Just Like That, Steel Curtain Closes On Lions' Chances

They say more NFL games than you know come down to a handful of plays. The talent level, supposedly, is so close from team to team that in any given game, wins and losses are often decided by maybe no more than three or four percent of the total number of plays run.

Usually, though, those three or four plays are scattered throughout the game's sixty minutes. They're rarely bunched together, rat-a-tat-tat, at the end of the match.

But that's exactly what happened at Ford Field---a.k.a. Heinz Field North---on Sunday as the Pittsburgh Steelers fended off the Lions, 28-20.

The Steelers sacked Lions QB Daunte Culpepper three straight times within the final 90 seconds of regulation, turning a 1st-and-10 from the Steelers' 21 into 4th-and-34 from their 45, thus sealing the victory.

Only the Lions could turn such a golden opportunity for a tying score into a desperate, Hail Mary situation in a matter of seconds.

Well, the Lions---and the Steelers themselves.

This is no ordinary defense, the one they have in Pittsburgh. Pro Bowler James Harrison spent almost as much time in the Lions backfield as running back Kevin Smith. The Steelers pressured Culpepper more than what the Hoover Dam deals with every day.

And the Lions have no ordinary offensive line. In fact, they'd kill for ordinary, because they're still not quite at mediocre yet.

And you hoped that Matthew Stafford would play on Sunday? Heck, we might be eulogizing him this morning.

Culpepper, though, didn't exactly show much elusiveness in that final drive, which was surprisingly punctuated by a couple of nice catches by rookie Derrick Williams. Daunte may have lost a lot of weight, but he went down sometimes if he was breathed on funny.

Sadly, he picked a couple of those times during that fateful three-play stretch. Steelers DB William Gay blitzed on the third sack, and clipped Culpepper with his arms, and the Lions QB plopped to the turf, his attempt at avoiding Gay about the most pathetic you'll ever see.

Would Stafford had done better? Even if he had---on that play---let's just say that the kid picked a good game to miss.

And the Steelers fans picked a good game not to miss.

They came in droves to Detroit, and if there was a home field advantage for the Lions, it was a trickle---the Steelers fans filtering it capably.

But it was because of those Steelers zealots that the game was sold out in time for the NFL to lift the blackout.

Which meant, of course, that we were lucky enough to see those three rat-a-tat-tat sacks that effectively squashed the Lions' hopes of tying the game.

Steelers defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau, the former Lion, is up for Hall of Fame consideration. It's debatable whether it's more for his exploits on the field or on the sidelines. But in about 30 seconds on Sunday, LeBeau sealed his induction, as far as I'm concerned.

Those three sacks should go down in Steelers lore, albeit them coming against the---no pun intended---sad-sack Lions. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a team change a game so definitively and so dramatically, so quickly and so late?

That's a lot of "sos," I know, but goodness gracious---LeBeau dialed up the pressure and his players responded, big time.

Ahh, players. The Steelers, like most NFL teams save a handful, have more good ones than the Lions have. But the Lions showed some moxie, making big plays on both sides of the ball and converting 11-of-18 third downs, which is their new thing this year.

DB William James had a "pick six" for the Lions, and I think the last one of those might be Shaun Rogers' long gallop against the Denver Broncos at Ford Field, two years ago.

But Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger completed 13 passes in a row after James' interception, proving why he's one of the game's greats. The elite guys bounce back like super balls following such duress.

As for the Lions, despite the new cast of characters, you still don't get the feeling that any late-game drives are going to end up positively, such as Sunday's. And you won't, until they actually start to occur. But here's the rub: I think they might, sooner rather than later.

The o-line is bad, but the Lions put a scare into the Steelers without Calvin Johnson, injured earlier. The playcalling is the main reason; o-coordinator Scott Linehan calls a good game, for the most part. Until the Lions get reinforcements on the line, they'll struggle, but the talent level and Linehan's mind will just have to combine for at least one heroic, late-game drive this year.

The Steelers fans who piled into their vehicles and made the trek to Detroit went home happy.

You can only wonder when you can start saying that with any consistency about the hometown folks, whose twenty, thirty minute jaunts have seemed longer than the one from Detroit to Pittsburgh in recent years.

Lions’ Schwartz Smart To Add Former Big Cheeses Cunningham, Linehan To Staff

When Gunther Cunningham first started coaching football players, Jim Schwartz was waddling around in diapers.

Now they both have a mess to clean up.

They have to be among the human diapers that will keep Ford Field’s turf from turning brown.

