Jared Goff has been there. He’s seen a team go from bad to good in a hurry. So even as the Lions lost six of their first seven, even as Dan Campbell’s record dipped to an unsightly 4-19-1 over his first 24 games as Detroit’s coach, and even as the defense struggled to get its footing and the offense went up and down, Goff could scroll back in his mental Rolodex to find optimism.
The quarterback has been on good teams. The Lions, even at 1–6, were close to being one.
That idea, of course, might have been a tougher sell on some players—mostly those who’d been in Detroit long enough to get that Here we go again feeling—than others. But even so, it persisted with all the guys who were punching the clock for Campbell. And eventually, that belief would actually amount to something, even if no one outside could see that coming.
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“You never know how long the bad times are going to last, I guess,” Goff said shortly after getting home early Sunday evening. “The work we were putting in and the players we have and the coaches we have, we always believed in it. It was just a matter of time. In some ways, we were like, When is it going to pop?
“A lot of it is trust and belief, no doubt.”
On Sunday, against a 10–2 Vikings team, it looked like a lot more than just that. It looked like a group that ran the ball efficiently, with 134 yards on the afternoon, and kept it rolling when the opposing defense knew it was coming. It looked like a team capable of big, explosive plays for scores on offense, the same as it was grinding its way down the field more methodically. It looked like a resourceful defense, somehow capable of mitigating damage even as Kirk Cousins threw for 425 yards.
It looked like the Lions were what they thought they were back in October, when it looked to all of us like the wheels were coming off. It looked to them like a group about to hit the gas. That, quite simply, is a good team.
“It’s an unshakable group of players and coaches,” Campbell says via text. “They never wavered—none of them!”
So they knew it all along. With a fifth win in six games, this one 34–23 over a Vikings team looking to clinch the NFC North on Sunday, now the rest of us know, too.
We’re in the home stretch now, with 14 Sundays down and four to go. In this week’s MMQB column we’ve got …
• The rollicking Eagles, the resourceful Cowboys and the resilient Panthers in Three Deep.
• Brock Purdy and the Niners, Baker Mayfield and the Rams, and a whole lot more in Ten Takeaways.
• Caleb Williams, some draft risers and a coach who could be returning from college in Six from Saturday.
But we’re starting at Ford Field, where the belief Goff and Campbell have been evangelizing is coming to life.
So why did the Lions’ players keep believing, in a place that should, at least on paper, inspire no such belief? As Goff sees it, it was as easy as just taking a look around.
“I can speak offensively, just the O-line we have, the receivers we have and the running backs we have are as good as I've been around,” Goff says. “And I've been on some good offenses. And those guys together, it’s like, O.K., it’s going to come. Like, We have the pieces, we have the players, we believe in [coordinator] Ben [Johnson]. He’s calling good things during training camp and early on in the season, and it was even when we were struggling.
“That belief was never lost, ever.”
On defense, the road was rockier. There were no-shows against the Eagles and Seahawks and Dolphins, plus the firing of pass-game coordinator Aubrey Pleasant, but the premise was no different. The Lions believed in a core blending veteran guys with emerging young pieces like Aidan Hutchinson, Alim McNeill and Kerby Joseph.
And in the game that served as the season’s turning point for Detroit, a 15–9 home win over Green Bay, that beleaguered group shut the Packers out in the first half and got a red-zone stop in the final minute to put their division rival away.
Paul Sancya/AP
That, as Goff would see it, is where the belief the Lions could do it morphed into a week-to-week belief that they would do it.
“We were losing these close games against really good teams and we were playing good football,” Goff says. “We really were [in] a lot of those games that we lost early on. I mean, there's a world and a scenario where we could have a plus record right now if we finished off some of those games early on. But that was kind of the learning curve that we had to go through. And I was just saying to the guys, winning isn’t, like, some magic potion. It’s not something someone’s going to say in a team meeting. It’s really just emphasizing doing your job every single play, one play at a time and maybe be a little bit more focused in the fourth quarter to do your job. But we don’t need somebody to be Superman. We don’t need anybody to come out of nowhere and be a player that they aren’t. Just be who you are, do your job and things will fall where they may.
“For the last six weeks, we’ve done a pretty good job of that.”
Against the Bears in Week 10, it was a 91-yard touchdown drive to go ahead in the fourth quarter, and a fourth-down sack by Julian Okwara to seal it. Against the Giants in Week 11, it was a forced fumble from Will Harris in the fourth quarter to set up the drive to seal it. And against the Jaguars last week, it was capitalizing on an early takeaway and the offense coming out of the gate roaring.
Across the board, it was clear to those inside the locker room that the Lions had what they needed to win. What they’ve gotten down of late is how they need to win. And now that they know it, the vets don’t think there will be any turning back.
