Game 14 @ Arizona Cardinals

Nothing to play for.

The Detroit Lions lost to the Arizona Cardinals 10-38 dropping their record to 4-10 on the year. Calvin Johnson became the first player in NFL history with consecutive 1,600-yard receiving seasons and tied an NFL record with 7 straight 100-yard receiving games. Unfortunately, the Lions have lost 6 games in a row in the same span. Other then Calvin Johnson being within a couple hundred yards of setting a new NFL yardage record for a wide receiver (currently held by Jerry Rice) the Lions don't have anything much to play for.

Except their livelihood, of course. Not only are they playing for their jobs with the Lions, but so many of the team are free agents in a couple months that they are also playing for a job on another team if they can find one. You really couldn't tell that by this game however. The fight for a win, the fight for themselves, was hard to see if it existed at all. I'd have to include the coaching staff in that boat as well, I don't think they can really bring back all of them and expect different results.

Then again, unless the drafting and free agency pickups if any (which always appears great on paper at the beginning of the year) don't dramatically improve with actual results it won't much matter who is coaching, or who is playing, or what draft position the Lions are heading towards... since there won't be anything to play for in the future either.

By the way, if you want to know what is wrong with the offense aside from the lack of touchdowns you need look no further then the stats for number of receptions. CJ had 10 which is great, and everyone else on the team had 3 or less, which is not good at all. Now you can blame injuries for this game, but they weren't all injured all season, and this issue hasn't just recently cropped up either. Is this issue due to Linehan or Stafford becomes the question (or as I believe it to be, both). The other part of that question is, why isn't Schwartz doing anything about it, or if he is, why isn't it working. Meanwhile, Stafford heads towards his 2nd year in the record books along with Calvin Johnson, but no one else is being much of threat, so how safe is Mayhew in all this? Considering how long Millen got, I'd say Mayhew is quite safe, and probably Schwartz too, but if everyone is safe what will change to make the future brighter?

You got to give the fans something to pay for.

In addition to counting down to the draft (the Lions are currently sitting in the 5th spot) there is free agency (with almost no cap space to play in) and of course there may be coaching or front office moves... you would think that someone in the organization would figure this out and spread the word, giving everyone something to play for... but apparently that has not yet happened. If it has, if this is the team in total playing as well as they possibly can, it's already going to be a long 2013.