Jared Goff was flat on the turf. Amon-Ra St. Brown was injured on the sidelines. Alex Anzalone was out of the game with a concussion. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were celebrating at Ford Field. And Dan Campbell was fuming from a mistake he made that might have cost his team the game.
If this were a painting, it would be called “Portrait of Defeat.” And it was. The Detroit Lions took their first loss of the year Sunday to the Bucs. So this morning, we know two things:
1. Our team is not going 17-0 this year.
2. They better get used to this kind of effort from opponents, because it’s coming every week.
First off, to the first point. The Lions are not — and will not be — perfect. And while he fell on his sword after the game, I don’t agree with Campbell’s self-flagellation for the 20-16 loss.
Although if anyone can sell a mea culpa, it’s him.
“Their head coach cost them this week,” Campbell confessed, his jaw tight, his face as red as a teenager telling his parents he cracked up the car. “Critical error. End of the half. A hundred percent on me.”
The play that haunts him came with Detroit on Tampa Bay’s 9-yard line, with the clock clicking off the final seconds of the first half. Suddenly, there was a mix-up between the field goal unit and the spike-the-ball unit, which left the Lions with too many men on the field. The resulting penalty called for a 10-second runoff, and since there were only 4 seconds remaining, that meant the half was over. The Lions didn’t get to try a chip-shot field goal.
Those lost three points were huge, given that Detroit would end up trailing by four in the closing minutes of the game and fail twice at putting the ball in the end zone from close range. Had they kicked the earlier field goal, another chip shot could have won it.
“It’s a massive error on my part, no one else’s,” Campbell insisted. “It’s one of those things we work over and over …and then I mess it up.”
That may be true.
But he’s not alone in that department.
Roasted by a Baker
The Lions also work on containing the opposing quarterback. Yet time after time Sunday, Baker Mayfield eluded the rush when it most mattered. The well-traveled quarterback wound up the Bucs’ leading rusher with 34 yards on five carries. But it wasn’t the total. It was the timing. Yes, he took five sacks (all of them credited, at least in part, to Aidan Hutchinson) but when he had to, especially on third downs, he eluded the Detroit rush and picked up precious yards by finding an open receiver or taking off himself.
And then, when it mattered most, he tucked the ball and ran through the Detroit defense for 11 yards and the go-ahead touchdown.
“You don’t expect to get to the end zone from that far out,” Mayfield later admitted. Yet he did.
That’s on the Lions, not Campbell.
The Lions also work on converting red-zone chances. But Detroit crossed the Bucs’ 20 seven times on Sunday, and came away with one touchdown. Seven times? One TD?
“That’ll get you beat,” Goff would say.
And let’s talk about the quarterback. Goff works on being precise. It’s the thing the Lions cherish most about him. He won’t hurt you. He’ll play within himself. On Sunday, he got away from that a few times. He threw one terrible interception to the middle of the defense, had another picked on a questionable no-call, and had two other potential steals dropped.
He was precise much of the time, but not all of it. Against a good hungry team like the Bucs, to quote Goff himself, “that’ll get you beat.”
The hunted, not the hunters
Which brings us to my second point. The other team. Most NFL cities have a tendency to look at football life through their own lens. We in Detroit are no exception. We are highly jazzed about these Lions. We think finally, for the first time ever, they have a legitimate shot at going to and even winning a Super Bowl.
But you know what? Other teams don’t care what we think. And some of them believe the same thing about themselves.
“That’s a good team over there,” Campbell said of the Bucs. Not only that, they’re a hungry group that had a taste of success last year until the Lions ended it in January. Don’t think they hadn’t been waiting for the rematch.
“You always remember your last loss of the season, especially in the playoffs,” Mayfield confirmed. “But it wasn’t a revenge game. … It’s this year. … How are we going to win the big games when we need to in critical moments?”
Did you hear that? The Lions are a “big” game. Once they were the hunters. Now they’re the hunted.
“That’s something we talked about as a team,” Campbell said. “We felt like we crossed over into this new threshold where, all right, we’re perceived as a team that is finding ways to win. … We go to the NFC championship game, that’s a notch in your hat, man. You do that, that speaks volumes.
“We’re going to Arizona this week. For them, that’s gonna be a huge win if they find a way to beat us. … We’re gonna get everybody’s best.”
So they better get used to it. Iron sharpens iron. And if the Lions are at their best, they should absorb the toughest stabs from almost anyone.
But come out slightly below par — in your passing precision, your quarterback containment, your red-zone performance, or your end-of-half communication — and that iron will leave you bleeding. Lesson learned. Tape it up and move on.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.
0 Comments