Pride of Detroit
The Detroit Lions seem incapable of avoiding drama when it comes to their losses, and that was certainly the case in their 29-24 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday evening.
After the Steelers scored a touchdown to go up 29-17 with just 6:36 left, Detroit mounted a furious comeback. They scored in about two minutes to bring it to 29-24, and they eventually got a defensive stop, which ended with a missed chip-shot field goal. They had 2:05 left and a timeout remaining to go 73 yards for the win.
Aided by a couple of big penalties on the Steelers, the Lions eventually worked their way into a first-and-goal at the 1-yard line with 25 seconds left. A win almost seemed certain at that point. Instead, the Lions committed three penalties from there: a pair of offensive pass interference penalties and a false start. The second pass interference came on one of the wackiest plays of the year: On fourth-and-goal from the 9-yard line, Jared Goff found Amon-Ra St. Brown, who was a yard short of the goal line. After his forward progress had been stalled, St. Brown made a last-ditch effort to lateral the ball to Goff, who grabbed it and took it in for a touchdown. But the offensive pass interference took the touchdown off the board, ending the game with time expired.
Here’s a look at what Lions players had to say about the wild finish.
Goff:
“It caught me by surprise a little bit, for sure. Loose ball, put it in the endzone. Tried to make a play with it, and unfortunately, it didn’t matter.”
Dan Campbell:
It was a headsy play, man. He wasn’t down, and just to stay alive for the last play, man. That’s what Saint is, he’s a freaking smart, instinctive player. Gave us one more shot, we thought, but it didn’t work out.”
Goff:
“Those guys have a hard job. I don’t want to make any excuses or anything like that. We’ve been on the right side of a lot of these. We’ve been on the wrong side of a lot of these. I think a few plays prior, the one on (Isaac) TeSlaa was a little bit more – in my head, for interpretation. But listen, man, they’ve got to make the calls, and I promise you if I were sitting on the other side of that right now, we’d be saying great job. Those sting for sure, and you wish they weren’t called. So be it.”
Goff later straight-up said the pass interference call on Isaac TeSlaa was wrong.
“In my opinion, that’s a bad call. Those happen. Listen, man, they’ve got a tough job, and they make calls that go our way all the time. That one in particular, he [TeSlaa] should not hang his head about.
St. Brown: (via Detroit Football Network)
“Look, we had—I think we had...
