The best thing about Sunday’s Detroit Lions game in New England is that it’s finally over.
The Patriots dominated the Lions in all facets of the game, smoking the visitors from Detroit 29-0. The shutout loss marks a new low point in the increasingly disappointing 2022 season.
The Lions fall to 1-4 and head to the bye week playing worse football by the week. New England snaps its 2-game losing streak and improves to 2-3.
Here’s what I took away from watching the miserable excuse of a game in real-time.
The offensive play-calling was an epic failure
There are so many examples of how poorly the Lions designed and executed the offensive attack against the Patriots that it’s hard to know where to begin. So we’ll zero in on the fourth downs. All six of them, none of which gained a successful conversion.
One in particular stands out. Midway through the third quarter, 4th-and-2 from the Patriots’ 34-yard line. Jared Goff rushes the snap count to try and catch the Patriots flat-footed. But the Patriots baited Goff expertly here. Knowing Goff would look for Amon-Ra St. Brown, they feigned a little off-coverage on No. 14. But the Patriots quickly just abandoned covering the outside option and had two defenders closing on St. Brown before he caught the ball — on a zero-yard route that required run-after-catch to succeed.
The Patriots knew what was coming way too often. The Lions, be it OC Ben Johnson or Dan Campbell or Goff at the controls, did not adjust to the Patriots’ film adjustments. That’s embarrassingly superior coaching by the Patriots over Campbell’s Lions.
The injury bug continues to bite hard
Lions CB Saivion Smith suffered a scary injury, one that saw him leave the field in an ambulance and security escort his family onto the field to go with him. Initial reports have Smith still hospitalized with a neck injury.
Unfortunately, Smith was not the only Lions player to go down. At one point in the second half, the Detroit secondary was playing without:
- CB Jeff Okudah
- CB Will Harris
- S DeShon Elliott
- S Ifeatu Melifonwu
- Smith
All suffered injuries during the game. Okudah and Elliott did return to action, but the virulent injury bug keeps biting the Lions hard.
Line of scrimmage failures
Not to lean too heavily on the age-old cliche, but this game was predominately decided in the trenches. And the Patriots won both the battles and the trench warfare on both sides of line of scrimmage all afternoon long.
It really doesn’t get any more basic than this: The Patriots offensive line was not really challenged by the Lions defense, allowing rookie QB Bailey Zappe to have way too much time to pick apart the dilapidated secondary. On defense, EDGE Matt Judon consistently won against RT Penei Sewell, LT Taylor Decker and even a bizarre rep where the Lions tried to stop him with T.J. Hockenson, the team’s worst-blocking TE.
Jared Goff is not a QB who can effectively handle or operate under pressure. That was proven time and again in Week 5 thanks to the worst performance by the Lions OL in the Hank Fraley coaching era.
Final stats
Quick hits
Gonna just roll these in Twitter form so I don’t have to relive the pain by rewriting these…
"I don't know how he missed it"–Vilma on Goff not seeing an uncovered ARSB. We're all wondering, good sir…
— Jeff Risdon (@JeffRisdon) October 9, 2022
Dan Campbell and his staff have to stop letting frustration influence so much stuff — not sure what else to say when you keep abandoning what works, double down on stuff that doesn't. It's just too erratic.
— Nick Baumgardner (@nickbaumgardner) October 9, 2022
Derrick Barnes should have been out on Myers, that's not Okudah on that cross–1 was clearly looking to hand off the coverage but Barnes was standing still in no-man's land
— Jeff Risdon (@JeffRisdon) October 9, 2022
Seriously, the ball landed 5 good yards OOB and was at least 3 steps beyond the receiver
— Jeff Risdon (@JeffRisdon) October 9, 2022
Kenny Albert, Jonathan Vilma and Shannon Spake have been very good on the call. Their production truck is failing them https://t.co/drwHiU7CTq
— Jeff Risdon (@JeffRisdon) October 9, 2022
Bring on the bye!
