Lions Lose to Cardinals in Week-15

It was not such an embarrassing loss as most thought it would be. It was still a loss and bad enough as the Lions dropped another one 31 to 24.

I must apologize early for any inaccuracies this article may have. With the game not on television, I was forced to listen to it on the radio and trust what the commentators said as well as look over the stats rather than see it with my own eyes. I have come to realize just how often I will hear a commentator say one thing when I just saw something different with my own eyes.

With less than four minutes left in the game, the Lions had the score tied at 24-24. It looked like the Lions would pull a stunt that we would only expect from... well, the Lions. With Tampa Bay and Cleveland both winning this week, the Lions moved into the 2nd overall draft pick for 2010. A win would have kept them in 4th or 5th overall. A win would have done nothing but hurt their draft position. The only team with a worse record now is St.Louis and it is not impossible for them to draft a QB 1st overall. That would leave the super Defensive Tackle Ndamukong Suh for the Lions to draft. A player like Suh could make a world of a difference for the Lions defense.

Culpepper did not play well. I did not expect him to. I still believe the Lions would have been better off starting Culpepper to begin the season and let Stafford learn on the bench first. I think Culpepper was better prepared to start the season and would have given the Lions a better chance to win games. But after not playing with the starting unit for most of the season, I will not expect him to play well with them now. He no longer has the timing and cohesion with them that he had in the preseason. On a good team a veteran quarterback can step in and look good, but it usually wont happen on a team as bad as the Lions.

Maurice Morris had a good game in his first start with Kevin Smith out. 126 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries are stats that do look good. Better than Kevin Smith has been getting. One impressive factor was Morris' 64 yard scamper for the TD. In two seasons, Smith's longest run was 50 yards and it was not a TD. Yet I cannot help but to be skeptical that Morris can do it again any time soon. He had a very good game but believe me, he is not as good as he looked in that one game. If he was, he would have shown it at one point in his first seven seasons. By the way, before that 64 yard run his longest was 49 yards only.