The war of words between the Cowboys and the Lions shows no sign of abating. Lions center Dominic Raiola took exception to Terence Newman's comments about Jon Kitna.
"Who the hell does he think he is?" Raiola said on Thursday. "You don't make comments like that in this league."
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"If you're going to (hit him hard), do it fair and square," Raiola said. "You're going to try to cheap-shot somebody? Say you're going to pick him off or you're going to make one of his receivers pay -- I don't care -- but when you say you've got money put away for fines? That takes it to a whole different level.
"You say you're going to come out and hurt him and what are we supposed to think? What if we come out and say we're going to take cheap shots the entire game? They're not going to like that, are they? Nobody would like that."
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"We're ready for (Newman) to blitz, but we haven't seen him blitz one time," Raiola said. "He's not the blitzer. Maybe he's talking about when he scrambles."
Things could definitely turn a little chippy on Sunday. Raiola is a guy who doesn’t mind talking a little bit. Before their Thanksgiving battle with the Packers, Raiola was nose-to-nose with Packers linebacker Nick Barnett jawing before the teams took the field. Unfortunately for Raiola, the Lions drove down the field on their first possession and converted a 3rd down to have a 1st and goal from the Packers one-yard line. But the play was wiped out by a Raiola chop block and the Lions had to kick a FG. That set the tone for the Lions as they failed to take advantage of early possessions to build a lead.
For the record, I don’t have any divided loyalties between the Cowboys and my main man Calvin Johnson on Sunday. For the first time in my life I have to root against CJ in a football game and root against him I will. Megatron, as they call him now, has been injured for a good part of the season but the Lions feel he’s pretty close to being 100% for the first time in a while. With Roy Williams out for the Lions, CJ may play a bigger role this week.
"He had just a marvelous practice (Wednesday)," Martz said of Johnson. "We're trying to get him a little more involved. But you've got to be careful, because he's still not exactly at 100%. But he's getting pretty close, so we're encouraged by that."
Troy Aikman visited Valley Ranch yesterday and gave a wide-ranging interview about a variety of subjects. It’s a pretty good interview, you can check it out for yourself, here. You can also read about some of his answers in a Nick Eatman article, here.