Don’t Ask Jets Fans To Feel Bad For The Lions
Jets fans can relate to the suffering of their counterparts in Detroit following the Lions’ 34-31 loss in San Francisco at Sunday’s NFC Championship Game. The blowing of a 24-7 halftime lead fueled by a costly fumble, the dropped passes, and the backfired coaching decisions were all out of the Gang Green playbook. Unlike New York, Detroit has never even participated in a Super Bowl in any of its previous 57 iterations. The Jets at least won one, though you need to be of a certain age to remember the glorious 1969 upset over the Colts.
But if you’re asking me, a tortured Jets fan, if I feel bad for Lions fans, um, no. At this point, getting the opportunity to see the Jets reach such heights seems unfathomable. New York hasn’t even qualified for the playoffs since the 2010 campaign, with just one winning season in the interim. From my perspective, I view the Lions as just one more supposedly irredeemable program which has left the Jets in the dust, joining, in no particular order, the Chiefs, Bills, and Bengals to build a sustainable winner.
Want to know how lucky I feel Lions fans are? They got to see their quarterback, Jared Goff, start every game this season, something that has happened all of one time (Ryan Fitzpatrick, 2015) in the last 10 years in New York.
Sure, there is never a guarantee in pro football that the Lions—or any team—will get back at the same level next season. Injuries and scheduling are a major factor in a team’s fortune. However, the Lions are young, fast, and have money to spend to boost their Achilles heel defense. They play in the weaker NFC, whose overall quarterback play pales in comparison to the riches in the AFC.
The Lions also were well-coached, even if Head Coach Dan Campbell is feeling the heat today from his fourth-down decisions. Except that’s who they were all season, going for it 40 times in 17 games, the second-most in the league behind awful Carolina, which probably used all four downs more often because they were always trailing.
Campbell may come across as old school, but he has embraced the modern theories that show the benefits of aggressive football. In Sunday’s most debated case, with the Lions down by three halfway through the fourth quarter and facing a 4th-and-3 from the 49ers 30-yard line, Campbell chose a Goff pass that fell incomplete instead of attempting a makeable but not automatic field goal. Since the goal is to win the game, the probability data supported keeping the ball to try for the go-ahead touchdown rather than giving it back to San Francisco, which had been unstoppable after making halftime adjustments, in a tie game.
Sure, it stings when it doesn’t work. However, if you trusted the process all season, you can’t renege on it when it fails in a big spot. It’s part of why the Lions appear to be set up for future success.
The only caveat, which is why I used the words “were well-coached” above, is if Offensive Coordinator Ben Johnson, who was terrific in scheming a system that allowed an otherwise average QB in Goff to flourish, departs to take a head coaching job elsewhere (Anyone at One Jets Drive awake? No?). Washington appears to be the favorite to land Johnson as of this writing.
That’s a risk you taken whenever you separate the HC and play-caller. I don’t find it coincidental that this season’s Super Bowl combatants boast Kansas City’s Andy Reid and San Francisco’s Kyle Shanahan, two HCs who are considered the league’s premier play-callers.
Again, these are concepts that I have never entertained in all these wasted years rooting for the Jets. Instead, we have gotten the same old “Let the defense win the game for us” nonsense from coaches for most of this century, epitomized by current Head Coach Robert Saleh’s disclosure to NBC analyst Tony Dungy before New York’s Week 12 loss at Las Vegas that the game would be “a race to 20 points.” This is what I have to deal with.
The Lions had a fantastic season that fell short. Sorry, but not sorry. Their fans got to witness two playoff games where their team won. I’ve been to every Jets home playoff game since the team moved to New Jersey in 1984. All four of them.