Scott Linehan doesn’t play Methuselah to Schwartz’s Baby New Year, like Cunningham does, but he’s been where Schwartz is currently.

Cunningham’s been there, too.

Schwartz, the man handed the keys to Bill Ford’s football Edsel in January, wasn’t shy to bring to his staff two men who’ve also been head coaches in the NFL.

The three of them—head coach Schwartz, defensive coordinator Cunningham, and offensive coordinator Linehan—form a triangle that best not be of the lovers’ variety.

It’s a sign of confidence and football acumen that Schwartz, after eight years as the Tennessee Titans’ defensive coordinator, has appointed two former head coaches to helm arguably the two most important positions on any football coaching staff.

Cunningham has probably forgotten more football than most Lions coaches in the past have ever known.

Not that that’s terribly difficult to accomplish.

But Cunningham’s like Schwartz in one distinct fashion: he’s a defensive guy—the coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs from 2004-2008 (and, prior to that, also from 1995-98). He’s coordinated defenses in Los Angeles (with the Raiders), and in college.

He’s coached linebackers. He’s coached the line.

And he was the big cheese, too.

Cunningham was tending to the Chiefs’ defense, as usual, when the call came.

You’re the head coach now.

Good luck to you.

It was 1999.

And he went 16-16 in two seasons as K.C.'s head man before returning to the relative safety of being an assistant coach.

There’s a certain coziness to coordinator positions. You can be in charge without really being in charge.

Of course, it can work the other way, too.

Charlie Knox used to coach the offense for the Detroit Lions, in the early-1970s, under Joe Schmidt.

In Charlie’s day, there were no “coordinators”.

Not in Cunningham’s early days, either.

Knox, years after becoming a head coach himself, once offered his viewpoint of employing offensive and defensive coordinators.

“I’ve seen it where you have a defensive coordinator, who’s the head coach in charge of the defense, and an offensive coordinator, who’s the head coach in charge of the offense, and you’re left with a head coach who’s in charge of nothing!”

I’m sure he has.

Linehan doesn’t look old enough to have been the head coach of his kid’s pee-wee team, but he’s got some coaching chops.

He’s known for his offenses. More specifically, Scott Linehan is now known, around Detroit, for his past dalliances with current Lions quarterback Daunte Culpepper.

Linehan coordinated the Minnesota Vikings offense from 2002-04, the last year of which was Culpepper’s career year in the NFL.

That success in tandem wasn’t lost on Schwartz, at all, when he tabbed Linehan, fresh off getting the ziggy by the St. Louis Rams as their head coach, to run his offense in Detroit.

Naturally, the talk is that Linehan and Culpepper are about to make sweet music again together, with the Lions.

And rookie QB Matthew Stafford will lead the Lions to glory, simply because he attended the same high school in Texas as Bobby Layne.

If only it was that easy. If only current success was merely a nod to the past away.

Cunningham (left) and Linehan have both been big cheeses elsewhere

The Lions have indeed had, as Charlie Knox once opined, head coaches who were in charge of nothing.

Showmen. Snake oil salesmen. Clueless boobs. Stubborn old men.

The Lions have had them all.

If you think an old codger like Bobby Ross, or an egomaniac like Steve Mariucci, would have two former NFL head coaches on their staff, at the ready for upper management should things go sideways, then you’re probably still leaving milk and cookies out on the coffee table on Christmas Eve.

Schwartz is new wave. He’s secure, as a new guy stepping into the goo of 0-16.

He knows he has some honeymoon time, and so why not spend it with two dudes who know what it’s like to be the boss?

Not too many head coaches in the NFL right now can look to their right and to their left and see two more common denominators, professionally.

Schwartz has his work cut out for him, much in the same way as Michelangelo did when they gave him some paint and a brush and stuck him in the ceiling of that chapel in the 16^th century.

Thank goodness, Schwartz isn’t going with the blind-leading-the-blind routine.

Matt Millen tried that, as a first-year GM when he hired a first-year head coach.

But here comes Schwartz, flush with success from his time in Tennessee, and he goes and hires two former head coaches as his coordinators.

It may not mean automatic success, but it sure seems smart.

I have no idea how many games the Lions will win in 2009. It seems foolhardy to think that they can manage even four victories, with their rugged schedule and being one year removed from a winless season.

It might be that they win two or three and consider the season a success, in a twisted, Lions kind of way.

But I do know one thing.

Jim Schwartz has already shown, with two hires, more football sense and vision than his 21^st century predecessors displayed, combined.

Besides, how can you not love a coach of American football named Gunther?