The author, a regular contributor to Deadline Detroit, is a former reporter for The New York Times and Detroit Free Press.
By Joe Lapointe
At 4 p.m. on a sunny Sunday – more than four hours before the Lions played New England at Ford Field – the fan action was heavy nearby at the intersection of Brush and Madison, which is also named Aretha Franklin Way.
There, a van painted the primary team color of Honolulu blue anchored a tailgate party in a parking lot across from 36th. District Court. Fans gathered around the vehicle to see what was posted on one side.
Several wore Tom Brady No. 12 jerseys to honor the visiting quarterback, an icon of American sports who played in college at Michigan. They saw a poster showing a Lions fan in visible agony.
“Leading cause of alcoholism since 1957,” it said, referring to Detroit’s last NFL championship, in the pro football Dark Ages before there were Super Bowls.
Near the van, two ticket scalpers were evaluating the market for this nationally televised game against the Patriots, who often play in the Super Bowl. It should have been a hot ticket. One of the scalpers wore a blue Barry Sanders No. 20 jersey.
“Did you see `StubHub?’” asked the man without the jersey. “Those tickets (prices) fell so bad!”
“Yeah,” said the man in the jersey. “There’s going to be a lot of tickets out here. They’re dumping them.”
Indeed, the cheapest prices online had fallen from more than $100 on Saturday night to under $60 Sunday afternoon. By game time, scalpers on foot, bicycle and scooters were taking $50 a ticket and $40 shortly after kickoff. (At the box ffice, they were $114 or more. Few customers stood in line.)
Resale Bargains
Why the fire sale? Because everyone expected the worst. And then they got the best when the Lions stunned the Patriots, 26-10, to even the records of both teams at 1-2.
Among others surprised were the Detroit customers and the national TV audience. “Let’s Go, Lions!” they chanted early in the fourth quarter, a sound that echoes inside the roofed stadium and out over the national airwaves to a stunned America.
A few minutes after the game -- under a big, round moon on a clear, crisp night -- one of the tailgaters stood by the blue van drinking beer with joyous shouts echoing all about him. But the sign mocking Lions futility was gone. Did the partiers take it down in renewed hope for the local team?
“No,” the guy said. “Somebody stole it.”
It was almost as if someone else – like maybe Lions’ coach Matt Patricia? – had stolen New England’s game plan, which isn’t entirely out of the question. Until this season, Patricia was defensive coordinator for Patriots’ head coach Bill Belichick, an evil genius whose staff has always explored the boundaries of the rules and how to bend them.
Perhaps, at least, Patricia knew from experience how to defend against Brady, the superstar quarterback who looked Sunday night like a 41-year-old future Hall-of-Famer with the emphasis on the age and not the fame.
The opposing coaches embrace.
He had enough time to throw the ball but too few open receivers. So, he got knocked around. He threw an interception. He got flagged for intentional grounding. He was forced to waste a timeout. And that was only when the Lions’ offense let New England have the ball.
Heck, for most of the night, the Lions just kept it. You could say, metaphorically, that they took the air out of it and deflated the Patriots. Perhaps, without Patricia as their defensive coordinator, the Patriots forgot to scout Lions’ quarterback Matt Stafford the previous week in his scatter-armed performance in San Francisco.
Because the New England defense played back to stop Stafford’s deep passes, that left the middle soft for Detroit’s offensive line to create a ground game. Some of the holes they blew through the Pats’ defense were big enough to send in running backs two at a time.
A Milestone
Best of them was the promising rookie Kerryon Johnson, who carried on for 16 runs totaling 101 yards, the first Lion to crack the century mark since Reggie Bush did it on Thanksgiving Day of 2013.
When Patricia took him out of the game with his milestone in the fourth quarter, the fans roared as the big video board showed Johnson’s teammates joyously mobbing him on the sideline.
Johnson also caught two passes out of the backfield, one a swing to the left, the other over the middle. He ran for a first down up the middle after Stafford faked an end-around to Golden Tate III.
Tate remains a savvy and valuable receiver. Like Stafford, he has wasted most of his career with mediocre Detroit teams. But on Sunday, he glittered again, catching six Stafford tosses for 69 yards, many of them showcasing his elusive running skills and knowledge of down-and-distances circumstances.
All of these guys gave the downtown sports district a jolt of optimism on a day when the Tigers closed out a dreary home schedule with yet another defeat.
On the sidewalk next to the baseball park, across the street from the football barn, a vendor sold custom tee shirts geared toward an angry football mentality.
One said “Tom Fuckin Brady” (with no apostrophe). Another said “Bitch, I’m a Lion.”
Both were kind of funny in a surly way. But with stars with cool names like Golden, Kerryon and Big Play Slay, imagine what sort of shirts might sell well if this team ever got good and the fashion-statements turned positive.
