Editor’s note: This is an opinion piece by MLive.com reporter Kyle Meinke.
DETROIT -- It’s hard to lose by 38 points in a league built for parity. Even in the long, sordid history of the Detroit Lions, it had happened only 10 times, three of which occurred before the end of World War II.
And never against a losing team. Not once. Not ever.
Then along came these Bad News Lions, who were pasted 44-6 on Sunday against a Philadelphia Eagles team that had slipped three games under .500. That’s the worst loss in franchise history against a team with a losing record, against a team that would go on to have a losing record, either way, doesn’t matter. They had never lost like this to a team like that, period. Not once. Not ever.
Not even in 2008, when they became the first team ever to go 0-16. Hey, now that’s hard to do in a league built for parity.
Yet after a loss like this one, against a team like that, and with a week off to think about all of it, the invitations to compare this season to 2008 have become impossible to ignore. Unless, of course, you’re Jared Goff.
“No,” the quarterback said, when asked about the specter of 0-17. “No. No.”
OK, Jared, I hear you. No one wants to think about 0-17, and for a while, we could listen to you. The Lions kept things tight in the first five weeks of the season, stayed competitive, even against some pretty good teams. They took San Francisco all the way to the buzzer. They took Minnesota beyond the buzzer. Baltimore too. Heck, the Ravens needed a broken coverage on fourth-and-19, a gift basket from the officials, plus the longest field goal in NFL history banked in off the crossbar to survive in this building.
That’s some awful luck, and you could buy the Lions weren’t 2008 bad. They had an awful roster constructed by an awful generation manager back then, all of which unraveled under awful coaching. In a league built for parity, it has to be an all-systems failure for that kind of thing to happen, and that’s what they had.
That’s why this team felt so different for so long. Because while the roster is awful, sure, after years of mismanagement by an awful regime, the coaching was keeping things together. Campbell commanded so much leadership and respect from the locker room that it often seemed like he had taken Matthew Stafford’s place with his finger in the dam, as the one thing standing between this team and the sort of abject futility that usually sets in with teams as far gone as this.
And when this season seemed to be teetering on that ledge after getting hammered by Cincinnati two weeks ago, Campbell responded by flying to Los Angeles and rolling out three trick plays that damn near beat the Rams, who could be playing in the Super Bowl on that same field in a couple months.
Of course, they lost that game too.
“We are a lot better than 0-7,” Goff insisted a few minutes later.
A week after that, they had a chance to prove it in -- dare anyone say -- a winnable game for Detroit. The Eagles had won just one game since opening weekend, after all, then placed their starting running back on injured reserve just a couple days before boarding their flight to Detroit. Then they took a bus to Ford Field, rolled a bottom-half offense onto the field that was helmed by a bottom-third quarterback that most of Philadelphia is ready to bury, and steamrolled Detroit into oblivion.
They started a running back with 24 yards for the season. Their backup had spent the entire year on the practice squad. And they hammered Detroit for 237 yards on the ground, a season high.
They punted to open the game, then never did it again. They finished with 44 points, a four-year high to the week. While the Lions were flagged for having too many men on the field, then did it again 10 minutes later. Which is really bad, although probably better than having too few men on the field, which they also did -- and did so at the goal line, no less.
And when the Lions did finally get something going in the second quarter on a 35-yard pass to Amon-Ra St. Brown, their longest play of the entire game, which should have given them possession in the red zone, well, they were flagged for an illegal formation. You know, the kind of stuff you usually cover on the first damn day of practice.
They were still able to drive the ball back down to Philadelphia’s 22-yard line right before intermission. But then Campbell decided to go for it on fourth-and-1, which seemed like a questionable decision given the 17-0 deficit on the scoreboard and the 13 seconds on the game clock and the power back who was in street clothes (Jamaal Williams) and the offensive linemen too (Frank Ragnow and Taylor Decker).
Campbell decided to pass, which seemed like an even worse idea. Goff was just 3 of 12 passing on fourth down heading into the weekend, and had a passer rating of 39.6, which is roughly the same rating you get if you take every snap and fire it directly into your center’s derrière.
On this one, Goff took a sack, his fourth in as many series to end the first half. Then Philadelphia trotted onto the field to take a knee, and the Lions headed up the tunnel to a torrent of boos.
“I’ve been given a second chance to do my best to represent you and give you what you deserve,” former linebacker great Chris Spielman said a few minutes later, his voice cracking with emotion during a halftime ceremony honoring him. “And I promise you in the near future -- the very near future -- we will give you what you all want.”
Perhaps. But that very near future was not the second half. That’s especially true for Jared Goff, who was eventually benched and booed relentlessly along the way, never more so than when he chucked a fourth-down pass into the cheap seats. Yes, again.
He did it against Cincinnati two weeks ago when he saw Penei Sewell flagged for holding in front of him and his brain malfunctioned. Goff thought he had a free play, forgetting the Bengals could simply decline the penalty. So he threw away the football toward the left sideline, while D’Andre Swift was uncovered to the right. Yikes.
Then after the Eagles opened the second half with another touchdown to make it 24-0, that guy did it again on fourth-and-11, firing another pass into the right sideline. I asked Goff about it after the game, and he said the ball just sailed on him.
“That was a misfire,” Goff said. “I was not trying to throw that ball away. That ball came out high. I knew what the situation was and that was a mistake physically, not mentally.”
What’s worse: A quarterback who throws away fourth-down passes in back-to-back home games? Or a quarterback whose accuracy is so erratic that you can’t tell the difference between fourth-down passes that are thrown away and fourth-down passes that are just 10 feet over the head of his receivers?
Nine plays later, a running back who had spent the entire season on Philadelphia’s practice squad was standing in the end zone with his second touchdown of the day and a 31-0 lead.
Fifteen seconds after that, former Lions star Darius Slay -- run off because of personality clashes with the previous regime -- scooped up a D’Andre Swift fumble and ran it back 33 yards. And just like that, Detroit was buried in a 38-0 hole.
A 38-0 hole, against one of the worst teams in the league, while getting flagged for having too many men on the field and defending the goal line with too few, as the crowd lusts for the benching of your quarterback because that guy could throw a pass into your girl’s nachos on any given fourth down.
“We have to fix it right now,” safety Tracy Walker said. “Because obviously it ain’t going to fix itself, or we’re going to be 0-17.”
Ah, there it is. The Lions have tried to avoid the comparisons, and did their part by playing hard and hanging tough and remaining competitive, even against some of the league’s best. But now they’ve been housed twice in three weeks, both times at home, including once against one of the worst teams in the league.
As Dan Campbell put it after the game, it was “a sea of trash.”
Campbell has been unafraid to show genuine emotion this season, even as this season has gone decidedly awry. He’s cried and yelled and dang neared pulled a microphone out of a podium. On Sunday, on a day when one of the greatest losers in professional sports lost worse than they ever have against another loser, tears gave way to frustration and exasperation, and perhaps a realization that this team could really become 2008 bad if he’s not better than he was on Sunday.
“It’s like the Bad News Bears on some stuff, man,” Campbell said. “That’s on me, man. You don’t play that bad unless your head coach did not have you ready to go. So, I did not. That’s very evident. I think we all know that.”
If it wasn’t an all-systems failure before, it surely is now. And if they’re not careful, they could find themselves playing in the wrong kind of meaningful games when they come back from a break we all badly need from this team.
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Even the Lions had never lost like this to a team like that. Now anything seems possible, even 0-17. - MLive.com
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