If the Detroit Lions' business department spent any time envisioning a catastrophic scenario for the 2010 season, it probably played out something like Sunday's game at Chicago.

The sight of second-year quarterback Matthew Stafford grimacing in pain after a brutal sack by the Bears' Julius Peppers -- the one player Detroit knew it had to keep away from Stafford -- must have caused a lot of stomachs to drop in the Lions' front office.

Less than two quarters into the season, the nightmare had arrived. And in broad daylight. It was a road game, too, meaning everyone back in Detroit got to see it. Probably in high definition, too.

Losing Stafford for any appreciable length of time isn't going to help the team sell tickets. That's what logic says. Still, the Lions tell me this morning (without revealing numbers) that they've had the best Monday-morning ticket sales since individual game tickets went on sale over the summer. They say they're confident Sunday's opener at Ford Field against the Philadelphia Eagles (0-1) will be a sellout (the team has to sell 54,500 tickets at the 65,000-seat stadium to have the game aired locally).

Despite the final score, the loss of Stafford and the weird, silly and stupid but legitimate ruling on Calvin Johnson's non-touchdown at the end, fans saw a Lions team play step for step with the Bears. Being competitive in losses is an improvement for Detroit, and that will keep some fans coming back. That won't last without victories.

Stafford sidelined doesn't help anything. Reports today say he'll be out at least two weeks, and possibly up to six. If they lose those games, local television blackouts will be commonplace again. The team had told me a couple weeks ago it expected, at worst, just one or two blackouts rather than four or five of the eight home games.

Fans' September tolerance, fueled by the perpetual optimism that the start of every new season brings, won't last long if the team struggles without Stafford. Their patience with this team hangs by by the slenderest of threads, and that thread frayed some more Sunday.

Backup quarterback Shaun Hill has had some good games in his career with the San Francisco 49ers, but there's a reason the 30-year-old quarterback is a career second-stringer and was deemed expendable and traded to Detroit. It's reflected in paychecks: He'll make $1.5 million this year. Stafford is in the second year of a six-year deal is and is due to make just $395,000 but the team is expected to exercise a $17.5 million bonus option on him that's prorated through 2014. Overall, Stafford's deal is worth a potential $78 million if he meets all incentives -- which will be hard if he's going to suffer an endless string of shoulder injuries.

Sunday's injury was Stafford's third major shoulder incident since joining the Lions. Last year, his non-throwing shoulder was hurt at the end of a game, but he famously returned to throw a short touchdown to beat the Cleveland Browns. He injured it again in a loss to the Cincinnati Bengals and was then put on injured reserve.

Stafford is the face of the franchise. He's the one on billboards. He's the one fans cautiously are hoping is the team's first legitimate franchise quarterback since Bobby Layne two generations ago. They're wearing his jersey. They believe he's the anti-Joey Harrington.

Stafford is supposed to be The One. And that brings us to The Culprit.

Left tackle Jeff Backus, who turns 33 next week, will be paid $4.95 million dollars this year to protect Stafford's blindside. He failed to do that on Sunday about as badly as you can without pulling a Marcus Junius Brutus. Stafford is a right-handed passer, meaning he is vulnerable to pressure from the left side of the defense because his body is facing the opposite direction to throw. Left tackles get huge contracts to keep people such as Peppers, who is being paid nearly $85 million the Bears to turn quarterbacks into bloody piles of bone splinters and hamburger, away from quarterbacks' vulnerable backsides.

A first-round draft pick out of the University of Michigan in 2001, Backus has started all 144 games in which he has played. In July 2006, he signed a new contract reportedly worth nearly $40 million and includes about $16 million in bonuses. And he's been appropriately remorseful and contrite about his gross failure to do his job Sunday. But as far as ticket- and merchandise-buying fans are concerned, it might as well have been Jim Backus of Mr. Magoo fame out there playing left tackle.

Expect the Lions to pursue a replacement in free agency or via the draft in 2011.

As a former gimp-kneed, third-string right-handed quarterback (I'm still right handed and gimpy, but no longer an arena football quarterback), I can sympathize with Stafford. You need absolute confidence that your blindside is going to be protected. If there's some worry that it's not, that will eat away at a quarterback and affect his performance. It's a terrible distraction.

In other NFL news, word today is that the player's union is seeking decertification, a tactic that could prevent a lockout by team owners when the league's labor deal expired in March. The New York Times explains it here.

So how are the Detroit Tigers doing at the gate this year?

Through the first 12 home games, the team is down slightly at the turnstiles to an average of 26,419 fans per game from an average of 26,878 after 12 games in 2009.
At that rate (459 fewer fans per game) the team would see a drop off of 37,179 over the 81-game home season at Comerica Park. That’s not much, and it’s unlikely attendance will continue at the current pace.

Why a slight decline? Many factors can drive attendance: weather, time of the game, day of the week, opponent, Detroit’s recent performance, other events going on, the local economy, etc.

The Tigers were 13-12, including 7-5 at home, at roughly this point last year. Now, going into tonight’s game at Minnesota, Detroit is 16-11 and 9-3 at home.

The team finished 12th among Major League Baseball’s 30 teams in attendance last year with an average of 31,693 fans per game. That’s 2,567,185 for the year at Comerica Park.

Detroit is 15th in attendance right now. A surge or decline in the standings could radically change that at any point.

Attendance picked up last season — as it typically does in the more pleasant summer months versus the cooler spring, when school is still in session. That explains why the Tigers’ per-game average increased last season, and likely will again this season.

AIRLINE MARRAIGE: The news that United Airlines wants to buy Continental Airlines isn’t expected to mean much for Detroit Metropolitan Airport because they carry just a small percentage of the facility’s passengers. So far this year, United’s 14 flights a day departing from Metro account for 1.5 percent of the airport’s passenger traffic while Continental’s 11 daily flights is 1.6 percent. Last year, Metro saw 31 million passengers.

The merger of Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines, finalized earlier this year, created the world’s largest carrier (and Metro is one of its biggest hubs), but if regulators approve the United-Continental deal, that would supplant Delta as the biggest airline.

MARKETING MATTHEW: When the Detroit Lions drafted quarterback Matthew Stafford with the first overall pick last year, the team said it wouldn’t use him as a marketing tool to sell tickets. It didn’t. A year later, it is.

Stafford now appears on billboards along Interstate 94, touting season ticket deals. Clearly, the Lions are confident in the wake of Stafford’s gritty performance as a rookie that he’s safe to use for marketing. In other words, he’s not Joey Harrington or Andre Ware.

AND THE WINNER IS: Charlie LeDuff, the unconventional Detroit News reporter who’s carved out a niche reporting the region’s unconventional stories and by getting newsmakers on camera for unique interviews, won the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2009 national Sigma Delta Chi award for online reporting for his video columns called “Travels with Charlie.”

LeDuff was among the winners out of 1,300 entries. He previously won the Pulitzer Prize as a reporter for the New York Times, and returned to his native Detroit to work at The News in 2008.

Disclosure: I’ve had beers with Charlie, and am reading his two fine books.

NO THANKS TO ME: The Crain Communications company softball team (“We Mean Business”) commenced its third season Monday night with a 20-8 mercy-rule victory over a team whose name I can’t remember in the Royal Oak Recreation Department league. Yours truly went a pathetic 0-for-2 with a stikeout, walk and run scored as the designated hitter. The K was looking, too. Is this how Brandon Inge feels? Maybe, until he looks at his paycheck.