PHILADELPHIA -- The Detroit Lions have thrived on going for it on fourth down and leaning on Jared Goff and Amon-Ra St. Brown time and time again.
But their bread and butter players and aggressive identity came back to bite them against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday night.
The Lions lost 16-9 to the Eagles, while failing to convert on any of their five fourth-down attempts. On top of that, Goff and St. Brown connected only twice on 12 targets for 42 yards.
Goff sent the ball St. Brown’s way on five third downs and two on fourth down. None of those passes connected, with the team’s bread and butter and identity colliding in disastrous fashion.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with him and I, I think there was just tight coverage and just didn’t connect,” Goff said. “There’s a few I’d like to have back that I just missed on. Slight miscommunication on one or two of them, maybe, but it should never be that bad. It really shouldn’t.”
Outside of Goff’s five-interception game in Houston last season, this was one of the worst statistical performances of his 10-year career. He completed a career-worst 37.8% of his passes. To end the game, the Lions quarterback completed only two across his last 18 attempts.
While many on social media were curious about the quarterback wearing a glove. Goff didn’t seem concerned with that, saying it felt good in pre-game so he went with it in the cold, windy conditions.
“Felt like those were helping,” Goff said after the game.
Those 12 targets were the second most sent St. Brown’s way of the season, while his two receptions were the least of the year. St. Brown has caught at least four passes in every single game this season.
“Yeah, I mean, you have those games,” St. Brown said. “I think, you know, when it mattered most, we had plays. There was plays to be had, and we didn’t make them. Some plays got batted down. There’s a lot of different stuff that happened, but at the end of the day, we were in the game. We had a chance to win it. We just, you know, we came short.”
The Lions are always going to press the issue on fourth down. And Goff is going to look St. Brown’s way more times than not on those money downs.
That’s not going to change, no matter what unfolded or how truly ugly it was from the typically-dependable Lions stars in Philadelphia.
Goff and Lions coach Dan Campbell were aligned on that after the game. Each said that’s who the Lions are and what they’re about, and this was just one of those tough days were they were off their mark.
The Lions entered Sunday’s game as the seventh-best team on fourth down in the NFL. They had converted 13-of-18 attempts, for a 72.2% conversion rate, before getting shut down on five tries.
They tried running up the gut, but hit a wall. They even tried a fake-punt direct snap to Grant Stuard, but the Eagles were all over that one, as well. Those five fourth-down failures were tied for the most in a single game over the previous 25 years.
And guess who they were tied with?
Themselves, from the 29-0 shutout loss to the New England Patriots in 2022. Even after nights like this one, Campbell isn’t wavering from something him and his team makes them who they are.
“Yeah, no, listen, and I told the team that, I was like, ‘Man, there’s some things I wish I would have done different,’” Campbell said. “Look, the bottom line is if you go totally conservative -- the way this game played out and the way it was, you got a better chance of winning that game than some of those decisions I made. I understand that.
“But also, that’s who we are. That’s who I am. And it bit us today.”
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