Lions vs. Cardinals: Random stats for Week 1

It’s that time of year again, Lions fans. It’s time to learn some Random Stats. This is easily one of my favorite pieces to do. Mostly because it’s the one time I get to be like Indiana Jones—just running through the jungle looking for stats that don’t mean anything, but make me happy. That’s what those movies are about, right?

The Lions are welcoming a familiar foe into Ford Field on Sunday. The Chicago/St. Louis/ Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals and the Lions have faced off a lot over the years. 64 times, to be exact.

The Lions’ first game against the Cardinals was way back in back in October of 1930. The Portsmouth Spartans battled the Chicago Cardinals to a 0-0 tie. Then everyone went out and did the Charleston.

You may be shocked to find out that the Lions are actually leading this series. They have a 31-28-5 record against the Cardinals, but they haven’t actually defeated the Cardinals since November 13th, 2005, the day before my 19th birthday. Nelly was still a popular rap artist at the time. That’s a sad, but random, stat.

Another interesting stat that we all know about this week is that this is the only team Matthew Stafford has even been benched against. We also know how outstanding Matthew has been since then.

To the social media!!

Twitter questions

Oh hi, Evan.

This one was a little hard to find, but I found it. The worst performance by a Cardinals quarterback against the Lions goes to Jim Hart. On December 6th, 1970, Hart went 10-26 for 126 yards and two interceptions. He had a completion percentage of 38.4 and and a passer rating of 22.3. That’s really bad.

You’re in for a shocker. They’re not that great at all. In the nine games that Fitz has played against the Lions, his best performance was nine receptions for 141 yards and a touchdown in 2005. Other than that, Fitz never went over 100 on the Lions again, and he’s only scored on the Lions once in the last four meetings.

John Skelton has never played against the Lions in his career. So he’s undefeated against Detroit.

Believe it or not, it’s the Lions that hold the longest winning streak of this rivalry. They won nine straight games between 1935 and 1939. Tell the DJ to put on more Charleston music please.

That one is easy. The answer is Barr.......wait...what? Kevin Jones? Really? Apparently it’s Kevin Jones everyone. Jones ran for 196 yards against the Cardinals in December of 2004.

I blacked out as soon as Dan Orlovsky came into the game. I know there were 60,816 fans in attendance at the beginning of the game. There were likely only 15 Lions fans left after beer sales ended.

That’s all we have for this week. Be sure to be on the look out next week. We’re always looking for great Twitter questions to add to our Random Stats piece.