Marketplace of Ideas Blog

Thursday is Thanksgiving, a day when we should remember what to be thankful for and why. (FoxPolitics.net has some thoughts.)

Thursday is also a day of NFL football. The Packers’ Thanksgiving opponent, Detroit, traditionally hosts the first of the three Thanksgiving Day games. (The Packers’ record with Detroit and Dallas as their Thanksgiving opponents is 12–18–2, 6–11–1 at Detroit.)

Even with the Packers’ having played more like, well, turkeys on most Thanksgivings, there’s something appropriate about the Packers’ playing at Detroit Thursday. The Lions hosted the Packers on Thanksgiving for 13 consecutive seasons, with the streak ending one year after the Lions handed the Packers their only loss of the season. Some would argue the 1962 Packers were the best Packers team of all time.

Thanksgiving Lions–Packers games have had interesting moments. Packer punt returner Walter Stanley finished the 1986 game with an 83-yard punt return for a touchdown. That was three years before Stanley, having been cut by the Packers and then picked up by the Lions, beat his old team with a punt return for a touchdown. The 2001 game was a thriller too, with the Packers turning back a game-tying two-point conversion attempt to win 29–27, with the winning margin a safety on a tackle by defensive end John Thierry.

Regardless of what the Lions do the rest of the season, they are already better than 2008, since they have won two games. (The latter of which, 38–37 over Cleveland on Sunday, could be the NFL’s most exciting game of the season to date.) ESPN.com’s Patrick Hruby gives grades to the NFL’s most hapless franchises, with the worst grade going to the Lions’ first victim, Washington.

(It should be noted that the Packers have four of those hapless franchises — Detroit twice, St. Louis, Cleveland and Tampa Bay — on their 2009 schedule, which should serve as a cautionary note for irrational exuberance about the season.)

Thanksgiving weekend is also the first weekend of winter. Should we be thankful for that too? (My answer: Not after last “summer.”)