DETROIT » This Thanksgiving was supposed to be different for Dominic Raiola. The Saint Louis School alum from Honolulu, who has been a fixture on the Detroit Lions offensive line for the past decade, has endured plenty of holiday misery over the years, including a blowout three years ago when Detroit became the first 0-16 team in NFL history. That was one of seven straight Thanksgiving Day losses from 2004 to 2010 for the hapless Lions — a streak all too familiar to the 32-year-old, who was a captain on several of those teams.
This season, Raiola finally had a meaningful Thanksgiving Day clash to savor. The Lions, one of the league’s surprise playoff contenders, hosted the undefeated and defending Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers. It was a chance to make a major statement on national television, to show the country just how far the Lions had come.
Unfortunately for Raiola and his teammates, the Lions imploded, with foolish penalties and untimely turnovers, as the Packers rolled to a 27-15 victory.
"It’s disappointing. It ruins the holiday," said Raiola, who started in his 151st NFL game Thursday. "This is pretty much my life, so it really does ruin the holiday. I mean that. I’m not going to enjoy my day. I’m not going to be happy. I don’t want to be around anybody. You put so much into this and then you go out there and lay an egg like that. We were finally playing for something on Thanksgiving and we screwed it up again."
While there was plenty of blame to be spread around the Lions locker room, it would be tough to pinpoint anything Raiola did wrong in the game. As the team’s center, he didn’t miss any assignments, and competed with strong intensity and effectiveness; whether blocking for the run or pass. He was also like a coach on the field — pointing out shifting defensive alignments to his fellow linemen and pushing hard on everyone to get the most out of them.
When asked about how he performed personally in the game, the father of three shook his head in frustration, and then paused to take a deep breath before answering.
"I’ve been involved in this organization for a long time. I’ve played when there’s nothing to play for and all you play for is your pride and you don’t want to be the guy to let it go. I pride myself on taking care of my stuff first and after that I try to be a leader for everybody here. For anybody in this locker room, you’ve got to do your job first before you can help the team, and I think doing our job first helps the team. That’s something I pride myself on every week," said Raiola, who, at 6-foot-1 and 295 pounds, is considered small for an offensive lineman.
Signed through the end of the 2013 season, Raiola recently became the 11th player in franchise history to appear in 165 games for the team. Since being drafted out of Nebraska in 2001 — leaving after his junior season as a consensus All-American — he has been a model of durability, missing only four games, when he shattered a thumb in 2008. He even came back the week after getting an irregular heartbeat corrected in 2004. With a ferocious competitive drive, Raiola has played as hard on terrible teams as he has this season.
Once he gets over the sting of this particular loss, he said he’ll let the optimism return, because the reality is that the Lions are still in the playoff hunt, though it doesn’t get any easier with a road game in New Orleans next week.
"We’re still in it, but I’d rather talk about what happened out there today instead of talking about playoffs. It’s still too early for that. We have to worry about putting out four quarters of good play, instead of worrying about what happens in January. If we worry about that, it’s going to get away from us and we won’t even be talking about January in late December. Having no discipline has just killed us today. We’ve got to tighten it up. This next game (at NFC South-leading New Orleans) is going to be a big measuring stick for us to see where we’re at."
In the meantime, he’ll get some feedback and perspective from his younger brother, Donovan, a Kamehameha Schools grad who has played for several NFL teams, and the recently retired Olin Kreutz, a teammate in high school, who also had a long pro career. With Thanksgiving as the one Detroit game that’s on national television, he knows that both his brother and Kreutz were watching.
"I talk to the people who know football and those guys know football," Raiola said. "They know what to see, they know what to look for on the field. They’re not just looking at touchdown passes."
