Jared Goff went for broke.
It was fourth down, about 10 yards to go, near the 15. The Detroit Lions were running a situational drill in practice Sunday, Aug. 16. Goff reared back and lofted a fade to the end zone. The target was Isaac TeSlaa, the second-year receiver who was just three days removed from a dreadful performance in the team’s preseason opener.
As the ball began its descent, TeSlaa soared above Ennis Rakestraw Jr. and snatched it out of the air before tumbling to the turf. He then got up and slammed the football, unleashing a thunderous spike to celebrate the touchdown. It was the exclamation point to a spectacular play. But it could have easily been interpreted as a release of pent-up frustration that had been building within TeSlaa over
the course of his underwhelming training camp
TeSlaa insisted it was not.
“No, it’s just kind of tradition,” he said. “If we score, we spike it.”
Even so, the customary celebration seemed cathartic for TeSlaa.
At the very least, it was satisfying.
“It feels great,” he said.
Up until that point, TeSlaa hadn't done much. He seemed stuck in a vexing rut. Earlier in practice, he was held in check during individual drills. Rock Ya-Sin slapped the ball out of his hand on a high-arcing throw toward the sideline. Khalil Dorsey then locked TeSlaa up on a short route, forcing an incompletion.
Those unsatisfactory repetitions came in theshadow of his lousy cameo in the Lions’ loss to Cincinnati last week. On the fifth play from scrimmage, a well-placed throw from Luke Altmyer zipped through TeSlaa's hands, caromed off his helmet and was plucked out of the air by Bengals safety Jordan Battle for an interception. Not long thereafter, with Detroit facing fourth-and-3 on its third possession, he dropped a slant pass and the Lions turned the ball over on downs at Cincinnati’s 29-yard line.
TeSlaa’s two blunders, which occurred in a span of 12 snaps, caused consternation. Some wondered if TeSlaa had slipped into a sophomore slump. Lions coach Dan Campbell tried to defuse those concerns right after the game.
“All it takes is a couple of wins,” Campbell said. “Just a couple of wins at critical times against some guys in practice and then in a game to all of a sudden – boom – skyrockets. It goes back up. So sometimes with a young player, it’s a little bit of that pendulum swing, so he’ll be fine. He’s going to be just fine.”
TeSlaa had earned trust with Campbell over the course of his rookie year. Although he made only 16 catches in 2025, six of them resulted in touchdowns and a couple others caused eyes to pop. Heading into this offseason, Campbell was prepared to expand TeSlaa’s role.
The young receiver, in turn, was determined to maximize it and prove he deserved to have more passes thrown his way. He worked on his short-area quickness and route running so he would be better equipped to get open, which was seen as his greatest weakness. But as training camp progressed, TeSlaa still struggled to separate from the defenders guarding him. More troubling yet was that TeSlaa’s sure hands were now occasionally betraying him. The contested passes that he regularly hauled in last year were suddenly falling incomplete. Campbell suggested that TeSlaa, in his effort to develop certain aspects of his game, had fallen out of rhythm in the same way that a golfer does when he tinkers with his swing.
Earlier this month, TeSlaa acknowledged that it had taken him “a little bit of time to find that groove.”
While he wasn’t worried, he felt a sense of urgency to perform better.
“I think the expectations for me have heightened that much, where I need to be on my game every single day,” TeSlaa said Sunday.
But against Cincinnati, he wasn’t.
Disappointing as it may have been, it wasn’t discouraging, TeSlaa claimed.
“You’ve got to flush it right away,” he said. “The big thing for me is I can catch the football. There’s no doubt about that … I think the biggest things for me is winning on the releases and running good routes and making sure I’m open. I feel like I did that well. So, it’s just a matter of finishing the play, which has never been a problem for me in my football career.”
In case anybody forgot that, TeSlaa offered a reminder Sunday, when Goff gave him a shot at redemption toward the end of practice.
“He’s been waiting for me to win on a release like that,” TeSlaa said. “So, just the fact that I was able to do that, stack the guy and he threw a perfect ball where I can go up and get it, things just shook out greatly. It was nice to score on fourth down like that.”
TeSlaa let everyone know how good it was when he spiked the ball with some extra oomph as if to signal he was back.
Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him @RainerSabin on X.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Lions WR Isaac TeSlaa earned some redemption after preseason flop
