Pride of Detroit
Without a doubt, the biggest storyline out of the Detroit Lions’ loss to the Minnesota Vikings was their poor offensive showing. After starting the game with an impressive six-play, 72-yard touchdown drive, here’s how the following seven drives went:
Over those seven drives, the Lions averaged 2.27 yards per play. By the time they got the ball again, there was only 6:04 left in the game and they found themselves down 24-14. While Detroit managed to work their way back into the game near the end, the game was essentially lost when five of seven drives in the middle quarters lasted just three plays.
Here’s what coach Dan Campbell and some Lions players had to say about the offensive struggles.
Campbell: “Self-induced. Oh yeah. Very disappointing. We knew what we were going to get going into this. We knew there would be some wrinkles, but there was nothing that we hadn’t seen before. We did not—we didn’t handle it. We did not handle it well. I know we got beat on a couple of them, just physically beat on a couple that we expect not to. We expect more out of our guys. But some of it, we act like it was something exotic—it wasn’t. We just didn’t handle it well. We weren’t on the same page. We were not on the same page.”
Jared Goff: “They had a good plan on defense. They always are hard to play against defensively. They do a good job over there, and I have a ton of respect for the way they do things. Yeah, they got after us up front a little bit and gave us some pressures we hadn’t seen and did a good job on defense.”
Goff on miscommunications up front: “Yeah, a couple times. I mean, it’s inexcusable, but they make it hard, and I think caused us to have a few miscommunications.”
Goff on not getting into the right protections/play calls pre-snap: “Not enough to win. You’d like to maybe have some different things against some of the stuff they were doing, but I think even if we’d won I’d say the same thing. They did some good stuff on defense. They’re going to get you at times, that’s who they are, and you’ve got to be able to win more than you lose in those instances where they are trying to confuse you and bring pressure in. I thought today they won more than we did in those instances.”
Amon-Ra St. Brown on pressure throwing off passing game: “Any quarterback (that) doesn’t have time to throw, it’s pretty tough. We’ve got to, as receivers, get open faster, if he’s not going to have as much time....
