Tag: tony scheffler

Bob Wojnowski: Lions finally have teeth to match their roar


Bob Wojnowski

Detroit — Oh my, how things have changed. At times in Ford Field on Sunday, the crowd was so loud, the Lions’ offense had to plead for calm. At times, the quarterback was so jacked up, he looked capable of firing the ball all the way across the street to Comerica Park.

Something startling is starting to happen at this hot little corner in downtown Detroit, and for their part, the Lions are determined to make it happen. That should be their theme this season, because it sure is Matthew Stafford’s theme — make something happen.

The gamblin’, gunslingin’, gosh-darnin’ quarterback was dominant in the home opener, throwing four touchdown passes in the Lions’ 48-3 blasting of the Chiefs. The Lions spent the offseason collecting players and plaudits, and though it was just one game, they showed it all in the biggest blowout in franchise history.

This is about talent, and the 2-0 Lions definitely have some. It’s also about attitude, and they’re certainly developing some, from the noise in the building to Kid Rock and Bob Seger in the postgame locker room. Going back to last season, this is six straight victories, and it’s happening with aggressiveness on offense and defense, and even with a cutthroat edge.

At long last

Jim Schwartz and his coaching staff are letting the fellas loose, and that’s partly because the Lions finally, finally have the quarterback capable of doing it. Stafford threw soft passes, feathered strikes and absolute lasers. His 36-yard pass down the middle to tight end Tony Scheffler in the second quarter was a thing of beauty — almost as audacious as Scheffler’s touchdown dance.

The Lions are having fun and they should. In an amusing pantomime, Scheffler pretended he was making a fire and sending smoke signals. (They were playing the Chiefs, get it?) Actually, the Lions are using more conventional means to send their signals, and it begins with a franchise quarterback who’s healthy and happy to fling.

“Your radar’s gotta be on high alert when Matt’s got the ball in his hands,” Scheffler said. “On my touchdown, he put some velocity on it and stuck it on my helmet. But we have a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed if we want to be the team we think we can be in January.”

The playoffs in January are a long way off, but not as long as they were two weeks ago. The Lions just hammered a team that was 10-6 last season, one week after handling another 10-6 team in Tampa. Granted, the Chiefs look positively awful, committing six turnovers.

But Stafford is growing rapidly, as he searches for the line between making something happen and needlessly forcing something to happen. Early in the game, the Lions were a bit sluggish. Stafford threw a bad interception instead of taking a sack, although the Chiefs fumbled it right back.

Stafford has shown he can scramble, and he and offensive coordinator Scott Linehan are finding ways to make teams pay. When the Chiefs’ defense loaded up to stuff the run, Stafford hit star Calvin Johnson for two touchdowns. When they adjusted, he found Nate Burleson, Jahvid Best, emerging rookie Titus Young and others.

“The big thing was, Matt took some hits and kept making the throws,” center Dominic Raiola said. “When teams leave Calvin out there one-on-one, that’s disrespectful to me. That’s what happens — you get dunked on. We got an aggressive coaching staff. We’re gonna stay fangs out.”

Fangs out, everyone in. Yep, you can feel something building here, after all the years of misery.

People wonder what spawns confidence. I’ll tell you what does: Talent. Stafford has the smarts, the arm and the leadership, and Johnson has become an amazing weapon.

Here were the Lions, up 20-3 late in the third quarter, facing a fourth down at Kansas City’s 1. Field goal by the ever-dependable Jason Hanson? Aw, boring. As the crowd momentarily quieted, Stafford dropped back, zipped a quick pass to Johnson, and the fans erupted again.

“We’ve been doing it for a while now and Calvin kind of knows what I’m thinking, and I’m the same way with him,” said Stafford, 23-for-39 for 294 yards. “It’s a good start, that’s the way we look at it.”

A ferocious start

It’s only a start, but the Lions attacked with stunning ferocity. This is who they’re trying to become — an explosive passing team that runs to keep the opponent honest. There also was some animosity in this one because defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham was accused in the offseason of tampering with Kansas City players, a charge that really ticked the Lions off.

I’m not saying they ran up the score. The Chiefs were so incompetent, the score practically ran itself up.

I am saying, when Stafford is flinging like this, the Lions are capable of running up points quickly. Through two games, he has thrown for 599 yards and seven touchdowns, with only two interceptions.

“Until we get some playoffs and championships, I’m not gonna walk around with my chest pumped out,” Burleson said. “But I don’t think people truly realize how many weapons we got. That’s the one thing that makes us so powerful. Matt makes throws that a lot of quarterbacks wouldn’t even attempt. We’re a good team, but our goal is to be great.”

They have a good quarterback who’s striving to be great. Nothing really has changed and everything has changed. The Lions’ goals are still the same, but now, early evidence suggests they’re legitimately attainable.

bob.wojnowski@detnews.com

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Matthew Stafford, Lions outmuscle Bucs to win opener


Lions 27, Buccaneers 20

Chris McCosky/ The Detroit News

Tampa, Fla. — It’s probably a good sign for the Lions they started the season on the road, against a team with playoff aspirations and were almost apologizing for not beating them worse than they did.

