All bad teams come to pass: Witness the 2009 Detroit Lions
Well, he's moving past Joey Harrington now. But that's not all good news for Matthew Stafford, who started despite an injured left shoulder Thursday against Green Bay and finished with another lesson in humility.
Stafford tied Harrington's franchise rookie record with his 12th TD pass of the season -- a well-placed throw to Calvin Johnson on the opening possession to give the Lions a 7-0 lead. But he also threw four more INTs today, giving him 18 for the season, two more than Harrington had as a rookie in 2002.
And therein lies part of the problem right now. Stafford is averaging 39 pass attempts per game, a ridiculously high number for a rookie quarterback in the NFL. Consider that 39 attempts per game translates to 624 in a 16-game season, a total surpassed by only the Saints' Drew Brees (635) last season.
Now then, I'll defer to the stat gurus who'll tell you the air warfare is no passing fancy: 11 of the top 12 passing teams in the NFL this season have winning records. It's a quarterback league. And coordinator Scott Linehan certainly understands the advantages of passing on first down. (The Lions did it about 60-65 percent of the time Thursday.)
But, yes, I think they're asking a bit much of this 21-year-old right now. Between the dwindling running game and the weekly deficits -- often early -- and the kid's live arm, the Lions have gotten pass happy by default.
Coach Jim Schwartz admitted as much in his postgame press conference, though he did so only after he was done lamenting his team's lack of a running game. It was glaring Thursday, even considering the Packers came in with the No. 4 rushing defense in the NFL. Kevin Smith's continuing struggles -- he has been "tripped up" far too often this season, to put it politely -- are impossible to ignore. And a season-ending injury to RG Stephen Peterman was compounded Thursday when his replacement, Daniel Loper, suffered back spasms. And that made it harder to bench Manny Ramirez for poor play, since Dylan Gandy couldn't play both left and right guard at the same time.
"We had some good 'boxes' and that means good numbers to run the ball," said Schwartz, who knows it probably won't get any better if rookie TE Brandon Pettigrew is lost for the season with a knee injury. "We got beat up front and we weren't able to capitalize on it."
And since that has become a weekly refrain from the Lions by now, Schwartz was asked if it wasn't time to quit pretending the Lions were capable of being a good running team and start acting more like, well, the Packers.
Problem is, they already are, with the sixth-most pass attempts in the league this season. (They're easily outpacing the Packers in pass attempts, by the way. Yards per attempt? Not even close: The Lions are ranked 25th.)
"We've thrown it a bunch," Schwartz said. "It's not like we're running it 50 times a game. We've been coming out and throwing it. But to win in this league, you'll have a hard time winning if you're one-dimensional like that. I'm not going to take a cop-out and say 'We can't do it so let's quit trying.' That's not our belief, that's not our philosophy. We need to find a way for it to work, not abandon it."
