Ladies And Gentlemen… We Have a Season. Key To The Detroit Lions Beating The New Orleans Saints in Week 1

What a great start to the new season.
It was a glorious up and down game, tough and stiff nosed defense, overtime and the home team marching it down the field to kick in the win.

LOVED IT.

On to Our Detoit Lions vs the Saints of New Orleans.

I didn’t like the way that Cleveland effortlessly moved the ball against our team one in the first. This brings to my mind many aspersions in the way of New Orleans and their ability to threaten you in the air and on the ground.

It’s going to come down to Reggie Bush. If we can take his big play factor away and frustrate the Saints into short range passing and moving the ball north and south. I don’t feel their receiving core is an immediate deep threat like ours, we have Calvin and I think Williams (maybe not now) has the speed to burn a DB in the open turf.

The Lions need to control possession and Stafford must use Pettigrew and Smith as outlets for short yardage gain and Stafford needs to stay nimble as the offensive line fails to hold the pocket and sends him on the run. Calvin is a constant deep threat and if Stafford has the time, he most certainly has the arm to deliver a 50+ yard bomb to him if the DB misses a single step. With that threat, Calvin is going to draw double coverage. That means its up to Bryant Johnson and Northcutt to take advantage of Calvin pulling coverage away from them. GET OPEN! These yardage pipelines will open up field for Smith to use his break away speed and frustrate the Defense.

That said, the defense needs to prevent the big play. If they break off one big one in the first quarter, they are going to break off another one. WE CAN’T LET THEM PUT US ON OUR HEELS. If they are going to score (and they will), we need to make them work for it. Tack it on the board coach, NO. BIG. PLAYS.

The bottom line is the Saints have more talent than us. But I believe in our coaching staff and if we play them yard for yard and make them work their ass off for every single point on that board, we can put ourselves in a position to win the game by a field goal in the waining seconds of the 4th quarter.

Go Lions!
(oh, and sorry the podcast is late. I think I’ll just do it as a post game thing and we’ll get it back on track)

PS:
Being 9/11 , today was a sad day for america in 2001.
My mother being an American Airlines Flight Attendant for over 30 years and my parents living in New York right up until I was conceived… It was a rough day.

Let’s all take a moment to think about the lives lost and how lucky we are to still be around and enjoy these wonderful, frivolous games of spectacle.