Week 6: Lions show what really, really bad looks like

The victory against Washington in week 3 did only one thing for the 2009 season, it made sure the Lions wouldn't finish worse than 1-15. On Sunday, the Lions made it look impossible for the the team to finish any better than 1-15.

In typical Lions fashion, the ugliness is mounting in an unheard of fashion. Mt. Despair will soon collapse and fall on the practice facility in Allen Park.

Wow, the Lions are bad. They are so bad that the Green Bay Packers, a team that tried desperately to prove they weren't anything but mediocre on Sunday shut out the Lions 26-0.

Now there were excuses, but what do they say about excuses? They're like $%#@%s, everybody's got one. The Lions had many, starting with the injury list. Right now the Lions are a one and a third trick pony--Matt Stafford to Calvin Johnson. When both are inactive and you have to rely on Kevin Smith (the third of the 1 1/3) it's bound to get ugly.

Heap on that, Three-fourths of the starting defensive line was also inactive...26-0.

Some other bad news to heap on the pile? ESPN is reporting that Franchise Savior Matt Stafford may require surgery on his injured knee and may be lost for the season. This is the epitome of Lions luck.

I could start in on a long diatribe of all the potentially great players who litter the Lions' past like roadkill, names like Mike Utley, Erik Andolsek, Kevin Jones, Billy Sims, Rodney Peete, Charles Rogers...Players who showed exceptional promise, some who managed to carry the team for a while, all cut down by injuries. The Lions seem to be cursed by injuries. It used to be blamed on the Silverdome astroturf...now, maybe it's Bobby Lane. Who knows?

If Stafford is truly gone for the year...this season becomes little more than a complete waste of time. I have already called this season a 24 game preseason for next year...if you are unable to train the players you will use for 2010, then what purpose does it all serve?

Oh, I suppose it can serve as some kind of training for players like Louis Delmas, DeAndre Levy, Sammie Hill (if he can ever get past his own injury), Derrick Williams, Aaron Brown and Brandon Pettigrew.

Maybe the rest of the season could be used to see if Drew Stanton is good enough to be the Lions full time backup quarterback. Any time wasted on Culpepper, who'll leave at the end of the season, is completely wasted.

Wouldn't it be great if the Lions had cheerleaders?

Just a little something to help my readers as we continue to suffer under the tyranny of the Ford's and their incomprehensible aversion to professional dance teams.

Currently only six of the NFL's 32 franchises have chosen to go without the all important cheer brigades--Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Detroit, Chicago, and the New York Giants.

3rd and 3 or less?

The Lions were 0-10 on third down against the Packers, so it goes without saying that whatever they tried failed. However, for posterity's sake, the Lions only faced 3rd and 3 or less once all game--3rd and 1 on the Packers 21 yard line (while it could actually still be considered a game). Culpepper passed incomplete. They were aggressive enough to try and go for it on fourth down, foregoing the only real chance during the game the Lions had of scoring any points at all. On 4th down, they ran a naked pitch to Kevin Smith for a loss of three yards. I don't think you can criticize Schwartz for going for it early in a game--challenging his team to actually play winning football. But it failed in the end.

Most coaches would have taken the easy field goal, but already down 14-0, all it would have done was ensure that the Lions could avoid being shut out, but if that's what you're playing for in the first quarter, you've already given up.

Currently the Lions are 4 of 5 rushing and 3 of 6 passing on 3rd and 3 or less.

The other dregs in the NFL

The Lions were the first team to ever go winless in a season last year. Because of parity in the NFL, it wasn't something that was never really supposed to happen. The draft and results driven draft position was supposed to ensure that every team has a chance to get better in a hurry. Add to that equation the advent of free agency and almost any team in the NFL should be able to turn over an entire franchise in the space of three or four years.

Matt Millen broke the mold on that concept.

In fact, high draft choices have, for many teams, become a curse. Rarely is there a truly "elite" talent that other NFL franchises will drool over enough to come calling with trade offers. Add in the outrageous contracts guaranteed to high picks, who in reality have never played an NFL down, and the #1-#3 picks become utter poison.

Good teams build their teams through the draft, but a team cannot afford to draft in the top five for more than one or two years, or else the franchise gets strangled by the exorbitant contracts of those players.

In fact, if a team is awful enough to have honestly earned picks 1-3, then they have more needs than one over priced player can fill. The lure of the #1 pick should be the ability to trade down and collect multiple players to rebuild your anchor of a team.

Right now, Matt Stafford is the highest paid player in the NFL. Should he really be paid more than Tom Brady or Peyton Manning? No. And add in Calvin Johnson's contract, a former #2 overall pick, and the Lions now have almost 20% of their salary cap money tied up in 2 players of a 53 man roster.

This has to be fixed, and hopefully will be addressed in the new labor contract coming up in 2011. The most likely fix would be a rookie salary cap. Surely, the NFLPA will throw future players to the wolves to save their own earnings potentials. Afterall, these are players who aren't even in the union yet.

Anyway, sorry about that tangent. This section was supposed to be about the other teams in the league who are trying so desperately to follow the Lions into the abyss. Who'll be the second team to go utterly defeated? I'll follow all winless teams until, once again, the Lions show that they truly are the worst of the worst.

Kansas City Chiefs (1-5) beat the Washington Redskins, 14-6. KC, which used to hold the highly prominent title of "last team to lose to the Detroit Lions" managed to win their first game of the year against the same team that ended the Lions streak, Washington. I'm going to check the schedules of all the other winless teams for Washington...this team is a real spoiler.

Tennessee Titans (0-6) lost to New England 59-0. Wow, that's impressive. Especially since the Titans were the number one seed in the AFC playoffs just last year. Does the loss of Jim Schwartz and Albert Haynesworth have anything to do with this? It's possible. In fact, this is the same team that almost gave up 60 to Brady and crew, which handily trounced the Lions just this last Thanksgiving. At least they have cheerleaders.

St. Louis Rams (0-6) lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars, 23-20. The Rams kept this game close the entire way, in fact leading for a few minutes in the fourth quarter. That's the kind of attitude that might get them off this list.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (0-6) lost to the Carolina Panthers, 28-21. Carolina QB Jake Delhomme was 9 of 17 for 65 yards and a TD...for the game...and they won. 'Nuff said.