ALLEN PARK -- Jared Goff isn’t making excuses for the tough offensive showing in the opener. And while the Detroit Lions quarterback knows the performance and some mistakes were “inexcusable,” he is confident those issues are fixable.
Goff completed 31 of 39 passes for 225 yards with one touchdown and one interception in Green Bay. He led a couple of long drives down the field, but ran into issues in the red zone. The Lions settled for two short field goals, and Goff threw an interception in the red zone with a chance to cut the lead to one score before opening the second half with the ball.
Dan Campbell said the high completion percentage, 35 minutes with the ball and 22 rushes on the ground “smells of you’re winning the game.” The Lions coach said it got away from them, as they were never able to cut it to being a one-score game after the midway point of the second quarter.
“And so, I think what we did was right,” Campbell said. “And you have to just stay in that, you have to stay in that. Just play that game for a while, stay patient because I do believe we get in there, we get within one score, defense gets a stop. Now all of a sudden, man, you’re good, you’ve got timeouts. But you get in that type of game, it gets really hard.”
Nearly everyone back in Allen Park has pointed to the communication lapses as one of the main causes of the issues against the Packers. Campbell has pointed to it, and left tackle Taylor Decker has addressed it a couple of times, as well. Decker added that it’s all about practicing the communication as a whole offensive line and not just with the two new starting guards, whether it’s about getting on the same page non-verbally or simply getting louder.
Goff explained that it’s all about being clear and ensuring everyone is on the same page and getting the same calls. When asked if it was the atmosphere at Lambeau Field causing some issues, the quarterback said it was “just straight miscommunication.”
“Just sloppy. Just have to be better in the details and communicate better,” Goff said on Wednesday. “I mentioned this after the game, it starts with me. I’ve got to communicate better and take a little bit of stress off of those guys from a communication aspect.
“Yeah, just be better. Just get back to our bread and butter. We’ve got good athletes. We’ve got good players. We’ve got good plays. If we execute the bread and butter, we’ll be just fine.”
The bread and butter has been a common talking point this week among players and coaches after the disappointing debut, as well. Detroit’s big-play ability was non-existent, its running game helpless, with only one play of 20-plus yards amid a day filled with checkdowns and no deep shots.
Goff and the Lions have said the checkdowns were part of the plan in Green Bay, with Campbell not wanting them to force anything. The Packers do a great job of keeping everything in front of them, and with the miscommunications on the offensive line hurting Goff’s time in the pocket and keeping the running game from taking off, it was perfectly executed.
The Lions quarterback completed 14 passes to his two running backs for a combined 49 yards. Gibbs’ 31 yards on 10 catches were the lowest in NFL history for someone with double-digit catches in a single game.
“We have two really good backs and two good tight ends for that matter that can do a lot with it after the catch, so getting it to them means space,” Goff said of the checkdowns. “Finding those voids underneath a zone defense that has that space, being able to put them in those places, and I thought we did a good job with that.
“Now, would we have liked to break one of those off for like 15 (yards)? Sure, but sometimes that doesn’t happen.”
Goff averaged only 3.3 air yards across those 31 completions, his fifth-lowest mark since 2021. He’s not sweating the lack of the deep ball, though, saying if something were there downfield, he would have thrown it.
Campbell and his starting quarterback have each said there were plenty of downfield shots called against the Packers, but they were covered, so he checked it down to the running backs. Goff told 97.1 The Ticket that “those shots will come and we’ll continue to find them.”
“I think every year is new and every defense is new and there are trends in the league that change and come and go, certainly offensively and defensively,” Goff told reporters in Allen Park on Wednesday. “Maybe certain runs that worked in the past don’t work anymore. You have to find those little niches that your guys are good at that are also successful plays, and I think that’s no different than last year, the year before, or any time in the past.
“I think that any time you’re in the early parts of a season, it takes three or four weeks for the offense to get their footing, and I feel like it’s been that way ever since I was a rookie.”
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