Category: NFL

The Bills came off the bye, beat Baltimore 36-10 at home, and are 6-1. A 26-point win over the Ravens should feel bigger than this one does, and the reason it doesn’t is who was playing quarterback for Baltimore for most of the afternoon.

Lamar Jackson was coming back from a three-game absence and threw exactly one pass. He hurt his throwing thumb on it and didn’t return, and the Ravens have since said he needs surgery and is headed to injured reserve. I don’t root for that, even against a team that has given Buffalo as much trouble as Baltimore has. Tyler Huntley took over, then left in the second quarter with a toe injury. That left Joe Fagnano, an undrafted rookie who had never taken an NFL snap, to play the rest of the game.

From there it went about how you’d expect. Fagnano was 10-of-21 for 91 yards with an interception, and late in the fourth quarter he fumbled an aborted snap that Buffalo recovered. Baltimore finished with 144 total yards and 91 passing yards. The Bills sacked Ravens quarterbacks four times and forced three turnovers, including a Cole Bishop strip-sack of Huntley early in the second quarter that set up a field goal.

So here’s the context check. The Ravens came in averaging about 24 points and 366 yards a game, which sounds like a tough offense, and Lamar was a big part of that. In the three games Huntley started before this one, they scored 30, 10 and 13. Ten points against Buffalo with a third-stringer under center is right in line with that. Meanwhile, the Bills defense had been giving up 28.5 points a game before the bye. One afternoon against a rookie making his debut doesn’t tell me that problem is fixed.

Allen was good without needing to be great. He went 21-of-34 for 289 yards, threw touchdowns to DJ Moore and Dalton Kincaid, and ran one in from a yard out on the opening drive. Kincaid had 86 receiving yards and looked like the most dangerous guy on the field for stretches. James Cook ground out 80 yards on 21 carries and scored from 5 yards out in the third quarter.

The part that bugged me was the first half. Buffalo led only 16-7 at halftime against a team that couldn’t throw the ball, and a lot of that was self-inflicted. Allen threw an interception at his own 17 that handed the Ravens their only touchdown. Moore fumbled at the Baltimore 18 a couple of minutes before the half. Tyler Bass kicked three field goals, which is great for Bass (he hit from 56 and 51) and less great for an offense that kept stalling. The Bills also had ten penalties for 87 yards. Against Baltimore with Lamar, those mistakes probably lose you the game.

Once Cook’s touchdown made it 23-10 midway through the third quarter, it was over. Allen added the two touchdown passes in the fourth, and the defense kept a rookie with no help in check the rest of the way.

This is a win the Bills were supposed to get, and they got it comfortably once the second half started. It just doesn’t tell me much. Next Monday night is the one that will: a trip to Minnesota to face a 6-1 Vikings team whose defense had been allowing about 12 points a game before the Lions put 19 on them Sunday. If the offense stalls in the red zone up there the way it did in the first half here, field goals won’t be enough. After that it’s the Jets on the road. Speaking as a Lions fan too, I already enjoyed watching the Vikings lose once this week, and I’d happily do it again.

Last week I said I wanted to see a clean game before I’d believe the Lions were ready for a team as good as Minnesota. I didn’t get a clean game. I got a win anyway. Detroit beat the Vikings 19-15 at Ford Field, handed them their first loss of the season, and moved to 5-2.

This one was won on the ground. The Lions ran for 230 yards on 39 carries against a defense that had been giving up about 12 points a game. Gibbs had 153 yards on 23 carries, including a 30-yard touchdown straight up the middle in the third quarter, and Sione Vaki chipped in 65 more. I’ve spent most of this season watching Goff and the receivers carry the offense, so it was strange and kind of great to watch Detroit just line up and push a good defense around.

The go-ahead drive was the best stretch of the day. Minnesota had just taken a 15-12 lead with under nine minutes left, and the Lions answered by going 69 yards in seven plays, five of them runs. Goff finished it with a 7-yard touchdown to Jameson Williams, and the Vikings never got close again. After Minnesota punted with three minutes to go, Gibbs ripped off runs of 14 and 8 yards, the Vikings burned all three timeouts trying to stop the clock, and Goff took two knees.

The passing game was quiet. Goff went 18-of-25 for 176 yards with a touchdown and an interception, and he got sacked four times. Minnesota’s front is a big reason they started 6-0, and it showed whenever the Lions got into obvious passing downs. Leaning on the run made a lot of sense against this group.

It could have been more comfortable. Amon-Ra St. Brown and Williams both drew taunting flags in the first quarter, and the one on Williams pushed the Lions back 15 yards on a drive that ended in a field goal. Penei Sewell was flagged for two false starts and a hold. Detroit finished with seven penalties for 76 yards. They also missed the two-point try after the Gibbs touchdown, which is why Minnesota’s touchdown and two-point conversion in the fourth quarter put the Vikings ahead instead of just tying it. Against this opponent, all of those small things mattered.

