The Detroit Lions regularly achieve feats in the NFL that haven’t been seen for quite some time. The latest was one that the Lions won’t want to be remembered for.
After an explosive showing on offense last week, the Lions put on a poor showing on the road against the Philadelphia Eagles, scoring just nine points in a rough loss.
And while the Lions stuck to coach Dan Campbell’s aggressive play style, their bold decisions didn’t pay off as the team went 0-for-5 on fourth-down tries. That tied for the most failed fourth-down conversions in a single game over the previous 25 years, a mark held by the Lions in their 2022 shutout loss to the New England Patriots.
The performance drew disappointment from the Lions, but elated the Eagles and coach Nick Sirianni as they benefitted from stronger field position and keeping the Lions’ offense off the field.
“Awesome,” Sirianni said of his defense’s performance. “Those are turnovers in our mind. Really, really good coverage and rush together, aggressive play by the front, good matching in the secondary. It’s a good football team. And to be able to go five-for-five, the way we look at it, outstanding.”
The Lions still managed 317 yards of offense against the Eagles, but they made most of that yardage irrelevant by making timely plays.
Detroit was a combined 3-of-18 on third and fourth downs. They entered the game converting over 72% of fourth-down tries for the season.
The Philadelphia defense’s performance even allowed the Eagles to be more aggressive in some of their offensive play calling.
Late in the game, the Eagles were trying to clinch the win going for a fourth-down tush push on their own 29-yard line and were halted. Despite the excellent field positioning, the Eagles’ defense kept the Lions from reaching the end zone and even knocked them back with a sack to force Detroit into a long field goal.
“I got a ton of confidence in my guys, in our guys to go out and execute,” Sirianni said. “Obviously, you know I’m gonna be second-guessing myself about the fourth-and-one in our own territory, but awesome job by the defense holding them to three there.”
Philadelphia got major contributions from all over the defense with Jordan Davis leading a D-line that had five batted passes, Nakobe Dean leading a talented linebacker group and Cooper DeJean getting a pick for the secondary.
The Lions have proven to be a very tough offense when running at their highest level, but the Eagles felt if they could keep them inefficient on the ground they could focus on Jared Goff and the air attack.
“They’re dynamic in both,” Dean said. “I’ve got a saying that I always say that I kind of get the front guys to try to live by…’You stop the run, then you have fun.’ We gotta stop the run first, I think we had them under 100 yards, then we was able to get after them in the pass game.”
While running back Jahmyr Gibbs had a standout performance, he did most of his damage on screen passes. The Lions were held to 74 yards on the ground, averaging 3.5 yards per carry.
With Goff completing just 37.8% of his passes Sunday night, it wasn’t a shock that the Eagles were able to make life so difficult for the Lions, particularly on those late downs.
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