Detroit, MI
Mitch Albom: Brave new world for Detroit Lions as they wrestle with when to pull stars
Za’Darius Smith gets biggest ovation of all Detroit Lions before game
Detroit Lions starting defense is introduced before win vs. Jaguars, Nov. 17, 2024 at Ford Field, with Za’Darius Smith earning the biggest ovation.
First, the excellence. The Detroit Lions entered Ford Field on Sunday and landed in one of those movie-like treasure chambers, where the gold is stacked as high as sand dunes.
Everywhere they turned, it was jewels and gems. Seven straight touchdowns. A franchise record 645 yards of offense. A final score of 52-6 over the Jacksonville Jaguars, thanks largely to a defense that treated the visitors like Popeye treats a spinach can: squeeze, pop, gulp.
But.
There’s always a little “but,” right? This one has come up a couple times this season. And it’s why it’s not easy being Dan Campbell these days. Call it “The Preservation Question.”
Here were the Lions deep into a game that was already decided, late third quarter, first-and-goal, 5 yards out. Jared Goff dropped back and waited for a receiver to come open. One second. Two seconds. Brock Wright, his tight end, was wiggling free in the end zone.
Goff spotted him. What he didn’t spot was an unblocked 6-foot-7 defensive end, Arik Armstead, charging towards him from behind. Armstead is a former first-round draft pick of the 49ers. He has 34½ sacks in his career. He was within a few feet of an easy No. 35½ when Goff let go of the ball.
Armstead pulled up — thankfully — and merely shoved Goff from behind, and Goff jogged away harmlessly. But had the quarterback taken two seconds longer, had he pumped before throwing, he would likely have taken the full force of the hulking Armstead blindly into his spine.
And that could have changed the season.
It didn’t. Wright caught the pass and the crowd went berserk for the touchdown— yet another touchdown, on a day when the Lions broke the franchise record for margin of victory (46 points.)
And there’s the dilemma. Goff’s TD toss took the score from 35-6 to 42-6. It wasn’t needed to secure a win. It wasn’t needed to put the game out of reach. This is the conundrum Campbell now faces with these new, sparkling Lions.
When is it time to take your best players out?
Pull-your-stars conundrum
“This is another one of those bizarre things that (we’re) running into,” Campbell admitted of the pull-your-stars issue, after the record shattering win moved the Lions to 9-1 but also saw them lose their defensive anchor, linebacker Alex Anzalone, for 6-8 weeks with a broken forearm. “Normally this doesn’t happen. This is like the third time … this season.”
So how does he decide?
“There’s a number of things,” Campbell said “you want to know that you finished on a good note. You found a rhythm, you keep the rhythm. OK, now the time says, ‘let’s get ‘em out.’
“What’s hard is (that) you’re playing pretty good, then you take this dip and then it starts to taste bad… and does that bleed into the next week?’’
You could tell by how he answered that he was grappling with the issue. That’s because there is no perfect answer. Especially here in Detroit, where this is all new and there is irony in a fan base that spent decades waiting for a team to be worth watching now wrestling with pulling its best players early.
But the Lions this year are after something bigger than a pile-on victory against an also-ran like Jacksonville. They want a Super Bowl. And the reality in the NFL is that while it’s “team-team-team” 90 percent of the time, there are moments where the mantra must be “star-star-star.” Certain players and positions just tilt the balance disproportionately.
No easy solution
On Detroit, that starts with Goff. First and foremost. The Lions lose him, their 2024 dreams are gone. Yet there he was Sunday, not only at 42-6, but again in the fourth quarter, leading a nearly four-minute, 95-yard drive and making it 49-6. He wasn’t replaced until less than 10 minutes remained in the game.
That may sound like a lot of time. Maybe it is. On the other hand, Goff could have sat at halftime and the game would still have been won. And he definitely wasn’t needed to make a 36-point margin a 43-point margin. More than a few Detroit fans watching no doubt were saying, “Why is he still in there?”
Campbell, obviously thinking a lot about this, came back after another question to add a thought.
“Man,” he said, “I do not want to let the fear of injury take away from our identity. That will always be most important for me. The minute you start worrying about injuries that’s when bad things happen.”
That’s true. It’s also true that sometimes they happen anyhow. Anzalone, a key to the defense, was lost on a routine play just before halftime. And of course, Aidan Hutchinson is gone for the year already, as are several other excellent players.
Unwavering attitude
But a Campbell-coached team will be a Campbell attitude team. And he knows better than all of us. He’s proving that with the wins. Sometimes, he explained, it’s a question of bodies. You must have ready players to put out there. For example, Campbell said, he’d sometimes like to yank Penei Sewell out of games that are well-decided, but backup linemen are in short supply.
So it’s play hard, right to the end. Don’t expect to see many early departures of Goff or other potential irreplaceables like Jahmyr Gibbs or Amon Ra St. Brown.
For his part, Goff said, “I don’t think … there is a right or wrong answer to that. It’s quite the luxury to have in the NFL to be able to take out players ever.”
True enough. But the nervous Detroit fans who still can’t believe the Lions are rolling out incredible performances like Sunday’s will likely want to err on pulling the chips off the table. That’s why we’re watching and the players are playing.
“Did you know Armstead was charging behind you on that touchdown?” Goff was asked.
“No,” he admitted, “Was he close?”
Too close for some. Not for others. Meanwhile, the Lions continue to blow away expectations with a team that Campbell described as “the right balance of electricity and … sledgehammer.”
