pick. And, to make things interesting (for what is the real difference between #1 and #2, anyway?), the loser of the Toilet Bowl gets bumped all the way down to the 32nd pick. I know, tough cookies for the loser, but maybe, just maybe, you might get a decent football game if you frame it this way.

I’m only partly kidding, by the way. What scares me is that I wonder if I’m really kidding at all.

I haven’t seen much of the Bengals this season, even with my NFL Sunday Ticket package. Just because you CAN watch the Bengals doesn’t mean that you DO. I’m sure they’re saying the same thing about the Lions in Cincinnati. But a look at the standings shows the Bengals with 104 points scored and 217 points allowed; the Lions are at 114-212. Verrrry similar.

Now, it may not be what Lions RB Rudi Johnson had in mind when he signed with the Lions after several years with the Bengals, but there you have it.

Here’s this week’s incredible Lions statistic: Washington QB Jason Campbell, Sunday, became the sixth quarterback out of the seven the Lions have played this season to register a career high in QB rating. SIX OUT OF SEVEN! The exception? Minnesota’s Gus Frerotte, who surely would contemplate retirement immediately if you were to show him this nugget of info.

But it’s true. Matt Ryan, Aaron Rodgers, J.T. O’Sullivan, Kyle Orton, Matt Schaub, and Campbell have all had career days, literally, against the Lions this season. Even for a winless team, even for a team with the Lions pedigree, that’s mind-boggling.

But it’s not funny. It’s not cute, even if we pretend it to be. It’s shameful, is what it is. It’s embarrassing and humiliating and disgusting, is what it is. It’s being the league’s punching bag, its fire hydrant for all the dogs.

Ahh, but would the Lions be the punching bag and fire hydrant for the Bengals, too?

Let’s strap it on the last week of January and find out.

It’s just crazy enough to work!

Zebras’ Errors Might Have Actually Mattered To Most Any Other Team Than The Lions

Note to NFL officiating crews everywhere: the Detroit Lions are perfectly capable of screwing games up all by themselves — they don’t need any help from you.

The Lions, as you’ve read all over the Internet and in those things that preceded it called newspapers, got jobbed yesterday in Minnesota by the zebras. Twice. And on one of those occasions, the very vehicle that was designed to prevent such malfeasance upheld the mistake that was made on the field.

Why, it might have actually been a travesty, if the Lions were any sort of a football team.

Whether they won in the Metrodome or not — and isn’t it just par for the course that the Vikings thieved another one away from the Lions — wouldn’t have changed, one iota, what happens to the Lions after this season is safely in the books. And if you’re looking for evidence that confirms the suspicion that 0-4 teams are treated more shabbily than others, look no further than yesterday’s game. So Lions fans’ outrage is probably justified, but as I wrote last week, is also just more wasted negative energy.

There’s no real difference between 1-4 and 0-5, is there?

Bad Call No. 1 was the opinion on the field, and upheld in that supposedly just court of appeals in the replay booth, that WR Calvin Johnson fumbled after a key, long pass reception in the fourth quarter. It was one of those calls that you feel better about once you see the video evidence play out on the TV screen.

“Oh, that will be overturned. No sweat,” you say as you venture to the fridge for another pop.

Then you return to the television and see that the court of appeals must be crooked, on the take, or with money on the Vikings. Or all of the above. For the call was confirmed, even though it sure looked like that Johnson had control of the ball when his knee made contact with the turf.

The referee explained afterward that there was no irrefutable evidence that the call on the field was wrong, so he had no choice but to uphold it. Maybe they showed him Tom and Jerry reruns under the hood instead of the actual play. Because had they shown him what we were privy to in the comforts of our own homes and neighborhood bars, then he certainly would have reversed the call.

Bad Call no. 2 was the real killer, though. The phantom pass interference collared on Leigh Bodden — who played wonderfully — late in the fourth quarter that instantly put the Vikings in game-winning field goal range. Not only did Bodden appear to play the pass perfectly with minimal contact, there was a question as to whether the ball was catchable at all. Earlier in the game, the officials let Johnson get mugged but kept the hankies in their pockets, apparently reasoning that Johnson could never have caught a long bomb near the end zone.

Bodden demanded an apology from the NFL, then quickly admitted that such a gesture wouldn’t change a darn thing; Lions lose, whether the league is sorry or not. But they probably aren’t; who cares about 0-5, 31-86 teams?