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On Sunday, against Cousins and Justin Jefferson and a talented Vikings roster, it became about the same sorts of plays, the kind that Minnesota made in surmounting a 24–14 deficit in the fourth quarter of the teams’ first meeting way back in September. Among them …
• A 41-yard bomb from Goff to Jameson Williams to open the scoring in the first quarter, which was set up by Jeff Okudah and Malcolm Rodriguez stoning Dalvin Cook on fourth-and-1 two plays earlier. Williams, for his part, couldn’t have been much more open than he was for his first NFL catch, which made Goff’s job pretty easy.
“Yeah, to be honest with you, they busted a coverage, and he was No. 1 in the progression and was wide open,” Goff says. “But with that being said, he still ran a good route and was fast enough to get past everybody. And he could be a total game-changer for us as we go on. But yeah, it was fun to get him that catch. I don't think I’ve been a part of a first-catch-touchdown type of situation like that.”
• A 48-yard touchdown connection between Goff and DJ Chark, on the first play after a 35-yard punt return from Kalif Raymond, to give the Lions a 14–7 lead that they would carry into halftime.
“That’s just a go ball,” Goff says. “And he made a great catch. … Real simple, got a good matchup, DJ on a corner, that we liked, that we wanted to take advantage of.”
• A fake punt after the Lions appeared to go three-and-out on their first possession of the second half, with up man C.J. Moore taking the direct snap 42 yards, from the Detroit 26 to the Minnesota 32 (a taunting penalty set the offense back to the Vikings’ 47).
“You have to pick your moments, pick your times and I think that Dan’s grown into that as we’ve gone along, knowing when that time is,” Goff says. “I think you took that as his belief in us and his belief in the coaching staff, specifically the special teams coaching and how great they are.”
That belief was paid off, with the Lions’ quickly covering the remaining 47 yards and taking a 21–7 lead late in the third quarter.
• Justin Jackson’s 15-yard touchdown run early in the fourth quarter, on which he cut back against the grain to make something happen and turned a second-and-10 into a 15-point lead for the hosts with 13:28 left.
“Just an inside-zone run and he made a nice cutback and finished on the pylon pretty well,” Goff says.
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• Which brings us to, perhaps, the most fun call of them all. It was third-and-7 with two minutes left, and the Vikings had cut the lead to eight, at 31–23. The ball was on the Vikings’ 41, which meant the play failing would mean Minnesota getting another shot to drive the field and tie the game. So, naturally, Campbell and Johnson looked to … offensive tackle Penei Sewell.
“Ben came up with it this week,” Goff says. “Really, he came up with it on Friday. It was going to be a touchdown throw to [Sewell] in the red zone. But in that situation in that game, they were going to play a similar defense that you’d see in the red zone, maybe bringing pressure, maybe low safeties. So that little package of plays there was kind of reserved for that, and it came up in a better situation for it to seal the game for us.
“We called that play and kind of knew it was coming based on where we were, and who was in the game. Penei was fired up about it, and yeah, it was a great catch.”
Sewell did have to adjust to it in the air, flipping his hips and getting underneath it for a nine-yard gain that put the Lions back in field goal range. That play effectively ended the game—and represented another play that maybe the Lions wouldn’t have made a couple of months ago.
It’s easy for Goff to say I told you so now that Detroit is inching back into the NFC playoff picture—and he’d be justified in saying that, since he did, in fact, tell people so.
But Goff wasn’t the only one spreading the word in the Lions’ locker room a month and a half ago, in an effort to keep everyone on track and on task. It was also Sewell and Jamaal Williams and Taylor Decker on offense, and guys like Isaiah Buggs and Alex Anzalone on defense, who told their teammates that if they kept chipping away, the dam would soon break. Then, it actually happened.
“Something in our mentality, something in our building, our locker room kind of flipped [after] the Packers game,” Goff says. “It was like, O.K., that’s how you win the game. And then we did it again, and then we did it again. And it builds and it snowballs. And the feeling in our locker room is so fun right now, because these guys have had so many hard times and it was so difficult early on, and now there’s this feeling of, We can beat anybody and we can play with anybody.
“It’s going to be a four-quarter game, but somebody's going to make a play and we believe in each other.”
The rest of the Lions’ schedule—they play at the Jets and Panthers the next two weeks, then close out their home schedule against the Bears and their season at Lambeau against the Packers—is at least manageable. And as it is, Detroit is just a game and a half out of the final wild-card spot in the NFC. Maybe this is the start of a playoff run. Maybe it’s the start of something the Lions wind up doing in 2023.
Paul Sancya/AP
Either way, Goff is smack in the middle of it, less than two years after the Rams traded him, which, you’d guess, would be pretty personally satisfying, too, given all he’s gone through.
“The best way to answer that, it’s so much more personally satisfying to be doing it with the group of guys that we’re doing it with,” Goff says. “That’s regardless of what I’ve been through in the past. Like sure, yeah, it’s great. We’re playing well, and I’m doing some good things.
“But being able to do it with the same group that was here last year, Dan, a lot of the same coaches, a lot of the same players that have been here the last couple of years, and to be able to see them, see the switch flip and then be a part of that as the quarterback, that’s the most satisfying thing by far.”
More than anything, it’s that Goff has gotten to see the Lions become a good team again. The kind he always knew they could be.
