The Detroit Lions got bullied in a 29-22 Thanksgiving Day loss to the Green Bay Packers.
Head coach Dan Campbell shouldered the blame for the loss but noted his 8-3 Lions aren’t ready to panic after another turnover-stuffed contest.
“The easy thing is to get in panic mode,” he told reporters on Thursday, via the team’s official transcript. “I know what it looks like, and we’ve been good enough out there, but I’m not panicked. We got the right guys who know how to play. We’re going to clean some things up, and we’ll have six (games) to go when we get back. And the fight is on now. I mean, they think these are going to be some cruise control. We’re going to have to fight and scratch and fight and claw for everything, man. We have to. That’s the type of team we are. That’s where we’re at.”
Campbell’s crew got beat in the trenches on both sides of the ball, with the offense allowing pressures to bamboozle Jared Goff and the defense doing little to rattle Jordan Love.
The Lions’ famous aggressive nature under Campbell didn’t work out, as Detroit went 1 of 5 on fourth downs, including an ill-fated fake punt at their own 23-yard-line in the third quarter.
“Yeah, look, that’s a bad call on me, that’s a bad call,” Campbell said of the fake punt. “I shouldn’t have done that to those guys. That’s a bad call.”
The biggest issue for Detroit in the past two games has been turnovers. In Week 11 against Chicago, the Lions overcame three Goff interceptions. Thursday against Green Bay, they couldn’t bounce back from three Goff fumbles — including one scooped up for a first-quarter score.
The three fumbles were a career-high in a game for Goff, who has compiled six turnovers in five days. He had not lost a fumble in 2023 prior to Thursday afternoon. The QB finished 29 of 44 passing 332 yards, two touchdowns and was sacked three times.
“The turnovers in the first half have certainly been the problem the last two games that have put us behind and, subsequently, part of the reason we lost today,” Goff said on Thursday. “And yes, the efficiency and how well we’d like to play on offense can certainly go up and the last two games, it’s not to our standard, absolutely.”
Behind a reshuffled offensive line, Goff was pressured relentlessly by Rashan Gary and the Packers defensive front. Goff faced pressure on 42.0% of dropbacks on Thursday, the QB’s third-highest rate in a game in 2023, per Next Gen Stats. He completed 6 of 16 passes for 91 yards under pressure.
Normally, the Lions offense is efficient enough to overcome a porous defense that struggles to get stops, but when the veteran QB turns the ball over like it’s part of a Black Friday sale, the whole operation goes down the tank.
The Lions hope the two-game turnover barrage is a bump on the 2023 ride for Goff rather than a QB devolving into a miscue machine. Given Goff’s lengthy interception-free stint earlier this season, Detroit is betting the QB will turn it around down the stretch.
“I mean, we lost one game,” Goff said. “I don’t know if we’re in quite a rut yet, but they played better than us today, and we didn’t play very well all over.”