Now the usual check on the defense. Minnesota came in averaging about 21 points and 282 yards a game. They got 15 points and 266 yards. That’s a little under their normal, which is fine, though the Vikings offense was never the scary part of that team. Kyler Murray went 17-of-29 for 210 yards and two touchdowns, and the one real breakdown was a 51-yard completion to Jordan Addison that set up their go-ahead score. D.J. Reed had an interception late in the first half, and the defense got a fourth-down stop at the Detroit 25 early in the fourth quarter. That makes three straight weeks of holding an offense to roughly its usual output. I’ll call that steady and leave it there until they do it against an offense that can actually hurt them.

The bigger takeaway is the run game. Minnesota’s defense had been the best unit in the division, and the Lions ran on it for four quarters. If that holds up, this offense gets a lot harder to deal with, because teams can’t sit back and only worry about St. Brown and Williams anymore.

Detroit is 5-2, a game behind the 6-1 Vikings, with the head-to-head win in hand for now. Next up is a trip to Miami, which is 1-6, and then New England at home. The Lions should win both, and this is also the kind of stretch where they’ve let teams hang around this year. I’d like to see them put one away early for a change.

I’ll take a win over Green Bay any way it comes, and this one came about as ugly as it gets. Jake Bates hit a 22-yarder with one second left, the Lions beat the Packers 20-17, and Detroit is 4-2 with its first division win. Most of the afternoon was spent making that harder than it needed to be.

The giveaways were mostly self-inflicted. Up 10-7 late in the second quarter with the ball at the Green Bay 12, Gibbs coughed it up and the Packers recovered at their own 8. Then early in the third quarter, Goff botched a snap at his own 41 and Green Bay fell on it. A couple of minutes later Jordan Love found Josh Jacobs for a 25-yard touchdown and the Packers were ahead 14-10. That’s two fumbles in a game where Detroit outgained Green Bay 415 to 324, and it turned what should have been a comfortable afternoon into a coin flip.

Then there was the fourth-down call. Tied at 17 with just under five minutes left, Dan Campbell went for it on fourth-and-1 from his own 24. Gibbs got stuffed for a loss of two, and Green Bay took over at the Detroit 22. I like that Campbell trusts his offense, and I usually defend these calls. This one I’d have punted. The defense held the Packers to five yards on three plays, and D.J. Wonnum blocked the 35-yard field goal that would have put Green Bay up three. That block saved the game, and it probably saved a week of arguing about the call.

The last drive was the Lions at their best. A roughing the passer flag on a LaPorta catch moved the ball into Green Bay territory, and after that it was mostly Gibbs running right at them while the Packers burned all three timeouts. Goff took a knee to drain the clock and Bates did the rest. Gibbs finished with 116 yards on 29 carries. The team only averaged 3.6 yards a carry, so it wasn’t pretty, but he was the reason they could close it out on the ground.

The passing game carried everything before that. Goff was 22-of-32 for 303 yards and two touchdowns, both to Jameson Williams. Amon-Ra St. Brown caught nine balls for 153 yards and looked like the best player on the field for long stretches. When this offense isn’t handing the ball to the other team, it moves it on anybody.

Now the defense, since two weeks ago I told everyone not to get carried away. Holding Green Bay to 17 points and 324 yards sounds like progress, and against what Detroit had been allowing (just over 400 yards and almost 30 points a game coming in) it is. But check it against Green Bay’s own numbers. The Packers came in averaging about 21 points and 329 yards a game. They got almost exactly their normal yardage, and a few points less than normal with a blocked kick helping out. Love threw 45 times for 274 yards, which is a lot of work for 6.1 yards an attempt, and Brian Branch picked him off to open the fourth quarter. The run defense held Green Bay to 60 yards, though the Packers are under three yards a carry for the season, so that’s less impressive than it looks.

So that’s two straight games of the defense holding an offense to roughly what it usually does. That’s better than the first month, when opponents were moving the ball at will. It’s still a long way from a unit you’d lean on to win a game.

And here comes the team that will test that. Minnesota is 6-0 and comes to Ford Field on Sunday giving up about 12 points a game. Their offense isn’t scaring anyone, but their defense is the kind that turns two lost fumbles into a loss. Against Green Bay the Lions could survive their own mistakes. Against the Vikings I don’t think they get that luxury, and I’d like to see a clean game before I believe they’re ready for a team that good.

A 24-point road win is a good day, and I’ll happily take 3-2. But the week of chatter about Kelvin Sheppard’s defense “answering the critics” doesn’t hold up when you look at who they played.

