Jameson Williams gathered in a wobbly ball and took off downfield, eluding tacklers like a video game character in the hands of a teenager. Amon-Ra St. Brown captured a pass and straight-armed his defenders downfield, all but dragging them to the goal line. Isaac TeSlaa raced along a sideline and, once again, caught a ball one-handed that no one has a right to catch.
Message, received. You wanted offense? You got offense. You wanted explosive plays? Explosive plays delivered. The Lions pass catchers, reeling in Jared Goff’s throws, put on an absolute clinic Sunday, Sept. 14, at Ford Field, racking up 334 yards and five touchdowns and righting all that was wrong with the season opener.
“Those are our dudes, man,” Dan Campbell would say, after the 52-21 beatdown of the Bears. “Just get out of their way sometimes and let ‘em go.”
They went, all right, right through whatever the Bears call their defense. Dinged? Speedbags don’t get hit that often. By the fourth quarter, Theo Wright, the Detroit touchdown singer, was actually starting his song with “Here we go again, everybody. …”
And when it was done, Detroit had the season’s first win, enough offense for three games, and a message sent on behalf of Dan Campbell to his 39-year-old, first-year head coaching protégé Ben Johnson:
Not yet, kid.
“There was nothing disrespectful about it,” Goff would say about the deluge his offense doused all over his former coordinator’s return to Detroit. “We’ve got so much respect for (Ben) and know what kind of coach he is. We knew he’d have them ready to go.”
Then again, if that was the Bears’ “ready to go” I’d hate to see when you catch them off guard.
Breathe easy, Lions fans
Here was a matchup straight out of a therapist’s notebook. Former partners pitted against each other. An ex with a new spouse. An old boss versus a former protégé, racing each other to the bank.
Dan Campbell’s Lions against Ben Johnson’s Bears (still sounds weird, sorry) was always going to be a red-letter date. But with both teams dropping their season openers to division opponents, there was an air of desperation Sunday afternoon at Ford Field. Nobody wants to start 0-2 in today’s NFL. Especially not in the NFC North.
Cross that off your worry list, Lions fans. In a game that featured countless explosive pass plays, nuclear bursts of rushing, hard-hitting turnovers, one-handed catches and 73 points scored, the Lions more than regained their offensive footing. And while they clearly miss the Picasso touch of Johnson, they still have enough Sherwin Williams to paint a silver and blue W.
“I don’t know if ‘impressed’ is the right word,” Campbell said when asked his reaction to his squad’s bounce back from last week’s flat performance against Green Bay. “I expected us to do that. Those are our standards. …
“That was a tough loss last week. … (But) I’ve said this all along: This train keeps rolling. We got players, we got playmakers, and they’re made the right way. They’re the right kind of guys, man. They know how to get in the ditch and just start digging.”
On Sunday, they could have reached China. By the end, the backups were playing, the starters were laughing, and the fanbase once again Dickensonian, with Great Expectations.
Look. The Lions are too good to have to climb out of an 0-2 hole. And they are too proud to let Johnson come into their house and teach them a lesson.
So this was a game that started like a house on fire, and ended with the Bears in ashes. The Lions’ first play was a 34-yard strike from Goff to St. Brown that set the volume for the Ford Field faithful, which was somewhere between “trapped inside a jet engine” and “meteor crashing.” Four plays later, the Lions were in the end zone and up, 7-0.
And after some back and forth and missed chances in the first 25 minutes, the old offensive magic carpet began to ascend. There was newfound creativity under Lions coordinator John Morton, a surprise handoff to St. Brown, a reverse to Raymond, a burst by Jahmyr Gibbs for 18 yards, one of many explosions from the running back, who would finish with 94 yards on just 12 carries.
There was Williams on that 64-yard track meet run, and later getting behind the defense for a 44-yard pitch-and-catch touchdown from Goff. There was TeSlaa with another insane, one-handed grab for 29 yards that put the Lions on the Bears’ 4-yard line with six seconds to go in the first half. Goff would hit St. Brown on the next play for a soul-crushing touchdown.
“Is TeSlaa just going to come in for one-handed catches from now on?” Campbell was asked.
“That’s it,” he said, laughing.
Why not? When you have that many weapons, you can create specialists. The Lions had Gibbs and David Montgomery doing their thing in the backfield (over 150 rushing yards between them) and St. Brown and Jameson and TeSlaa and Kalif Raymond – and, oh yeah, Goff, the puppetmaster of all this. He looked almost handcuffed last week. But he blew up the stat sheet Sunday: five TD passes, no picks, 334 yards, and a QB rating of 156.0.
AI couldn’t create a game like that.
Honestly, there was so much Detroit offense (511 yards) that you wish the Lions could have bottled some and saved it for Baltimore next week. But Sunday was about erasing last week’s bad taste, setting a new tone, and sending a message not only to Johnson, but to any other teams that might have assumed after that the Lions were lesser than last year.
Not yet, doubters.
Back to Lions’ old self
It was a day of strange bedfellows at Ford Field. Jimmy Fallon was sitting with Keegan-Michael Key, Eminem was sitting with Barry Sanders, and Campbell was bent at the waist, hands-on-knees, across the field from a grim-faced Johnson, the young genius who was brought to Detroit by Matt Patricia but was kept on by Campbell and eventually promoted to offensive coordinator, a Robin to his Batman.
In their season openers last week, Johnson’s Bears looked a lot more like the old Lions than the Lions did, racking up 24 points, 317 yards, and a 5.0 yards per play average in a Monday night showdown loss with Minnesota. The Lions, meanwhile, were struggling to find their identity against Green Bay, scoring only 13 points and not breaking 50 yards rushing. Their plays looked vanilla. Their offensive line execution was concerning.
Not on Sunday. The Lions got back to pass protection for Goff and opening holes for Gibbs and Montgomery. Believe Goff, Campbell and everyone else when they tell you that everything, everything with these Lions, begins with the offensive line. This is not an team that watches its young speedy quarterback improvise and run. It’s about blocking, timing, buying an extra second, opening six more inches of space.
“Those guys really jelled (today),” Goff said.
Fifty-two points? That’s not jelled. That’s full-out baked.
But OK. Let’s keep it in perspective. The Lions were not as bad as doomsayers were crying last week. And they’re not going to beat many teams the way they beat the Bears on Sunday. This first win shows what the Lions can do when they’re focused and energized. And it reiterates how they rally for their coach. I’m sure, whether they admit it or not, there was no way the players were going to let Campbell lose to Johnson in their first meeting. Everyone has pride. On Sunday, the One Pride gang was a juggernaut.
Not yet, Ben. And no panic, fans. The Lions are, apparently, still the Lions, and the season is now truly underway. Buckle up.
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