The 1998 dram-rom-com Sliding Doors is a terrible movie with a great premise. It’s like the Purge franchise all rolled into one forgettable Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle. The great premise of which I speak springs from its use of alternate realities some time before that concept became the ubiquitous pop culture touchstone (perhaps crutch) that it is today. The titular doors are referring to the doors on the London subways; in one version that we see play out, Gwyneth misses her train. In the other, she makes it through the sliding doors and a totally different life plays out.
I’ve been Sliding Doors-ing the Lions ever since the end of the regular season. The refs gave away our win in Dallas. We beat the Cowboys but the referees made up some nonsense and effectively changed our one-point lead with ~20 seconds left to a 1-point deficit. What if they called that game legit and we finished 13-4 instead of 12-5? Well, we’d have the one seed. And a home game this week. Presumably. Perhaps the pressure of acquiring the one seed would’ve proved too much and we would’ve dropped one of our Vikings games. And there’s the rub about the butterfly effect: its centrally informed by chaos theory, and chaos theory posits that the differences in these results are effectively random because there are too many differing variables in the initial condition to accurately say what a non-linear system like sport competition will spit out as a result. In other words, let’s say for the sake of argument that the NFL stepped in and awarded us a W over the Cowboys. That changes an incalculable amount of variables to consider when trying to determine whether or not the W would’ve automatically had us finishing 13-4. Another movie that effectively illustrates this is, coincidentally, The Butterfly Effect, but that movie is a stone-cold bummer.
These thought experiments are a fun distraction. Also a needed distraction, since what’s really at issue here is a football game with stakes as high as any Lions fan has ever seen. Just taking this game at face value can make a long-suffering Lions fan incredibly nervous. But what brings a nervous Lions fan comfort? Our team’s leadership. Ford-Hamp hired Holmes who hired Spielman and they all conferred and hired Campbell. Campbell et al. is leadership that doesn’t bother with Sliding Doors/Butterfly Effect riff-raff. They are — with a few concerning exceptions — very focused and present. When people were constantly asking them about historical pressures before the wild card round, the team response was effectively, “We’re not playing against decades of futility, we’re playing the LA Rams.” And that attitude carried the day against a red-hot, trendy-pick Rams team. When they were asked about getting the proverbial monkey off their back and stuff about the stadium noise and Eminem, the team’s collective response was, “We’re focused on defeating Tampa Bay.” Again, putting on those blinders worked for the Lions. They didn’t execute flawlessly but they played a relentlessly aggressive game and eventually harried the Bucs into a defeat. They seem to have the same focus this week. They know that the Niners are a distinct cut above the two teams they’ve vanquished thus far. Both the Bucs and the Rams were very hot coming into their games against us, but neither were ever really on the level that the Niners played at for most of the year. That’s a big leap and it might seem farfetched but it’s very true: Ram & Buc excellence isn’t quite as good as Niner baseline.
(Briefly touching on the concerning exceptions to focus that I mentioned in the previous paragraph: Ceej Gar-Jo had a “happy to be here” comment in the press this week I didn’t like. I hope it was a slip of the tongue. I pray it was a slip of the tongue. Because “happy to be here” is the attitude of a team (or unit, like the DBs) that’s about its ass completely kicked. I also wasn’t thrilled with our assistants having yet another round(s) of coaching interviews this week. There are only 168 hours in a week. A person preparing for a huge, potentially life-changing interview presumably takes several hours to prepare. This is two weeks in a row where our coordinators have had multiple interviews. It seems impossible that this time sharing won’t have at least some impact on the game, and one can’t imagine how that impact would be positive for the Lions. I’m far from the first person to complain about how this system sucks. This just seems more sucky than usual. I’m sincerely happy for Johnson and Glenn. But I don’t like knowing that a solid chunk of their week was spent in the service of teams not called the Lions.)