Some context first. Going into Sunday, the Lions were giving up 31.8 points and nearly 424 yards a game, among the worst numbers in the league. Sheppard spent the week saying talk was cheap and he needed to see real change on the field, and called the outside criticism poison. So when the defense held Arizona to 21, the takes wrote themselves.

Here’s my problem with that. Arizona came into this game averaging just under 22 points a game (26, 7, 30 and 24 in their first four). They scored 21. And one of those touchdowns came with 2:17 left in a game that was long over.

The yardage looks like progress until you check it against the right number. The 327 yards Arizona put up is about 100 fewer than Detroit had been allowing, but that 424 average came against New Orleans, Buffalo, the Jets and Carolina. Arizona’s own offense had been averaging about 295 yards a game (393, 151, 365 and 270). Against the Lions it gained more than that. A middle-of-the-pack offense with Jacoby Brissett at quarterback had a slightly better than normal day against a defense that had been getting carved up for a month. That’s what you’d expect.

The pass rush did its thing: five sacks, 12 QB hits, and a fourth-and-one sack from Hutchinson and Malcolm Rodriguez late. There was also an interception to end the first half. But the front has been the one part of this defense that’s worked all year. Detroit came in second in the league in pressures, with Hutchinson second among individual players. Hutchinson and company are very good. The problem has never been talent up front; it’s a unit that doesn’t play coordinated, where pressure up front doesn’t connect to anything behind it. Sheppard more or less said the same thing about the back end last week. Brissett still threw 48 times for three touchdowns, and plenty of that was Arizona playing from way behind.

The offense is the real story again. After going down 7-0, Detroit scored 24 in the second quarter and never looked back. Goff was 19-of-30 with three touchdowns and no picks, Jameson Williams caught two of them including a 39-yarder, LaPorta took one 38 yards, and the run game put up 163 yards and three scores. That’s the formula: score enough that the defense only has to be average.

Average won’t cut it for what’s next, though. After the bye it’s Green Bay at home and then a Minnesota team that’s 5-0. Detroit is 3-2 and sitting last in the division on tiebreakers. Holding a 1-4 team to its usual output is fine. Doing it against the Packers and Vikings would actually mean something.

So, good win, good offensive day, and a defense that was fine. I’ll be more convinced when “fine” shows up against someone in the NFC North.

A win is a win, but that felt a lot more like survival than victory.

The Lions were up 24-10 and looked like they had the game under control. Then the defense did what it has been doing and let the Jets right back into it. A 14-point lead disappeared in the fourth quarter and suddenly it was 24-24.

Fortunately, the offense answered. Goff played another really clean game, and Gibbs was ridiculous: 99 yards rushing, 65 receiving and three touchdowns. When Detroit needed the lead back, they got it.

The defense is still the concern. Geno Smith went 31-of-37 for 321 yards and three touchdowns, and the Jets were driving for a potential tying score before Chuck Clark finally ended it with the strip sack.

There were some positives. Detroit held the Jets to 58 yards rushing, got five sacks and finally produced the big defensive play when they absolutely had to have one.

So I’ll take 2-1.

But I’d really like to watch a Lions game where the fourth quarter doesn’t turn into a survival exercise.

Everyone loves an underdog. It’s even easier to love one when the team on the other sideline is Green Bay, and for roughly three quarters of the NFC North, Thursday night was pure entertainment. If you live by FTP, this one was for you.

On paper it looked like a get-right game for the Packers. Atlanta came into Lambeau 0-2 under a brand new head coach in Kevin Stefanski, with an offense that had scored 16 points total across two weeks and hadn’t run a single play in the red zone. Green Bay was a five-point favorite in its home opener. Michael Penix Jr. was making his first start of the season, coming back from the partially torn ACL that ended his last one.

For about one drive, the script held. Penix threw an interception on Atlanta’s opening possession, and Christian Watson caught his fourth touchdown of the year to put Green Bay up 7-0. I figured I’d be changing the channel by halftime.

Then Atlanta scored 27 straight points.

Penix settled in and went 13-of-15 with a touchdown across the second and third quarters. He finished 18-of-25 for 256 yards, one touchdown and the one early pick. That’s a quarterback who shook off a bad start instead of letting it snowball, which is more than I can say for some quarterbacks I watch every Sunday.

The real damage came from Drake London and Bijan Robinson. London had nine catches for 194 yards after managing six for 80 in the first two games combined. Robinson ran it 29 times for 194 yards and two touchdowns, plus two catches for 19 more. For context, he’d had 80 rushing yards total through two weeks. According to the stat nerds, they’re the first pair of teammates to each clear 190 yards from scrimmage in a road game since 1976. Doing that at Lambeau is a nice touch.

