The Lions improved to 7-2 on Sunday by beating the Dolphins behind their consistently strong defense and a timely offense that got Calvin Johnson back into the mix.
That’s their best start since 1993 and it has some people starting to weigh the Lions’ chances of making a run in the playoffs, but Lions coach Jim Caldwell isn’t one of them. Caldwell said Monday that no one has a case of playoff fever in the organization with so much football left to play.
“We don’t have it. We’re wearing the white mask around here, so we don’t have to worry about it,” Caldwell said, via ESPN.com. “It’s like I said every week, we don’t give out any awards or anything after nine games of the season. We haven’t done anything yet. We’ve been playing well. We’ve been playing tough and that kind of stuff, but it’s a long season. It’s a journey and we’re still on that journey.”
With seven weeks to go, they’re still relatively early on that journey as they learned when they lost six of seven games after starting the 2013 season with a 6-3 record. If the Lions should beat the Cardinals and Patriots in the next two weeks, however, Caldwell might need a hazmat suit to keep the playoff fever at bay.