The Green Bay Packers couldn’t outlast the Detroit Lions in the final minute of their Week 14 game in Detroit. They managed only seven points through the first half and still fought and clawed their way back to a 31-31 game with just over three and a half minutes remaining in regulation.
The Lions then drove down the field on Packers' defense and kicked the game-winning field goal as time expired, a drive they would’ve needed a touchdown on to win if not for an extremely tight offensive pass interference penalty that took a touchdown and potential 35-31 lead off the board.
In a game where both teams traded scores in the second half, the Packers could ill afford to let one or two plays slip through their hands. One or two plays turned into a drive here and drive there, where any kind of points would have put them in a better position. Teams don’t often lose while scoring 30+. And there were plays to be made throughout the game the offense just couldn’t take advantage of.
On the first play of the game, play action out of an under center formation, the Packers were hunting for the big explosive play early and they had every reason to. The Lions are missing several key players on defense. But explosive plays only work if you take advantage of them.
Quarterback Jordan Love turns around and is looking for receiver Christian Watson over the middle on a deep dig route. It’s not clear why he didn’t pull the trigger. The safeties are guarding deep. Receiver Dontayvion Wicks is rounding his dig over the middle of the field as well and is also wide open. Love needed to pull the trigger on one of them but didn’t and took a 7-yard sack on first down.
They got out of the deficit thanks to a defensive pass interference but faced a 3rd-and-6 again but pressure from a simulated blitz forced Love to throw an errant pass and the offense left the first series punting the ball back to Detroit.
On the next drive on 2nd down, Love missed a chance to convert when he under-threw a short out route that receiver Jayden Reed couldn’t catch after a diving attempt.
Love simply didn’t elevate the pass enough and threw low at Reed’s feet. If he was able to get the pass up to his chest, there’s a good chance Reed could get the first or would at least get tackled just short of the line to gain. Pressure again got to Love on third down, forcing an incompletion and a Packers punt for the second drive in a row.
The defense held after another Lions drive stalled and got the ball back to the offense to start the second quarter still only trailing 7-0. But another offensive mistake cost the Packers another drive.
Love goes under center again on first down, possibly indicating another play action shot play. The Lions countered with a 6-man pressure of their own to ensure that Love wouldn’t have time to scan and throw deep with the linebacker blitz from the second level. The pressure gets to Love and quickly forces him to throw to Watson on the short crosser.
Since the Lions were in man coverage, Watson was able to get open because the cornerback played off coverage on the stack to the left, so he wouldn’t run into a pick route. Instead, he ran into the traffic created by the rest of the concept, and Watson was wide open on the short crosser.
But as Watson was dodging the tackle attempt, he wildly swung the ball over his head and the defender in coverage on him eventually punched it out as he was going down. The Lions recovered.
LaFleur had probably seen enough by this point with the passing game and lack of success. To slow the Lions rush down, he turned to Josh Jacobs on the next drive to get the offense moving with the running game. Jacobs gained 19 yards on this staple run-pass option concept with a tagged bubble screen on the backside.
The Lions were down a defender in the box with Reed’s motion to the left on the bubble, giving the Packers a 6-on-6 blocking surface. The quarterback/running back mesh point blocked the backside edge defender and Jacobs found a crease up on the offense’s right side where they had three blockers for two defenders.
Later on the drive, Love picked up 14 yards on a scramble when he couldn’t find an open receiver within the timing of the play and the pocket collapsed around him on a 4-man rush. Love only completed one pass on the drive in two attempts.
Love missed this attempt to Tucker Kraft who was wide open and would have scored. He has these characteristic misses that can be maddening sometimes. He has to hit these throws because there’s no guarantee of a touchdown later in the drive. These are the little things that keep games like this closer than they should be and leave no margin for error.
There was a third attempt that was intercepted but called back on a penalty. The combination of the run game and penalties got the offense to the 1-yard where Jacobs punched it in for the Packers' first score.
To start the second half, Love connected with Watson for a 59-yard explosive pass play that led to a touchdown two plays later.
The Packers' offensive formation looks more like a decoy devised to draw attention to it and get Watson isolated on a corner to the single receiver side. The Lions are in man coverage cover-1 with a 5-man pressure. The offensive line picks up all five rushers with ease as Love looks off the safety.