If only we could build a steel cage around some of them.
Mitch Albom will talk Lions football and other sports Monday with Bernie Smilovitz in a special live event at Emagine Royal Oak at 7 p.m. Proceeds go to charity. Tickets at Emagine-entertainment.com.
SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN — Severe storms are expected across southeastern Michigan on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
All of southeastern Michigan is under a slight risk (2/5) for severe weather Sunday.
The storms are expected to move into the area between 4 and 11 p.m. Sunday when highs climb into the low 70s, according to the weather service.
Forecasters warned the storms could produce heavy downpours, large hail up to 1 inch in diameter, strong winds reaching up to 60 miles per hour and isolated tornadoes.
Colder air will then move into the region Monday with highs topping out in the low 50s, according to the weather service.
The cold air will stick around Tuesday before another warm-up on Wednesday when another round of showers and thunderstorms could move into the region. Forecasters warned those storms could also become severe.
Here is the full forecast for southeastern Michigan:
Sunday: Storms; High 70, Low 45
Monday: Cloudy; High 52, Low 30
Tuesday: Sunny; High 43, Low 33
Wednesday: Storms; High 64, Low 53
Thursday: Rain; High 64, Low 42
The 2025 regular season didn’t get off to the kind of start that the Detroit Tigers and their ace, Tarik Skubal, were hoping for.
Facing the tall task of going up against the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers on Opening Day, the Tigers came up just short. They lost the game 5-4 as their star had an off night on the mound.
Skubal pitched five innings, allowing six hits and one walk, resulting in four earned runs being scored against him, with only two strikeouts.
That kind of success against the dominant lefty is rarely had. There were only 10 starts in 2024 that a team recorded at least six hits against Skubal and only six that he surrendered four runs; on five of those occasions, at least four were earned.
Only once last year did he record under five strikeouts as well.
Far from the kind of outing that Skubal has become accustomed to providing, but going up against the Dodgers is a tall task; they can make even the best pitchers look human on any given day.
Despite the underwhelming Opening Day outing, it doesn’t change his standing as the best starting pitcher in baseball, which MLB insiders voted him over at The Athletic (paid subscription required) in a piece put together by Andy McCullough, Will Sammon and Sahadev Sharm.
Skubal received the only perfect score of 100 to land as the sole player inside “The Inner Circle” tier of the article.
The evaluators and insiders were running out of superlatives to describe him with as everyone provided the Detroit ace with glowing reviews.
“An ace in any era,” an evaluator said.
“Best there is right now,” one scout said.
What separates Skubal is his ability to beat opponents in various ways. He isn’t overly reliant on one facet of his game to generate outs, which is what makes him so special.
The strike zone is peppered with regularity, but opponents can’t take advantage because he can miss bats with ease. Barrelling up an offering is not easy and he generates ground balls at an impressive rate to limit damage.
Possessing arguably the best changeup in baseball, he pairs it with a fastball he has no qualms about challenging hitters with.
“Skubal is, as another evaluator put it, “a monster not afraid to challenge you with a ‘f— you’ fastball,’” they added in the blurb.
That combination of stuff and command is what led to him winning the American League Cy Young Award in 2024, recording the pitching Triple Crown in the process.
Health was the only knock against him previously but if he can stay healthy, he is going to put together an incredible resume over the next few years stocked with accolades and awards.
DETROIT (WXYZ) — Alisa Sanders was close to giving up hope that her son’s killer would ever be caught after nearly three years went by since he was shot on Detroit’s west side.
But when she got a call from the Detroit Police Department saying that a man had been taken into custody, her hope changed.
“Hopeful, prayerful — that’s how I feel,” Sanders said.
Sanders is talking about the space she has been in since the moment she found out someone had been charged in her youngest son’s murder.
“When it happened, I didn’t know what to do, where to go,” the mother of four said.
Her son Derrell Rockette, 32, was gunned down in December of 2022. He was a father of two with another baby on the way.
“He didn’t even know that he was having another baby,” Sanders said.
Sanders told me the feeling of not knowing if she’d ever see an arrest remained a constant for her until Friday when she looked the man in the face who police say killed her son.
Detroit police took Darnell Jerome Franklin Jr.,19, into custody a week ago.
Wayne County prosecutors say Franklin shot and killed Rockette in cold blood. Franklin is now facing multiple charges including first-degree murder.
Sanders says she didn’t know if this day would ever come because there wasn’t much communication with Detroit police in the beginning.
So she along with other mothers who lost a child to gun violence formed the group known as Mothers Keeping Boots on the Ground to make sure their children’s homicide cases weren’t forgotten.
“We banned to stick together and fight,” Sanders said. “And fight for other families, so we can get justice.”
Chief Todd Bettison said Sanders helped with the case.
“She never gave up,” Bettison said. “She relentlessly continued to contact the Detroit Police Department. And she’s advocated for other mothers as well.”
“And so, she was an advocate just involved out there looking for her own tips.”
Bettison also says that the department remains committed to every victims’ case regardless of when it happened.
“We are not going to stop working these cases,” the chief said. “And so our cold case unit, I’ve actually added additional officers. We just don’t close out homicide cases.”
Sanders said she’s grateful for the work put into her sons case and she leaves this advice for other mothers still looking for justice.
“Don’t ever, ever give up,” Sanders said. “You fight for your child… Fight. Be the voice for your child.”
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