Friends in Low Places
For the Detroit Lions (0-12), there’s no where to go but up. As for the Tennessee Titans (11-1), the view from the top just keeps getting better. Less than one week after being blown out at home by the New York Jets and suffering their first loss of the season, the team from Music City crushed the team from Motor City 47-10, in a game that the home-town Lions were thankful was limited to the regulation 60 minutes.
Tennessee’s recent troubles out of the gate were a distant memory, as running back Chris Johnson charged into the endzone 85 seconds into the game, following a forced fumble by DB Michael Griffin, and tallied 21 points by the end of the 1st quarter.
Johnson scored twice, rushing once for six yards, and another for a 58-yard scamper through a whole opened by the Offensive line that you could have herded a gaggle of turkeys through. Running back LenDale White, the other half of the “Smash and Dash” tandem, also hit pay dirt twice, bulling his way into the endzone on six, and two-yard runs.
Busy kicker Rob Bironas added 4 field goals from beyond 40 yards (41, 43, 45, 49), and 5 extra-points. Even the defensive line got into the act, when DE Dave Ball intercepted a tipped Dante Culpepper pass, and took it to the house for a TD from the 16.
Culpepper (13 of 26, for 134 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT) ,struggled all day. The Lions went out like a lamb in their first 5 possessions, going fumble, FG, punt, interception, punt. Culpepper did find TE Michael Gaines from the 2 yard line for Detroit’s only touchdown, following a strip of Titan’s quarterback Kerry Collins. “That’s a really good football team, but we didn’t play our best game today, nowhere near our best game,” Culpepper said. “To beat a team like that you’ve got to have some things go your way, and you’ve got to play an almost mistake-free game, and we didn’t do that.”
The Titans, facing the NFL’s worst run defense, ran wild for 292 yards - nearly a single-game franchise record, while Detroit’s anemic net yards on the ground was 23. That’s right, 23 yards. LenDale White and Chris Johnson each gained more than 100 yards rushing for Tennessee, while Kevin Smith ran for 22 yards on 12 attempts for the Lions, with his longest of the afternoon went for 21. Yes, your math is correct. One run of 21 yards, and 11 runs for a total of 1 yard. “We saw a lot of teams had a lot of rushing yards on them,” Johnson said. “It was important to get our running game going and get momentum.”
“Not to knock them, but we expected to win this game,” said White. “There was no way coming into this game we thought we were going to lose. We just came out swinging.”
Vince Young, the embattled former starting quarterback, sidelined for an apparent knee injury in the season opener, and relegated to backing up Collins after a highly publicized police search and private meeting with Coach Fisher, actually took a few snaps near the end of the game. In the locker room after the game, Young refused to speak with Nashville reporters, according to Jim Wyatt from The Tennessean, though he was willing to talk with a radio reporter from Westwood One. “We’ve been playing aggressive and defense is playing a great game and the whole team is playing a great game. We’re just playing together as a whole as the Tennessee Titans.”
The Lions get the benefit of this weekend off, and an extra couple of days to prepare for the Minnesota Vikings’ (6-5) visit on December 7. Tennessee will host the Cleveland Browns (4-7) at LP Field in Nashville, also a week from Sunday.
With only 4 chances remaining, Detroit could conceivably finish 0-16 for the first time since the Tampa Bay “Yucks” accomplished the infamous feat during their inaugural season in 1976 - 32 years ago. ” The record doesn’t show it, but I’ve got great belief in myself,” said Lion’s head Coach Rod Marinelli after watching his team dismantled for the um-teenth time this season. Hope he’s got friends in high places, because he’s got no company where he’s at right now.
