DETROIT _ And then everything went wrong again.
The Eagles were going to survive their own bad behavior. They had rallied from a 14-point deficit to take a late lead Sunday against the Lions, and they were melting down the clock, and Carson Wentz was completing clutch passes and Caleb Sturgis was drilling clutch field goals, and they were going to survive a succession of big mistakes to stay unbeaten this season.
And then, on a third-and-2 sweep to the right, Ryan Mathews made the Eagles' costliest mistake of the day. He carried the football in the crook of his left arm, giving a blindside defender a naked target to aim at. And Lions cornerback Darius Slay's aim was true. He hit Mathews cleanly, knocking the ball free, and after the Lions recovered the fumble and Matt Prater had made a 29-yard field goal to finish off Detroit's 24-23 victory, the Eagles had nothing left to do but trudge back to the visiting locker room at Ford Field and wonder why they had done so much to give this game away.
Understand: The Eagles didn't deserve to win Sunday. They were too careless overall. Their defense was a pushover in the first half. They settled for three field goals when they could have overtaken and eventually buried the Lions with touchdowns. Over Andy Reid's 14 seasons with the Eagles, they were 13-1 in games after a bye. Every year, they took that week's break and came back ready to cut glass, and given how efficient and precise the Eagles had been through this season's first three weeks under Reid protege Doug Pederson, the sloppiness with which they played Sunday was a surprise. After all, if Pederson had kneaded out the kinks that plagued Reid _ the halting two-minute offense, the wasted timeouts _ it made sense to think he had learned and retained the how-to of his mentor's strengths.
And yet the Eagles, for the first half anyway, appeared determined to give Sunday's game away. They allowed the Lions to embark on three long, time-consuming touchdown drives, affording themselves just three offensive possessions through the game's first 30 minutes. They committed 13 penalties for 106 yards, and a flurry of errors _ two penalties and a sack _ forced them to settle for a 50-yard field goal by Sturgis at the end of the first half. Carson Wentz committed two delay-of-game infractions after he and center Jason Kelce had trouble hearing each other because of the sound inside the domed stadium. It was a slog, and it was ugly.
Yes, the kid was terrific for most of the day, and if you want to take a particularly rosy view, his play and the defense's improvement in the second half at least put the Eagles in position to steal a win. We know now they have moxie. But then came Mathews' fumble, and an interception by Wentz on the ensuing possession to seal the Lions' victory. The irony is, those were the Eagles' first two turnovers of the season. Their timing couldn't have been worse. It's just one game. The Eagles are still 3-1. But this one will sting, and it should.
