Lions vs. Bengals: What Just Happened?

The Notorious B.I.G. once said, “Damn right, I like the life I live ’Cause I went from negative to positive and it’s all good.” He also said, “and another one.” For the Detroit Lions and their fans, it’s the latter quote that’s defining things around here right now. The Lions lost themselves another game on Sunday when the Cincinnati Bengals routed them 34-11.

As always, I have thoughts on this game. These are those thoughts.

Offense is ugly in multiple speeds

This is bad as it gets, right? The Lions' offense has hit rock bottom in Week 6. They just looked incapable of making anything happen in an NFL game on Sunday. Short passes, short runs, false starts, and turnovers. It was just ugly. You shouldn’t have to worry about an NFL team overcoming a seven-point deficit, but right now in Detroit, you do. Any time the Lions are down by any amount, you can’t but feel like it’s over because you know this offense isn’t going to put anything together.

Later in the game, they showed that they couldn’t get anything done in an up-tempo format, either. At that point, it seemed like the Lions were trying to see how fast they could get to fourth down. I think they set whatever record they were looking to set.

They were able to move the ball late, but at that point, the Lions were down 27-0, and the Bengals had clearly let off the gas.

Jared Goff is broken

There’s been some sort of variation of this same sentiment in this article every week. This week I just really want to know what happened to this guy? It seems like Jared Goff is broken deep down inside. Maybe it’s a confidence thing or maybe it’s something that Sean McVay did or said to him. Whatever it is, it’s hard to not see a guy out there that’s scared and maybe unhappy. It just looks this is the end for Jared Goff. His starter days are coming to a close and his post-Detroit career looks like a backup job at multiple different stops around the league.

Jerry Jacobs

It wasn’t always pretty. Jacobs did get beat a few times on Sunday, but the flip side of that is that an undrafted rookie played his heart out and, for most of the game, shut down the leading candidate for Offensive Rookie of the Year. It’s stuff like this that gets you a little excited about the future. Once guys like Jacobs put in the time and grow, what can they be?

Drop all your Lions in fantasy

It’s over. None of these guys are scoring anymore. Even T.J. Hockenson is just a blip on the radar. If you want to be 1-4 like me, then go ahead and pick Lions players up off the waiver wire. I’m sure they’ll be there after this week.

The Lions defense is going to be good soon

Yeah, I really mean that. The Lions' defense did allow 34 points on Sunday. That looks really bad when you look at the box score. But there’s a longer story there.

The Lions' defense spent a crazy amount of time on the field today. The Bengals time of possession for this game was 35:52—over half of the game. This was because the turnaround on offense was so fast that the defense only had enough time to drink some Gatorade real quick before they had to go back out there. These guys looked exhausted and I can’t blame them for that.

Early on in the game, the young Lions' defense had no problem shutting down a pretty good Bengals offense. They were able to get to Joe Burrow on multiple occasions and kept Ja’Marr Chase quiet for much of the game. They gave the Lions’ offense plenty of opportunities to make things happen but they failed on every occasion.

While things crumbled for the defense late, they showed a lot of good things that over time will continue to get even better. If this defense continues to grow and they add a few more good pieces, it could be the Lions’ greatest strength sooner than any Lions fans could have imagined.

Oh by the way...

The Lions got sacks

Enough is enough

I flirted with it last week when I talked about starting David Blough in Monday Overreactions. At the end of that piece, I chose to go the route that the Lions should just stick with Goff. I’m going back on that this week. Even though the Lions are paying Jared Goff a lot of money to be this bad, it’s time to give Blough a shot. It’s time to try something, anything really, different. Maybe that something different is a player that’s not even on this team. I don’t know. What I do know is Jared Goff is holding this team back. Until he can get whatever is wrong with him fixed, the Lions should throw some stuff at the wall and see if it sticks.