A friend used to always say about his parents: "They had low expectation of everybody and they were seldom disappointed."
If you're a Lions fan, that feeling surely is familiar. After Sunday's 14-13 loss to Buffalo on the road, Bob Wojnowski writes of the 5-9 team:
The kicker who never misses, missed. The snapper who never misfires, misfired. The linebacker who made plenty of good plays suddenly made a bad one.
And the team that can’t get out of its own way, or find its way, put the fitting capper on its misery. The Lions don’t have anything they can count on right now, not even the things they can count on, and mercifully the charade is over. The Lions’ playoff chances officially plummeted from about 4 percent to precisely zero, no shot, stop the math, with a 14-13 loss to Buffalo on Sunday.
In so many ways, it was appropriate, and now without even minuscule playoff odds to consider, the introspection must begin for the Lions and Matt Patricia, who is 5-9 in his first season. It starts with the offense, which has to be revamped. Matthew Stafford, playing with an achy back, stood in against the Bills’ top-rated defense, but once again the Lions were short-handed and short-armed.
On WJR radio after the game, Coach Matt Patricia noted: “Look, for us, it’s not different. We go out, we compete, we try to win and we try to fucking get better every week.”
-- Allan Lengel
