Late in the first half of the Lions’ stunning 21-20 victory over the Super Bowl champion Chiefs in Kansas City on Thursday night, NBC showed a replay of the game’s first penalty of the National Football League’s first game of the 2023 season.
The video, with sound, showed not the infraction but rather the reaction to it by the parents of Aidan Hutchinson, the Lions’ pass rusher, who forced the holding call by pressuring Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
“Way to go, Hutch!” his dad, Chris Hutchinson, shouted.
It was one of several exuberant moments in the league’s season opener. The game was as good as the pre-season hype that has Lions’ fans chattering about winning their first National Football League championship since 1957.
“Way to go, Lions!” their den is roaring this morning.
After the game, the younger Hutchinson was interviewed by Channel 4. Asked if there is something different about the current Lions, he replied: “I think so. A normal team doesn’t go out and beat the Super Bowl champs. We’ve got something brewing here.”
Certainly, the Lions got some breaks — and forced some, too. One of them came on a touchdown by Detroit defensive back Brian Branch, who ran back an interception 50 yards for a score after a perfect pass by Mahomes bounced off his intended receiver.
Earlier, the Lions set up the game’s first touchdown with a bold trick play, a fake punt on fourth down from their own 17 yard line that worked for a first down that set up the drive for the game’s first touchdown.
Later, even when they fell behind, they seemed to stay poised. This impressed NBC commentator Cris Collinsworth, who seemed skeptical at first.
He noted that Detroit finished 8-2 last season and that Detroit quarterback Jared Goff “doesn’t look rattled in the slightest” (for a change?). But he rhetorically asked the Lions late in the first half: “Are you ready to come in against the big guys and win one of these?”
By the end of the game, Collinsworth sounded convinced.
“You’ve got to be happy for this team,” Collinsworth said. “You’ve got to be happy for this organization. This is a milestone moment for them.”
It sort of makes you want to watch their next 16 regular-season games. Along with NBC, Thursday’s opener was simulcast on NBC’s “Peacock” system, a subscriber stream.
But what might happen to Lions’ television exposure if the team were to qualify for the first round of the playoffs as a wild card contestant?
One of the games in that round would be streamed exclusively on Peacock to most of the country. Chris McCloskey of NBC Sports said Thursday that it is one of two NFL games on Peacock that are exclusive.
The other is a regular-season game between Buffalo and the Los Angeles Chargers on Dec. 23.
However, McCloskey added, Peacock’s exclusive NFL playoff game would be made available (for a price) to traditional broadcasters in the local markets of the two teams involved.
But what about the Lions’ game in Green Bay on Thursday, Sept. 28? TV schedules show it exclusively on Amazon Prime Video, another streaming service. Presumably, the NFL will allow a local exception. Messages to the Lions Thursday were not returned.
No such flexible provision, however, will apply to the Michigan State home game against Washington next Saturday (Sept. 16) or to Notre Dame hosting Central Michigan the same day.
Those two will be shown only on Peacock. So anyone wanting to watch either game must either pay extra for the Peacock stream or buy a ticket.
What about later in the season? Peacock has chosen only three of its exclusive Big Ten games. It gets nine. So the Wolverines and the Spartans could again go semi-invisible in their home market if Peacock decides to choose them again later in the season.
TV and football are longtime dance partners who sometimes step on each other’s toes.
Some fans will recall the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, when college football teams were limited to two TV appearances per season and pro football teams blacked out all home games in the local market even when sold out far in advance.
After that, things got better for viewers over several decades. Cable provided more sports for more money, as did local systems like “ON TV,” “PASS,” and “Fox Sports Detroit,” now known as “Bally Sports Detroit.” But you were paying extra for games not previously available, so it felt like a win-win.
Now, however, the new movement in TV is to reduce what’s available “free” or available on basic cable and to move some of that product to streaming, a pay service that forces you to pay extra for certain games.
It’s also happening with baseball and hockey, a few games every season. Perhaps this will prove penny-wise and pound-foolish. If viewers can’t casually happen upon a game while channel-surfing, they might not be enticed to watch another or to attend one in person.
By cashing in for the short term by leaking games to streamers, the new TV sports business model might show itself to be short-sighted if teams, schools, and leagues get fatter by eating their own seed corn.
In the meantime, however, the Lions should boost ratings on all platforms both locally and nationally. Shows like this will certainly draw an audience. Mahomes, the reigning most valuable player, completed 21 of 39 passes for 226 yards and ran six times for 45.
He had several brilliant moments. Lions’ QB Goff went 22 for 35 for 253 and one touchdown. But he threw a few sidearms and had three passes at least partially blocked, a worrisome detail.
“We probably didn’t play our best,” Goff said on the NBC telecast. “But we’re built for this. We really are . . . We come in every game expecting to win.”
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