Then there’s the old adage of, “Well, if we did some things better, those calls wouldn’t matter.”

Bull-oney.

The Lions rushed the passer. They blocked a field goal attempt. They were decent against the run. They broke off a 50-yard run of their own. They didn’t really turn the ball over. They forced two fumbles from Adrian Peterson. They tackled. For long stretches of time, they looked like a pro football team. Yet it wasn’t quite good enough.

At one point, with the Lions threatening to not get blown out for the first time this season, Fox’s Ron Pitts wondered whether the action on the field was a result of the Lions raising their game a level, or the Vikings lowering theirs. Even the announcers don’t give the benefit of the doubt to 0-4 teams.

Again, no big deal in the scheme of things. We’re only talking the difference between 1-15 and 2-14 here, folks. Still, it would have been nice for the guys to have a chance to lose the game on their own, without the nudge from the officials. The way I see it, that bad pass interference call robbed me of discovering Way #564 of how the Lions can lose a football game.

Oh well — there’s always next week.

Browns Prove Dumbness Not Relegated To Allen Park

Another Mistake By The Lake.

Until today, that was the less-than-flattering nickname given to the city of Cleveland, Ohio. Like many city monikers, it was neither accurate nor fair. Chicago isn’t all that Windy, Philadelphia doesn’t show much Brotherly Love, and Detroit is losing claim to being the Motor City.

But the new Mistake By The Lake is the Browns’ decision to wrap DT Shaun Rogers in green thru the 2013 season, to the tune of $42 million. His current contract was set to expire in 2010; the Brownies added three years and about $20 million to the pot.

That sound you hear is hundreds of thousands of Lions fans clutching their bellies, laughing and pointing across Lake Erie.

“SUCKERS!”

Why the Browns decided to lock Rogers up so quickly, when there was hardly a sense of urgency to do so, is beyond me. They acquired him Friday from the Lions for a draft pick and CB Leigh Bodden.

The Browns, you’d think, would have liked to have seen Rogers squeeze himself into his football pants, at least, before hooking him up with so much dough.

But Rogers is their problem now, so I really shouldn’t care. But it’s nonetheless amusing to see another team spend its money so foolishly.

There is nothing — zero, zip, nada — that makes me think that Rogers will suddenly become a 16-game beast on the D-line, just because he’s changed teams. The whole “change of scenery” thing is a nice thought, and I think it’s cute that the Browns think that it applies here, but once a scalawag, always a scalawag. The change of scenery theory mostly applies to hard-working but frustrated players who either struggle to find playing time or are caught in a system that doesn’t exploit their virtues. It’s not designed to be a panacea for all — especially overweight, out-of-shape, brooding dudes like Shaun Rogers.

Like I’ve written here, Rogers could have owned Detroit. He could have turned this town on like no other D-lineman since Al “Bubba” Baker — a modern day Alex Karras, if he had only smiled or talked. After his monster performance against the Broncos in that 44-7 win, Rogers was silent. That was his chance to seize the moment. I would have taken outrageous. I would have taken a Roy Williams-like propensity to say goofy things. I would have taken some humility, some leadership. I would have taken the ability to play more than four plays in a row without needing an oxygen tank.

But none of those things was Shaun Rogers interested in doing, so now he’s gone, someone else’s concern. The change of scenery theory might apply for a series, a quarter, a game. Maybe even a stretch of several games. But it cannot, I maintain, apply for a 16-game NFL season, because Rogers hasn’t shown, in seven years, the gumption to prove otherwise. He’s poison, and it’s time now to infect another’s apple.

The Browns will regret today’s decision as early as the midway point of next season. They may even regret it in the first week of training camp, when they look over and see Rogers doubled over, gasping for air.

Lions Need Super Bowl-Winning Management People, Not Players

They’ve come through town, their fingers ringed, and smiled the smile of the champion.

Damien Woody. Az Hakim. Eric Davis. Dre Bly. Desmond Howard. John Jett. An offensive lineman; a receiver; a couple defensive backs; a kick returner; even a punter, for goodness sake. And there’ve been more, as you go deeper into history — players who’ve won Super Bowls for other organizations, in other years, for other coaches — who’ve come to the Lions after having captured The Prize.

They’ve been looked at with awe in the locker room, for having owned what no other Lions player has come close to sniffing: that elusive World Championship ring.

