Lions march toward the cellar

These last 32 frenetic football years, John McKay’s 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers have lived alone in a figurative cellar as the NFL’s last case of winlessness, with hardly anybody noting that their 0-14 record, given their first-year expansion status, should be rather forgivable.

But if Steve Spurrier (the quarterback) and Lee Roy Selmon (the first draft choice) and McKay (the great coach) will just raise their eyes, they’ll see the 2008 Detroit Lions.

With a 20-16 loss to the Minnesota Vikings in Detroit on Sunday, the Lions reached the kind of 0-13 record that’s hard to attain in a generally balanced league.

“They don’t want to go down in the Hall of Fame,” Minnesota running back Adrian Peterson said, and who knew the Hall of Fame had a cellar?

Three chances left: at Indianapolis, home to New Orleans, at Green Bay.

And since December in the NFL can be about ghosts of Decembers past, let’s bask in the bygone glory of Terry Metcalf and Jim Otis and Jim Hart and Mel Gray and Roger Wehrli.

Those St. Louisans helped shove a Cardinals franchise to 11-3 in 1975, good enough to edge Dallas for the division title, and it would be 33 years before some other St. Louisans, the Rams, would lose in Arizona by 34-10 to bring the Cardinals’ ensuing division title with, well, Kurt Warner as pilot.

So sneer all you wish about the Cardinals winning the sorry NFC West because somebody had to. It won’t mar a true total-eclipse NFL event, the first home Cardinals playoff game in 61 years.

December in the NFL is about clinching, which Tennessee (12-1) did by beating Cleveland, 28-9, and the New York Giants (11-2) did despite not beating Philadelphia, 20-14, and Denver (8-5) just about did in the listless AFC West after Jay Cutler’s 95-yard drive beat Kansas City, 24-17.

December in the NFL means a playoff jumble, which now includes Philadelphia at 7-5-1.

It also includes Matt Cassel’s New England, whose late, six-minute drive nudged Seattle 24-21 and secured a three-team logjam atop the AFC East.

It includes Indianapolis, trailing Tennessee in the standings but playing like the Colts again after a sixth win in a row, even if it occurred at Cincinnati and might not officially count. It includes Atlanta at 8-5, even though the Falcons lost a taffy pull in New Orleans when the undrafted Pierre Thomas rushed for 102 yards and fashioned a huge fourth-quarter kickoff return for 88.

It still includes the New York Favres, even if losing at suddenly competent San Francisco, 24-14, might make some wonder why. And it includes Baltimore (9-4) and Washington (7-6), after the former beat the latter in the night game.

December in the NFL means outdoor games in frigidity, so that even with questionable relevance, Chicago beating Jacksonville 23-10 in 18 degrees and thin-blooded Houston edging Green Bay 24-21 in three degrees do rate slightly glorious, while the very idea of Buffalo playing indoors seems to inveigh against all known reason, nature and goodness.

The 16-3 “home” loss that ensued probably then qualifies as justice, plus amazement given it made South Florida’s own Dolphins, 0-13 themselves just a year back, 6-1 in their last seven and a creditable 8-5 overall.

And then, December in the NFL can mean dramatic turnabouts in early-evening darkness. That’s what happened in Pittsburgh where the Steelers, trailing Dallas 13-3 in the fourth, finally caught up at 13-13 with Ben Roethlisberger’s six-yard flip to Heath Miller with 2:04 left.

Just as viewers adjusted to that, 24 seconds later came a Tony Romo pass that floated into nowhere and into danger, where Deshea Townsend cradled it, ran the interception 25 yards for a touchdown, pushed Pittsburgh to 10-3 and left Dallas 8-5.

If you cupped your ear, you could almost hear the howling blaring from Texas radios, but at least that’s some kind of sound. From Detroit came only silent tiptoeing down the stairs toward Tampa Bay ‘76, as the Lions got the ball with 22 seconds left and 71 yards to go and went sack, spike, sack and definitely, definitely sad sack.