Detroit’s Cherilus Godser calls tomorrow’s trip to Green Bay, “our Super Bowl”, a rather curious way of looking at things for the 0-15 Lions, as the Super Bowl is generally played several weeks after the regular season….between two teams with winning records. The Detroit Free Press’ Michael Rosenberg isn’t having a tough time finding the humor in all of this, acknowledging Detroit’s announcement of a price cut on ’09 club seats by sneering “I was not even aware they were selling the club seats before, because as far as I can tell, nobody ever sits in them. I always wondered why they built a storage facility for La-Z-Boy in the middle of Ford Field, but I was too embarrassed to ask about it.”
As the Lions head to the frozen grass of Lambeau, though, I wonder: Could they (accidentally) win this game?
We are trying to calm ourselves by remembering that the Packers are one of the best 5-10 teams in the history of the league, which sounds like faint praise, but the Lions would KILL for that kind of honor.
Despite their record, the Packers have actually outscored their opponents by 29 points. For comparison’s sake: the Arizona Cardinals, who have clinched their division, have been outscored by 12 points.
Possibly in an attempt to ease our concerns, Lions coach Rod Marinelli promised this week that the Packers will use a lot of personnel packages and try to spread the field.
This means that Green Bay can match its third and fourth receivers against the Lions’ fifth and sixth defensive backs, and the genius of the strategy is that the Lions don’t actually have six defensive backs. This will force the Lions to burn all their time-outs while they scan the stands for anybody who looks like they can play safety.
The strategy should work. The Lions have the worst pass defense in the league by a mile, and Aaron Rodgers, statistically, is the fourth-best quarterback the Lions have faced this season.
Rodgers could be third-best by the end of the day. And the Lions should be 0-16. Nothing is Possible, or as Al Michaels might say: Do you believe in Nothing? Yes!