Detroit over NY Giants

Detroit over NY Giants by 14(Thursday)

When they met in the regular season a year ago, the Lions were contentious in a 16-10 home loss that featured 43 pass calls by since-booted offensive coordinator Mike Wartz. When you call 43 passes against the NFL's leadin sack defense, you are a boob! This season, the Lions will pound the ball more often as they transition to more of a field-position team under leadership that has lots of "Tampa Bay" in it. Having a competition for the #1 running back spot is a fine thing to have when you intend to run more, and the Lions have rookie #1 draft pick Kevin Smith, plus veterans Tatum Bell, Artose Pinner, Aveion Cason, and Brian Calhoun all vying for the workload. The Giants' defense features four departed starters from a year ago, which means youth is suspect. One of those departed starters is big linebacker Kavika Mitchell, very solid against the run. Also, Giants' wide receivers Plaxico Burress, Amani Toomer, Steve Smith, Mario Manningham, and David Tyree all have missed time with injuries in camp. When the Lions feel like throwing, they have many capable hands available in the crew that Martz messed up mightily with. Besides Anthony (yawn) Wright, the Giants have also saddled themselves with desultory David Carr as a back-up quarterback. Carr will probably see action with the lesser O-linemen who have much to prove behind the stalwart starters. Not good for David Carr. Detroit figures to treat it more like a regular-season affair and their own back-up QB Dan Orlovsky has led plenty of practice and preseason drives with Detroits #2s and #3s. DETROIT 24-10.