Monday, September 27, 2004
ouch. here are a couple of excerpts:
MITCH ALBOM: Lions put in their place by the Eagles
30-13 loss shows how far Detroit is from contending
September 27, 2004
BY MITCH ALBOM
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
It was like asking Britney Spears to dance with the Bolshoi, like watching Nelly try to sing "La Boheme," like seeing if the cashier at the 7-Eleven can crunch numbers with Alan Greenspan. The Lions and Eagles may have shared the same record coming into Sunday afternoon's showdown at Ford Field, but that was where the similarity ended. Coach Steve Mariucci had predicted this game would be "a reality check" for his young team.
Guess what?
Reality stinks.
"Our guys can see what a championship-caliber squad looks like," Mariucci moaned after the 30-13 drubbing. "We just saw one."
This is like telling the Coyote that he just saw a Roadrunner; you are usually talking to a face full of gunpowder. The Lions were dirtied early in this one. In fact, you could say the game was over in one three-and-a-half minute stretch of the first quarter.
Here's what happened. The Eagles had a third-and-long in their territory. The crowd was roaring. The score was 0-0. There was reason to believe.
Then Donovan McNabb escaped several failed Lions tacklers, and connected with a 25-yard pass to his tight end..
Two plays later, he hit a 45-yard pass down the gut of the Lions' defense.
Three plays later, the Eagles scored a touchdown.
Three plays after that, Joey Harrington fumbled the ball off his knee.
One play later, the Eagles scored another touchdown -- a 29-yard lob from McNabb to Terrell Owens. It was 14-0.
And fans started checking their watches. This was still the first quarter, still, technically, bright lights, big viewers. But you knew it: We all knew it. The Lions were not ready for prime time.
The rest was just determining a score.
[...]
For six days we had a whale of a time here, inhaling the fumes of an undefeated season. Then the Philharmonic came to town, and we sent out the organ grinder monkey. It was fantasy football, this was reality, and as a movie title once suggested, reality bites, right in the butt.
