The Detroit Lions aren't Super Bowl favorites, but the season isn't over yet

See those who crush dreams and those who insist that hope is just a problem. They are almost giddy and relentless.

Continue the vacation, right?

THE Detroit Lions were cute for a while.

Now they are just sad. Deprived of an immediate future after the loss of more defensive pillars and the intimidating half of their running back duo.

Apparently the season is over.

So, turn off the games and do what you used to do when the Lions lost eight of its first 10. Because no high-flying offense has ever won a Super Bowl without the compliments of a reasonable defense.

It’s the story of the reality TV purveyors: the Lions are doomed.

Yes, it doesn’t look good on paper…or on the ground…or in the context of the story. But this task of winning three games in a row – two against struggling teams – to earn the No. 1 seed is not the challenge of crunching the math to land on Saturn as many believe.

The Lions, if I may, still have the player they absolutely cannot afford to lose. His name is Jared Goff. He wishes you wouldn’t worry so much.

“Don’t be depressed,” he said on WXYT-FM (97.1) earlier this week, “we’re 12-2, we’ve got three games in front of us, we’re in good shape. ”

OK, maybe not in good shape. But consider what just happened on Sunday when the Lions played the best offense in the NFL outside of Detroit. They lost. By six points. And turned the ball over.

Take away the fumble and unusually slow start and the Lions have a chance to beat the Buffalo Bills. They will also have a chance against any other players they face. The odds and the margin for error have changed, but the possibilities remain the same, and that’s all any team can ask for.

Instead of focusing on what they lost, let’s focus on what they have.

There’s still a lot left in the cupboard

For starters, they have Dan Campbell and one of the best coaches in the league. The coach can’t make up for talent – see 3-13-1 record in Campbell’s first season – but he can make up for some: see 3-13-1 record in first year by Campbell.

The Lions lost their first eight games of the 2021 season, drew their ninth game, then lost the next two. At 0-10-1, many teams could have stopped fighting. The Lions have not done so and have won three of their last six games.

Those six games are where Campbell showed what kind of program he was building and how he connected with and pushed the team.

Here are some words he said on Wednesday that show he still does both:

“We have a lot of them here and I’ll tell you what… when we come out of a game and everything we said we had to do, we do that for 60 minutes and we lose the game, so I’m will stand up here and tell you, “You know what, we just don’t have enough.” But until that happens, you won’t hear me say anything about what we have (or don’t have). not).”

Again, Campbell isn’t going to clog running lanes like Alim McNeill or cover Justin Jefferson like Carlton Davis III. In fact, Davis wasn’t going to stop Jefferson either. Nobody does it.

But Campbell and his team just need to find a way to get a stop or two or force a turnover or two to keep the best offenses they’ll face somewhere in the 30s. What if opponents reach the quarantine ? Well, the Lions have an offense to match.

Certainly, the odds of the Lions winning the shootout in the next six games — that’s the number they’ll play if they win their first three and advance to the Super Bowl — aren’t great. Also, losing David Montgomery would hurt the running game in certain situations.

Which brings us to another piece they still have: Jahmyr Gibbs.

The second-year running back is third in the NFL in yards per carry. He is sixth in rushing yardage, despite being 100 fewer carries than league leader Saquon Barkley. Gibbs may not be built to carry the ball 30 times a game like Barkley or Derrick Henry, but he is absolutely built to carry the ball way more than the 13 attempts he currently averages.

He is, in numbers and sight, one of the best backs in the NFL. Now he has an opportunity to prove it further, assuming the offensive line can return to its former rhythm. And that brings us to the most important remaining piece:

Goff.

As long as this line protects him, and it did against Buffalo for the most part, he will have time to pick apart any defense and find the high-level pass catchers that are on this team.

Goff is playing the best ball of his career. He plays as well as any quarterback in the league not named Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes (although he has better numbers than Mahomes.) He even shows that he can occasionally extend plays and make plays , as he did several times against the Bills.

In other words, Goff and the talented players, offensive line and coaching staff are enough to give this team a chance to make a deep run. They did it a year ago with an inconsistent pass rush and one of the worst pass defenses in the league. This can be done again.

Will he do it?

I’m not a soothsayer. But teams run races this time of year in unexpected ways. The Lions were expected to make a run. Now this is no longer the case. That doesn’t mean they can’t.

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