Football in July
All that can be said about the Hall of Fame Game is that it happened
On July 31, the Detroit Lions and the Los Angeles Chargers met for the Hall of Fame Game, the first pre-season game of the season, which is played at the league’s hall of fame.
As is the case with all preseason games, neither team played its stars. It was a contest between two teams’ backups and the backups’ backups, most of whom will not make the final roster.
At any rate, the Chargers’ backups blew out the Lions’ backups by the score of 34 to who cares.
The conventions of sportswriting demand several articles with headlines like “Takeaways from the Hall of Fame Game” or “Seven Things We Learned During the Hall of Fame Game.” We did not learn much of anything. We certainly did not learn seven things.
What we did see is that the Detroit Lions do not have a good backup quarterback. The number two and three signal calls on the depth chart, Kyle Allen and Hendon Hooker, both looked flummoxed by the concept of zone coverage. They both have great arms, but their decision-making skills are such that I would not trust them to drive home.
This is fine. It doesn’t matter. Detroit’s offense will live and die with the talents and fortunes of starting quarterback Jared Goff. The only way either Allen or Hooker ever plays a meaningful snap is if Goff goes down with an injury. And as is the case with every other team in the NFL, if the starting quarterback goes down with an injury, they're fucked. But, in the words of Tom Moore, we don’t practice fucked.
By contrast, it might be tempting to think that the Chargers have a very good backup quarterback situation based on the performance of Trey Lance. He threw several nice passes, including a soft touch pass while on the move and an absolute dime of a deep pass that is making the US Air Force think about replacing their smart bomb technology with his arm, but it would be wrong to draw too many conclusions from his performance because he was playing scrubs.
The one thing we already knew about Trey Lance is that he looks very good when he plays scrubs. Trey Lance’s only full season of play came in 2019 when he was with the North Dakota State Bison, the proverbial kings of FCS football, the division below what’s typically thought of as Division I football but is still technically also Division I football because bureaucracy.
While playing the future insurance adjusters and wholesale Xerox salesmen of America, Lance threw for nearly 2,800 yards, 28 touchdowns, and zero interceptions over 16 games. He also ran for 1,100 yards and 14 touchdowns. His time in the NFL has not been as lustrous, being a backup for the San Francisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys, two teams whose coaching staffs are ideologically opposed to mobile quarterbacks the same way Jews, Muslims, and Adventists are ideologically opposed to pork.
We also saw that Dan Campbell continues to have an extremely expressive face. Whenever anything went wrong for Detroit, the NBC broadcast crew would be sure to show a slow-motion replay of Campbell putting his hands on his hips and shaking his head. As anyone with a film degree can tell you, so much of a performance is in the eyes, and Campbell’s are always so sad. It’s like someone just told him his dog has an inoperable brain tumor and he’s okay with the vet seeing him look sad but doesn’t want to cry--not because of notions about masculinity but because he’s self-aware enough to know the image of a jacked six-foot-five guy crying would make everyone very uncomfortable and even in moments of intense personal tragedy puts the comfort of others ahead of his own. This is probably why his voice-over narration for Detroit Mercy Hospital ads is pretty solid.
On the other sideline, we saw that Jim Harbaugh continues to be the most socially awkward coach in the game. When he jogged out to midfield after for the traditional post-game coach’s handshake, he was all grinny and jovial and ready to talk for three hours about how awesome blocking schemes are. Dan Campbell, unsurprisingly, was not. He cut Harbaugh off with a stern but friendly “good luck” and walked away. Harbaugh’s brain went, “BEEP BOOP, DEACTIVATE GOOFBALL MODE,” his expression blankened, and he trekked off to the locker room, completely unperturbed.