Lions Will Not Win a Game

Yep, that's the title to my Bears vs. Lions game "recap" for this week.

It's not that I think the Bears are a bad team. I don't. I'm biased, but I firmly believe the Bears are going to take the NFC North with relative ease this year. I didn't say the latter part last week, but I will now since the Packers fell at home to the Falcons.

The game still shouldn't have been this ugly, though.

Let us consider a myriad of factors that were working in the Lions' favor this week:

1. The Bears were coming off a hard-hitting, emotional victory Sunday night against the Eagles.
2. The Lions had two weeks to prepare for this game.
3. The Bears passing defense was amongst the worst in the league heading into Sunday, Nathan Vasher would not play, and Charles Tillman was to be playing through an injury.
4. The Lions had a capable passer and two extraordinarily talented wideouts.
5. The Lions had shed themselves of the off-field distraction that was Matt Millen's employment status.
6. Tommie Harris and Brandon Lloyd were also missing in action for the Monsters of the Midway.

Before the dust settled, the Lions found themselves down 31-0, benching Jon Kitna in favor of Dan Orlovsky, and seeing adequately-talented-at-best Kyle Orton obliterate career highs through the air.

As a Bears fan, I'd love to sit here and point to all the good things we saw. Greg Olsen has become the big-play tight end we hoped he would, the Kyle Orton experiment couldn't be working any better, Matt Forte is the antithesis of Cedric Benson, Rashied Davis had a big game, Devin Hester scored an offensive touchdown again, the defense was monstrous, and Peanut Tillman came through with another big play. Marty Booker made a ridiculous catch. Two pro-bowlers weren't even missed. Etc.

You know we have to throw a disclaimer on all this, though, right?

They were playing the freaking Lions.

The real story here is how bad this Lions team is. There was just no fight yesterday whatsoever. The Millen remnants linger, as simply firing a GM doesn't erase his horrifying personnel decisions overnight.

Now look ahead at the remaining schedule ... is there a single game this team can win?

@ MIN, @ HOU, vs. WAS, @ CHI, vs. JAX, @ CAR, vs. TB, vs. TEN, vs. MIN, @ IND, vs. NO, @ GB

Remember, that team you saw yesterday had two weeks to prepare. They won't have that luxury again. What games are even remotely winnable? At Texas? I doubt it. Can they catch the Vikings or Bucs off-guard at home? Lord only knows, but I wouldn't be confident if I was a Lions fan.

We saw one perfect regular season last year. We're about to see another, only this time it won't be quite as festive.