Most Detroit Lions fans know exactly where they were on January 1st, 2012. That day was the final regular season game of the 2011 NFL season, a showdown between the Lions and the rival Green Bay Packers.
It’s commonly known as the Matt Flynn game. For many fans, it’s among the lowest points in a Lions history filled with too many to list.
I have a different memory of that day and game. Living in Houston at the time and knowing the Lions were in the playoffs win or lose, my wife and I opted to drive to northern Texas and treat our kids (then 6 and 3) to a trip on the Polar Express. I heard the first handful of drives in the car on the trip, but that was it.
It’s the only Lions game since 2003 that I haven’t watched in full. In fact, I’ve only ever seen a handful of highlights of the Matt Flynn game. Until today…
Honoring a commitment from the Detroit Lions Podcast annual fundraiser, I subjected myself to watching the Lions’ 45-41 loss in Green Bay to a fourth-year backup QB making just his second career start.
The game wasn’t difficult to find on YouTube. It was a lot more difficult to process as a Lions fan, even knowing full well going in what the final outcome would be.
Watching the game in retrospect made me realize why the game sits in such infamy with the Detroit faithful. Flynn starts out shaky, throwing wobblers on the first drive before getting strip-sacked by Sammie Lee Hill, with DeAndre Levy on the recovery by outhustling several Packers to the loose ball.
Matthew (then still often called Matt) Stafford quickly gets the Lions on the scoreboard with a strike to Titus Young in the front corner of the end zone. It’s a statement by a 10-5 Lions team trying to win in Green Bay for the first time in 20 years, and with the Packers defense resting Clay Matthews Jr. and Charles Woodson.
It gets even better. The Packers return man, Pat Lee, kneels down for a safety after he bobbled the ball outside of the end zone. It’s 9-0 Lions. I can only imagine the excitement coursing through Detroit fandom at this point. Coach Jim Schwartz is fired up and I am too!
Alas, Detroit’s offense sputters to a three-and-out. Green Bay answers with a deliberate 15-play drive where Flynn looked like he started to feel more comfortable. A stupid penalty by Ashlee Palmer on the Detroit punt helped set things up. A terrible spot on a third down in the Packers’ favor also helped.
Blood pressure rising, and not in a happy way.
The reckless young Stafford shows on the next drive and the Packers capitalize, turning a fumble into a touchdown. The Lions were in position to make an early kill shot, but instead give the opportunity away. Sort of a fitting allegory for the Schwartz era.
The Lions offense really sputtered in this stretch of the game. Another poor drive from Stafford, then a fumble, then a missed Jason Hanson field goal sandwiched around one impressive drive where Stafford and Calvin Johnson hook up for a nice TD. The opportunities were there, the execution was not.
While that’s going on, Flynn is heating up. Well, sort of. Cornerback Alphonso Smith made one good play, an interception to thwart a Packers drive. Mason Crosby matched Hanson’s miss, too.
There is controversy, of course. Schwartz is forced to burn his two coaching challenges on plays that are now automatically reviewed. It means this clear TD catch by Titus Young that was ruled incomplete on the field cannot be challenged.
That’s a touchdown, folks. Fox Sports broadcasters Thom Brenneman, Brian Billick and Mike Pereira all agree it’s a TD and that the rule (now changed) is ridiculous.
It’s halftime, 24-19 Packers. I’m pretty sure if I were watching this live, I’d be pretty pessimistic about the Lions chances here. Even with no Rodgers, no Randall Cobb or James Starks or Bryan Bulaga or Greg Jennings on Green Bay’s offense, the Packers are lighting up the Lions defense.
Second half
The second half is a weird hybrid of an offensive explosion, terrible defense from both sides and some really bad quarterback play from both Stafford and Flynn. The Packers dropped two should-be pick-sixes from Stafford. Flynn took a couple of bad sacks and missed a should-be touchdown of his own.
Yet both Stafford and Flynn also made some incredible throws. It’s a thrilling game, one that I now see why people recall it so vividly. I hadn’t watched a Lions game from this era in a while. They were top-heavy on the roster, but boy was that top-shelf talent full of promise— Stafford, Johnson, Suh, Tulloch, Kyle Vanden Bosch, Nate Burleson, even Brandon Pettigrew and Titus Young (two TDs with another two he should have had).
Watching this took me back to that time. I remember thinking Schwartz would be able to build off the promising season with the blossoming young talent. Give the defense some better health and a couple more pieces in the secondary and this was a Detroit team poised for perennial playoff berths. Alas, that didn’t happen.
I wonder how much the hangover of this game impacted the team. Had the Lions won, they would have played the New York Giants in the playoffs. Detroit’s loss sent them to New Orleans, where they got blasted by a veteran Saints team. Sure, the Giants wound up winning the Super Bowl that year, but the Lions matched up better against them than the Saints.
The next draft (2012) brought no help outside of tackle Riley Reiff, and the defense got much worse. Had they won this game, would they have had more confidence, more swagger, more of a purpose? Impossible to know but hard to not think how different the next couple of years might have turned out.
Watching the game also stripped away some of the lore of Flynn. Was he good? Yeah, sure. But he wasn’t this otherworldly passer that he’s been canonized by fans of both teams. Detroit’s secondary was suspect, to say the least. Two of the touchdowns could have been thrown by Daffy Duck.
I now have a better understanding of why the Packers let him walk, and why the Seahawks (who signed Flynn) smartly hedged their investment by also drafting Russell Wilson. Nothing at all against Flynn, who proved to be a pretty capable No. 2 for several years, but this game was one where the Lions controlled the fate of the game. An enigmatically talented but mistake-prone team gave Flynn his moment in the sun, err, snow.
It’s a game that will live forever in Lions infamy, and it should. Now that I’ve seen it, I know better why. The story is still a sad one, but the path to sadness is somehow different than what I expected.
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