It’s even been a reason, in some instances, why some of those players have been signed to wear the Honolulu Blue and Silver. The old claptrap about how having players on your roster who’ve won championships somehow services you well. It was mentioned again yesterday, after the Lions signed safety Dwight Smith, proud alumnus of the 2002 Super Bowl-winning Tampa Bay Bucs.

Nonsense!

It’s not PLAYERS who’ve won championships that the Lions have been lacking. Or, to fittingly borrow from an old campaign line in this, an election year: It’s the management, stupid.

The Lions have woefully lacked Super Bowl-winning front office types, and that — way more than a lack of Super Bowl-winning players — is the biggest reason why they have been ring-less since the Eisenhower administration.

I remember back in the mid-to-late-1990s. Bill Ford Jr. was dispatched by his father to openly spy on the San Francisco 49ers. The objective was to find out how a championship-type organization goes about its business. So the younger Ford hung around the 49ers braintrust for a while, in training camp, taking notes, before reporting back to the brass in Pontiac.

That was over a hundred losses and a half dozen coaches ago.

It’s nice to pick the brains of champions, but it’s far more effective to go one step further and raid their organizations for their brightest talent.

How many Super Bowl winners do you think the New England Patriots had on their roster before they began their 21st century supremacy? Were the Indy Colts dotted with champions before the current management team took over and built a mini-empire?

As insult to injury, the Super Bowl “winners” that the Lions have signed have often proved to be far from key contributors to their old team’s cause, anyhow. Starters? Yeah. Decent players? In some cases. But it’s not like the Lions have brought Tom Brady, Marshall Faulk, or Warren Sapp over here, fresh off a championship.

But that’s secondary. What’s primary is that you cannot model yourself after an elite organization until you are ready to stop admiring from afar and start plundering from within.

The closest the Lions came to doing such a noble thing was in the mid-1980s, when they stole Bears executive Jerry Vainisi. But then they fouled the whole thing up by making him beholden to then-GM Russ Thomas, which completely defeated the purpose. They bought a Rolls Royce and fitted it with an Edsel engine.

So be ready to hear all about Smith and his 2002 experience. About his two returned INTs for touchdowns in the Super Bowl against the Raiders. It’s nice. But it was for another team, at another time. You don’t win Super Bowls with players resumes. You win with competent front offices and scouts.

The most important Super Bowl-winning talent a team can employ are those who wear suits and ties to work everyday.

Not Surprisingly, Lions Can’t Get It Done In Crunch Time

Let’s play a round of Liar’s Club.

Who among you actually thought Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo WASN’T going to lead his team to victory in the final drive of yesterday’s game, despite needing 83 yards with 2:15 left and sans timeouts?

Who among you were surprised when Lions linebacker Paris Lenon failed to scoop up a Romo fumble in the final drive?

Who among you actually felt that Jason Hanson’s miss of a 35-yard field goal in the final quarter WOULDN’T come back to haunt the Lions?

If anyone raised their hands to any of the previous questions, then you are a candidate for the Liar’s Club.

The Lions did it to us again yesterday, waiting till there were 18 seconds left to surrender a lead that they held all afternoon in losing to the Cowboys, 28-27 at Ford Field.

Moral victories have been very familiar to Lions players and fans over the years. Often, the “victory” was in simply surviving without getting blown out. Sunday, the moral victory was almost upsetting the 11-1 Cowboys — when another blowout seemed very, very possible.

But the ironic thing is that the Lions were in a position to need a REAL victory in December. In the past, a moral victory might have done the franchise some good in this late stage of the season. But it didn’t get the Lions from 6-6 to 7-6 yesterday, which they so badly needed to do if they have any hope of making the playoffs.

Ahh, the playoffs. Does it really matter, when you stop to think about it? Would anything be accomplished beyond just extending the season by one more week? Let’s play more Liar’s Club. Who thinks the Lions would even win a playoff game, anyway? They certainly wouldn’t get home field advantage. It would smack of the 1999 season, when they started 8-4, finished 8-8, and got smoked in Washington in the first round.

So it’s not really about the playoffs anymore — at least not in the same way. When the Lions were 6-2, the talk wasn’t just about making the playoffs, but of perhaps getting a home game and maybe advancing a round or two. Now, even if by some miracle they win their three remaining games and sneak in at 9-7, winning a postseason game would still be considered a long shot at best.