But like I said, and despite some slight misgivings about schedule-related dumbery, this leadership brings comfort. Take a look at the second half of the Bucs game. Entering that half (very disappointingly) tied up at 10 would make some coaches flinch. Not our guys. They made terrific adjustments. We saw three consecutive touchies on O and some very aggressive defensive looks in the second half. Not only does this coaching staff bring unparalleled passion and excellent football acumen, but they leave the foolish parts of pride at the doorstep. Our coaches have a great strength in their knowledge and acceptance that they’re not infallible. I can’t tell you how many ego-led coaches I’ve seen stick to futile tactics for 60 minutes (or 48 minutes… looking at you, coaches at my high school back in the ’00s). Not our guys, not this year. Our coaches are not afraid to say, “This isn’t working, let’s try our other looks.” And boy do they have other looks. Even though San Francisco gets billed as the league’s most versatile team (perhaps rightfully so), our beloved Lions are absolutely in the same ballpark, versatility-wise. In fact, our teams’s mutual chameleonity (great word I made up) is what should make this game a true goodie. I do believe this’ll be a match of wits and execution and look like a good football game, not an early-season college football game where one opponent is clearly JV compared to the other. We’re more equal than the point spread would have you believe. Remember: spreads aren’t necessarily Vegas’s feelings about team quality. They’re adjusted and calibrated to where they are in order to try to get as close to an identical amount of betting action on both sides as possible. Despite the momentary spotlight being enjoyed by the Lions, the Niners are a far more public team with a much larger natural fanbase. So we have a line that may be a bit inflated.
Let’s talk Jims and Joes. Even the biggest Leo Kool-Aid-slaked goofballs would have to admit that San Francisco has a roster that is amongst the best in the league. Perhaps even slightly better than the Lions from a pure talent standpoint. And they’re well-coached. Even though his failures have been somewhat spectacular and choke-y, Shanahan is play-in, play-out an excellent coach and his players consistently demonstrate this fact. The question marks are the obvious ones that everyone’s been talking about all week: is Deebo healthy? And if not, is Purdy the same steady hand on the tiller? As of press time (15:00ish Friday), Deebo is said to still be in pain and somewhat limited in practice. I don’t buy this too much. He’s not only a team captain but — even by captain standards — a stand-up, “how can I help the team”-type player. I recall a story Cris Collinsworth told about Deebo asking Shanahan, unprompted, if he was in good enough shape. Shanny said no and Deebo came back from this past offseason looking cut from granite. His whole career he’s looked like a fit and dangerous weapon, but he felt something was off and he came back this year having worked himself into Ultimate Warrior-ness. That doesn’t sound like a guy who’s gonna sit out unless he hears direct from a doctor that he’d be putting his entire remaining career at risk. That’ll open things up for Purdy to make easier passes. And that alone could be our death knell. We need to constantly be disrupting them, upsetting them, making them feel like any gains at all require everything they have. Let’s do them like the ’04 Pats did the Colts: bully them like maladjusted children do and then dare the refs to call it that tight all game long. Savvy point guards do this in basketball and it works.
What else needs to happen, broadly speaking? It might be exceedingly simple. I’m confident our offense will figure things out as best they can. Okay, so maybe this week they might not score 30. It’s certainly possible, but the Niner defense is very formidable and chaotic. Here’s the thing about the Goffense, though: they’re an offense that rises to the occasion and plays their best when the stakes get higher. That conversion Sun God had on the 3rd-and-15 last week was one of the best football plays I’ve seen all year. He simply willed himself to a first down, leveraging his impossibly dynamic and powerful frame and quite literally dragging two defenders across the threshold with him. Everyone did their jobs, the executors of the play trusted each other fully; plays like that are what makes American football the true Beautiful Game. And it was a microcosm of what our offense’s potential has been all season long. If it can get done, it will. They’ll figure it out in time.
