Last week I said I wanted to see the Lions put one away early against Miami. They didn’t. They won 19-9 anyway, which makes four in a row and puts Detroit at 6-2. I’ll take it, but for a game against a team that came in 1-6, this was a long afternoon on the couch.
The week started badly. Jack Campbell went on injured reserve with the neck injury he suffered against Minnesota, and the players wore his No. 46 in Miami to honor him. You don’t replace an All-Pro linebacker in a week. Against this particular offense, the defense didn’t need to.
The offense is where I’m stuck. The Lions came in scoring 29 points a game, and they managed 19 with 270 total yards. Goff went 17-of-25 for 170 yards with no touchdowns, threw an interception on a tipped ball in the first quarter, and got sacked three times. One week after Jahmyr Gibbs ran for 153 yards on Minnesota, he had 74 on 20 carries. Amon-Ra St. Brown was the one thing that worked all day, with 8 catches for 86 yards, mostly on the same kind of short, sure-handed throws he always catches.
Jake Bates was the offense, basically. He went 4-for-4 on field goals from 28, 40, 33 and 43 yards. The first drive set the tone. Goff looked like he fumbled on a sack and Miami ran it back 72 yards for a touchdown, but replay turned it into an incomplete pass. Detroit converted on fourth down, Gibbs got them to the 6, and then they stalled and kicked. In the third quarter Chuck Clark picked off Malik Willis and returned it to the Miami 26, and the Lions turned that into another field goal. Getting three points out of a short field like that is how a team lets a 1-6 opponent hang around. Nine penalties for 63 yards didn’t help.
The one drive that looked like the Lions I’m used to came late in the third quarter. Goff hit Jameson Williams for 31 yards and St. Brown for 17, and Gibbs finished it with an 8-yard touchdown run on fourth-and-1 to make it 16-6. That was the only touchdown of the game.
Now the context check. Miami came in averaging about 17 points and 290 yards a game. They got 9 points and 228 yards. Willis went 13-of-25 for 128 yards with the interception, and the Lions sacked him three times. The Dolphins also committed 11 penalties, hit the upright on a 38-yard field goal at the end of the first half, and needed a 46-yard completion on a fake punt to set up their last field goal. So yes, the defense held a bad offense under its usual output, without Campbell. That’s good, and I’m glad to see it. This was also a unit giving up close to 26 points a game coming in, and one afternoon against Miami doesn’t change that number much.
The flip side is that Miami’s defense had been allowing almost 26 points a game too, and the Lions offense still couldn’t find the end zone more than once. I’d worry more about that if it happened twice in a row. For now I’m filing it under a road game and a team playing without one of its leaders.
Detroit is 6-2, and thanks to Buffalo beating Minnesota on Monday night, the Lions and Vikings are tied at the top of the division with Detroit holding the head-to-head win. Next up is New England at Ford Field. The Patriots are 5-4 and already beat the Bills once this year, so this one should be a real test. If the offense plays like it did in Miami, field goals won’t be enough.
Leave a Reply