Lions Shuffle Past Buccaneers!

The 3-2 Detroit Lions hosted the 4-2 Tampa Bay Buccaneers in an old Black and Blue division match. Detroit leads the over all series 29-26. Most of those wins coming from the days of Barry Sanders. Tampa Bay did not look that great during the first quarter but as the game went on the running game began to show up as Earnest Graham had 19 carries for 92 yards and 13 receptions for 92 yards. Not a bad performance at all from Mr. Preseason. I would have liked to seen Michael Bennett get more carries as he only had three with one being a huge 18 yard gain that almost got him in the end-zone.

Jeff Garcia continues to impress even though I must question those damn shuffle passes. What is the purpose, he almost had two of them picked off. If the guy is open throw the ball in there, don’t shuffle pass it. If he’s not open, don’t try to shuffle pass it, throw the ball away. Garcia has been smart with the football all year, but those shuffle passes were a dumb move on his part yesterday.

With those passes aside, Garcia was 37 of 45 for 316 yards and two touchdowns, one to Ike Hilliard and the other to second year wide-out Maurice Stovall. Matt Bryant missed a key 4th quarter field goal but redeemed himself late in the game when the Bucs where able to recover an onside kick and get him in field goal position to make it a 23 to 16 game.

Tampa wasn’t able to get the second onside kick and that sealed the game for Detroit. I must say, I underestimated the Detroit defense, though those couple of fumbles were not caused by their defensive play, but rather bad communication between Garcia and his backs.

Overall this was an eye opener for Tampa Bay who will now head home and get ready for Jacksonville who will be on a short week.