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Still Winless: Lions collapse down the stretch
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Published: November 17, 2008
CHARLOTTE -- The Detroit Lions played one of the finest games that any 0-9 team ever played yesterday.
They lost 31-22 to a playoff contender, but they put up a fight. What did you expect, the Kansas City Chiefs?
The Carolina Panthers evidently expected 10 minutes of lightly starched resistance followed by 50 minutes of capitulation. They didn't get it. Detroit hung around until the last five minutes, until the tangible prospect of a monumental upset evolved into blind bad luck and then into absurd farce.
Bad blind luck actually was official blindness, which differs from legal blindness. Official blindness occurs when the Lions drive 70 yards for a touchdown and pull to two points behind only to have 260-pound quarterback Daunte Culpepper raked across the face mask on the conversion without any officials seeing it. Culpepper lost control of the ball as he landed inches from the end zone.
He didn't cry foul. He didn't even confirm the face-mask infraction. "I don't know," Culpepper said. "It happened so fast, I can't tell you."
Detroit stopped the Panthers cold and got the ball back with 4:58 left. Then came Absurd Farce, Part I. After the punt return, the Lions' Anthony Cannon popped a Carolina player, a personal foul that put the ball at the 14-yard line instead of the 28.
In Absurd Farce, Part II, Culpepper threw a short first-down pass to the right side, apparently intended for tight end John Owens, surrounded by three Panthers. Charles Godfrey intercepted and sped to the 4, setting up the clinching touchdown. The pass really was intended for Calvin Johnson. Johnson wasn't there.
What happened? Culpepper judiciously blamed poor communications, which happens when an almost-retired quarterback has worked with a new team less than two weeks. Johnson was more revealing.
"I just decided to turn upfield," he said. "I probably should have -- I should have stayed on my route."
For the NFL's only winless team, those last five probably seemed like an eternity. For the NFL's only winless team, everything seems like an eternity.
Monday film sessions. Tuesday whirlpool baths. Wednesday waiver wires. The time between now and the annual Thanksgiving Day game on national TV.
Detroit used to pull off upsets with everyone stuffed. The Lions have lost six of their past seven Turkey Bowls, and the Tennessee Titans should deliver another potato mashing in 10 days.
Believe it or not, the Lions once ruled the world. In 1957, when Detroit made cars people actually wanted to buy, the Lions finished 8-4, beat San Francisco in the Western playoff game and trashed the Cleveland Browns 59-14 for the championship.
The stars had oddly magical names: runners Howard "Hopalong" Cassady and John Henry Johnson, quarterback Bobby Layne (who preferred helmets without face masks), middle linebacker Joe Schmidt, safety Jack Christiansen and safety-punter Yale Lary.
The magic couldn't last forever. Since the 1957 parade ended, the Lions have celebrated one playoff victory. One. In 50 years.
Mired in mediocrity
Somehow, the Lions never became lovable losers like the Cubs. They were presented as a tad cuddly and a bit rowdy in the movie Paper Lion. Alan Alda portrayed George Plimpton, a writer who trained with the 1963 Lions, got into an exhibition game and wrote a book. The athletic actors included defensive tackle Alex Karras, who wound up making more money acting than playing, and defensive back Dick "Night Train" Lane.
In the real NFL plot, the Lions have spent most of the past half century as invisibly mediocre. They competed in 10 playoff games over that span, the only win coming against Dallas in 1991, promptly followed by a 41-10 meltdown against Washington in the NFC title game.
Detroit was 7-9 last year. The Lions won nine games as recently as 2000, the year Coach Bobby Ross stepped down after reaching the playoffs twice in three seasons. The Ford family owners hired Matt Millen as president, the first misstep in a nasty tumble down the staircase.
Under Millen's leadership, the Lions used their first draft pick on wide receivers four times in five seasons (2003-2007). Only Georgia Tech's Johnson remains.
Two of those guys, Mike Williams and Charles Rogers, who combined for 80 career catches, no longer play in the league. This season, after considerable family infighting, the owners fired Millen and traded Roy Williams to the Cowboys for three draft picks, including a first-rounder.
If at first you don't succeed....
The Lions (0-10) probably aren't the worst team in 2008, based on local experience. Kansas City quit on the same field and lost 34-0, the biggest blowout in Panthers history. St. Louis, Oakland, Cincinnati and KC had scored fewer points before the weekend games. St. Louis had given up more points than Detroit, which ranked next-to-last in key defensive stats.
The 2008 Lions certainly aren't the worst team in pro-football history. The expansion Tampa Bay Bucs lost all 14 games in 1976 and the first 12 games the next season. Someone asked Coach John McKay how he felt about the execution of his team. He said he was in favor of it.
Detroit's Rod Marinelli doesn't have McKay's lethal sense of humor, but he has patience.
When a confrontational Detroit columnist asked the coach how he could believe in guys who can't make a tackle, Marinelli replied: "That's my job. That's what I do. I don't bag them and throw them in a waste can. I encourage them to get better. I'll go back out next week and teach and work, because that's what I am, and that's what a teacher does. Have we failed? Yes. Have I failed? Yes. Am I going to give up? No way. Am I discouraged? No way. I'm not. You can ask me that until the cows come home and you're going to get the exact same answer."
The cows will come home one day, but it probably won't be the same day the Lions come home as big winners. Some things take time, lifetimes of time.
■ Lenox Rawlings can be reached at lrawlings@wsjournal.com.
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