Lions Don’t Want to Go Down This Road Again

Every time the Detroit Lions trudge out of the visitors’ locker room, down the tunnel and onto hostile turf, they have just one goal:

To get the L out of there.

The Lions, who play at Kansas City on Sunday, are one defeat away from tying the record of 23 consecutive road losses, set by the 1981-84 Houston Oilers. If the Lions tie the record, they can break it next week at Carolina.

But the Lions aren’t the only ones who suffer from road rash. With three weeks left in the regular season, four other teams remain winless on the road: San Francisco, Oakland, Arizona and Jacksonville. Seattle and Chicago have one road victory each, and nine more teams have won twice away from home.

The Rams have won three in a row away from St. Louis, although they started 1-3 on the road. If you take their traveling record out of the mix, the rest of the NFC West is a combined 1-18 in games away from home. The gory details: San Francisco (0-6), Arizona (0-7) and Seattle (1-5).

When those teams hit the road, they hit the skids. It’s perplexing to 49er Coach Dennis Erickson, whose team will try to cure its ills Sunday at Cincinnati. His team has outscored opponents at 3Com Park, 219-82, and has been outscored on the road, 162-79.

“The travel, the crowd, the noise, you can look at a lot of things,” he said. “And believe me, we’re looking. We’ve been looking ever since the beginning of the year.”

It’s apparently getting more and more difficult to win away from home. Maybe that’s a byproduct of parity, each tiny advantage helping tip the scale between evenly balanced opponents. And maybe it’s that every little mistake feels like a backbreaker when it happens on hostile turf.

A false start becomes a huge deal. A fumble could be all but a death knell.

“It’s a mentality that’s really hard to get out of,” said Rich McKay, Tampa Bay’s general manager. “You start thinking to yourself that the ball’s going to bounce funny, a pass is going to get tipped, they’re going to make a bad call against me. And something does happen like that because it happens in every game to both teams. But when it happens to you, the mind-set is just, ‘Oh, no. We’re not good enough to overcome this.’

“You’re sitting there thinking, ‘We’re not that good. And now this bad thing’s happened. We’re done.’ ”

Through their first 20 seasons, the Buccaneers were 1-19 in games played on the West Coast. But they had something of a breakthrough, McKay said, when they posted a 25-17 victory at San Diego in 1996. Since then they have gone 2-2 in West Coast games -- counting their Super Bowl victory over the Oakland Raiders in San Diego last season.

Said McKay of the “breakthrough” game in 1996: “I remember there was a feeling among the team that, ‘Geez, we can win on the road.’ But that’s a hard mentality to break. Because you know when anything goes bad, the noise level goes up for them. The feeling of, ‘Oh, woe is me’ returns. You never want to say a guy quits or gives up, but I see it more a sense of, ‘Here we go again.’ That really is there.”

Often, it’s next to impossible for players on offense to hear the snap count on the road. Cincinnati tackle Willie Anderson remembers a time playing the Titans in Tennessee when, during a TV timeout, things reached an absurd crescendo.

“Some guy on a motorcycle is riding across the field,” he said. “It’s a circus out here, man. It’s just crazy. Meanwhile, you’ve got a 6-5, 275-pound defensive end who runs a 4.4 who you’ve got to block. And you can’t hear nothing. He sees the ball and he’s just running.”

Anderson says the toughest, loudest open-air stadiums to play in are Baltimore’s and Tennessee’s.

“All the good teams who have been to the Super Bowl, been to the playoffs year after year, their crowd understands, ‘Hey, we’re going to play a part in this ballgame,’ ” he said. “It’s amazing how that crowd just knows when to cheer, how long to cheer for, when to be quiet. The crowd sees if Jon Kitna is doing this [cups hands over ears] to the coaching staff. The crowd knows to cheer louder. Good crowds are in tune to the game.”

Bengal linebacker Kevin Hardy says the difficulty of playing on the road starts long before kickoff -- on Friday or Saturday night.

“It starts with all you have to go through with traveling,” he said. “Especially when teams travel across the country, you leave a day early and it adds that extra distraction. A lot of times, you go on the road and you’ve got people, family that you haven’t seen in a while, and they want to call you and go out to eat.

“When Sunday finally comes, after you put all those distractions behind you, then you’ve got to focus on the task at hand.”

