Lions

The good news for the Detroit Lions is that someone has faith in their upcoming season. The bad news is it is Kevin Smith, who has quickly began to cover up his ability on the field with his Jon Kitnaish predictions and appears to be heading down the same path as his other former teammate Roy Williams and doing planned touchdown dances in 28 point drubbings against prevent defenses who have been checked out mentally for several quarters. (In fairness he does have useful information about living in Detroit, ex: "if you want to look fly go to the mall") The point being is Detroit has to go through two stages to become a winning team.

First they must win games, obviously, but the problem is many of the players with possible upside on this team have been unproven against an intense NFL defense. My point being is having a good game for many of their players last year was preying on defenses that had comfortable leads. They do have to start somewhere however, and they have several young position players with seemingly extraordinary talent including Calvin Johnson and Kevin Smith.

Secondly, they must become competitive in a league that takes them seriously and considers the Lions a threat each week. Until this begins to happen the wins they get will continue to be huge surprises over overconfident and unprepared foes and not hard fought battles with the Lions emerging on top. If they are only able to surprise teams in the upcoming season they might win a few games early but eventually someone will notice and trounce them with a scheme exposing their weaknesses and will likely lead to a season that ends up with them trading all their valuable veterans by week 9.

Matt Stafford has made some superb passes and shown flashes of brillance, but he looks slightly mechanical (in a bad way, not a Tom Brady/Peyton Manning way) and has 3 interceptions in 3 games......and he plays for the Lions.

(photo from ESPN.com)