Lions Win A Dandy, But Not According To Plan

In the end, it was all a mistake.

The Lions had just pulled off one of their most improbable victories, unexpected for 40+ years worth of reasons, and were staging a rather unusual scene indeed: jumping on each other on the field, hollering and whooping it up, celebrating a last-second field goal to beat the New Orleans Saints Saturday, 13-12. Take that, Tom Dempsey.

You remember Dempsey, don’t you? His record-setting 63-yard field goal lifted the Saints over the Lions at the gun, 19-17, in 1970. Thirty-five years and some change later, the Lions returned the favor, though Jason Hanson’s kick had to merely travel 39 yards for the victory.

But interim coach Dick Jauron let the cat out of the bag: the frantic moments that led to Hanson’s kick went largely unscripted. Typical, of the Lions. Even when they find a nut, turns out they were a blind squirrel all along.

"We knew we had time to kick it," Jauron explained to the, I’m sure, dazed press after the game. "We had told the field goal unit on the sidelines that we had time to kick the ball after the last play from scrimmage." It was true, barely. The Lions, without timeouts, had 19 seconds with which to work as Joey Harrington came up behind center, looking at a 3rd-and-10 at the Saints’ 36. A failed pass would mean about a 54-yarder for Hanson.

But here was where the mistake occurred: the next play was a 15-yard pass to Roy Williams, right in the middle of the field. The ball was now at the Saints’ 21. A very do-able kick. But as Lions fans all over screamed at their television sets, "SPIKE IT!", Harrington and the offense frantically ran off the field, giving way to the field goal people. Why?

"They (the field goal team) thought we meant, ‘Kick it no matter what -- first down or not,’" Jauron explained, sheepish but happy. "And once they ran on the field, it was too late to call them back, so we just said, ‘Let’s kick it.’"

Yeah, like they had a choice at that point.

Hanson also had to run on to the field too, don’t forget. I don’t know how often he practices field goals when he’s huffing for breath, but the snap happened, it was clean, the hold was good, nobody committed an infraction, and Hanson’s line drive kick was true. Lions win.

The not-spiking-the-ball thing was dicey, because not only did the Lions run the risk of running out of time -- a typical way for them to lose -- they also ran the risk of committing some sort of foul that can be associated with hurried snaps: false start, etc. And at the end of games, penalties against the offense require an automatic run-off of, I believe, 10 or 15 seconds from the game clock. The Lions, in such an instance, being flagged, would have lost, right then and there. No time to kick after the run-off of time. It all would have been such a Lionesque way to lose a football game. But this time the lump of coal was in the Saints’ stocking.

Harrington was asked after the game if this victory meant the Lions went into their finale at Pittsburgh with momentum, that ancient word.

"I wouldn’t call it momentum," Harrington said. I wouldn’t either.

But the Lions won, in such unbelievable fashion for a franchise that has maybe three or four of those kinds of wins on their resume in the past 40 years or so. The football gods decided to give the fans a Christmas gift.
The victory means nothing, of course, to the long term. I don’t think it saves Dick Jauron’s job. I don’t think it means the fans are any less forgiving of president Matt Millen. I don't think it means the lockerroom is all that much more harmonious. It may not even, frankly, help Harrington’s chances of sticking around next season, even though he came through in the clutch. The only person it may have boosted was receiver Williams, who made an outstanding 40-yard grab on 4th-and-17 from the Lions’ 24 that clearly saved the game, along with the 15-yarder just before Hanson’s kick. Williams, though, still tends to drop the easy ones, so the Lions will have to live with that, it seems, until he corrects that problem. But Roy Williams is a keeper -- one of the few on the Lions that you can say that about.

The Lions won Saturday, a Christmas Eve sugarplum, and it all mostly happened by accident, at the end.

But, good for them. Our bums deserve to feel good about themselves from time to time.