Wednesday, November 12, 2008

0-16?

The 16-0 chatter started around this time last year for the Pats, and the 0-16 talk began for the Rams and the Dolphins (until the Rams disappointed us all and finally won a game, followed eventually by Miami). After having lost their last winnable game of the season, not only am I amazed no one's started talking 0-16 as a possibility yet, but I can't believe that no one considers the Lions going 0-16 to be anything more than a matter of formality. Let's look at their upcoming schedule. See if you can spot a trend.

Carolina
Tampa Bay
Tennessee
Minnesota
Indianapolis
New Orleans
Green Bay

The trend is, these teams are all very good and much better than the Lions.

Also, you may notice that my team colors are spot on today. I had some extra time on my hands and took the precise color codes straight from every NFL teams' logo. Now I'm like a real professional web logger!

Back to Detroit. I mean, how bad are they? Right now, kids in Detroit are looking up at their old Lions posters and thinking about the good old days.

Joey Harrington: Never Forget

Even Captain Crusader Kitna seems like a better option than what they've got at this point. If you have a UConn quarterback fighting for reps with Daunte Culpepper, your team has more than just issues. Well, if this was 2001, you might have a fighting chance, but 2008 Culpepper is slightly different.

The Lions have made 3 of their 9 losses close. Those were against the Bears, Texans, and Vikings. Not the same caliber as the Panthers, Bucs, and Titans. I can almost guarantee you 100% the Lions will be 0-12 after their next three game stretch. I don't know, maybe Thanksgiving we'll all get a special afternoon surprise with the upset of the season as the Lions defeat the Titans, but I think John Madden is more likely to keep his vow to never have another Turducken than for that to happen.

After those three losses come their four "easy" games. Minnesota barely scraped by them last time they played, and if all calls in football were 100% correct all the time, Detroit would have won it, but the Vikings played their absolute worst game of the football season. If you saw the second half of the Colts/Vikings game, think about how bad Minnesota played. Now, have them be even worse, but for an entire 60 minutes. Brad Childress did absolutely EVERYTHING in his power to give Detroit the win, but they just couldn't do it. It was like when you're trying to run a race with your 5 year old cousin/nephew/niece/son/daughter/friend's son/friend's daughter/kid on the playground that has a restraining order against you, and you keep stumbling on purpose or running into things. You exaggerate a fall and let them get way ahead of you, but they're slow and dumb as hell, so they somehow still manage to lose? That's what that game was like.

These last four games of the season are most likely must-wins for these teams if they're still in the playoff race at that point. I don't think anyone's going to be resting their starters and I don't think anyone's going to give Detroit an inch. There aren't any games where the Lions can come in and sneak up on someone. When you're 5-4 and 4-5, there's no such thing as a trap game. Every game from here on out is a must-win, and I can guarantee you every team the Lions go against will be scheming against them as if they were the 2007 Patriots.

Maybe the Lions will sneak in a win. Maybe the Saints go on a 3 game losing streak, find themselves out of playoff contention at 4-8, and give up on the season. It could happen. Drew Brees gets injured, their entire group of defensive backs tests positive for steroids and are suspended, and Reggie Bush gets lost in the black hole that is Kim Kardashian's lady parts. Maybe Jesus comes down and blesses Dan Orlovsky's arm so that he throws nothing but touchdowns (Kitna would be soooooo jeal). I don't know, it could happen. The thing is, I just don't see it happening, and I am calling the Lions to go winless for 2008. That elusive first win didn't happen with Kitna, and it won't happen with anyone else they throw in there.





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