The questions remain the same. The outlook (for this week at least) bleak.
So, what's wrong with this team? Coach M says the Lions can't put the ball in the air without a ground game. Also, the defense can't stop the run.
"There were a lot of things that we have to improve upon in a game like that. But the two obvious would be running the football on offense, which is something that we are making a commitment to and it is going to be important for us to do that; and conversely stopping the run on defense. We got neither one of those done (against the Bears) - nothing like our game with the Packers, nothing like it.
"The run game, we abandoned early because of the score, so there was some reason to hold back on the attempts. Nevertheless, we have to be able to run the football in all of our personnel groups; whether we are one, two, three or four wide receivers. The other thing was in the passing game: protecting the quarterback and conversely putting pressure on the quarterback. Those are the two things that we are looking hard at right now."
Lions fans calling for Joey H's head will be sorely disappointed. Coach M is sticking with his No. 1 QB. Period. End of story.
Here's how the Oakland Daily Press summed up the situation:
Lions prove theyʹre still the Lions
BY JIM HAWKINS
ALLEN PARK - Inexcusable. Inexplicable. Unacceptable. And oh
so typical. Get used to it. "There are no magic beans falling from the
sky," Joey Harrington admitted Monday, a day after the Lions were
humiliated, 38-6, at Chicago. "There's no Barry Sanders coming back."
Smart man, Joey. And a realist. The Lions are what they are. "It's
what we got," Harrington said.
Don't misunderstand. "I love the guys we have in this locker
room," Harrington made a point of insisting, more than once. "And I
believe we can win with the guys we have.
"The thing we have to do is learn from the mistakes we made -
quickly."
He can say that again.
"We didn't do anything yesterday," conceded the quarterback who
probably would have been benched by now if veteran backup Jeff
Garcia were healthy. "We played bad football. It was a bad day for
everybody. Nobody played well. I was terrible. When you play
quarterback, you are the last line of defense. My mistakes compounded
what was already happening."
Mariucci resisted the invitation to throw his quarterback under the
bus, dismissing Harrington's first interception as a fluke and his second
with the fact that he and receiver Roy Williams were reading different
pages of the same playbook.
"He had a tough day," Mariucci acknowledged, "but we have to
help him a little more than that."
And Mariucci rejected the suggestion that the Lions should have
picked up another veteran QB off the scrap heap after Garcia went
down in the fi nal exhibition game. "There is nobody out there who
would have come in and played this game," the coach said.
In other words, Sunday's game - and probably the rest of this
season - are Joey's to win or lose.
Asked if he thought the play calling was too conservative Sunday,
Mariucci delivered a Bill Clinton-esque response. "It depends on what
you mean by conservative," the coach deadpanned.
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