Pete Dougherty: Disciplined Lions own Packers on their turf, deliver big statement in NFC
GREEN BAY - The Detroit Lions are in a much different and better place than the Green Bay Packers at the halfway point of the 2024 NFL season.
The Lions had been the best team in the NFC coming into this game and very much looked like it in their 24-14 win over the Packers at Lambeau Field, a thrashing that anyone who watched knows was far more convincing than the score suggests.
But while it’s hardly a surprise that Dan Campbell’s well-coached Lions won this one, it was stunning in the manner in which they did it. As in, a Detroit team that plays its home games indoors and was playing outside for the first time this season handled the nasty weather — a steady rain on a 50-degree day — far better than a Packers team that’s supposed to be at home in the elements.
It was the Lions who took care of the ball (no turnovers) and limited their mistakes (no drops), and the Packers who made the catastrophic error (Jordan Love’s late second-quarter pick-six) and had at least six dropped passes.
“They played a clean game,” coach Matt LaFleur said admiringly of his Campbell’s team after the game. “Much cleaner than we did.”
The final insult for LaFleur and his players after having the Lions handle the elements better for 58 minutes was then listening to their Honolulu-blue-clad fans congregated in the first few rows behind the Lions’ bench serenading their quarterback with chants of “Jared Goff, Jared Goff,” as he took the final kneel downs to run out the clock after putting up a 109.3 rating (18-for-22 passing with a touchdown and a sack).
Detroit played like it wanted to make a statement that they’re the new kings of the NFC North, and they made it convincingly by owning the Packers on their turf and in their kind of weather.
“We see 'em twice a year, that’s what I was thinking,” said defensive end Rashan Gary of soaking in that chant in the mostly empty Lambeau.
Lions make statement as team to beat in the NFC
The win clearly establishes the Lions as the team to beat not just in the division, but also in the NFC. At 7-1, Detroit has a two-game lead over the 6-3 Packers in the loss column and 2-0 record in the division. The Packers, on the other hand, are 0-2 in the division, with both losses coming at Lambeau, to the Lions and Minnesota Vikings (31-29).
“We put ourselves in a hole being 0-2 in our division,” safety Xavier McKinney said.
Love’s pick-six to safety Kerby Joseph on a checkdown pass while the quarterback was trying to avoid a sack was obviously the backbreaker. Joseph returned it 27 yards for a touchdown, so instead of the Packers perhaps going down for an end-of-half field goal that would have cut Detroit’s lead to 10-6, LaFleur’s team went into halftime trailing 17-3.
But the contrast in how the teams performed in the conditions was stark even with that huge play.
The Packers’ six drops included two costly ones by receiver Dontayvion Wicks, whose 2024 season is disintegrating at an alarming rate after his promising rookie year. One of his drops would have converted a third down. On the other he nearly whiffed in the end zone on a ball that was behind him but still very much catchable with the Packers trailing 24-6 early in the third quarter and desperate for a touchdown to get back into the game.
But he was not alone. Romeo Doubs, Chris Brooks (on a third down that ended the Packers’ first drive), Bo Melton and Tucker Kraft also had throws go through their hands. It would have been more forgivable considering the conditions, except that the Lions didn’t have a drop on Goff’s 22 attempts.
Then there were the back-to-back botched shotgun snaps on a red zone trip late in the third quarter — one that Love mishandled, the other a low snap from Elgton Jenkins. Those miscues left the Packers kicking an anemic field goal on a key red-zone trip late in the third quarter when they were down by three touchdowns.
“At the end of the day all I can say is they embraced (the elements) a little bit better than us, and we all know that,” Packers receiver Christian Watson said. “We just have to find a way to be better.”
Said Campbell: "We can play anywhere. We can play in the snow. We can play in the rain. Play in the mud. That is just us, and we are built to win man."
Lions take advantage of Packers' lack of discipline
The Packers also had twice as many penalties as the Lions (10 to 5). The two most costly were a false start on guard Sean Rhyan that killed a possession early in the second quarter by turning a third-and-3 into a third-and-8, and an encroachment on defensive tackle T.J. Slaton on fourth-and-goal from the 5 at the start of the second quarter. Detroit turned that into a 3-yard touchdown pass from Goff to Amon-Ra St. Brown to take a 7-3 lead.
“They’re a good team,” right tackle Zach Tom said. “I think we’re a good team too, but, I mean, they played more disciplined than us, and that reflected on the scoreboard. The way we played today we would have lost to anybody.”
It’s going to be hard for LaFleur and the Packers to take much of anything from this performance. They were down 24-3 early in the second half in conditions where it was going to be especially tough to come back. They never got back into the game and were badly outplayed even though the final margin (10 points) didn’t look like it.
“It’s one loss, we’ve got a lot of season ahead of us, it’s not the end of the world,” McKinney said. “But we damn sure got to make — we’ve got to get this thing figured out. Like I said it’s the small things. We’ve got to be able to beat these good teams.”
There still is a lot of football to be played. Last year the Lions whipped the Packers at Lambeau early (34-20), but then the Packers came back to win at Ford Field (29-22) on Thanksgiving Day in one of their finest performances of 2023.
In other words, a midseason game, even a big one, is never definitive. But at the halfway point of 2024, one of these teams looked talented, mature and well prepared to make a run at the NFL’s biggest prize. And the other most certainly did not.