Let me make this clear, I am a Lions slappy.  I live and die by the team and I will always hold it in my heart that they WILL come back and win.

That's why I'm an idiot.  That's why I'm always heart broken.

For the second week in a row all of the "cards" fell into place for the Lions to cement themselves as the leader in the clubhouse to grab at least the last wild card spot, if not the fifth seed.  The Giants lost.  The Bears lost.  If the Lions could beat the Raiders they'd have a really good shot of grabbing one of those two spots in the next two weeks.

Which is why they came out and played like crap for most of three quarters.  I was firmly under the impression that this was just a really young team who didn't understand how to deal with the kind of pressure applied to a team in the midst of a playoff stretch.

Matthew Stafford was missing open receivers or if he did manage to hit them, the Lions would drop them--9 dropped passes on the day...how can you win like that?  The running game never got on track and the majority of the Lions offense came on a handful of big plays that simply kept them close.

The Lions weren't stopping the run either and the corners were treating Oakland receivers as if they had some sort of communicable disease.  Chris Houston, playing an injured ankle, was giving a ten yard cushion...when he wasn't giving a fifteen yard cushion...and he also looked like he had decided that tackling was a job best left for other players.  He had a bad, bad game.

But then, in the fourth quarter, when it all mattered most, the Lions woke up again.  They've been doing this too much this season.  This is a trend that will not play in the playoffs...

Look at me, talking about playoffs in December and I'm not even using a statement like, "Someday, hopefully before I die, when the Lions make the playoffs." 

1. Stafford needs to start hitting more of these open receivers.  Also, in watching Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers and Tony Romo, when these quarterbacks are under pressure, they pull the ball down in order to make time to throw the ball down field.  That's not what Stafford does--Stafford pulls the ball down, waiting for a sack or in order to be able to better throw the ball away.  I don't know if that's something that he has to learn...or something he has been taught.  It's scary.

2.  Until Chris Houston is 110% healthy, they need to let Alphonso Smith play.  He may give up a pass every once in a while, but he also makes big plays.

3. I loved when Stafford pulled it down in order to get three yards and a first down on that critical late game fourth down play.

4. Ndamukong Suh came back for his first game and remained relatively invisible until the last play of the game.  If this continues, that suspension has done a lot more damage than it's done good.

5. The Lions are still WAY too penalty prone.

6. The offensive line, and Dominic Raioloa in particular, looked pathetic against that Raiders front.  Stafford was under too much constant pressure and the running game was...bad.  Raiola couldn't handle Richard Seymour and that was just the beginning of the Lions line problems.

7. Calvin Johnson is a stud.  Titus Young could be a star in this league.  Burleson and Pettigrew and Kevin Smith need to have superglue applied to their hands.

8. If the Lions can win either of their last two games (San Diego, at Green Bay) they'll clinch a spot.  If they lose out, they can still get in if, over the next two weeks,  each of the following teams suffers a loss: Giants, Bears, Seahawks, and Cardinals...and the Seahawks and Cardinals play each other, the Seahawks other game is against San Francisco.  The Bears play Green Bay and the Giants play the Cowboys.

When the Lions weren't blocking...or being blocked...or missing open receivers or dropping passes, they were busy taking dumb penalties.

This was the kind of game that beckoned back to the inglorious days of "same old Lions."  The hallmark of "same old Lions" is this: Less than three minutes left, down by seven or eight and needing a touchdown to tie...never a field goal...which is exactly where the Lions were again yesterday.

The complaints this year about the Lions have routinely gone back to the teams inability to run...with the loss of Jahvid Best last week the Lions decided to prove the world right...they CANNOT run the ball.  Kieland Williams looked pretty good on a couple of carries...so they took him out.

But it really wasn't a problem with the running backs at all, although it may have been a problem with the coaches continually calling running plays when the team was showing so efficiently that they have less chance of being a running team as the Detroit Pride have of getting invitations to the Ford Family Christmas party.  The problem was the blocking or lack there of. 

Jim Schwartz may have had something last year when he said that Jeff Backus was the best tackle in the NFC North last season...this year....Backus has looked his age or worse....and the rest of the line isn't fairing any better.  There is no running game, because it looks as if the guys on the line don't believe that they can run the ball.

Oh...and the defense can't stop the run either.  The Lions may have the most fear inducing, dominating defensive line in the NFL.  It is a line that, at times, has looked like it simply cannot be blocked...which is something that opposing offenses have almost come to accept...so instead they trick the D-lineman into overrunning plays and filling wrong gaps.  The Lions are giving up way too much on the ground and are being skewered by the quick passing game.

During the 5-0 start, the defensive backs were playing up on opposing receivers, now, inexplicably they have started playing back more often than not.

Here is the argument I am going to raise....the Lions are looking an awful lot like the 2007 edition.  They started off 6-2....beating the living snot out of the Denver Broncos....then went on to lose the next 24 games...The Lions built the 5-0 record by beating some run of the mill teams and the majority of the remainder of this year's schedule is against the primo teams in the NFL. 

This week, they go to Denver and should come out 6-2...