TAMPA, Fla. -- Detroit Lions safety Corwin Brown sat on a storage box outside the locker room with his face buried in his hands and cried like a baby. Blood stained the right pant leg of Lions halfback James Stewart. Safety Kurt Schulz could barely move his neck after possibly damaging a disk forcing a fumble from the hands of 248-pound fullback Mike Alstott.
|  | | James Stewart dives into the end zone for a 4-yard touchdown run. |
These Lions roared Thursday night, while the Bucs stopped here in Raymond James Stadium. They played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at their style of game in their stadium and buried them 28-14.
"They are a hard-hitting team and we had to match their intensity," Stewart said.
That the Bucs are 3-4 isn't new, but the way they are 3-4 is. They've lost four in a row, and opponents can get into physical slugfests with them and win. The Super Bowl is being held on their grass field this January, but the team that many believed would be the NFC's best is finding out you can't win with defense alone.
As long as they are willing to withstand the pain inflicted by their defense, teams no longer fear the Bucs because of their offense. Like Daunte Culpepper more than a week ago in Minnesota, Lions quarterback Charlie Batch proved that the Bucs are outmatched at quarterback in their own division.
Offensively, the Lions passed the Bucs by investing $25 million over five years on Stewart, who can consistently outperform the tandem of Alstott and Warrick Dunn. Face it, Stewart being inserted in the Lions' offense has meant much more to them than what Keyshawn Johnson does in the Bucs' offense.
Here's why: King struggled to get the ball to his receivers. In part, he and his teammates are struggling to adjust to Les Steckel's meticulous offensive scheme that forces quarterbacks to think of all passing options so that it makes their game mistake-free. Batch just plays football in the Bobby Ross scheme and is more successful.
Batch and Stewart literally took control of Thursday night's game during the final four plays of the first quarter. The Bucs led 6-0 at the time, thanks to two Martin Gramatica field goals.
From the final four plays of the first quarter until the end of the game, the Lions held the ball for an incredible 67 plays, compared to the Bucs' 35. Batch and Stewart each excelled because they were ready for the physical war. The Bucs' offensive, skill-position players weren't.
Case in point -- Batch was sacked seven times, often on bone-crunching blows; Stewart took a bloody pounding with his 29 carries, but he didn't fumble. Bucs players, meanwhile, couldn't hold on to the ball. Alstott turned the game around in the second quarter when Schultz crashed into him and forced the 13th lost fumble from his hands in 39 games. That play enabled the Lions to drive for the first of three Jason Hanson field goals to cut the Bucs' lead to 8-3.
"This game was very physical," Stewart said. "There were a lot of hard knocks."
Stewart's wake-up call came with four plays remaining in the first quarter. Strong safety John Lynch ran through the middle of the Lions' blockers to crash face-first into Stewart in the backfield.
"Lynch got me right in the face mask, but the first thing I thought about was holding onto the ball," Stewart said. "He timed it perfectly, but I knew if I held onto the ball, we could get it down the field."
Stewart accepted all blows. On the last play of the first quarter, he busted free of the line and slammed into umpire Jim Quirk. That's right, this game was so physical, the officials were getting in their hits. Stewart didn't fumble.
"If we could stay in there, we thought we could run the ball," Stewart said. "When we kept pounding, we wore them down."
The Bucs' problem of late is that their offense is taking the same type of hits their defense delivers. As tough as it is for a defender to pull down the 248-pound Alstott in the open field, he's a fumbler and he's also in a slump on third-and-1s.
During the four-game losing streak, the Bucs aren't converting those third-and-1s when Alstott lines up eight yards behind the line of scrimmage and tries to read for the right hole. By that time, he's stopped short of the line, and later in the game, that forced coach Tony Dungy to call short-yardage scramble passes by King.
Johnson is also having trouble holding onto the ball. In the past three games, the ball has come out of his hands five times -- two by fumbles, three on incomplete passes caused by aggressive hits.
Corwin Brown slammed his helmet into the back of Johnson on a sideline pass and caused an incompletion that might have been called a fumble had the officials not blown the play dead. Vikings cornerback Robert Tate had a similar play last Monday night.
"I played with Keyshawn in New York, and I just got a good shot on him today," Brown said. "I got a good break on the ball and was real fortunate."
King, meanwhile, just hasn't made enough big plays in these physical games to consistently win. His stats were better than Batch's Thursday night -- King completed 17 of 34 passes for 149 yards. Batch was 13-of-31 for 144 yards -- but Batch left as the winning QB.
Here's the difference. The Lions, trailing 11-3 in the second quarter, had a critical third-and-22 in the second quarter. Batch moved around and fired a pass to the sideline that Johnnie Morton caught for a 24-yard gain. That loosened up the Bucs defense enough for Stewart to pound the ball on the ground and eventually beat a run blitz for a 5-yard touchdown run. He hit the hole again for a two-point conversion run to tie the score at 11.
King didn't match such a big pass after the first series. The Bucs, you see, seem to have a good opening script. They've scored points on the opening drive of each of their seven games. After that, everything is iffy.
Batch, meanwhile, saw Bucs defenders tiring and reacted like a shark as the game progressed.
"When we got into the fourth quarter, I could see their defense was really tired," Batch said. "I stepped up in the huddle and told everybody to step up the tempo. Their pass rush wasn't coming as fast. We were able to move the ball."
The Lions abandoned some of their seven- and five-step drops as Batch hit Morton with three-step drops and completed slant passes. Stewart put the dagger in the fatigued Bucs defense by completing a 116-yard, three-touchdown game by keeping his body and legs moving.
"It was gut-check time for us," Stewart said.
At 5-2 with a surprising three road wins, the Lions are in the hunt with the Vikings for a division title. At 3-4, the Bucs are in trouble and may just have to settle for the sixth and final playoff spot -- if they can get hot.
But, as strange as it sounds, the Bucs' offense isn't withstanding the physical style that is being delivered by their defense. The Lions took their punches and won the game.
John Clayton is the senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.
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