Lions at Cowboys Postmortem

I thought I would throw this out there, give everyone a place to vent and also to discuss some positives.

For me this was a tale of two halves. We lost the second half by more than we won the first half. The end result was an overwhelming loss. But there were some things I thought needed to be mentioned.

The first big negative impact game was on Dominic Raiola. After running his mouth he totally whiffed in pass protection on the nose tackle and caused the first drive of the game to stall. Obviously Dom is better at talking than walking.

The next negative impact play was the Stephen Peterman blocking in the back call. Not only did he erase a 21 yard gain but he put us back 10 more, to make that a net -31 yard play. It is too bad that he had this big bonehead play because he had a decent game otherwise. For the record I thought the call was pretty weak.

Despite all of this the Lions managed to go into the half with a lead. Mainly because of our defense playing lights out after giving up a score on the Cowboy's first drive of the game. Capitalizing on the turnover with a short field the Lions showed some killer instinct.

More after the jump.

The second half was a different tale as the Lions slowly crumbled. I found this to be ironic as we usually do well in the 4th quarter of games and this is where we really lost the game. Sure it started in the third quarter, but we were only down 19 to 21 going into the fourth quarter and had the defense forced a field goal we would have went ahead on a touchdown.

The first negative play in the second half came in the form of what initially looked to be an excellent special teams effort by John Wendling. Unfortunately the Cowboys return specialist picked the ball up and scored. I cannot blame Wendling on this play at all, nor Jerome Felton whom was the second guy in the area who was there to support John by downing the ball if he knocked it back out of the end zone. I do however blame either Danny Crossman for poor coaching and not having a couple of the gunners spying the returner here or the second level of coverage guys down there for not actually covering the kick returner. This is not the first time I have seen a touchdown scored this year in the NFL because of lackadaisical support coverage behind the first two gunners down the field. On top of all of that the Cowboys returner actually stepped out of bounds long before the touchdown was scored there, so give an assist to poor officiating. Despite all his huge momentum swing and negative play we still were in the game at this point.

The next big hurt came on the fumble from Felton. Some people have claimed that there were 12 men on the field for the Cowboys for that play. I have went back and watched the play and there were clearly only 11 Cowboys on the field. This one was all on Felton and perhaps now we as fans know why he is not getting more touches in games. I have seen him drop numerous passes, and now I have seen the poor ball security. While he has some promise I am pretty confident that he is not part of the long term solution. Still, even after this we were in the game, only down by two as a result of this later in the game after the offense provided a quick score.

The straw that stroked the camels sack, to quote Kelly Bundy, was the phantom horse collar call on Suh. Up until this point the Lions were still very much in the game and fighting. The score was 19-21 in favor of Dallas and it would have been 3rd and 11. Detroit went on to shut down several of the next plays from the Cowboys after they were gifted with a first down. I feel confident that Detroit would have held them to the field goal and the score would have been 19-24, totally within reach of a win as a touchdown would have put the Lions up by a score of 25 to 24. This was just too much to overcome. The Lions are not talented enough yet to beat the other team and poor officiating. We have seen it week in and week out and honestly I do not blame some fans for giving up on the NFL for this poor quality of competition. It is so bad that it does indeed make one speculate as to how it could possibly be this way.

I have to hand it to Fox in that their officiating guy even said it was a bad call. And later in the game Moose Johnson even commented on the fact that the Lions are continually having to overcome a bad call or two in the games. Unfortunately he is right, until we eliminate the other bonehead penalties we are going to be doomed to guilt by association. Because one Lions player had a bad play previous in the game the refs seem to think that all Lions players and plays are subject to penalties, even if they don't actually exist.

Now I am going to put some silver lining out there, because I do not like to focus only on the negative. But first I have to mention that I think Louis Delmas played his worst game as a professional, constantly taking bad angles and missing tackles.

First off I felt that Schwartz coached a pretty good game. He was very animated with the officials and let them clearly know how bad they were at doing their job today. I also noticed that almost every time after a bonehead play the player was benched in favor of a replacement, the only exception being the offensive line.

Secondly I felt that Maurice Morris had a nice day and earned more playing time. Overall the running game was much better today until we had to abandon it due to playing from behind with time winding down in the game.

Brandon Pettigrew had a nice game too, making several tough catches and also fighting for extra yards.

Nate Burleson had a nice game too and it is a relief going forward to have a legit number 2-3 guy with him.

Scheffler had a decent game too for the most part and hung tough once he was injured. He is an excellent weapon to have as a number two tight end going forward.

Gosder Cherilus had a nice game in run blocking. Several times I saw him 10 yards down field at the point of attack in the running game.

Lawrence Jackson had a solid game again this week and I look forward to seeing him be a solid starter in the future. I actually think he is performing slightly better than Avril as he has more strength to make inside moves and play run support.

On a final thought we saw several of the depth guys out there today, even Aaron Brown and Derrick Williams were in the mix. Going forward this season I believe we can look forward to more of that as the coaches begin to evaluate guys who may not have had much of a chance. If some of these guys emerge as solid starters going into next season this will be a huge benefit. Though Amari Spievey had a tough game, and was replaced by C. C. Brown after he failed to come up and fill a hole on a big run by Felix Jones, I still have hopes that he will develop into being a solid starter next to Louis Delmas.

For those of you looking to the draft I will refrain from doing so too much. IMO there is a LOT that is going to happen between now and week 17 that will definitely change the outcome of how the off season is approached.