Yashinsky: Another Lions Soul-Crusher With Missing Flags and a Sleeping Offense

At the end of the day, you need not have seen the game at all.

The names change, the setting differs, but when the final credits begin to roll, the plot has remained very similar and the ending very much the same.

It’s the Detroit Lions losing a game they “could” have won and ultimately did not.

Had you missed the game entirely and been asked to make an educated guess as to how it all went down, what might you say?

You might predict that the Lions would get off to a quick start, raising hope throughout metro Detroit, blanketing the city with full-blown Super Bowl dreams.

Perhaps you’d wonder about the use of Calvin Johnson, or lack thereof.  You’d worry that he wouldn’t be targeted downfield enough, or at all.

You’d probably fear the offense would go in a major funk at some point, that a quick flurry could so easily be followed by a string of punts, turnovers, and field goals.  It’s been happening all year.

There'd be nervousness that defensive attacks wouldn’t be creative enough, that they'd be a touch on the vanilla side, too many simple four-man rushes, relying on a depleted secondary to somehow stay glued to their men for five to 35 seconds.  

You'd also fret that the game might swing at some point on the super-conservative tactics of Jim Caldwell.  That when push came to shove, he’d opt for the “play not to lose” mentality, ultimately costing his team in the end.

And as always, you could almost guarantee that there would be a controversial call at some point in the second half, it would go against the Lions, and that it would become the main storyline immediately following the game.

It wouldn’t be hard to foresee these things because the same movie has been playing in these parts for the last 50 years.  It just takes on different titles with different main characters.  

That damn ending, though.  It refuses to budge an inch.

The Mysterious Flag Pick-Up

Make no mistake, the call in question regarding Brandon Pettigrew was bizarre and frankly, inexplicable.  The on-air explanation that this particular crew lacked familiarity with one another was laughable.  

We’ve all been watching football for a long time.  Pass interference flags like that are never just picked up and disregarded.  Well, almost never, it turns out.

But go back to the Saints playoff game from three years ago and you’ll find a similar level of referee-directed vitriol coming from Lions fans related to a couple of very questionable spots of the ball.

You simply have to overcome it.  This particular sequence of events was a hurdle, sure, but not an insurmountable one, and most definitely not the deciding factor in the game.

The Lions played the entire second, third, and fourth quarters without reaching the end zone.  That interference call would have helped the Lions cause, but it wouldn’t have put seven points on the board.  

Based on the stalled drives preceding it and the long Cowboys drive that followed, the flag likely would have just contributed to another Matt Prater field goal, and an even more gut-wrenching defeat minutes later, by one point instead of four.    

Let’s move past the officiating for a moment and take a closer look at the straight-out-of-left-field play call on 3rd-and-1.  

In the opening play of what turned out to be the game-turning series, Reggie Bush collected four yards.

Now it’s 2nd-and-6.  

The next play, Joique Bell picked up five.  

Now it’s 3rd-and-1.

How about saying at that point, “We’re gonna smash it on the ground this play, and if need be, the next one, too.  If we can’t gain one yard on two plays against a fatigued defense, we don’t deserve to win.”

It’s not Monday morning quarterbacking.  It’s simple football logic.

At that juncture and throughout much of the afternoon, the Lions were running the ball with success.  For the game, Bush averaged close to five yards a carry, Bell almost four.  

All of a sudden, with the ticking clock serving as the Lions’ best friend and a super-manageable third-and-short situation hanging in the balance, they decide to look for Stonehands Pettigrew on a deep pattern?  It didn’t make sense to me at the time, and it makes even less sense to me now.

When the punt team was brought on following the interference-turned-incompletion, you might as well have shut off the television. 

Franchises with one playoff win in their history don’t reach such lows with gutty play-calling and a never-say-die mentality.  They get there by hoping the clock somehow miraculously runs out with their team on top.  They get there by punting in the fourth quarter with one yard to go and the season hanging in the balance.

Joey Harrington Returns

The last gasp drive by the Lions was symbolic of the way the offense has went about their business all year.  Checkdown after checkdown; three yards here, four yards there.  It’s awful hard to take the ball and move it all the way down the field without, you know, actually throwing the ball down the field.

It’s the most disturbing pattern in Stafford’s play as he now completes his sixth year in the NFL -- his unwillingness to toss the ball more than 10 or 15 yards in the air.  He’ll do it once in a while, but it’s rare, and it’s not nearly enough in today’s game.  

Calvin Johnson has likely assured himself a future place in Canton by spending his career out-jumping and out-muscling smaller defensive backs on long bombs down the field.  Double coverage, triple coverage, you still like #81’s chances when the ball makes its final descent.  But as is so often the case of late, the opportunities are just not there.

