Lions-Steelers: The Good, The Bad, and The Unusual

(Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

Don’t worry; it’s not all bad.

After shouting random profanities to an inanimate object (my TV screen) for about 15 minutes following the final tick of a Pittsburgh Steelers victory at Ford Field, my mind started functioning in a less primal way.

That’s what I started thinking about something other than a new person to curse (George Yarno).

I started analyzing the game, and what I came up with was basically bipolar: “It wasn’t that bad. Wait...yes, it was. And what was up with that?”

Know what? It’s just easier if I break it all down for you. So see if you can make sense of my musings on the game any better than I can.

Good: Eight Points

A loss is a loss, and the score, after Sunday, doesn’t matter.

But this Sunday, eight points separated the lowly Detroit Lions from the defending champion Steelers. I’m not one to celebrate moral victories, mind you, but one thing the Lions proved today is they can play with anybody.

Talent gap be damned, the Lions are playing to the level of their competition every week.

Which brings me to my next point.

Bad: Lions Still Can’t Close

Know what the scary-yet-frustrating thing is about the Lions?

Every game they’ve played has been winnable. With the exception of the Saints in week one, the Lions have matched the teams they’ve played nearly punch-for-punch.

The Bears and Vikings pulled away in the second half, the Steelers got a last-minute stop deep in their own territory, and the Saints volleyed with the Lions after going up early.

But every game they’ve lost could have turned had a third-down conversion, a defensive stop, a turnover, a special-teams play, something gone differently.

They put themselves in a position to win every week, but they don’t have those big players making big plays in big moments. They are perhaps the most anti-clutch team in football.

And once they blow one clutch moment, they snowball their mistakes like a college team with rattled confidence.

Overcoming that alone will put up an additional 3-4 wins a year. Until they can, they’ll continue to lose close ones, and make close ones look ugly.

Unusual: The Announcers

I don’t know where Dick Enberg and Dan Fouts rank on CBS’s totem pole of game-calling duos, but it can’t be very high.

In my opinion, announcers are at their best when they become like somewhat informative background noise. I don’t really want to notice them; I want to notice the game, and have them chime in with an occasionally useful opinion.

These guys? I noticed them.

Fouts was still going on in the fourth quarter, as he had all game long, about a decision the Lions made to take a field goal instead of going for it on fourth-and-inches on their opening possession.

The ball wasn’t even in the red zone, and the score was tied at zero. The field goal gave the Lions the lead, and were the first points the Steelers had given up in the first quarter all season.

Yet Fouts, with the score 28-13, was still talking about, “if the Lions had taken the offsides penalty, gotten the first down on fourth and short, and scored a touchdown…”

Then what, Dan? If the Lions scored a touchdown (BIG if), the score is 28-17, and you’ve turned a two-possession game into a two-possession game. Leave the coaching to the coaches, please.

Enberg did a decent job, but he had an abnormally high rate of getting tripped up on names.

A couple of times he called out the wrong receiver making a reception, and once he made reference to injured Steelers star safety, “Troy Polamu.” An innocent mistake, I thought… except he also put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, i.e. PO-la-mu.

He corrected himself shortly afterwards, but it made me notice.

And that was a bad thing.

Good: Derrick Williams

As I pointed out last week, this game against the Steelers was going to be a good opportunity to try some guys out who hadn’t seen much time thus far in the season.

One such guy was the third-round rookie out of Penn State, Derrick Williams. He single-handedly made the Lions’ special teams look competent (credit where due: coverage teams were improved, as well), and made a pair of clutch catches during the Lions’ final comeback attempt.

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