Motor City Turkey Madness » Brats & Beer

November 20, 2007
posted under: Lions, Packers, Pre-game, Thanksgiving

We’re just a couple days away now from Thanksgiving, the second greatest holiday on the entire calendar. It’s a whole day devoted to festive overeating and football, only Christmas can top it.

This year, unfortunately, one of those football games involves the Green Bay Packers playing in Detroit, which has given me indigestion since the start of the season. Don’t the schedule makers understand that a Packer loss will undo any amount of hard work to make it a pleasant holiday? And if history is any judge, losing is the likeliest outcome when Green Bay plays on Turkey Day.

Overall the Packers are 11-18-2 playing on Thanksgiving, but against the Lions the Green & Gold has lost 11 of 17 holiday meetings. Vince Lombardi’s Packers won just two of five midweek games in the Motor City, and Brett Favre has split two Thanksgiving meetings with Detroit.

Making these trends even more worrisome is the fact that Detroit is contending this year for a piece of the division. If you thought the 9-1 Packers are a surprise, the Matt Millen era Lions getting off to a 6-2 start was downright unbelievable. A loss Thursday would close the gap to two games and give Detroit part of the tie-breaker.

There is reason to hope for success, though. Now 6-4, the Lions are riding a two-game losing streak after falling to the Cardinals and the Giants, while the Packers have won six consecutive road games. Detroit’s defense ranks 24th in points allowed and 30th against the pass. The Lions rank ninth in the league in passing, but John Kitna has been sacked a league-leading 37 times. Against Arizona two weeks ago, Detroit had a rushing total of -18 yards.

So what will it take for the Packers to emerge victorious and save the holiday for millions of fans? Solid execution on the same gameplan as previous weeks. Favre and his fabulous receivers should be able to rip through the Detroit secondary, and Mike McCarthy proved he could gameplan around stout run defenses in the Minnesota game. (Maybe we’ll see that Packer sweep once again.) The defense needs to get plenty of pressure on Kitna all day and every play; Aaron Kampman and KGB should be able to add a couple more sacks to their team-leading totals.

Oh, and save the turkey dinner for after the game guys. We all remember the Thanksgiving in 2003 when it looked like Green Bay had been mainlining tryptophan right before kickoff.

Go Pack, go!