Lions vs. Bears: What Just Happened?

I look forward to Thanksgiving every year. It’s a time to be with my family and eat turkey and....

Thanks, Uncle Phil, but I’m trying to be emo today.

Anyways, I look forward to Thanksgiving all the time. Besides the food, it’s all about football and the tradition with family and the Lions game, but the Lions keep hurting me on this holiday. It’s become a day that I just feel sullen and downtrodden until I get that turkey in my mouth. The Lions lost today. Let’s just talk about it already.

As always, I have thoughts on this game. These are those thoughts.

Stafford’s pick-six ruined the day

I honestly don’t know if I should just be upset with Matthew Stafford here or if it should be bigger than that. Because on one hand, Stafford is the guy throwing the ball, right? Therefore he should take all of the blame right? I say wrong.

If you watched the entire game, you knew that pick had been foreshadowed all day long. Because, for some odd reason, the Lions decided to put a leash on their more-than-capable veteran quarterback and have him dink and dunk his way up and down the field for much of the game.

Props to Eddie Jackson for picking that. Eddie was the guy on the opposite end of the Madden player that runs the same four or five plays all game. At some point, you know that you just have to move a guy in position and it’ll ruin your opponent’s entire day. I mean Cooter drew up that play like 15 times on Thursday. I could have picked it if I tried.

On the second interception, what are you going to do, right? You expect that your starting tight end knows to be in position at such a crucial point. Michael Roberts just wasn’t at all, and the Lions paid for it with a loss. Can’t really put any blame on Stafford for that.

Why do you have to embarrass Detroit?

This game is on national television. If I have no rooting interest here, I’m looking at this game wondering how the Lions have four wins. Especially in this moment right here.

This is the Lions needing to make one stop to get the ball back with a chance to tie. They stopped the run all day long without a problem. The Lions defense had an okay day, then this happened. I can’t figure out how they let this happen, but the entire country saw it. This is what Lions fans will have to deal with for the next week.

I’m sorry, LeGarrette

I was wrong. We were all wrong. The assumption was that the Lions were not going to be able to get the run game going at all. Especially with LeGarrette Blount as their lead back. And early on, it looked that way. We were seeing the Blount we’re all familiar with: Little 1-yard runs that stall out drives and make us pull our hair out.

Then Blount went off. It was like he heard us, and he was angry about it. Blount finished the day with 88 yards and two touchdowns, including this one where he showed us all that he's a grown man.

The Lions have broken me

If you remember earlier this week, I wrote a column about how the season wasn’t really over for the Lions. I felt there was a chance based off a few different things. The first being that the division is bad. I still feel that way. The Bears are still not good. The second reason was that I didn’t think the way the Lions played over the three-game losing streak was really all that indicative of who this team is. I feel a little vindicated by the way the Lions played a much stronger game on Thursday against the Bears than they did 11 days before. And that was without their No. 1 receiver and their starting running back.

I still think the Lions are a great team stuck in the body of a bumbling teenage boy that’s going through changes and now has to talk to a girl for the first time.

But they’re not ready to be that great team yet. I thought they might be. I thought they could figure it out. But they didn’t, and they won’t in 2018. That’s okay with me, because while most are crying about trading Stafford, firing Cooter, Patricia, Quinn and every concession stand worker in the building, I’ll be looking forward to what I believe will be the Lions all-in year in 2019.

Until then, I know it’s over. I’m sorry if you’re still holding on. It’s time to pack it in and look for the nearest mock draft. It will distract you from the hurt you’re going to feel in the coming weeks. But, hey, everybody hurts. Sometimes.