Lions vs Eagles quick thoughts: What Just Happened?

The Lions put up one hell of a fight against a team that beat them 44-6 just one year ago. Sadly, it just wasn’t enough, and the Lions fall to the Eagles again, 38-35. The Lions may have lost, but they showed of ton of resolve and fought hard. Moral victories are real in Detroit, if you ask me.

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

Something about adversity and oysters

The Lions did some things on Sunday that you’re just not used to seeing the Lions do. They overcame adversity on multiple occasions that would have killed the Lions in the past. In particular, how many times have you seen the Lions cruise down the field and then get caught up with multiple penalties in the red zone?

The Lions would usually fizzle out and head to the sideline with a field goal at best. This time the Lions overcame those back-to-back penalties and wound up scoring a touchdown. Another good example is the Goff pick-six. We’ve seen plenty of Lions teams go through that and never get back on track. This team went back onto the field and put a touchdown on the board. Stuff like this goes a long way.

Jared Goff

Jared Goff is in a situation where he not only has to play well in order to stay in Detroit, he has to play well to get a chance to remain a starting quarterback in this league. He did himself no favors today. He was off early and it severely hurt the Lions’ defense because all of his misses caused the Lions to go three-and-out fast, bringing the defense right back onto the field after their butts hit the bench.

Goff did clean things up after throwing a pick-six and he looked a lot more comfortable and he even led a few touchdown drives. Still, Goff has to come out and be better than this on a consistent basis or the Lions will have no problem moving on from him.

Having said all of that, this was a really pretty throw by Goff.

Drops

The Lions had a real drop party on Sunday. The normally sure-handed Amon-Ra St. Brown had a couple of drops. DJ Chark had a couple, too. Jamaal Williams and Hockenson also chipped in for one apiece. Perhaps the worst one, though, was Josh Reynolds’ drop in the fourth quarter on what could have been a 60-yard touchdown that would have brought the Lions to within three points. The Lions have to clean this up against the Commanders in Week 2. Then, ya know, keep it clean from then on.

Swift is a baller

D’Andre Swift hit the ground running in this game. He became the first Lions running back to run for 100 yards in Week 1 since Barry Sanders did it in Week 1 of the 1996 season. Wow, that’s a long time. I was 11 years old. For a while now the feeling of some was that Swift could soon breakout and be one of the best running backs in the league. He took a big first step towards that on Sunday. In total, Swift ran for 144 yards and a touchdown. Not bad. This guy has a real shot to be a Pro Bowler in 2022. I’m just sad that I didn’t draft him when I had the chance.

The Crowd

The Lions hype built up to a fever pitch and it got so loud in that building. It was truly an awesome sight to see before it was promptly ruined by a pretty bad Lions performance. Fans shouldn’t give up and walk away, though. Come back next time and bring this same energy. It can only help.

Running quarterbacks

There was no secret after the Lions preseason game against the Falcons that the Lions were going to continue to have trouble with running quarterbacks. On Sunday, we saw just how big that problem is for the Lions defense. They were absolutely incapable of containing Hurts and he bit off big chunks on the ground on every Eagles drive. Every time the Lions defense would get things under control, Hurts would just run again on third or fourth down and keep the Eagles’ drive alive.

Tracy Walker

Look, I’m not going to side with the Lions on this one. I saw a lot of people on Twitter saying Hurts slid late and all that. That may be so, but you cannot go down to the ground with him and ram your shoulder into his head. You just can’t do it. The other thing you can’t do is get upset and do something else and get yourself ejected. As if the game wasn't bad enough. Stuff like this made it take a turn to downright ugly and embarrassing.