Lions vice chairman William Clay Ford Jr. said he lost a little bit of interest in the playoffs when the Saints eliminated the Lions in the Wild Card. “I look at the teams that were still playing and I would like to think that we would have a chance,” he told Detroitlions.com last week.
It’s hard not to agree with him, especially after watching the Giants’ run to Super Bowl XLVI.
Looking at the Lions and the Giants on paper, the similarities are hard to miss.
- They both have Pro Bowl caliber quarterbacks in
Matthew Stafford and Eli Manning, who both finished in the top five in the league in nearly all statistical categories and played their best football at the end of the season.
- Both have terrific defensive lines that ranked in the top 10 in the league in sacks (Giants, 50; Lions 41).
- Both struggled running the ball, the Giants ranked 32nd and the Lions 29th.
- Both ranked in the bottom third against the pass, the Giants (29th) were worse than the Lions (22).
Lions head coach Jim Schwartz was hired in 2009 because he had a specific philosophy in how he wanted to build the team, a philosophy the Giants won the Super Bowl with during the 2007 season.
"In today's NFL, you build your team around the quarterback and the guys who can get to the quarterback,” William Clay Ford Jr. said when asked what impressed him most about the interview with Schwartz.
The biggest difference between the Giants and the Lions this year was that the Giants got hot when it counted and the Lions went cold, especially on defense.
But could the Lions have made a similar run in the playoffs if they’d faced the Giants and beaten them in the first round?
It would have been tough, but not impossible, as the Giants proved.
Next on the docket for the Lions after the Giants would have been the Packers and the 49ers, two teams that defeated the Lions during the regular season. The Packers beat them twice.
But, the Giants lost to both the Packers and the 49ers in the regular season, too, and beat them in the playoffs with good quarterback and defensive line play.
The Lions needed a victory in the final week of the season in Green Bay to set up a matchup with the Giants in New York in the first round of the playoffs. Instead, the Lions allowed Packers quarterback Matt Flynn to have the best performance in Packers’ franchise history in a 45-42 victory.
The loss sent the Lions to New Orleans to play the red-hot Saints. The Giants hosted the Falcons. And the rest, they say, is history.
But could there have been a different Super Bowl match-up this week if the Lions had played the Giants? Could the Lions have beaten the Giants and gone on to win with almost the same formula the Giants did – throw the ball, rush the passer and don’t make mistakes?
We’ll never know. But it looks good on paper.
