Yesterday Was A Reminder That The Detroit Lions Still Have A Long Way To Go
I want to buy in. I want to believe. I want to accept that this football team, which has been almost exclusively awful my entire lifetime, is creating a product that Detroit can be proud of. I want to believe that the days of "same old Lions" are slowly starting to fade. The idea that the NFL world is entering a new age of Lions football is something Detroit fans were told all offseason. We're not off to a great start.
I'm not losing any sleep over the Lions' loss yesterday to Philadelphia. It was not a game that I had the Lions winning before the season started. So it's not so much the loss that bothered me as much as the way they lost because it was a movie I've seen a million times before.
Yesterday's game saw inconsistent quarterback play and a defense that got torched all game long, giving up 455 yards of total offense. We saw questionable in-game decisions by the coaching staff (seriously, what was up with those timeouts?), and in typical Lions fashion, they battled back and lost by 3 points, creating the illusion that these teams were somehow evenly matched. The only true positive was that D'Andre Swift, behind what appears to be a solid offensive line, is quickly emerging as one of the NFL's best running backs.
I've repeatedly said that I desperately want the Dan Campbell era to succeed. It sounds weird to say, but if he succeeds in Detroit, he could legitimately be the face of Detroit sports, which is something we've never said about a head coach. The passion and culture are there. He's said all of the right things. And while I can't stress enough how small the sample size is for this season so far, watching the Lions' defense get gashed by Jalen Hurts and company did inspire a fair amount of eye rolls.
That's not to say that the Eagles are slouches. They were a playoff team last year. But from now on, this team, which has stated many times that one of their main goals is to be more physical than their opponent, needs to improve substantially regarding their defensive physicality. I don't need to see kneecaps being bitten off, but I'd like to see a defense stop a third down before garbage time.
I don't know if there is anything in sports that leads to greater overreactions than week 1 of the NFL season. Hot takes tend to flow like lava. By writing this blog, I'm falling into that trap. I predicted the Lions to win six games before the season started, and after yesterday, I'm sticking with that prediction. They have a winnable game next Sunday against the Commanders, a team that struggled to beat Jacksonville at home yesterday. Six wins is a reasonable expectation for a team in year two under a new regime.
But even beyond wins and losses, the one thing I want to see out of this Lions season is something, literally ANYTHING, that will make me believe that this regime is different. I've praised the work of GM Brad Holmes in the past. I do think he's the right guy for the job.
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But the on-field product is what matters. I want to come away from this season believing that the tide is turning, that the Lions' way of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is no more. I genuinely hope we get to that point with Dan Campbell. It's one game. No one should be giving up, but yesterday inspired very little confidence that this isn't the same pathetic organization we've watched for decades.