12 thoughts on “The Detroit Lions”

  1. The officiating crew was pretty consistently bad, and I would expect that this particular crew won’t get many future playoff games. I agree that the pass interference call should not have been reversed, but I also felt that the roughing the kicker call in the end zone was bogus, particularly when later in the game the same contact was made on the Dallas kicker and no call was made.

    For that matter, I can’t understand how Ndamukong Suh won his appeal to even play in today’s game. Well, except for the fact that the NFL is a very big business and more money is to be made when he is in the lineup.

    Lions failed to put the ball in the end zone after the first quarter. Sorry, buy all things considered I think the final outcome today was the right one.

  2. In the 40-plus years I’ve been watching pro football, I’ve seen plenty of bad calls; this was indeed a bad call. In that same time span, I’ve never seen a bad call that unequivocally changed the outcome of a game, and this one was no exception. There are pretty much always enough bad calls to go around, it’s just that some are showier than others. Jiminator is spot on.

    And Jiminator is also spot on regarding Suh, the Lions’ lack of offensive production, etc. “get hosed” and “almost looks like the fix was in” is unworthy even as hyperbole.

      1. My working theory about the Lions (and I say this having spent my childhood in Livonia and Farmington Hills) is that they’re part of a sophisticated money laundering operation for organized crime and/or the mayor’s office (not that there’s any real difference). How else can you explain keeping Wayne Fontes on as head coach for eight years?

        So if the fix was in, who put it there?

        Maybe it’s just as well. If they’d actually won a playoff game, the temptation to gloat might have been irresistible, and my wife’s from Fort Worth.

        1. If the Lions were good enough to go all the way, they wouldn’t have even been playing yesterday. They’d have had the day off after beating the Packers the previous week.

  3. Definitely a bad crew. I think the same crew (at least the same head guy) that called the Bronco-Jets game back in October. After ejecting a Bronco, his call was (roughly) “And that player ejected himself from the game.” Even one of the announcers (Dan Fouts) had enough issue with that to comment on air (“Well, to be fair, you ejected him”).

    Did anyone else find the shots of Chris Christie hugging Jerry Jones a little weird?

    1. Did anyone else find the shots of Chris Christie hugging Jerry Jones a little weird?

      Michigan voters certainly will. Probably enough to cost him the state if he runs.

  4. The issue isn’t whether the call affected the outcome of the game – of course it did – how is another matter.

    The big issue here is that the refs made the call and THEN decided to reverse it. This is NEVER done in situations like this (at least I’ve never seen it). Picking up the flag is for times where one official saw something to definitively over-rule the other. This was a horrible decision at a key time. Period.

  6. It was a strange happening. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before. However, over 60 minutes of play, it’s hard to point to any one play as costing them the game.

  7. The blown call on the Pettigrew play was only the tip of the iceberg. Romo’s lineman were blatantly holding Suh and Ansah on every play and the refs turned a blind eye on every one, but they did find a phantom defensive holding call twice when they needed one. That final drive was completely engineered by the refs. Roger Goodell is a figurehead, Jerry Jones really runs the NFL, and he’s tired of somebody else getting the Lombardi Trophy. This is exactly the kind of thing that made me stop watching the NBA, games rigged for the benefit of the team in the best media market and/or best national following, not that any media person will ever call them on it for fear of being denied access.

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