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It doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense.
How can an NFL team score three points in the first half of one game, then fail to score any points at all in the first half the following week, yet still walk away from the crime scene with not a blemish in sight?
The final tally: two wins, no losses, and a bunch of shocked Detroit football fans that aren’t exactly sure what they just witnessed.
The Lions were atrocious during the opening 30 minutes against Atlanta. Matt Stafford was especially inaccurate and Matt Ryan was unusually spectacular. The Lions looked like a glorified Pop Warner team and the Falcons looked like the hands-down favorite to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl. It was as if the field was tilted in whichever direction Atlanta happened to be going.
For what always seemed like a fairly jolly city, London was turning out to be the unfriendliest place on Earth.
And yet, somehow, as the second quarter turned into the third, the Falcons decided to stop playing and the Lions decided to start.
Nothing Short of Miraculous
Golden Tate on a long bomb for six. Joique Bell bouncing off defenders like Natrone Means. Theo Riddick catching what seemed like fifty balls down the stretch. And the defense that looked like it had left its #1 ranking back in the states sprang to life, pitching a shutout in the second half while surrendering just six first downs.
And the ending itself was nothing short of miraculous.
So many things needed to go right for the Lions in the final two minutes.
Most importantly, it required that Falcons’ head coach Mike Smith have little to no idea how to properly drain a clock at the end of a game. When the Lions used their last timeout with 1:55 to play, they were basically dead in the water. Atlanta could simply take a knee on consecutive downs, and by the time they punted the ball away, the Lions would have had the ball at around their own 10 with about 15-20 seconds left. 25 at best.
But the Falcons lacked such simple understanding of in-game tactics. They ran the ball on 2nd down, resulting in a penalty and stopped clock. They decided to throw on 3rd down, resulting in an incompletion and a frozen clock at 1:46. Stafford would now have close to 100 seconds to perform his trademark late-game jig, and it proved to be just enough.
The Miracle Penalty
The delay of game penalty that wiped away Matt Prater’s bad kick and cleared room for the good one was simply the cherry on top of this truly unexplainable round of Sunday morning dramatics.
The Lions roll into their bye week with a million injuries on offense and a quarterback that comes to play for one half a week. Yet they sit proudly atop the NFC North, looking down on their competition with a glistening 6-2 mark.
The next three games will all be against plus-.500 teams. The Dolphins have won consecutive road games, both by two touchdowns. The Patriots are riding even higher, winners of four straight, including a 51-point outburst against Chicago on Sunday. And then it’s off to the desert to try and take down the 6-1 Arizona Cardinals.
The bye week comes at a perfect time, but the team must come out of it with a renewed understanding of how to properly begin a football game.
The last two weeks have provided scintillating theater at game’s end, but it is not sustainable. The Lions need to thank the football gods a hundred times over for letting them sleepwalk through this Saints/Falcons doubleheader and emerge with a pair of W’s.
Going forward, the Lions must start playing at 1:00 pm, or 4:25, or whenever the NFL schedule dictates that the opening kickoff goes airborne. And that doesn’t mean just being accounted for with all the necessary equipment attached and strapped in.
It means being prepared to actually make a tackle, complete a pass, or dare I say, even score a first half touchdown.
Dancing Between Raindrops
The Lions have tempted fate in consecutive weeks and walked away without a scratch.
But it can’t become a habit.
Or else 6-2 will become 6-3, then 6-4, and...we’ve seen how that story goes. Too many times before.
For now, though, these are the first place Detroit Lions. Flawed and frustrating to be sure, but somehow always on the right side of things after 60 minutes.
They are professional tightrope walkers that also happen to wear shoulder pads and jockstraps.
Only time will tell if this high-wire act can last into January, or even February.
One thing is certain -- the Lions will need every last, little second to get there.
And that’s just the way they like it.
