Lions achieve immortality through perfection

No NFL team has ever gone through an entire season without scoring a win. Until 2008.

Last season the New England Patriots finished their season a perfect 16-0 only to cap it off with a disappointing loss in the Super Bowl. Disappointing. The Lions record in futility is abysmal. Embarrassing. Sixteen games without a win. After going a perfect 4-0 in the preseason. Does a team have to work at that sort of ineffectiveness? You’d think, at some point during the season, the Lions would find a team against which it would match up well, a team with enough injuries to key players that they’d be susceptible to an upset, even a good team that might take the Lions lightly, looking past them to their game the following week against the team just ahead of them in the standings. But week after week the Lions managed to find ways to lose.  Their trademark was to fall behind early, leaving the opposition to win going away. In those few games where they managed to mount a semblance of a comeback, as they did against Green Bay in the final game of the season as they strove to reach perfection, they only proved they couldn’t compete for a full sixty minutes. After falling behind to the Packers 14-0 early, they managed to tie the game early in the third quarter only to overcome two personal foul penalties in the second half (how does an 0-15 team get flagged for taunting?!) to close within three points after the Packers had gone ahead by ten. But the defense managed to overcome the momentum the offense had gained by allowing the Pack a quick score to counter.

Head coach Rod Marinelli has said, all season long, that he is proud of his team for never giving up, that they come prepared to practice and prepared to play on Sunday. But the truth is, a team does not win, cannot win, merely on attitude. The measuring stick against which a professional sports team is measured is wins and losses. Winning requires discipline, something this team has lacked for years, as well as skill. While quarterback Dan Orlovsky could start and win with other teams in the NFL, and wide receiver Calvin Johnson and running back Kevin Smith could be superstars on other teams, the truth is the Lions don’t have enough skill at the unskilled positions to compete ─ not against professional teams or against many top college teams.

Lions’ fans today, already looking ahead to next season, are perhaps gleeful that the Lions have the first pick in the first round of next year’s draft. But it’s not like this team hasn’t had first picks in the past. Who remembers Andre Ware? Barry Sanders holds all the records for running backs who ever played for the Lions and could’ve set the NFL record had he not given up on the Lions, and he alone couldn’t bring them to the Promised Land. In forty-five years under owner Clay Ford the Lions have won one playoff game, with Barry in the backfield. The most dependable player on the Lions’ roster the past ten years, since Sanders retired? Jason Hanson. The placekicker, and surely a future hall of famer.

When will the fans learn? The players come and go. Head coaches are hired and fired and never go on to coach elsewhere. General managers are hired and fired ─ and while other franchises build dynasties that crumble to dust only to be rebuilt, the Lions continue in their quest to achieve martyrdom through what can best be defined as less than mediocrity. And all the while, the believers continue to buy tickets to see this pathetic team perform, well, pathetically. Until this season. For the first time since I can recall, the last several home games failed to draw enough of a gate to allow them to be televised locally. For that I cheer the fans heartily. For while games at Ford Field continued to sell out, why would anything change? The fans deserve better. Hell, the NFL deserves better from one of the oldest teams in the league.

Futility? Before the Red Sox won the World Series a few years, they’d held the longest record for not winning a championship. The Cubs in Chicago are embraced by their faithful, but they at least compete, tease, have occasionally made the playoffs. The Lions merely show up on game day to embarrass themselves, their fans, ownership and the NFL. Whatever may be ailing the opposition on any given Sunday, they are assured of finding a remedy, however temporary, against the Lions.

Ownership needs to make changes beyond the hiring of a new head coach and a new GM. They’ve proven, since 1963, that a sports franchise can’t be run like an automobile company, with the owner making all the decisions. Hopefully the fans will no longer be appeased by the firing/hiring of a new head coach and GM, along with a number one pick. If ownership fails to adapt to the modern formula of other winning franchises, then it should sell the Lions to someone who not only cares about winning, but also knows how to run a franchise.

The Lions are one of the most storied franchises in the NFL: hall of famers Dutch Clark, Bill Dudley and Alex Wojciechowicz, Bobby Layne, Charlie Sanders, Joe Schmidt, Greg Landry, Billy Sims, Chris Spielman and Barry Sanders. On this day in 2008, they added a dismal chapter.