Green Bay’s run game, meanwhile, produced 17 yards. Seventeen. Jordan Love threw it 53 times for 312 yards and two touchdowns, and Matthew Golden got his first career touchdown with a 100-yard night, but most of that came while the Packers were chasing a game that was already gone. Atlanta outgained them 498 to 328 and went 6-of-10 on third down. It would have been over 500 yards if not for a couple of kneel-downs at the end.

Final: Falcons 35, Packers 14. It’s Green Bay’s first home-opener loss since 2012, and it leaves them at 1-2, with the Week 1 loss to Minnesota already on the books.

I’m not going to pretend three weeks settles anything in this division. Green Bay will be fine eventually; they usually are, which is exactly why a night like this is so satisfying. As a Lions fan, I’ll take a Packers team that couldn’t run the ball or stop the run at home against an 0-2 team, and I’ll enjoy it for the rest of the weekend. The Lions have their own problems to sort out against the Jets on Sunday, but that’s a post for another day.

Same result as last week in one sense: another close-ish final score. Everything else about how it felt was worse.

Detroit went into Buffalo already missing pieces up front, with two starting offensive linemen out and both starting safeties unavailable. Josh Allen and the Bills offense made that count immediately. Buffalo scored on their first three drives and it was 21-0 before the Lions ran a single successful play that mattered. By halftime it was 27-10.

Watching it live, the offense looked like it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be early on. Goff started spreading throws to whoever was open, then within a series or two it was back to feeding Gibbs almost by reflex, like the play-calling defaulted to its most comfortable answer instead of what the defense was actually giving up. Gibbs finished with just 52 yards on 16 carries on the ground, which tells you Buffalo had that answer scouted and Detroit kept asking the question anyway for a stretch.

The second half was a different team. Once Goff started living through Jameson Williams, Amon-Ra St. Brown, and Sam LaPorta instead of forcing the ground game, Detroit actually outscored Buffalo 21-14 the rest of the way. St. Brown finished with 142 yards and two touchdowns, Goff ended the night 327 yards and four touchdown passes, and for about a quarter and a half it looked like a real comeback instead of garbage-time stat padding.

Then the defense gave up 41 points, for the second straight week after allowing 30 to the Saints. Two straight games of that is a pattern, not a blip. And it’s happening with the two starting safeties already out and the offensive line already missing two starters, which is exactly the kind of situation where thin depth turns a bad week into a genuinely ugly one. Allen finished with 317 total yards and five total touchdowns and the Bills converted 9 of 12 third downs. Detroit’s defense was beaten and gassed, on the field almost the entire night.

Final: Bills 41, Lions 31. A game the offense nearly stole back in the fourth quarter, and a defense that made that theft necessary in the first place.

Jets come to Ford Field next. Plenty of time to figure out who’s walking through that door to help the back end of this defense, though at this point I’m not holding my breath.

Full disclosure up front: I’m not a football theory guy. I couldn’t diagram a cover-2 if you paid me. I watch as a casual fan who likes the Lions, yells at the TV a little, and moves on with my day. So take these as impressions, not analysis.

Sunday’s game against the Saints was a weird one to sit through, because Detroit won 31-30 and it still didn’t feel like a win.

The first half and change went about how you’d hope. Detroit built a 21-0 lead through the third quarter on two Jahmyr Gibbs rushing touchdowns and a Jared Goff touchdown pass to Amon-Ra St. Brown, and the Saints hadn’t put a point on the board yet. This is the part of the game I actually enjoyed watching.

Then it fell apart. New Orleans scored on four straight possessions, a touchdown, another touchdown, a field goal, and a third touchdown, to erase the entire lead and tie the game at 24 with just over a minute left in the fourth quarter. A 21-0 lead turned into a tie game that fast. Their quarterback finished with 410 passing yards on the day, which is a number that should not be possible against a defense that also racked up five sacks and two interceptions. Both things happened in the same game.

Detroit did answer. Goff found St. Brown again for a short touchdown to make it 31-24 with barely a minute on the clock, which should have sealed it. Instead the Saints marched right back down and scored again to make it 31-30, then went for the two-point conversion and the win instead of the extra point and overtime. The pass fell incomplete, and that’s the game.

So Detroit wins by one point after giving up 30 unanswered and needing the Saints to miss a two-point try to close it out. The Lions also lost the total yardage battle, 369 to 469, and Detroit held the ball for five more minutes than New Orleans did while still surrendering nearly 500 yards. None of that shows up in the final score, but it’s exactly why the game felt like it did.

I know a win is a win, and I’m sure there are Lions fans out there right now telling me to stop complaining about a victory. Fair. But if you were watching live, you know exactly the feeling I mean: that slow drain where a comfortable laugher turns into a nail-biter you didn’t ask for, and by the end you’re relieved more than happy.

On to Buffalo tonight.