If former Lions coach Jim Schwartz had any idea he’d be playing another game in Detroit this year, he probably would have found a way to resist the urge to be carried off by players after the Bills won there in October.
Schwartz returns on Monday night to a free-ticket sellout crowd that may not be supporting the home-away-from-home team, given Schwartz’s employment by it. Indeed, there’s a chance that a large chunk of the price-is-right-for-me crowd has opted to gobble up the free seats for no reason other than to heckle Schwartz into oblivion.
Schwartz’s reception in Detroit for this unexpected second trip becomes one of the top story lines for Monday night’s game, next to perhaps only the bizarre fact that a game between to AFC East teams is even being played in Michigan due to a major Buffalo snowstorm in November.
Ultimately, moving the Jets-Bills game to Detroit was the right call. Ultimately, it wasn’t the right call for Schwartz to want to be carried off the field after a regular-season win against the team he used to coach. And it’s hilarious that he now must return to the scene of the crime.
Said Lions receiver Golden Tate once he learned that the spontaneous gesture was premeditated: “It was planned? That’s a total douche move.”
Perhaps the only thing that would make Schwartz’s unlikely return to Detroit even better would be Tate attending the game, too.