BUFFALO – The nighttime, what've-you-got game arrived a week later last season, when the Detroit Lions traveled to Baltimore in Week 3.
And when the Lions walked off the field that Monday night, they no doubt felt they were on their way.
Or had at least rinsed the nasty film from their mouths after the humbling at Green Bay in the season opener. At the time, slowing – relatively, it turned out – Lamar Jackson and big bad, scary Derrick Henry felt like a step on a path somewhere notable.
The Ravens had drop-kicked the Lions, 38-6, two seasons earlier, sending them a message that they weren't ready, knocking them back to the Matt Patricia era. It felt like that at the time, at least.
Less than three months later, the Lions were playing in the NFC
title game in San Fran, a few points away from the Super Bowl. Which is another way of saying: Don't trust the outcome when the Lions and Ravens get together – both teams missed the playoffs last season.
Or ... don't extrapolate the meaning of life from a single game, unless it is the Super Bowl, or the NFC championship game, or a playoff game.
But Week 2?
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Yeah, it feels big, because it's got narrative markers, like christening a new stadium, and Josh Allen, and Thursday Night Football on Prime, which isn't part of the pop-culture canon the way Monday Night Football used to be, but nevertheless still crackles because it's the only NFL game in town.
The Lions have the stage to themselves. Well, the Buffalo Bills will be there, too, presumably, and are favored; the latest odds have Buffalo as 4.5-point favorites. The over-under, meanwhile, hovered comfortably in the mid-50s, which means the folks who bet for a living don't think too much of either defense.
Nor should they, based on the Week 1 results, when the Bills let the Houston Texans (did the nickname need to remind everyone where Houston is?) score 31 and the Lions made Tyler Shough look like an All-Pro in the second half and overtime.
In fairness, maybe Shough will be an All-Pro, and maybe the Texans, finally healthy at receiver – remember Nico Collins? – will tap into the offense they began to look like pre-2025. C.J. Stroud was once considered an ascendant young quarterback. He can be again.
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So maybe the Bills' and Lions' defenses won't be as weak as they looked in their respective openers. Or maybe they will – it's Game 2, and what do we know yet anyway?
Which gets us back to the mindset best suited to viewing the Thursday night game as the Lions help the Bills christen Highmark Stadium: skepticism.
Last season's "test" at Baltimore showed why. So did last week's game at Michigan Stadium, where the Wolverines "upset" the Oklahoma Sooners.
Yeah, yeah, it's college football. A sport where completing a 20-yard out in tight coverage is worthy of a double-take and a few fingers of a single malt, if you're into that kind of thing.
Whatever the result, remember the lesson
But there are similarities, like trying to make too much of a narrow win in Week 1 and losing sight of a potentially dominant defense because of a Hail Mary. They're rare, no doubt, and always worthy of celebration, Scotch on hand or not.
Yet the Wolverines reminded us – because every year we need reminding – that the mishaps and kinks of an opener sometimes obfuscate reality, though sometimes they enhance it. That may prove true here Thursday, Sept. 17, when the saucy matchup takes the NFL's center stage.
Maybe the Lions will give up 50. Maybe the Bills will give up 47.
Whatever happens, it'll be tempting to howl with full-throated conviction that the season is headed one way or another, like so many of us did when Western Michigan beat the Wolverines – oh, sorry, almost beat the Wolverines.
A similar mistake we made last fall in Baltimore, and three years ago in Baltimore, when so many buried the Lions with the same fervor that they propped them up last season. Hey, I'm guilty of it, too; speculation is too tantalizing to leave alone in sports journalism, also in ... you know, life.
And that leads to my prediction – not the one this newspaper made me publish – but the one I'm most certain of: I've got no idea what to expect. I'm guessing the Bills will win. Logic and what little precedent we have tells us that.
I'm also guessing too many will make too much of the outcome. That may be fun. That also may be foolhardy. The Lions taught us this about this time last year.
And the year before ...
And the year before that ...
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Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Lions get big stage in Buffalo but don't forget lesson from a year ago
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