If I’m right on that, then the game is going to mostly come down (again this week) to Aaron Glenn and our defensive performance. Make no mistake: our deef is gonna have to play one of their best games if we’re gonna slow down the Niners. That O-Line of theirs is almost on par with ours, they have McCaff, Kittle, Aiyuk, likely a 99% speeded Deebo; the weapons are as scary as they are diversified. But the one thing that all of their success is dependent on is good line play. Not breaking any news there; good line play is almost always a huge reason any team makes it this far. And the SF line might be good, but they’re not invincible. We can vince ’em. There’s tape of people getting to Purdy. His effectiveness plummets when he’s not comfortable. Kinda like Goff but to a larger degree, honestly. If our front seven can limit big plays and first-down conversions on the ground, we can force Purdy to make the plays to beat us. And that’s the Achilles heel (relatively speaking) at which we should be aiming our arrows: disguised blitzes, stunts, twists, and hitting the stuffing out of Purdy when we get our chances. Our deef in this game is like Oberon when he fought The Mountain in Game of Thrones. We’re fighting a behemoth and they seem impenetrably armored at most of the key spots. But there are joints in the armor. Seams. Tiny, difficult-to-see spaces where we can, if executing smartly and without fear, inflict catastrophic damage. I feel if the Lions can get a TAINT or a scoop-n-score or a deep-in-their-territory turnover and turn it into points our chances of winning increase quite a bit. And even though we’ve been slightly up-and-down on that side of the ball this season, I see evidence that Glenn is getting this thing humming the right way. He knows we’re not gonna be pitching shutouts, but he’s picking his spots well. He’s rope-a-doping in between the 35s a bit, getting more aggressive and creative when we’re defending inside our own territory, using pre-snap dynamics to create a stress on the offense that metastasizes and has strong effect as the game wears on. In short, he’s doing the things I wish he’d been doing more consistently all season.
(By the way, I’ll freely admit here and now that my blitz-happy wishes for our defense totally bit us in the ass last week when Mayfield floated that touchdown to Rachaad White in the 3rd quarter. I was stoked when I saw Glenn send the house and about 5 seconds later I was saying aloud to myself, “I’m not sure I’d make an effective D coordinator.”)
Time to make a pick so let’s bottom line this thing: the oddsmakers favor the Niners, and the odds they prescribe give the Niners an edge by a not-inconsiderable margin. But the Lions are good enough. If the Lions play their best they’ll win. It remains to be seen if the Niners can prevent the Lions from playing their best. The last time I picked with my heart over my head, the Chiefs kicked off another winter of heartbreak for western New York. The Lions are the last of the Lake Erie Brethren standing. Billy Joel once sang he’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. Well I’d rather lose knowing that I was true to my boys than win and have to be cold and joyless like Operation Hennessey in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Take those points. Take the Lions. And the Lions are gonna take us where we wanna go. One time, baby.
THE OTHER GAME. THERE’S ONLY ONE.
Chiefs (+4) @ Ravens — Well, look who’s a big ol’ dummy. It’s me! I bet against Pat Mahomes when he was getting points! I voluntarily wore a dunce cap all day Monday as contrition. Highly impractical, especially when driving. Dunce caps are unwieldy on the dome. What’s more unwieldy on the dome is the feeling that you’ve done something incredibly stupid and then seeing evidence of that exact thing play out over ~4 hours. The Ravens have not only been excellent this season, they’ve been true giant killers. They have the most wins by 14 or more points over teams with winning records than any team in history. Almost all teams with several 14+ point wins over teams with winning records have gone on to win the Super Bowl. Their second half against Houston was a reminder of just how buzz-saw-y they can be. Their defense is super athletic and might have all routes covered all the time. This game might need a whole heap of Mahomes magic just for the Chiefs to keep it close. There are a lot of well-founded reasons to predict a Ravens drubbing in this one. Plenty. But after last week I don’t think I can pick against Pat Mahomes when he’s getting points. It’s like putting your hand on the stove twice. And I don’t do that. It’s dumb.
That’s the preview of this week’s Championship Game action. May luck shine her radiance down on our beloved Lions and help deliver them a great amount of breaks in the game. I’ll see you all here next week for a celebratory article the likes of which you’ve never seen or a requiem of an article that I’ll have to type through embarrassingly misty eyes. Regardless, thank you very much for reading and enjoy your Championship Game weekend. Auf Wiedersehen!