It’d be one thing if the Lions were moving the ball otherwise, still finding a way to score points and get touchdowns.  But they weren’t.  They haven’t been for the better part of five months.  A turnover on a 55-yard heave to Calvin would have been well worth the possible reward.

What’s the alternative?  An out pattern to Eric Ebron, a two-yard rush, and a ball batted down at the line?  No thanks.  

Stafford-to-Johnson was one of the most dangerous combinations in the league a couple of years ago.  Now they have less chemistry than Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones did in The Terminal.  And that guy spoke like three words of English.

A Glorified Prevent Defense

When the dust settled, the anything-but-sharp Tony Romo finally got the score they needed.  It was bound to happen.  Throughout the final quarter, the Lions rushed only four players.

Earlier in the game, James Ihedigbo came flying through on a blitz and dropped Romo for a huge loss.  Why the refusal to bring similar levels of pressure when the game’s stakes were highest?  

Of course, the chance you will give up a big play increases with such tactics, but so do the chances that you’ll make one, too.  Romo is a quarterback with a reputation as a turnover machine that will hand you the ball in critical moments of a playoff game.  But you have to give him a little push.  He’s not going to do it on his own.  

The push never came.  The last quarter saw him hanging in the pocket, then hanging some more.  When there wasn’t a wide-open receiver, it was because said pass-catcher was being held by Don Carey, or tackled by DeAndre Levy.  And it’s not their fault.

Even the best of secondaries can’t guard NFL wideouts and backs for more than 3-4 seconds.  It’s not how it works.  Go back and watch a tape of the second half and tell me how many times the Lions sent more than four players after the quarterback.  You won’t need more than one hand, or even a couple of fingers.

While you’re at it, go back and watch any of the Steelers’ playoff wins from their three recent trips to the Super Bowl.  Dick LeBeau, the sage master of the zone blitz, would bring rushers from anywhere and everywhere.  He’d just as soon have quit the sport altogether if you forced him to defeat top quarterbacks with simple four-man attacks in the game’s biggest moments.

Even the back-to-back takedowns by Ndamukong Suh were really more “coverage” sacks than anything else.  The heat stopped coming in the second half, and it’s why deep down you knew Romo was going to hit the jackpot eventually.

You play not to lose, you coach not to lose -- more often than not, you wind up losing.  

The football gods reward courage.  

If you’re looking for a game where passivity is valued and averting disaster is the main goal, go find a deck of cards and play Old Maid.

More Painful Than Usual

Yet even though this represents the eighth straight playoff loss and one we’ve fully come to expect, it somehow feels extra frustrating.  Not just the usual one punch to the stomach, but two or three, the wind knocked out completely on the final blow.

And it’s because this time, the opponent really wasn’t all that good.

These Cowboys were not the juggernaut, Super Bowl-winning Washington Redskins in 1991-92.  This wasn’t Drew Brees and his pinball-machine Saints offense that literally could not be defeated at home in 2011-12 (9-0). 

This was a team that looked flat for much of the game.  Romo was tentative and inaccurate. Dez Bryant made one play the whole day.  A brainless penalty was committed going after a punt.  An easy field goal was missed.  The Cowboys literally scooped up the game-winning fumble and promptly fumbled it right back.

Usually these are the kind of things that get you beat in the playoffs.

But put the Lions on the other side of the field and such mistakes are forgiven.

There was little to no chance this current Lions edition was going to take out Dallas, invade Seattle next Saturday night and pull off the shocker, then go to Lambeau and conquer those demons, too.

Still, it would have been nice just to play another game.

One more chance to get together with friends and family, to order an excessive amount of pizza, to wonder semi-seriously whether the Lions are actually signing some of these anonymous defensive backs (Mohammed Seisay, anyone?) in the middle of the game.

Yet, that next game never seems to come.  

We didn’t choose to be Lions fans.  You root for the team from the city in which you were born.  It’s one of the first rules of sports fandom.

You don’t get to reach adulthood and decide that the Celtics’ logo is charming or that the Yankees’ history is irresistible.

You pop out of the womb in Southfield, or Troy, or Detroit, and you’re stamped right then and there.

Lions fan.  Eternal sufferer.  Hater of all things striped and carrying a whistle.

Football season is over in Detroit.  Too soon for our liking, but also one week later than typically expected.

The penalty flag of disappointment was bestowed upon this franchise many years ago.

Unfortunately, no referee seems to be in much of a hurry to come pick it up.