Losing Lions Bounce Back Against the Bears With Bevell at the Helm
By Robbie Williams
Detroit Lions fans and players alike are in a much better mood heading into their Week 14 matchup with their bitter rivals, the Green Bay Packers, and it seems to be interim Head Coach Darrell Bevell’s great attitude that has infected the Losing Lions culture with a newfound winning spirit.
According to Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press, as a player, Darrell Bevell was a four-year starting quarterback at the University of Wisconsin. Bevell led the Badgers to the 1994 Rose Bowl and remains the Badgers’ career leader in passing yards, attempts, completions, and passing touchdowns to this day. Also, as a coach he spent six seasons being an assistant with the Green Bay Packers, before spending five seasons as the Minnesota Vikings’ Offensive Coordinator, then seven seasons as the Seattle Seahawks Offensive Coordinator after that. Bevell finally ended up as the Lions Offensive Coordinator in 2019 after not finding an NFL coaching job in 2018.
Darrell Bevell started his interim head coaching career with a win. (USA TODAY Sports)
Bevell was quoted in his interview with the Detroit Free Press before his first game as a head coach against the Chicago Bears, saying of his one season off the job in 2018, “I used to tell everybody, ‘Football is what I do, it’s not who I am,’ Well, all of a sudden, I didn’t have it anymore and I’m like, ‘Ahh, you know what, it really is who I am.’ So that was really enlightening for me as well. I loved the game and I missed the game and so I just came back with, ‘You know what, I’m going to dive into whatever opportunity I get kind of reinvigorated and give it the best I got.’” That quote kind of sums up the energy that Bevell is bringing to a Lions team that has nothing to lose and realistically nothing to gain but a worse draft position next season. The Lions come-from-behind win against the Bears, something Matt Patricia never achieved in his tenure in Detroit, losing all of his matchups with both the Bears and the Vikings, is a definitive sign the culture on the Lions sideline has changed for the better since letting Patricia go.
Lions wide receiver Marvin Jones, who caught 8 passes for 116 yards and a touchdown against the Bears, testified to this fact after the Lions latest win, saying, “The sideline it was just a different energy, when I made a play on the sideline, and it feels like it's a home game cause the whole defense is yelling, and vice versa. It was just a great feeling on the sideline and it makes it better when you get into situations where you've got to have it and stuff like that and we had some momentum and it just felt good. It was great.”
Matthew Stafford, who threw for 402 yards and three touchdowns against the Bears for one of his best games of the season, also echoed his top receivers remarks, saying, “It was great, guys were having a blast. Obviously, a crazy one, down to the wire. The defense made some huge plays late in the game. We were able to put enough points on the board to obviously come away with the win. Happy for Bev, man. Happy for our team. Just excited to get a win and thought it was fitting he needs to get that game ball. It's his first game as a Head Coach and to get a win is huge.”
With the locker room and fans across Metro Detroit buzzing about the Bevell difference, it doesn’t seem too crazy to talk about how the Lions are technically not mathematically eliminated from playoff contention yet. The Lions have a seemingly impossible matchup against a great Green Bay Packers team in Week 14, and the odds of them not only winning that game, but also every game for the remainder of the season, is highly unlikely; however, it is a fun idea to toy with, it’s more interesting than tanking for Trevor Lawrence, it would be a fitting way for a traditionally deplorable team to make the playoffs, it would be an amazing Cinderella story, and most of all it would fit Darrell Bevell’s fun-loving coaching strategy perfectly.
Robbie is a sports writer for La Tonique.
