Jameson Williams still had the game ball under his arm when he finally emerged, after midnight, to talk to reporters.
“When was the last time you got one of those?” someone asked.
“I never got a game ball!” the 23-year-old declared. “Not at ‘Bama. Not nowhere. I ain’t gonna lie, this right here might not leave my hands. I might sleep like this!”
It would be a sweet slumber — for him, and for scores of Detroit fans who held their breath until the waning minutes of Sunday night.
Here, in the autumn of our new content, it took the Lions their entire season opener — and actually into overtime — to remember it was about the young guys playing this year, and not the old guy who left three years ago.
Their epic battle against the LA Rams would finally end with the Lions’ first overtime win in eight years, a gutsy, exhausting display of overcoming obstacles: the rust of not playing starters in the offseason, the weight of massive expectations, and, most difficult of all, their former quarterback, Matthew Stafford, who almost singlehandedly dumped a Motown-sized bucket of ice water on his old franchise’s dreams of glory.
“He knew exactly what he needed to do,” admitted Lions coach Dan Campbell, after Stafford nearly ruined the night by quick-throwing 34 completions for 317 yards to six different receivers, who kept eluding tackles and moving down the field.
Had Stafford been able to hit one more fourth-quarter pass to his favorite target, Cooper Kupp, the game would have likely been over and Detroit would be a lot sadder this morning.
Instead, the Lions shook off their rust, marched 55 yards for a tying field goal, then won the overtime coin flip and never gave the ball back. After surfing the big, fast plays of Williams’ best night as a Lion, they turned to what quarterback Jared Goff calls their “battering ram,” running back David Montgomery, whom the Lions rode in overtime the way jockey Ron Turcotte rode Secretariat in the 1973 Kentucky Derby: all the way to the roses.
Montgomery took five handoffs on that final OT drive, and sliced through the Rams for 45 yards, including the last handoff that broke into the end zone and brought the weary crowd to its weary feet.
One. Won. And whew.
‘One less’ mistake
“Once you got going in overtime, did you think anyone could stop you?” Montgomery was asked, after he sealed the 26-20 OT win.
“Oh, nah,” he said. “Nothing against them (but) I was in the mode. I was already locked in to where I felt like I had to prove myself to myself … but at the same time show how much grit this offense and this team has.”
It had grit, all right. And it needed grit. The luxury of not playing their starters in preseason weighed on the Lions like a wet blanket. Their offense wasn’t clicking. Their defense, despite the Rams missing several offensive lineman and, for much of the night, star receiver Puca Nakua, had too many penalties, couldn’t get to Stafford enough, and let receiver after receiver make short catches and turn upfield.
The Rams dominated in number of plays, first downs, yards, and time of possession. But the Lions, who lost a two-touchdown lead in the second half, still won the game, thanks to limiting LA to field goals, and a few timely Rams miscues. One was a Stafford interception in the end zone. The other was a holding call when LA had the ball on the Lions’ 1-yard line.
“Early in the season, a lot of games come down to who makes the fewest mistakes,” Campbell said “We made one less than they did.”
The Lions won’t like certain things they see when they watch the game tape, But they’ll surely smile at a handful of Williams’ plays. Let’s be honest: “Jamo,” now in his third season, has been, as that old song laments, like a horse that never left the post. Fans and teammates have been waiting for the former first-round draft pick to show his true potential.
On Sunday, he let loose. A snatch over the middle in which he outran three defenders for a 37-yard gain. A reverse where he sped for 12 yards. A fourth-quarter grab that he stretched for 27 more. And a double move where he left the LA defender so far behind, the guy needed binoculars to find him: a 52-yard touchdown.
All told, Williams had a career high five catches for 121 yards and a score. And he insists he is just getting started.
“I don’t plan on this being the best game of my career,” he said, still cradling that game ball. “I plan on this just being the start of me being me.”
Detroit will take that.
One. Won. And whew.
Stafford: ‘I had a chance to win it’
Now, a word here about Stafford. He may be 36, with a laundry list of injuries on his resume, but he played one of his best games in Ford Field on Sunday night. Missing several starting linemen and one of his two favorite receivers, he kept the Rams alive with a streak of fast and familiar slings, some lofted, some whipped, some backpedaling, some no-look.
Stafford led scoring drives of 67, 70, 76 and 80 yards. He led the Rams from a 17-3 deficit to a 20-17 lead. And with less than three minutes left in the game, Rams still ahead, he had a third-down pass that he just missed to Kupp that would have been a first down and possibly iced the game. When the ball hit the turf, Stafford threw his hands onto his helmet in dismay.
“That was the game,” he later said. “I had a chance to win it.”
Stafford, who labored here for so many lean years, was no longer the focus of the night, the way he was when the Rams came to Detroit for the wild-card playoff in January. In fact, there was precious little of the “Stafford comes back” angle in the media this time. When asked if he thought that meant the sports world was done with that story, he grinned and said, “I am.”
As he should be. As the Lions should be. This is a new day, a new season, and a new approach. To be honest, many worried that the Lions might actually be overconfident starting this season, a bit swell-headed by all the summer predictions of greatness and Super Bowls.
If so, falling behind and needing everything they had to come back and win Sunday should shake free the pixie dust of such illusions. Nothing is given in the NFL. Nothing is predictable.
“You know it’s not gonna be perfect,” Campbell said of season openers. “You just want it to be cleaner. … Ultimately, it’s always gonna be about we gotta get better. And whether we won or lost today, we gotta get better.”
Or as Goff put it, “It was good enough for a win, but it wasn’t good enough for our standard.”
Our standard. If you want proof that things have changed around here, there it is.
A win that needs improvement. A budding star who is just getting started. A battering ram that says he can’t be stopped. And a national TV stage that no longer seems too big or too unfamiliar for this franchise. You know what we call that in Motown? We call that a pretty good night.
One. Won. And whew.
What’s next?
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.
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