Detroit Lions ugly loss a blip on radar, not impending doom. This team is still for real.
Detroit Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone has been a part of worse losses before, or worse defensive performances at least. And if seven seasons in the NFL have taught him anything, it's not to overreact to one game.
In 2018, Anzalone was a starting middle linebacker on a New Orleans Saints team that opened the season with a clunker of a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Not the Tom Brady Buccaneers, the Ryan Fitzpatrick ones.
Fitzpatrick, a journeyman who played for nine teams in his NFL career and was more famous for his bushy beard than anything he did on the field, torched the Saints in Week 1 of the 2018 season, throwing for 417 yards and four touchdowns on 28 pass attempts.
He averaged an astounding 14.9 yards per attempt that day and 19.9 yards per completion, and the Bucs led by 24 points early in the fourth quarter before the Saints scored a couple touchdowns with two-point conversions to make the final score look respectable, 48-40.
It was a butt-kicking of epic proportions, of a team with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations, and by a quarterback who wasn't a former MVP and isn't still one of the most unique athletes in the world.
"It's the nature of the NFL," Anzalone said Sunday, after the Lions' 38-6 beatdown by the Baltimore Ravens. "This stuff happens. And it’s unfortunate, you never want it to happen because you’ve got expectations and your standards as a defense."
As Anzalone recounted what Fitzpatrick did to him and the rest of the Saints that day - a team Lions coach Dan Campbell and defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn were a part of as assistants - I asked what happened to the Saints after that blowout.
“I think we won 10 in a row or something crazy like that," Anzalone said.
Indeed, the Saints won 10 straight after starting 0-1 in 2018, and manhandled most of the teams on their schedule. There were a couple of nail-biters, including a one-point win at Baltimore in mid-October, but the Saints won five straight by double digits at one point, finished 13-3 and went on to make the NFC championship game, where they lost to Jared Goff and the Los Angeles Rams after the worst missed pass interference call in NFL history.
Seeing any similarities yet?
SEIDEL: Detroit Lions not doomed by Baltimore Ravens disaster, but important lessons to go around
"It humbles you," Anzalone said. "It gets you back to work. It makes you locked into your Ps and Qs and right when you think you have stuff figured out, that’s when it bites you in the butt. And I don’t necessarily think that was the issue (Sunday), just a lack of focus and execution."
Bad losses happen in the NFL. All the time. Even by good teams.
The Miami Dolphins got throttled by the Buffalo Bills three weeks ago, 48-20, and the Bills lost to the New England Patriots - definitely not the Tom Brady ones - on Sunday.
The Lions got their teeth kicked in, 38-6, by a good Ravens team and a former MVP quarterback in Lamar Jackson, who's as difficult to gameplan for as anyone in the NFL.
Jackson accounted for 393 yards of offense and four touchdowns, staking the Ravens (5-2) to a 28-0 lead before the Lions had a first down. The game was over early in the second quarter, and almost everything that happened after was meaningless.
Sure, the Lions could have kicked a couple field goals to dress up the score, and, yes, there are concerns to come from the game that need immediate fixing. The Lions have not run the ball well in two weeks (though they barely tried Sunday) and their pass rush has dried up once again.
But no, the shine has not come off the Lions as one of the best teams in the league.
At 5-2 and with a home game next Monday night against the Las Vegas Raiders, the Lions are still comfortably in the driver's seat in the NFC North at almost the midpoint of the season. No other team in the division has more than two wins entering Monday's San Francisco 49ers-Minnesota Vikings game, and just three teams - the 49ers, Philadelphia Eagles, and Kansas City Chiefs - have better records in the entire NFL.
"This is the ebbs and flows of life," Lions defensive end Aidan Hutchinson said. "I mean, one week you’ll be at the top of the mountain, people will say you’re the best team in the league and then the next week they’re going to hate on you and tell you how (expletive) you are. So that’s why we keep what we got in this locker room and we block out all the noise."
Clearly, Hutchinson isn't blocking out all the noise, because you have to go to the deep corners of the web right now to find anyone calling the Lions frauds.
The history of this franchise makes its fanbase more prone to angst than most others, and locker rooms full of hardened professionals tend to be more circumspect about the highs and lows of a season than those who follow it from afar.
But people in the NFL know the Lions are for real and will be playing into January, with a home playoff game all but certain at this point.
Maybe they're less likely to be the one seed today, or the two seed, for that matter, considering the Eagles' Sunday night win over a good Dolphins team. But they've got a well-rounded roster with a really good offensive line protecting a quarterback who's mostly playing at a high level and a defense that's much better than it showed Sunday.
As tough as it was to watch, the Ravens game was more blip-on-the-radar than it was any sign of impending doom. The Lions got the kind of reminder most good teams get at some point every season, that they better bring it every week because when they don't, they can be beat on their off days, too.
"We say this every week," Campbell said Sunday. "We have to go into these games, and it takes every one of us to do it right. We have to. That’s where we’re at. When we do it, we’re pretty good. But when we don’t, it’s hard to overcome some of these things. We’re not that type of group."
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions blowout loss a blip on radar, not impending doom
