Detroit Lions were lucky to survive Chicago Bears. Matt Eberflus gave them help.
The Detroit Lions survived.
That’s the only way to describe their 23-20 win over the lowly Chicago Bears on Thursday.
Actually, time out. On second thought, there is one other way to describe their victory: They got lucky.
After he delivered his victory speech in the locker room, Lions coach Dan Campbell should have awarded a game ball to Bears coach (for now) Matt Eberflus for forgetting how timeouts work and gift-wrapping the win. Maybe Eberflus was already in Black Friday mode.
It’s strange to say that an 11-1 team and the class of the NFC, if not the entire NFL, got lucky to survive a 4-8 team at home against a rookie quarterback and a coach who’s hanging on by a thread.
The Lions dominated the first half against the Bears while building a 16-0 lead at halftime. They outgained Chicago in yardage, 279 to 53, and allowed them just two first downs. The only thing more cooked than the Bears was the bird in the oven at grandma’s house.
But toward the end of the first half, the first cracks started showing up for the Lions.
Running back Jahmyr Gibbs lost a fumble at the Chicago 5-yard line with 55 seconds left.
Injuries started piling up on defense.
Jameson Williams took a stupid taunting penalty near the red zone that could have cost the Lions a touchdown. That led to Jake Bates missing a 45-yard field goal on the drive.
The offense went colder than the leftover pumpkin pie in your fridge and scored just seven points in the second half.
Kerby Joseph let a game-changing, if not game-ending, interception near Chicago’s 30 with 10:33 left in the fourth quarter slip right through his usually reliable fingers. The Lions led, 23-13, but they just couldn’t seem to pull away or put the Bears away.
Chance after chance was blown. Chicago wouldn’t go away. And then it happened. Eberflus handed over the game – and possibly the keys to his office at Halas Hall – by failing to bail out his rookie QB with a timeout when he failed to get the ball snapped early enough on the final play.
Fans at Ford Field were a bit stunned after Caleb Williams’ Hail Mary pass to Rome Odunze fell incomplete with no time left on the clock. The referee had to announce that the game was over before fans could exhale and the teams walked to the middle of the field to shake hands.
Most of the press box was surprised, too, as eyeballs from on high scanned for a penalty flag or listened for a strange clock run-off announcement any number of crazy ways the Lions have lost games before.
Even Jared Goff was a bit incredulous watching the final minutes and seconds unfold.
“Yeah, it was a crazy ending, right?” the Lions quarterback said. “Like thought we won, thought we were going to go to overtime, thought we were going to have a chance to have our final drive, thought we won again. Like it all kind of kept happening.”
In the post-game news conference, Campbell looked like a guy who’d just woken up from a tryptophan-induced bad dream as he rubbed his eyes.
“Hey, good win. I mean, you find a way to get the ‘W.,’" he said. "That’s ultimately what we did and we found a way.”
Campbell still looked like he was in a daze he tried to explain to a bunch of reporters who didn’t believe him that the Bears are a tough team that isn’t all that bad. Someone finally asked Campbell if he felt his team had escaped with a win after cruising to so many victories lately.
“You know, if you’re not careful, you start grading your own wins,” he said he told his players, “and it’s good because you have these standards – the way you think you should play, by your own standards, by what you have.
“Has nothing to do with the opponent, it’s just you know yourselves and you know what you’re capable of. And so, if you’re not careful, you start going too far down that thing. Then you start taking wins for granted.”
In this way, the Lions should be especially thankful for not only getting the win but also coming away with a valuable lesson: As good as they think they are, they can always lose on any given day if they fail to make enough plays or make too many avoidable mistakes.
That lesson would have resonated more in a loss. But I trust Campbell will emphasize it almost equally in victory.
“So we did what we had to do to win,” he said. “We’ll clean up the other stuff that cost us some points. I’m not worried about that. But I will take this ‘W’ and I’m not going to lose sleep over it.”
Here's one thing that should keep Campbell up and that needs to be corrected immediately: Discipline.
Williams’ taunting penalty was a big, avoidable mistake. The problem is that Gibbs was also called for taunting just four days earlier against the Colts, though the repercussions weren’t nearly as severe.
Two weeks, two stupid taunting penalties by two different young players.
Campbell was happily relieved to say the problem has been resolved because Williams offered an unprompted apology to the locker room. Great. But if the issue was really no longer an issue for the team, why did it happen twice in five days?
Campbell has time to address the issue before it becomes a bad habit, if he chooses to. But on Thursday, after a wild win that felt like a fortune escape, Campbell chose to bask in the moment. He had won his first game on Thanksgiving and the Lions ended a seven-year losing streak on the holiday.
“So I’m proud of the way they fought,” he said of his players. “We did what we had to do. We’re going to move forward.
"We’re going to enjoy this first Thanksgiving win since I’ve been here and our guys are going to enjoy it. We’re going to enjoy it.”
I can’t blame Campbell. These moments don’t last long. Soon it will be time for him to get his team ready for the next challenge that awaits next week. A challenge that be a little easier if the Lions reap the benefits of the lesson they learned against the Bears.
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on X @cmonarrez.