Lions fans shouldn't be depressed. Detroit can embrace the underdog role.
Behold the dream-crashers, and those who insist hope is for rubes. They are almost giddy, and they are relentless.
Get on with the holidays, right?
The Detroit Lions were cute for a while.
Now, they’re just sad. Bereft of an immediate future after the loss of more defensive stalwarts and the bully-ball half of their running-back duo.
The season, apparently, is over.
So, turn off the games and do whatever it is you used to do when the Lions lost eight of their first 10. Because no top-flight offense has ever won a Super Bowl without the compliments of a reasonable defense.
That’s the story from the reality purveyors: The Lions are doomed.
Yes, it doesn’t look good on paper ... or on the field ... or in the context of history. But this task of winning three games in a row – two against struggling teams – to earn the No. 1 seed isn’t the let’s-figure-the-math-to-land-on-Saturn challenge so many believe it is.
The Lions, if I may, still have the player they absolutely can’t afford to lose. His name is Jared Goff. He would like it if you weren’t fretting quite so much.
“Don’t be depressed,” he said on WXYT-FM (97.1) earlier this week, “we’re 12-2, we’ve got three games ahead of us, we’re in good shape.”
OK, maybe not good shape. But let’s consider what just happened Sunday when the Lions played the best offense in the NFL outside of Detroit. They lost. By six points. And turned the ball over.
Remove the fumble and the uncharacteristically slow start and the Lions have a chance to beat the Buffalo Bills. They will have a chance against everyone else they play as well. The odds and the margin for error have changed, but the possibilities have not, and that’s all any team can ask.
Instead of focusing on what they’ve lost, let’s focus on what they’ve got.
Still a lot in the cupboard
For starters, they’ve got Dan Campbell and one of the best coaching staffs in the league. Coaching can’t make up for talent – see the 3-13-1 record during Campbell’s first season – but it can make up for some: see the 3-13-1 record during Campbell’s first year.
The Lions lost their first eight games that 2021 season, got a tie in their ninth game, then lost the next two. At 0-10-1, many teams might have stopped fighting. The Lions did not and won three of their last six games.
Those six games are where Campbell showed what kind of program he was building, and how he was connecting with and pushing the team.
Here are some words he said Wednesday that show he is still doing both:
“We’ve got plenty here and I’ll tell you what ... when we come out of a game and everything that we said that we have to do, we do that for 60 minutes and we lose the game, then I’ll stand up here and tell you, ‘You know what, we just don’t have enough.’ But until that happens, you’re not going to hear me say anything about what we have (or don’t have)."
Again, Campbell isn’t going to plug running lanes like Alim McNeill or cover Justin Jefferson like Carlton Davis III. Actually, Davis wasn’t going to stop Jefferson, either. No one does.
But Campbell and his staff need only find a way to get a stop or two or force a turnover or two to keep the best offenses they will face somewhere in the 30s. And if opponents get into the 40s? Well, the Lions have the offense to match.
True, the chances the Lions win shootouts the next six games – that's how many they’ll play if they win their first three and get to the Super Bowl – aren't great. Also, losing David Montgomery will hurt the running game in certain situations.
Which leads us to another piece that they still have: Jahmyr Gibbs.
The second-year running back is third in the NFL in yards-per-carry. He is sixth in rushing yardage, despite 100 fewer carries than league-leader Saquon Barkley. Gibbs may not be built to carry the ball 30 times a game like Barkley or Derrick Henry, but he is absolutely built to carry the ball well more than the 13 attempts he currently averages.
He is, by number and by sight, one of the best backs in the NFL. Now he gets a chance to prove it more, assuming the offensive line can find its earlier groove. And that brings us to the most important remaining piece:
Goff.
As long as that line protects him, and it did against Buffalo for the most part, he will have time to pick any defense apart and find the high-level pass catchers that are on this team.
Goff is playing the best ball of his career. He is playing as well as any quarterback in the league not named Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes (though he has better numbers than Mahomes.) He is even showing he can occasionally extend plays and make plays, as he did several times against the Bills.
In other words, Goff and the skill players and the offensive line and the coaching staff are enough to give this team a chance to make a deep run. They did it a year ago with an inconsistent pass rush and one of the worst pass defenses in the league. It can be done again.
Will it?
I’m not a soothsayer. But teams make runs this time of year in unexpected ways. The Lions were expected to make a run. Now they are not. That doesn’t mean they can’t.
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