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New Lions receiver Anquan Boldin has made a splash since signing with the club last week.

(Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)

ALLEN PARK -- It's the Super Bowl. You're up two points with 7:14 to go, but facing third-and-inches.



What do you do?



You play it safe, right? And run the ball? Especially if you're the Ravens, with pre-elevator Ray Rice?



Right?



Not Jim Caldwell. Not with Anquan Boldin.



Caldwell, then Baltimore's offensive coordinator, surprised just about everybody by going to the air on the play. And it looked like it was going to be a disaster, with San Francisco's Carlos Rogers draped all over Boldin.

Joe Flacco feathered a quick, back-shoulder pass to him anyway. Rogers stuck his right arm up, directly between Boldin's arms, and pressed a hand into his facemask. It's hard to imagine the play being any better defended.

Boldin came up with the ball anyway.

And it's something Nevin Lawson has never forgotten.

Anquan Boldin makes a difficult catch against San Francisco cornerback Carlos Rogers in Super Bowl XLVII.

"I remember when he caught that ball right over the 49ers defender's head," the Detroit Lions cornerback said. "And I always said, 'man, that guy has great hands.' I always thought about that every time I've seen him. He just has great, strong hands. I think about that play."

He hasn't had to think too hard about it lately. Four practices into Lions training camp, he's been re-living it all over the practice fields in Allen Park.

Boldin, who turns 36 in October, has responded to questions about how much he has left in the tank by dominating early Lions practices out of the slot.

He rarely gets a lot of separation, at least the kind of separation you'd expect a guy with 1,009 career catches to get. Yet he comes up with the ball almost every time. (This reporter has seen him fail to come up with a catchable ball just once.)

And a lot of those plays have come against Lawson.

Lawson was particularly baffled by how Boldin came up with a touchdown catch against him on Saturday. He was in Boldin's hip pocket the whole way, basically beat him to the spot of the ball in the back left corner of the end zone, yet Boldin somehow snatched the ball from behind his head for the score.

"Yeah man, he just has great hands," Lawson said, shaking his head. "That's a dude."

Indeed.

Boldin probably isn't going to rack up 1,000 receiving yards, like he did in five of his first seven seasons, or even in two of the last three. Not at his age, and not with guys like Marvin Jones and Golden Tate flanking him. (Not to mention Theo Riddick and an improving Eric Ebron.)

But you can expect him to start, and you can expect him to pose some difficult matchups for opponents.

Detroit doesn't have Calvin Johnson anymore, and that's still going to be a difficult dynamic to deal with this season. But with Marvin Jones looking explosive downfield and Tate catching everything in his orbit, plus Boldin's experience and physicality in the slot, a case can be made this receiver corps is actually better top to bottom.

You can already see Matthew Stafford turning to Boldin as a safety valve, and considering Boldin's sure-handedness, it's easy to see why the Lions gave him $2.75 million in July. He's making this offense better.

"Over my 14 years, I've learned to expect the unexpected," Boldin said. "Sometimes with teams, you look great as a team and then injuries hit and it goes downhill. That's one thing you can't prepare for. The only thing we can do is come out every day and prepare. Prepare the best way we know how."

Boldin has done that, and you can see his influence spreading as well.

For example, tight end Eric Ebron beat nickel Quandre Diggs for a spectacular catch on Monday, despite a hard jam. It was one of the best plays of the day, and a lot of teammates were congratulating Ebron.

Then Boldin came over, and rather than pat him on the back, gave him some straight-talk on how to run the route better the next time.

"When we first signed him, I texted him and I told him, 'Look man, as soon as you get here, I need to hear every bit of knowledge you got about playing slot receiver,'' Ebron said. "(After that play), he just told me how to perfect the route, pretty much -- what I could have done differently to make it easier on myself. That's just the knowledge I'm trying to gain from him.



"I'm going into Year 3, so to have someone who has been doing this for almost 14 years, it's beneficial to every little thing that I do."

The Lions praised Boldin for his experience when he signed here. Praised him for his physicality, and his leadership. They believe this isn't a garbage-heap signing. They believe Boldin makes them better.

Four days in, it's easy to see why.