The Lions thought things were going to get better; that things would level off and work out.
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A whole bunch of others thought they wouldn’t, though — and after a Week 4 loss dropped them to 1-3, already far behind the Vikings and Packers, Jim Caldwell had to answer questions about whether his job was on the line.
Now, here the Lions are: leading the division without even taking the field in Week 10. Don’t think they didn’t appreciate it, either:
That went up Sunday afternoon, after Washington knocked off the Vikings and the Packers got cold-cocked by the Titans. Sometimes, all you have to do is wait for the competition to come back to you.
The Lions stayed on course and won four of their last five with Matthew Stafford going on one of the best stretches of his career. The two divisional favorites have had wretched months.
Plus, in their last meeting with one of the teams they were chasing at the time, on the road, the Lions hung around the Vikings, withstood a dramatic late go-ahead score, stormed back to the game-tying field goal, and won it with an equally-dramatic touchdown drive in overtime.
That sure made for a relaxing bye week.
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It was one full of validation, for the patience the organization had with the survivor of owner Martha Ford’s purge just over a year ago. The team president and general manager were flushed out. Caldwell stayed. He seemingly has been coaching while standing on a trap door ever since.
The Lions didn’t pull the ripcord after the bad start, and they’re reaping the rewards. Now, they have a path to wrest real control of the division over the next week and a half — they’re home Sunday against a beatable Jaguars team, and then in their traditional Thanksgiving game against the same Vikings team they took down two weeks ago.
So, as Caldwell said Monday as they returned from the bye, the Lions have no reason to let down, nor to crank the intensity higher than it has been already. No reaction could fit Caldwell’s personality better, one that’s described as even-keeled when his team wins, and emotionless and uninspiring when it does not.
Their approach has been the same going into every game, Caldwell reiterated, so there’s no reason to change that with so much at stake.
“You don’t have one point in time in this league when you can ever say, ‘We’re gonna take the governor off just a little bit this week,’” he said, breaking out a city-appropriate auto reference. “It doesn’t happen. This is a different ball game, this is a different league; it’s hard to win one game in this league.
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“So, no, I don’t sense it, and if I did, I’d be awfully disappointed, I really would be.”
That approach keeps working for him, even when he has to steer the team out of one skid or another. They’re not in a skid now, though … despite everything that has happened with and around them this season, they’re in first place with seven weeks to go.