The diamond bunch creates all kinds of chaos and confusion for the defense and is a mess of bodies. Safety Kirby Joseph is rightly shaded over to Watson but follows Love’s eyes post-snap to the diamond bunch, leaving Watson singled up outside. Watson took an inside release and stacked the corner behind working back on the “red line” where Love hit him perfectly on the chest for a 59-yard completion.
Two plays later Love connected with Kraft on a strike that Kraft scored on from 12 yards out.
With the Lions in red zone cover-6, LaFleur gets the exact look he wants, an isolated glance route to Kraft on a defender. The Lions zone blitz a linebacker out of the second level and the defensive end drops to cover the running back.
This left a gaping hole in the middle of the field for Love and Kraft. Love beat the blitz just as it got there with a perfect throw over the hand of the defender.
A Jared Goff interception set the offense up in the red zone giving the Packers a prime chance to erase the 10-point deficit they faced coming out of halftime. On first down at the six-yard line, Jacobs barreled his way into the end zone on a play that should have been dead at the line of scrimmage.
The offense is running inside zone and no one accounts for the backside cutback defender who chases down Jacobs from behind. Also, center Josh Myers missed his block in the second level, allowing the linebacker to knife through the play side A-gap to hit Jacobs. Jacobs sees the linebacker shoot through, cuts, stays low, and cuts again between the defenders trying to tackle him.
Jacobs' sudden shiftiness between the tackles to make the defenders miss is what makes this play work for the offense. The Lions defended this play well but Jacobs was just stronger than everyone else who tried to tackle him.
After a Lions turnover on downs in their own territory, the Packers gained 21 yards on a play-action pass from Love to Kraft on a wide-open intermediate crossing route. Two plays later, Jacobs hammered the ball inside again for a touchdown.
The play call is a duo run concept with a double team block at the point of attack. Normally this run would hit on the tight end side if Jacobs couldn’t hit the play side B-gap. But the edge to the tight end side is compressed and there is no crease.
Jacobs improvises and presses his landmark long enough to get the middle linebacker to fill before cutting to his left in the small crease. Defenders could not bring him down with arm tackles as he barreled into the end zone.
On the Packers offense’s final drive of the game, Love hit two explosive passes of 20+ yards and another 12-yard throw to get the offense into the low red zone. The most impressive throw of the drive was a 29-yard completion to Christian Watson on a deep crosser.
As soon as Love executes the play action fake, he turns and has pressure in his face almost immediately. The Lions 2nd level linebackers are reading the running back movement and blitzing to the opposite of where Jacobs' run action went, getting them a free rusher in Love’s face.
Love turns and sees the pressure, makes a quick movement to his left to avoid the sack, finds the downfield throw and delivers a strike to Watson in stride.
A few plays later the team would find out how slim the margins are in the NFL, especially against the league’s best overall team. Love would make an outstanding play to escape pressure from the left, roll to his right and deliver the go-ahead touchdown with just under five minutes remaining in the game.
But a penalty flag was thrown for offensive pass interference on Watson, who collided with a Lions defender on the play past the 1-yard allowed for contact zone. The offense is trying to run a mesh concept against the Lions' man coverage with Watson on a shallow crosser from right to left. It does actually look like he tried to avoid a collision but couldn’t and the collision knocked the defender down.
Love escapes the pressure when he sees there’s no crosser coming from right to left and finds Jacobs at the goal line, fires an off-platform rope, and scores the go-ahead touchdown. Then you can see the flags come in late. It’s doubtful this play would have drawn a flag had the defender not been knocked over.
Was Watson trying to avoid contact? Perhaps. But it’s not the officials' job to introduce even more subjectivity into the rule. The only question is whether or not the foul occurred as the rule states and it did. It’s unfortunate, but Watson needs to do everything he can to avoid contact with the defender. Had the defender not fallen down, it’s likely they don’t call but we can’t be sure.
Regardless of the outcome, the Packers are finding more than enough firepower to win games down the stretch here. They just couldn’t make one less mistake than the Lions in a high-scoring, high variance of outcomes game.
Nonetheless, it has to be encouraging going forward with Love getting hot at the right time, the running game finding its stride, and young receiving playmakers continuing to play at a high level.