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If you've watched any of the Detroit Lions games so far this year, you know that they have an offense that can almost score at will. Calvin Johnson had two touchdown catches in each of his first four games this season. The San Francisco 49ers were coming off of a home win, where they throttled the Tampa Bay Bucs 48-3. So you might have expected something a little different than what you were treated to on Sunday.
The Lions jumped out quickly to a 10-0 lead 10 minutes into the game, but after that it was a defensive struggle like they haven't seen so far this year. From the time they scored with 4:44 remaining in the first, they scored only three points until 13:48 remained in the game. The Niners meanwhile, had a bit of offense that they wanted to display. Frank Gore did most of the damage with seemingly minimal effort. His efficient 15 carries netted him 141 yards and a trip to the end zone.
In my estimation there is nobody better in the league at catching passes than Calvin Johnson. I believe he is completely uncoverable for a full 60 minutes. He proved my point by hauling in 7 passes for 113 yards, but no touchdowns. That is where the Niner defense succeeded in keeping Johnson out of the zone. They made the Lions have somebody else beat them, and the Lions didn't have an answer.
Matt Stafford had a decent day throwing the ball; he didn't have a very good percentage, or high yardage totals, but did get two TD's. The first came in the first quarter to tight end Brandon Pettigrew. The second one was in the 4th quarter to reliable veteran Nate Burleson. Jahvid Best was his usual self on the ground amassing 37 yards, but did grab six balls for another 73, putting him over 100 yards total for the game.
On the other side it was the Frank Gore show. The running backs out produced Alex Smith by almost double. It was 203 yards for the backs, to 125 for the esteemed Mr. Smith. A bright spot for the Niner passing game was Michael Crabtree who found himself targeted time and again. He caught nine passes for only 77 yards, and again failed to reach the end zone.
As big of a win as this was for the 49ers as a team, it was almost over shadowed in the end by a small dust up between the head coaches after the game. Jim Harbaugh was surely excited his team came out with the W, and was jumping up and down as he found Jim Schwartz for the post game hand shake. Schwartz appeared to get agitated about something during the shake, and proceeded to run him down about 30 yards and bump him. That started another little something, but it all turned out to be much ado about nothing. Afterwards Harbaugh downplayed the incident and took the blame by saying "That's totally on me, I shook his hand too hard.".
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