“We were very lucky to win this game,” coach Jim Schwartz said, after the Lions held on to beat the Buccaneers 27-20 at Raymond James Stadium on Sunday.

Lucky?

The Lions scored on five of their first seven possessions and finished with 431 total yards. Quarterback Matthew Stafford had the second-most productive performance of his career, completing 24 of 33 passes for 305 yards and three touchdowns.

His 36-yard touchdown pass to Calvin Johnson on fourth-and-2 in the second quarter was laser precise. He threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to tight end Tony Scheffler and the eventual winner, a 1-yarder to Johnson.

Johnson had six catches for 88 yards, secured an onside kick and was on the field in the prevent defense on the last play of the game.

Lucky?

The defense didn’t allow the Bucs a first down in the first and third quarters. Until the middle of the fourth quarter, after the Lions had built a 27-13, the Bucs had amassed just 209 yards and the only touchdown was a 28-yard interception return off a tipped pass by Aqib Talib.

What did luck have to do with any of that?

“Really, we should have blown them out,” said cornerback Chris Houston, who had seven tackles and limited Bucs big-play receiver Mike Williams to four catches. “There were a couple of plays on offense, the interception return, and a couple of plays we missed on defense — just some mistakes we made that kept them in the game. We need to get back to the film and get those corrected.”

The Lions had the 14-point lead late in the third quarter and seemed content on running out the clock.

“We were in command of the game, so at that point we wanted to control the clock,” said receiver Nate Burleson, who caught five passes for 60 yards and ran a reverse for 20. “There were seven minutes left and I was saying, ‘Let’s get it to four.’ We tried to get it over with, but it was some good execution by them to get in position to tie the game.”

With 1:35 left, Bucs quarterback Josh Freeman hit Williams in the back of the end zone on fourth-and-3 from the 5. Williams caught the ball over cornerback Aaron Berry.

The Bucs went for the onside kick. Schwartz inserted Johnson on the hands team, and Johnson leaped and grabbed the high bounding kick.

The Lions couldn’t move the ball on three running plays, but they forced the Bucs to use their final two timeouts. Had things gone the way they were supposed to, the Bucs would have gotten the ball back deep in their own zone with 30 seconds left.

Instead, the clock was stopped with 1:24 left when Lions right tackle Gosder Cherilus got entangled with a defensive player and was slapped with an unnecessary roughness penalty.

“I don’t consider that about discipline, I consider that stupid,” Schwartz said. “The opponent has no timeouts left and we get a penalty? That’s a situation we talk about and we work on. That’s stupid football, and it almost put us in a situation — the defense should have been in where there were 30 seconds left and they would have to defend two plays.”

As it was, the Bucs had the ball on the 20 with 1:07 left. Freeman moved them to the Lions 42 before the clock expired on a wild play where the Bucs kept fumbling the ball to keep from getting tackled.

Lions safety Louis Delmas banged his hip on the play but said later he wasn’t injured.

“I am not going to discount the value of a win, particularly a win on the road,” Schwartz said. “But we definitely have to play a lot better than we played today. We made too many mistakes that kept Tampa in the game.

“I guess it’s the sign of a good football team that we made those mistakes and still came out with the win. But there are things that happened in this game that are inexcusable and they will not continue.”

At one point in the first quarter, the Lions had a 147-1 edge in total yards and were trailing 10-6. The Bucs first field goal — a 38-yarder by Connor Barth — was set up by a 78-yard kickoff return by Sammie Stroughter.

“We have a darn good kickoff team,” Schwartz said. “But we missed a tackle and the guy hit a gap and all of a sudden they are kicking a field goal.”

Kicker Jason Hanson, who contributed field goals of 23 and 28 yards, booted all of his other kicks to the back of the end zone.

On the Lions’ next possession, Stafford’s pass clanged off the hands of tight end Will Heller right into the waiting arms of Talib.

“You don’t want those mistakes to keep coming back,” Stafford said. “That’s the main thing. You’ve got to fix them, get them ironed out and not make them next week. We are going to need to get started a little earlier on offense.”

The game was played in oppressive 90-degree heat, and players on both sides were cramping up. Stafford didn’t miss a snap, but he limped off a couple of times. Freeman missed two series in the third quarter with cramps. Burleson also missed some time.

“That was the worst I’ve seen,” Burleson said. “I was hydrated, too, and I still cramped.”

But it was an all’s-well-that-ends-well kind of day for the Lions.

“We almost let this get away at the end,” said Johnson. “Had this been another year, who knows? We should have put it away. I didn’t feel like we were going to lose, but it shouldn’t have been as close as we made it to be.”

chrismccosky@detnews.com