After Further Review, Lions Will Be Lucky To Win Another Game

How the Lions ever got to be a 6-2 team surely must go down in history as one of the great mysteries in sports. And it wasn't all that long ago.

I remember the Lions intercepting Kurt Warner on the Cardinals' opening possession, back in those 6-2 salad days, and driving down for a score. 7-2 looked imminent. Now, the Lions will be lucky to win another game, if truth be told.

They were anemic and unresistant in yesterday's 42-10 loss in Minnesota. Their defense was shameful, and embarrassing. They were absolutely helpless to stop the 5-6 Vikings. Totally.

I must give the Lions some thanks, though. Yesterday the family wanted to put up the Christmas tree, and I tend to give them divided attention when sports is on the tube, to my wife's chagrin. But the Lions fell behind so rapidly, so decisively, that it made it very easy to turn them off and devote my entire attention to my wife and child. So thanks!

It's all fragmenting now: special teams, offense, defense, and internal harmony. I wonder whose ass Mike Furrey thinks the media can kiss now?

I must admit, I got suckered in. I snickered at the party poopers who called sports talk radio when the team was 6-2 and maintained that it was all an illusion. I got irritated, in fact, that there could still be such sticks in the mud amid the euphoria. Even Drew Sharp of the Free Press was getting caught up in the excitement ... a little bit.

But, as usual, the naysayers were right. The Lions were, indeed, fraudulent. As I've written before, anyone can go 6-2. Happens a lot in the NFL. It's how you finish that determines whether you're a playoff team or not.

I wonder, though, how it happens this way. Maybe the more games you play, the more opponents can look at how best to attack you. Or maybe the talent level simply rears its head. The Lions' secondary, we all knew, wasn't the greatest. But it's getting worse as the season wears on. So many of the Vikings' drives Sunday looked like no-contact drills. It was, frankly, pathetic.

I think the tone was set on the Vikes' opening drive, when they were faced with 3rd-and-14 from their own nine. Running a simple draw to probably just get themselves out of the shadows of their own goalposts for the expected punt, the Vikings converted when Adrian Peterson took advantage of the Lions' soft tackling skills and rambled for a first down. From there, it was like a hot knife thru butter. 87 yards with little resistance.

My, what must Tony Romo, Terrell Owens, and the Dallas Cowboys be thinking today? Romo, for one, is going to need a drool cup when he gets a load of the Lions' DBs. It might be pitch-and-catch all afternoon. This one could get REAL ugly, folks -- kinda like Turkey Day '04, when Peyton Manning carved up Detroit for six TD passes, and could have had 10, if he wasn't pulled with the Colts comfortably ahead.

Michael Rosenberg of the Freep had a good analogy. The 6-6 Lions are like that woman who appeared attractive from across the street, but who, upon closer inspection, ends up being rather ugly. I'll go one step further. The Lions, now, are looking like a bad drag queen.

EXPOSED!