Dave Birkett

Detroit Free Press

The regular season is two weeks away and everyone is in a panic.

Not just here in Detroit, where the Lions seem to spit up on themselves every time they approach the end zone, but in NFL cities all across the land.

In Chicago, Bears fans are ready to be done with Jay Cutler (who isn’t?) after he led the team to a whopping 20 yards of offense on 18 plays in the first half of Saturday’s preseason loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Bears, who the Lions play twice this year, are now 0-3 in exhibition games.

The New York Giants won their first game of the preseason on Friday, but they’ve been just as atrocious as Chicago. Their first-team offense had the ball for seven series in a game against the New York Jets this week. They punted six times – one of the punts was blocked – and ended the other drive with an interception.

The Lions visit the Giants in December.

On and on it goes.

The New Orleans Saints are 0-3. The Jacksonville Jaguars 0-2. The Dallas Cowboys lost Tony Romo to injury (again). And the Indianapolis Colts, whom the Lions play in the season opener Sept. 11, are down their top three cornerbacks, have half an offensive line, and are once again treating their own quarterback like a piñata.

Those six teams comprise nearly half of the Lions’ regular-season schedule – seven games – and collectively they represent everything wrong with the preseason.

I’ve long been a believer that the NFL is full of mostly mediocre teams.

There’s a few really good ones who everyone knows will be in the Super Bowl hunt at the end of the year. The New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals (who laid their own preseason egg last week) to name a few.

There’s a few bad teams, too. The Cleveland Browns, annually, and the San Francisco 49ers post-Jim Harbaugh.

As for everyone else? Throw them in a bag, mix them up and injuries and a few chancy breaks (both good and bad) will determine the outcome.

The Lions have not looked good this preseason, that is indisputable.

Their first-team offense has scored nine points on nine possessions and quite likely will enter the regular season having not scored a touchdown. Matthew Stafford has two fumbles and an interception in three games, the offensive line continues to struggle with basic tasks like run and pass blocking, and defensively the Lions have surrendered 60 points the last two weeks with much of it coming against quarterbacks named Ryan Mallett and Keith Wenning.

While most players downplayed the Lions’ struggles on Saturday, and for good reason considering the worthless nature of exhibition games, Lions coach Jim Caldwell admitted to having some legitimate concerns.

“Anytime we have penalties that hurt us and take points off the board we’re certainly concerned about it,” Caldwell said. “Don’t take it lightly and it’s something we got to improve upon. You just cannot put yourself in the kind of position we put ourselves in a couple times there with penalties, personal fouls. I mean, it’s senseless.”

The Lions committed nine penalties for 95 yards Saturday and had four personal fouls (including three by starters Larry Warford, Riley Reiff and Nevin Lawson). They had a touchdown called back by penalty.

At one point, things got so out of hand they faced a third-and-37 at the Ravens’ 41-yard line.

“Not everybody when they go to church gets saved,” Caldwell said. “Obviously, we got a few guys that need a revival because some of those penalties are done by guys that typically don’t have penalties in ball games.”

Whether that revival comes before the regular season begins is impossible to say.

But one thing that’s not is that the Lions are far from alone in doling out meaningless preseason angst.

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett

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