Detroit Lions: 5 Players Who Need To Step Up for Week 2

If you've listened to anything Jim Schwartz has said this week, or read anything I've written, you might think the Detroit Lions lost their opener on the road.

I've said nothing but how the Lions could have played better. Schwartz showed up at his postgame press conference looking irate and surly. I thought he was about to go into a "they are who we thought they were!" tirade.

And frankly, I would have joined in and understood. I was irritated with the way that game ended, and I would have been even more so as the Lions' head coach.

This is probably a good time to remind everyone that the Detroit Lions are 1-0. They won their season opener.

When did the Lions become this team? The infamous 0-16 season is less than three years behind us, and suddenly a win—a season-opening win on the road against a playoff darling, no less—isn't enough to satisfy anybody?

Have expectations gotten this high? The Lions win, and instead of partying in the streets (see: Sept. 27, 2009), we're picking the team apart for its mistakes, talking about how they should have beaten a 10-win football team by more points, more cleanly, more efficiently.

And it doesn't seem crazy. The Lions are a good team that can play even better than they did in a winning effort. How long has it been since that has been true?

While you're pondering that, I'm going to continue with the picking apart of players on a 1-0 football team.

Gosder Cherilus

If I wanted to take the easy road, I would just make all five players Gosder Cherilus.

And I don't even think he played poorly. He actually had a pretty decent game, all considered, against a defensive line that was billed as being pretty decent.

And then he did what he could to torpedo the entire effort.

If Cherilus was being paid a million dollars by a bookie to fix the game, he couldn't have done anything more destructive than take a personal foul call with just over a minute in the game. The 15-yard penalty part wasn't an issue; Ryan Donahue still put the ensuing punt in the end zone.

The difference is, instead of the Bucs having 30 seconds to go 80 yards with no timeouts, they had over a minute. The Michigan vs. Notre Dame game had three touchdowns in the amount of time the Bucs had to score one.

And this wasn't a ticky-tack call. This wasn't a hand accidentally brushing the quarterback's helmet, or a little extra pushing and shoving after the whistle. We're not talking about a questionable holding call or a helmet-to-helmet hit that looks a lot more like helmet-to-shoulder.

This is Cherilus, two seconds after the play has ended, shoving a defenseless player ready to walk back to the bench, in the plain sight of every referee on the field, to give the Bucs a free timeout when they were about to be subjected to 40 seconds of clock-running torture. 

Utterly inexcusable. Or as Schwartz put it, "Stupid."

Stephen Peterman

Like Gosder Cherilus, Stephen Peterman took a stupid, unnecessary personal foul penalty that put his team in a bad situation.

Unlike Cherilus, he did it at a less-than crucial time.

Like Cherilus, his penalty ended up not being as catastrophic as it could have been. The Lions still won the game after Cherilus gave the Bucs a free timeout, and the Lions still ended up scoring a touchdown after Peterman's penalty.

Unlike Cherilus, Peterman didn't make up for his transgression with a game of pretty decent blocking.

While he didn't get torched in pass coverage, he also provided no value to the run game, which is what he's supposed to be good at.

We've been making excuses for Peterman for a long time, most of them centered around his foot injury. This is the year that was supposed to no longer be an issue. And Peterman isn't playing any better than he ever has.

It's no coincidence that the Lions were scouring the waiver wire for interior line help after final cuts. I'm not sure where Jacques McClendon is in his development, but he's an athletic second-year player whose acquisition put Peterman on notice. Peterman responded with a pedestrian day and a stupid penalty.

At this rate, the next notice Peterman gets is one of termination.

DeAndre Levy

DeAndre Levy didn't make any major errors in this game. He seemed perfectly solid, and there was never a point where there was a defensive breakdown and you could point to Levy at the reason.

But this is a vaunted defensive unit, or at least that's how it's billed. The linebackers are supposed to be the most improved unit in that vaunted defense.

Justin Durant did great work, particularly sniffing out screens.

Stephen Tulloch read plays as if he were in the offensive huddle. He finished with a couple of run stops, a sack and a pass defended.

Levy... was invisible most of the day. He had three tackles, but two of them were on the Bucs' last drive, in which he just got guys out of bounds after a completed pass.

So far this season, I've been tough on every member of the linebacker corps except Levy, and in the season opener, every linebacker except Levy showed up big. Maybe we can chalk it up to Levy having to change positions every year as a pro, but it's not like he's never been on the outside before.

On one hand, it's a testament to the Lions that they were able to sign enough talent to push Levy from best starting linebacker to worst in one offseason. On the other, Levy can play better than this, and he shouldn't be satisfied with just fading into the background as Tulloch and Durant take the spotlight.

Titus Young

Here's the guy tasked with giving the Detroit Lions a third legitimate wide receiver target to throw to.

Titus Young's 2011 stat line: zero catches, one target.

I have long been an advocate of exercising patience with rookies. When the Lions drafted Matthew Stafford, I said he should sit behind Daunte Culpepper (!) and learn the system before throwing him to the wolves. I didn't want him getting knocked around on a half-formed team, and I didn't want him to play before he was ready.

I was half right. He has gotten knocked around a bit (overall punishment hasn't been as bad as I thought, actual injuries have been worse), but he was ready from day one.

Then last year, I warned everyone to temper expectations for Ndamukong Suh's rookie year. May have swung and missed a bit on that one.

This year, my focus has been Titus Young, who used speed to make up for his lack of height and burn defenders at Boise State. But playing wide receiver is hard in the NFL. There is a learning curve. It's not as severe as the curve faced by cornerbacks, but it's close.

Young has the tools to be a very good receiver, but he's going to need some time. He has no chemistry with Matthew Stafford, and no experience with the kinds of techniques he'll need to succeed with his stature.

It's different for a guy like Calvin Johnson. Nobody needs to teach him how to be taller, faster and stronger than everybody else. Young will need to learn how to deal with taller defenders, where Johnson never will.

So Young does need to step up, but it's okay if it happens gradually. He doesn't have to have a 100-yard receiving day every game. I won't even mind if he doesn't have one this season. He just needs to step up and look a little better every week.

By 2012, he'll come to camp ready to break out.

Ndamukong Suh

I know, I know. Of all those areas the Lions need to improve, Ndamukong Suh may be one of the players I'm least concerned about on the whole team.

In fact, I'll go one step further and admit that Suh actually had a pretty good game, and he had it against the run, which is one area you don't often hear him lavished with praise.

In fact, that's true of the entire defensive line. The Bucs supposedly have a decent offensive line and a solid running game, and Suh and the Lions held it to under 50 yards.

But they also didn't put an unbearable amount of pressure on Josh Freeman in this game, either, and pressuring the quarterback is something the Lions are counting on the front line to do.

Now, I've been blaming the heat for the lack of quarterback pressure all week, and I will continue to do so unless this becomes a recurring problem. The Lions weren't able to bring much pressure late because the whole team was gassed and dehydrated. It has nothing to do with conditioning, it has to do with it being 90 degrees and humid at Raymond James Stadium.

But this is exactly why I expect the line to step up this week. They were effective, but not amazing, in Tampa. That's fine, but we've come to expect amazing, particularly from Suh. This week, at the climate-controlled Ford Field, heat won't be a factor.

And because heat will be a non-factor, Suh should be a big factor.