Falcons Give Lions The Bird On Thanksgiving

The good thing about the Lions playing on Thanksgiving Day is the whole world gets to see our football team in action.

The bad thing about the Lions playing on Thanksgiving Day is the whole world gets to see our football team in action.

It's one thing for the Lions' warts to be beamed from regional broadcasts to Arizona or Carolina or Baltimore, but when the entire freaking nation gets to see what we have to put up with week to week, it's like being outed. Lately on Turkey Day, our laundry has never looked dirtier.

The Lions got drilled yesterday, slapped around and toyed with by the Atlanta Falcons, 27-7, in a game that I think was over with after the very first play from scrimmage. Falcons quarterback Michael Vick calmly laid a 30-yard pass to Alge Crumpler, and things got worse from there. Even the Lions' moral victory of stopping the Falcons' opening drive enough to force a field goal was only putting off the inevitable.

Last year on T-day, Peyton Manning scorched the Lions, leading the Colts to a 41-9 victory. Peyton, had he been left in for the entire game, could have had eight or nine TD passes, in my opinion. As it was, he had six.

So with two dynamite quarterbacks coming to town in successive Thanksgivings, the Lions got outscored 68-16 and looked every bit as powerless as those scores would indicate to stop either of them.

Lions tight end Marcus Pollard played for the Colts last year, and I don't believe, wearing the Colts white uniforms, he dropped a pass like he dropped two of them yesterday. Funny things happen to players, even good ones, when they slip that Honolulu Blue (or Motor City Black, as in yesterday's case) over their pads.

There's really nothing more to say. The season is officially over. No more hand-wringing over the quarterback situation. Jeff Garcia didn't provide the needed spark in relief of Joey Harrington. Maybe the talk should go from quarterback controversy to coaching controversy. The Lions are dead in the water and their emperor has no clothes. I think yesterday's game may have been the final blow for Steve Mariucci. Stay tuned.

And please, PLEASE -- no more talk from the out-of-town announcers about how good the Lions' front four is. They are serviceable against mediocrity, but are helpless against good football teams. Shaun Rogers and Dan Wilkinson are, indeed, decent football players. But even they become invisible for long stretches of time. They are, frankly, somewhere in the upper-middle class, but no higher.

Maybe the rest of the country has figured that out by now after two straight turkey performances on Thanksgiving.