Detroit Lions crash back to reality today

@#$%!$#

The above pretty well illustrate my thoughts on the game.

The Lions had actually gotten my hope up a bit over the last two weeks.  Two fairly poor teams that we were able to beat, and going up against an Eagles team that was 0-2 versus our 2-0.  I've been complaining about the Lions secondary and offensive line since preseason, but the Eagles just seemed ripe for the beating.  It wasn't just records, but the fact that Westbrook was hurt and even though he was expected to play, his production would likely be limited.  Additonally Lito Shepard and Brian Dawkins were out today, and with those two starters missing from the Eagles secondary against the Lions offense?  Well, it wasn't hard to envision a nearly 30 or 40 point day.

Things I noticed:

- Our offensive line is still terrible.  The Lions have done what they can to improve it, and Martz has an offensive system that produces numbers but also doesn't seem to block especially well.  Still, that was 9 sacks today, several tackles for a loss and a lot of Kitna scrambling out of the pocket.  On paper this line looks better than last year, and maybe they just need more time to jell, but I have seen no sign of hope from this line at all.

- Our secondary is probably the worst in the league.  I'm not just saying this because Donavan tore us up for all those yards and touchdowns, but after seeing McCown do it for the Raiders in week 1, it just seems like the secondary really needs the defensive line to apply pressure (like they did last week against the Vikings) to be successful.  The Eagles however, boast one of the best offensive lines in football, and our defensive line only had a couple of decent plays but otherwise were spectators as the ball would sail over their heads to the VERY wide open wide receivers.  Oh, Curtis for the Eagles had over 200 yards and 3 tds.

- The Lions have some very good, but still very young wide receivers.  Calvin Johnson got hurt - hopefully nothing too bad but he never made it back onto the field.  Roy Williams had some brilliant runs after the catch, but he also had a pair of fairly big drops.  Every wide receiver has drops, but I think that Roy still has a few too many of these, and they keep him from becoming an elite receiver, which he has all the tools to be.

- Kitna's a tough customer - we saw that last week.  But he has also thrown an interception in our endzone once each of the first 3 games of the season.  Today's wasn't as bad, because we were not real close to the endzone and the half was nearly over, but we had two drives stall right off of the bat the last two weeks due to early interceptions when we were within 10 yards of the endzone.

- Are the Lions not as good as their early record showed, or are the Eagles better than their early record showed?  Probably some of both - it's too early in the season to really know a team's identity, but the Lions have a couple of tough games coming up soon so I'll learn more about them in those.  I still think 8 and 8 sounds about right.