The Detroit Lions have started 0-2. Is there time to fix this season? What is going on with the team and what should we expect going forward?
The Detroit Lions have limped out onto the field to start this season. The 0-2 start gives them about a 10% chance of making the playoffs. However, going 0-3 drops it down to around a 2% chance of tasting a postseason contest.
The Lions are already one and a half games behind the Packers and Vikings in the NFC North standings. There’s something SO Lions about this season, but also something so disheartening. My therapist keeps telling me that bottling my feelings up isn’t healthy, so let’s discuss it.
Familiar territory
Many Lions fans can remember plenty of times that the Lions were mathematically eliminated from playoff contentions before September was over, but that was not expected to be the case this year. No more Jim Caldwell, we have found a defensive guru, head coach Matt Patricia, who knows that 11 men should be in on every play!
Everyone gets that bringing in a new coach and defense means some growing pains. The offense, which kept coordinator Jim Bob Cooter, was supposed to cover some for the adjusting on the other side of the ball. Matthew Stafford, Golden Tate, Marvin Jones, Jr., Taylor Decker, TJ Lang, Rick Wagner, Graham Glasgow, plus some new talent were all supposed to help out the defense. Right?
Kick in the Crotch Weekly wishes that it didn’t have to be cynical. Truly. We have seen the Lions lead for 60 minutes, and still lose a game. We have watched the secondary not cover the other team’s best player on the last play of the game. The Detroit Lions have blown opportunities in almost every conceivable way during the past 25 years, and you just have to admire the fact that they never run out of new ways to disappoint fans.
In an odd twist of fate, the Lions have five teams to look at that have started 0-3 and made the playoffs and one of them is a Detroit squad! The 1995 Lions, which featured all-time great runner Barry Sanders, started with the dreaded 0-3 mark but rallied to make the playoffs.
We won’t, however, rehash how that postseason appearance went, though. (shakes head to try to forget)
The Sporting News has put the Lions current chances at zero. Some people have no faith that the Lions can right the ship. As a diehard Lions fan, I both simultaneously know they can do it and dread seeing how they will rally to within one game of making the playoffs only to save their worst effort for the game that would’ve put them in.
If you can relate, you’re a diehard. Send me a message, I’ll put you in touch with my shrink.