So far, the Lions haven’t been focused enough to end their slide. For almost three seasons, it has looked as if they’ve been banging their heads against the wall.

Turns out, they were knocking on the door of NFL history.

*

Cincinnati receiver Chad Johnson calls himself 7-Eleven because, naturally, he’s open all the time. So what happened last Sunday in Baltimore when the Ravens limited him to two catches for 15 yards?

7-Eleven was robbed.

That’s what Johnson contends, at least. He says Raven cornerback Chris McAlister is dreaming if he believes he single-handedly shut him down. Johnson says he was double-teamed all game, every down, by McAlister and safety Ed Reed, something the Ravens didn’t show much of on film.

“For three hours, I had to deal with Chris McAlister and Ed Reed,” said Johnson, who began the game with 1,105 yards receiving, best in the AFC. “I’m like, ‘C’mon, y’all, give me a break now.’ ... No, you didn’t shut me down. You and your help did. At some point, players have to be realistic. Leave [McAlister] out there and he’ll get exposed.”

In the seven games since the Ravens started putting him on the best opposing receiver, McAlister has put the clamps on, in order, Rod Smith, Jimmy Smith, Torry Holt, Chris Chambers, Koren Robinson, Terrell Owens and Johnson. Those receivers accounted for a total of 25 catches for 269 yards and one touchdown.

“Modestly putting it, that’s what a shut-down corner is supposed to do,” McAlister said.

Johnson, who before the game said the only way to give him problems would be to bring Deion Sanders out of retirement, scoffed at the idea that McAlister -- or anyone else playing now -- is a shut-down cornerback.

“If there is, I’d like to see him,” Johnson said. “I’d like to see a defensive coordinator leave him out there on the island and let’s play. Deion was the only shut-down corner there was.”

Meanwhile, back on Earth ...

*

Cleveland safety Earl Little picked off a pass in last Monday’s loss to St. Louis, came to the sideline and did some campaigning.

“Pro Bowl, baby!” he shouted into a TV camera.

That elicited guffaws from reporters in the press box, who know Little to be a sloppy tackler with fairly modest numbers.

But it’s that time of year, when players lobby and preen and pray for that postseason trip to Honolulu. Player voting for the Pro Bowl takes place this week.

Among the deserving players who probably will be overlooked are San Francisco fullback Fred Beasley and safety Tony Parrish; Kansas City cornerback Dexter McCleon and center Casey Wiegmann; and Cleveland defensive lineman Courtney Brown, who’s now out for the season because of a torn biceps.

Tampa Bay’s Mike Alstott has been the Pro Bowl fullback the last six seasons. But a lot of people think that’s skewed because Alstott is as much a halfback and strong goal-line runner as he is a blocking fullback. Over that span, he averaged 179 carries for 692 yards, and scored 42 touchdowns rushing.

Said 49er quarterback Jeff Garcia, touting Beasley for the honor, “You would like to see the players and coaches acknowledge a true fullback. Hopefully, this will be the year that brings Fred the acknowledgment he deserves.”

*

The smart money says Atlanta may hire McKay as general manager and St. Louis defensive coordinator Lovie Smith as head coach. Considering what Smith has done with the Rams, he deserves a chance.

*

Talk about a sore loser. New England’s Tom Brady is one of the worst.

“I can’t tell you how many golf clubs I broke as a 10-year-old,” he told reporters this week. “Every time I hit a bad shot, I’d try to break my club. I once busted our TV with a video game. I threw the remote through the screen. Every time I’d lose, I’d just throw a fit. That was me growing up. I guess it’s still the same.”

Imagine if he’d lost that Super Bowl.

*

Baltimore Raven owner Art Modell will hand over the franchise to Maryland businessman Steve Bisciotti after the season, stepping into the background of a league he helped shape. Modell, 78, the man credited with helping develop “Monday Night Football,” the salary cap, revenue sharing, billion-dollar TV deals and a slew of other things, still wants to keep a hand in competitive team sports.

Modell also has long-standing ties to Los Angeles and the entertainment industry. He has the money and credentials to be an owner of an NFL franchise in L.A.

An even better fit might be the Dodgers. Hey, he has already set up for spring training. He’s building a house on Florida’s Orchid Island, adjacent to Vero Beach.

Just a thought.