In Detroit, three bullet sandwiches to go, please…

By Os Davis  |   Monday, September 18, 2006  |  Comments( 1 )

Detroit Lions
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Ever-unquotable Detroit Lions head coach Rod "Almighty" Marinelli for once put it succinctly after the 34-7 drubbing handed to his team by the Chicago Bears: "I'll take the bullet right in the head." The only additional advice to be given Marinelli here is that he'll probably want to save one of those lead sandwiches for his offensive coordinator.

Steeled by 50 years of mostly disappointment and toughened further by five years of Matt Millen's foolishness, Lions fans aren't quite ready for the hari-kari treatment yet, but frustration must already be high among the thinner-skinned faithful in Detroit.

Granted, few figured the Lions to start better than 0-2 and most knew the Bears' D to be fearsome indeed. But the silver-and-Honolulu blue was supposed to be riding the momentum of a hard-fought moral victory in which Marinelli's philosophy had seemingly fired up this bunch. The Lions were the trendy "surprise" choice in football pick 'ems across the country with the spread's fat 8.5-point handicap.

Instead, Rex Grossman has a career day, Marinelli's new "Lions Football" looks a lot like old Lions football without the benefit of a Barry Sanders, and Mike Martz appears to have forgotten everything he learned in a couple of Super Bowl runs.

Granted, no one particularly feared a high-powered Kurt Warner-like offense from Detroit this season, but this is a guy who went 29-19 with Marc Bulger as his preferred quarterback. Before this season, Martz' offenses had been held to seven points or fewer a total of four times going back to 1999, a "standard" these Lions have already met twice this year.

In the unimaginative Atari Football-like strategy that has substituted for the Lions' passing game, Jon Kitna has gone 44-for-67 for a pathetic 459 yards, making him the only 66 percent accurate QB with zero interceptions you don't want on your fantasy team. Thanks to an unbelievable 1-of-9 on third-down attempts, the Detroit offense is now a sad 6-of-23 for the season.

But, hey, it's not as though Martz didn't try anything interesting on offense. Apparently, a few plays he called in proved complicated enough for his offense to score an illegal shift penalty, an illegal formation penalty and three false start calls.

Together with a little ineptitude on the defense, the total line on Detroit penalties read 14 for 104 yards. In fact, just when the defense appeared to take control of the game - a necessity for this Lions squad to be successful, it seems - with a Boss Bailey interception for a TD, this, too, was called back due to penalty.

Meanwhile, the swarming, beautifully brutal defense that no doubt gave Seattle Seahawks QB Matt Hasselbeck flashbacks all week had disappeared. First-round draft pick Ernie Sims showed nice reaction speed once again, running up seven tackles, but this was slim consolation. The Detroit D chased their five sacks this week with exactly zero against Chicago. Because Bailey was robbed of his pick, the Lions notched zero interceptions for a 2006 total of - you guessed it - zero.

Granted, few expected the Lions to be any higher in the standings than they sit today, but most surely expected to have scored a bit more than 13 by now. And who really thought Grossman would be capable of four TD passes? (In one game, that is.)

Lions fans are not yet as distraught as Marinelli's suicidal lament made him sound; they're made of stronger stuff. You have to think that a few metaphorical trigger fingers are getting itchy, though. The new coach won't want to wait forever to start looking between his eyes. And Martz'. And, as always, Millen's.

See if the Detroit Lions can pull it together at RealFootball365.com.
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About Os Davis

Os Davis has taken a twisted route to get to RealFootball365.com in his nearly 17 years in professional writing, working in any number of capacities in the sportswriting, news reporting and film criticism worlds. In print media, Os has served as editor at a few publications, including Albuquerque's...
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