They can’t cover a kickoff — or a punt — to save their souls, number one. It’s ridiculous how many long returns they’ve given up this season. More irony here, too, for when the Lions were down in the depths, special teams was one aspect of the team that was relatively strong, all the way around. They had good return men, good kicking and punting, and good coverage. It started all the way back in the Wayne Fontes years with coach Frank Gansz, and continued with Chuck Priefer. The new special teams coach, Stan Kwan, must take some blame here. I don’t know what the problem has been, but Kwan may be gone after this season. Kick coverage has been atrocious. Sunday, the Lions were reduced to trying pathetic pooch kicks that they still couldn’t cover, giving the Cowboys the same kind of field position as they were getting when the kicks were deep.

“They made one more play than we did,” DT Corey Redding said as he walked off the field, speaking to Fox 2′s Jennifer Hammond. “We tried our best. But they made one more play than we did.”

“They made one more play than we did.”

It should be put on the Lions franchise’s tombstone.

Despite Hordes Of Losses In Minnesota, Three Wins Stand Out

The Lions haven’t celebrated too many glorious Sundays in the great white north of Minnesota in the past several decades, but there’ve been a few that stick out in my memory.

Perhaps the most memorable was a win in 1974.

The Lions, when they invaded the old Metropolitan Stadium in October ’74, hadn’t beaten the Vikings since December, 1967. That was 13 straight losses to the Purple People Eaters, who will always be my most hated team in all of sports. And, the Lions were 1-4, which didn’t inspire much confidence. Part of the early-season strife could be blamed on the death of head coach Don McCafferty, who died of a heart attack during training camp, while cutting his lawn at home. McCafferty’s death thrust assistant Rick Forzano into the top spot. Forzano was a former college coach who’d never been a head coach at the pro level. The latter distinction had never stopped the Lions, of course, from hiring such folks, but McCafferty’s untimely passing was an excusable reason for giving the untested Forzano the job.

The Lions managed to nudge ahead of the powerful 5-0 Vikings, 20-16, as the fourth quarter clock wound down. But Minnesota was on the move. It looked like they would, once again, steal a win from the Lions, who during the 0-13 streak had the Vikes on the ropes many times, only to have something weird happen to them.

The Vikings drove down the field, led by Fran Tarkenton. But being down by four, they needed a touchdown. They neared the Lions’ 20-yard line.

Tarkenton scrambled and fired a pass in the end zone. There was a collision, and the ball popped gently into the air. But instead of being snagged by a Vikings receiver (which wouldn’t have been surprising), the football was cradled by DB Lem Barney. His secondary mates crowded around Barney and forced him to down the ball in the end zone, ensuring the Lions victory. The 0-13 streak was over — and with the 1-4 Lions beating the 5-0 Vikings!

Barney, who hadn’t beaten the Vikings since his rookie season in 1967, before sealing 1974′s win in Minnesota with a pick in the end zone

It was so ironic, because many much better Lions teams had outplayed the Vikings in the past yet lost.

Another win in Minnesota that sticks out was in 1991, the Sunday before Thanksgiving. This was the 12-4, Mike Utley year. It wasn’t so much the win that stands out as the move that Barry Sanders made on safety Joey Browner that I swore could have blown out both of Browner’s knees.

Sanders got into the open field and juked Browner — who was a pretty darn good player — so badly that he, at once, both froze Browner and rattled the safety’s knees. He reduced a Pro Bowl player to nothing more than an orange construction zone cone. Of course, Sanders also made other great players look silly in similar scenarios, such as Rod Woodson (who really did blow out a knee against Sanders) and John Lynch.

Then there was a 1993 win, in which the Lions trailed 27-23 in the waning seconds on Sunday Night Football. But Rodney Peete drove the Lions downfield and, facing a fourth-and-goal, threw in the direction of Brett Perriman in the end zone. There was contact, but it would have been unsurprising if the officials called nothing, especially on such a crucial play. Yet here comes the flag, to the howls of the Metrodome crowd. Now with first-and-goal at the one, the Lions scored, and stole a 30-27 win just before the final gun.

“Couldn’t have happened to a better team,” I said of the Vikings.

Sunday, the Lions return to another of their houses of horrors. They need a win in the worst way, and they could have picked a better place to seek it than the awful Metrodome. Strange things happen to them in the state of Minnesota. Always have.