Our plan was not to run… We didn’t come in here and say, “Let’s put the blade down and take these guys on.” You’ve got to be realistic in your game preparation. We came to throw the football.

— Detroit Lions Head coach Darryl Rogers, post-game press conference, October 9th, 1988.

In week 6 of the 1988 season, the 4-1 Bears and 1-4 Lions squared off in Detroit’s Pontiac Silverdome. And coach Rogers knew that running the ball was unlikely to be the key to victory: since the Bears emerged as the league’s dominant defense in ’84, Detroit was 0-7 against Chicago and had rushed 139 times for just 421 yards in those seen games, a pitiful 3.03 yards per carry average. ^[1]The 8th game was lost in the 1987 strike. And while the ’88 version wasn’t quite the ’85 Bears, Chicago’s run defense was red hot, allowing just 34 rushing yards on 26 carries *combined* in the previous two weeks. And let’s dispel with any sense of wonder: on this day, the Lions would rush 13 times for 42 yards.

Coming into the game, QB Chuck Long was on a cold streak: he had quarterbacked the Lions to five straight losses.   And after three failed drives to begin the game, Long injured his knee, leaving Rogers to turn the job over to Rusty Hilger, who was about to get his first action as a Lion after joining the team just days earlier.  In the first half, Detroit’s offense was ugly: Long (6/14, 57 yards) and Hilger (3/10, 18 yards) and combined to go 7-for-24 for 75 yards, while running back Garry James rushed 7 times for 22 yards. The Bears jumped out to an early 7-0 lead and extended that to 17-0 by halftime, leaving little question for what the second half game plan would be.

The Quarterback Room

For much of the mid-’80s, Eric Hipple was the man under center for the Lions. Then, with the 12th pick in the 1986 NFL Draft, Detroit selected Iowa’s Chuck Long, the #2 college prospect behind Jim Everett. He was the team’s third string quarterback that season behind Hipple and veteran Joe Ferguson, and played poorly in two starts. But the next season, a thumb injury cost Hipple his entire season, making Long the team’s full-time starter. In 1988, Long returned as the starter with Hipple as his backup. In week five, just one week before our fateful game of the day, Hipple replaced Long in the second quarter in a loss to the 49ers, but the veteran quarterback broke his ankle late in the third quarter. That left Long as the only healthy quarterback, so Detroit signed Hilger shortly after the 49ers game. Hilger, an Oklahoma State star, was a late round draft pick of the Raiders in 1985. After sitting on the bench for two seasons, he opened the season as the starting quarterback for the Silver and Black in 1987. It didn’t go well: among 36 quarterbacks, Hilger ranked 34th that season in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt.

So here is a picture of the quarterback room for the Lions that day: a struggling Long, an injured Hipple, and a newly-signed Hilger, who was signed off the street just days earlier. And when the terrorizing Bears defense injured Long, that put the rest of the game in Hilger’s hands.

The Second Half

After a sack on the Lions first play of the second half, things began to turn around: Hilger hit fullback James Jones for a 3-yard pass in the flat, and then on 3rd-and-16, he unleashed a bomb to wide receiver Pete Mandley for 56 yards. After a 1st down run for a yard, Hilger again hit Mandley for a seven-yard scoring strike, to cut the lead to 17-7.

Hilger’s stat line for Drive 1 of the Second Half: 3-for-3 for 66 yards and a touchdown (and one sack).
Hilger’s stat line for the rest of the Second Half: 7-for-30 for 102 yards and one interception on the game’s final play (and two sacks).

My favorite set of downs came late in the game with Detroit at the Bears 20. It is rare that you get to see seven straight incomplete passes, but thanks to a defensive holding penalty on 4th down, that’s hold one Lions drive ended.

The Records

The Lions set two records for passing futility in this game, and both still stand to this day. Long and Hilger combined to throw 38 incomplete passes, breaking a mark of 37 held by three AFL teams. Since then, Eli Manning and the 2007 Giants are the only team to come close; Manning threw 35 incomplete passes in a home loss to the Washington Football Team in December. In the last five seasons, just once has a team thrown 30 or more incomplete passes in a game: a 31-error game by Ryan Mallett and the Texans in 2015. Last season, the highwater mark was 27 incomplete passes.

In addition, Detroit threw an incomplete pass on 52 percent of all plays that game; that still stands as the highest rate in league history and shows no sign of being broken anytime soon. For reference, no game last season exceeded a 40% mark (although this one came close).

While this was an awful performance, it wasn’t that inept: and that’s the reason it could be a record day. The Lions “only” had five 3-and-outs; while the passing was ugly, Detroit did manage to pick up first downs on 11 of the team’s 19 completions. Without those new sets of downs, the Lions would never have had the chance to throw more incomplete passes. To his credit, Hilger also didn’t take many sacks against a ferocious Beras defense, which would have reduced his number of incompletions. And the Bears were a mediocre 6-for-15 on third downs on offense: that combined to give Detroit enough passing drives and passing plays to set the record.

There is more that could be said about Hilger and Long, Rogers, and what would happen to the three of them and the Detroit Lions after this game. But today’s story is, after all, incomplete.