Lots of big things have gone off in the desert. The Ten Commandments. The Dead Sea Scrolls. The first nuclear explosion. On Sunday, Oct. 11, in an entirely different desert, the Detroit Lions discovered where their bottom was, then made a critical decision not to stay there.
Already dragging in the NFL’s worst ranked defense, and an offense that was having trouble with its ignition, the Lions came out Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals, and quickly found themselves in a pile of camel dung.
They went three-and-out on their first drive. And their second. And their third. Meanwhile, they watched the Cardinals (with a first year coach and a 1-3 record) mow down the field for 74 yards and a 7-0 lead.
By the end of the first quarter, this looked like
buzzard’s luck: can’t kill nothing, and nothing will die. The stat line read like your kid’s worst report card. Detroit had a total of negative-9 yards.
Negative-9?
That’s actually hard to do.
“Certainly, we were sputtering,” quarterback Jared Goff later told reporters.
Ah, but as the Israelites could attest, it’s not where you start in the desert, it’s that you finish in the Promised Land. And suddenly, as if Moses came down from the mountain with two tablets worth of winning football instructions, the Lions flipped the script.
Everything began to work. The defense stepped up. The offense revved up. The coaching regained its swagger, with Dan Campbell rolling the dice on a fourth down and Goff converting a nice pass to Sam LaPorta, which soon led to the Lions' first points.
Campbell ultimately went for three more fourth downs – all of which resulted in touchdowns.
Three touchdowns on three fourth-down calls – in a single game? That happens about as often as a flight attendant says, “Hi, would you like to move up to first class for no extra charge?”
[ WATCH FOR YOURSELF: Catch the "Freep Sports Show" on our Detroit Free Press livestream on YouTube and available anywhere you listen to podcasts (Apple or Spotify). ]
“The important thing is that you go all in, no matter what you're going to do,” Campbell told the press after this 45-21 shellacking that was certainly a fork in the road of their season. “Either it crumbles, or they rise up.”
They rose up.
Desert bloom.
Belief in the desert
Now, we’ll go around the horn with the credit here, but you have to start with Campbell. By all accounts, after last week’s embarrassing loss to the Carolina Panthers on "Sunday Night Football," his blood pressure could have popped the mercury. It’s not just losing – it’s making dumb mistakes, being out of position, playing beneath your talent. Campbell let it be known that mediocrity wouldn’t be tolerated, and that the team was in for a brutal week. He reportedly delivered one.
But anger alone never shapes a team. It has to be tempered with belief, and Campbell is a master of belief. When he went for that first fourth down in the second quarter, it was his entire coaching philosophy shrunk to a moment.
“You got to push your chips all the way in, and you got to believe in it,” he said. “And we did.”
He’s not talking about a couple of players. It was the whole team. Starting in that second quarter, the Lions scored on seven straight drives, with six touchdowns.
Sam LaPorta was the emotional catalyst, catching all five passes thrown to him, including a beautiful 38-yard touchdown that saw him more wide open than a Texas prairie.
Jahmyr Gibbs was the statistical giant, with 151 yards rushing and another 56 receiving, plus two more touchdowns that saw him break Barry Sanders' NFL record for the most TDs by a player by age 25. As long as Gibbs stays healthy, there will be many more records to fall.
And Goff? Well, as Campbell said, “Goff just is Goff.”
The quarterback continued his season-long streak of no turnovers, while shaking off several sacks to guide the Lions with 271 passing yards, three touchdown tosses, one touchdown leap and an unflappable leadership that, if it’s possible in a football-crazy town like Detroit, actually is underappreciated.
“He's just gotten better every year,” Campbell said, “and here we are five [games] in, and he’s even better than last year.”
Desert bloom.
These Lions stomp when they should
Still, if there is a major shift in attitude around Lions Nation this week, it’s because of how the defense played. Coming into the game, the buzz was that the secondary couldn’t stop anything, the linebackers were underperforming and the front got pressure but just missed when it most counted.
Kelvin Sheppard, the Lions' defensive coordinator, was virtually a dead man walking, if you listened to the pundits: Lose to the Cardinals, and the bye week is bye-bye week for Shep.
Well, I imagine he’s not going anywhere soon. The Lions didn’t stop everything Sunday, but the stopped what they needed to, forcing five straight three-and-outs, sacking Jacoby Brissett five times and intercepting him once.
It also did a serviceable job on Trey McBride, arguably the best tight end in football. Although McBride caught nine passes – including one ridiculous jugging touchdown in garbage time – he only had 66 yards, because the Lions defenders got him to the ground quickly.
Overall, the D surrendered just 21 points, 10 less than it had been averaging. The secondary, minus a few slips, looked tight and aggressive and, with everyone’s favorite new adjective, sticky.
Now, I can hear the critics yelling through my computer screen. “What does it prove? It’s the Cardinals! They stink!”
That may be true. But the Lions have played other middling teams this season and needed every trick just to eke out wins. That included getting embarrassed last week by the Carolina Panthers, who are not exactly Super Bowl-bound.
So give them credit. They scored 45 points. They won by 24. They needed to show there was a difference between them and teams like the Cardinals. And they did. They stomped where they should have stomped. They dominated the stats.
“It's not good enough, it's not,” Campbell admitted. “You know, we're going to have to be a hell of a lot better when we play Green Bay coming out of the bye.
“But that was a step in the right direction. It got us to win No. 3.”
In dominant fashion, which was the medicine this team needed. Do I think the win puts the Lions on some championship course? Not hardly. But they needed to remember what they are capable of, and Sunday accomplished that.
After all, sometimes when you’re lost, the most important thing to find is yourself.
Desert bloom.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates on his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow @mitchalbom on x.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mitch Albom: Lions find belief – and their defense – in the desert
