Nearly all of the collectibles I purchase are intended for both enjoyment and an investment. This ticket stub from the 2001 Week 2 showdown between the Lions and Browns is pure enjoyment.
For those of you who don’t remember terrible football games from decades past—and for all you Cleveland and Detroit fans who forced yourselves to forget—this was the last game in NFL history where one player threw seven interceptions. That quarterback was an aging Ty Detmer, suiting up for the Lions against his former team. Not only did he throw seven picks, he threw them all within 29 minutes of clock time: from 2:14 remaining in the 2nd quarter to 3:28 remaining in the 4th quarter.
For a player to throw seven interceptions in one game, either the quarterback must be an all-time legend who has earned the undying faith of his coach or the team must be so bad that they have no other options. In addition, the game must remain close the entire time, meaning the other team must be incredibly bad. The Lions had just benched Charlie Batch for Detmer that game, and their opponent was downright horrible on offense, amassing only 257 yards of total offense on a +5 turnover ratio. Even with 7 INTs, the Browns only won 24-14 in a contest that was still up for grabs midway through the fourth quarter.
We’ll never see another 7 INT game again due to player parity, improved in-game metrics, more specialized game-planning, and the pass-friendly fashion of today’s NFL.
So why do I love this game so much? Because it serves as a reminder to me that everyone has bad days from time to time. In the rare instance when I make a giant mistake at work (I’m talking the get-yelled-at-by-senior-management kind of mistake), I rewatch this game as a kind of bizarre catharsis. It helps me move on. I’m going to get this graded with the custom tagline “Detmer 7 INTs”.
