Lions 19 - 49ers 25

There is one thing the Lions season and their actual play in games do not have in common. A great start. Today their lack of production on offense continued until they had their first loss of the season.

The 49ers defense was good. Real good. But it was not good enough to have been able to shut down the Lions offense. Yet it did just that.

Without further adieu, here are my goats in this loss:

The Lions offensive line was just that today. Offensive! Jeff Backus, for the second time this year looked like a human sieve. Constantly and continuously he was watching a defensive end run past him and after Stafford. Backus actually looked worse than he did against Jared Allen in Minnesota.

Matthew Stafford looked like a rookie in his first NFL game today. He looked lost, scared and was the most inaccurate I have seen him. His passes sailed early and when he finally found some resemblance of accuracy, he held onto the ball for far too long. When he did see the rush coming, he often threw the ball into the dirt, which lead to him being called for a safety and an intentional grounding.

The Lions coaching in general can take a big piece of the blame pie in this loss. Consider the weapons on this team, with Calvin Johnson (who was hardly thrown to for long portions of the game and completely ignored in the redzone), Jahvid Best, Pettigrew, Burleson and Titus Young, there is simply no excuse for this offense to always look lost in the first half. The defense should be making adjustments to them rather than the other way around.

When the Lions were down to their last drive with no timeouts, the offense looked lackadaisical. With one minute left, the players should have been hustling to the line. They showed no sense of urgency whatsoever.

At one point, when the Lions had a 2nd and 23 yards to go, they set up in the shotgun and handed off to Best with a draw play. After 5 previous games in which the draw play has rarely netted more than 1 or 2 yards, it was absolutely the worst play they could have called.

This team simply did not come into the game ready to play (again), and in this game it staid that way.

Any loss is hard to watch. Especially when you know your team is capable of so much more. But to watch a team with this much talent and far more play-makers than their opponent, to watch them play this badly an entire game.... it is disgusting. There simply is no other way to put it.

In fact, I am actually more ashamed of this Lions team right now, than I was of the 2008 team that did not win a game. Simply because this team is capable of so much more than they showed. They simply did not play to their capabilities.