INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Dan Campbell walked down an elongated hallway — face beet red, hat tilted from rubbing his forehead in search of answers — and into the locker room. Follow him inside and you’ll find a near-empty room. Wristbands covered in fresh pelt from the Sofi Stadium turf were left on the floor. Bloodied wrist tape left unraveled like this team. A hollow, vacant room. Much like the feeling upon the conclusion of yet another opportunity lost.
“Now you have firsthand knowledge of what probably the top of the NFC looks like right now,” Campbell said, pointedly. “That’s them. And so, now you know. You know what it looks like, you know what it is and we’re not there right now. Doesn’t mean we can’t be, but now we know what it looks like.”
So, uh, when will they be?
It’s time to have a frank conversation about this team. The Lions have not won consecutive games since Weeks 4 and 5 — a two-month rollercoaster that has defined the season. They beat a Joe Burrow-less Bengals team, then lost to the first Chiefs team to miss the playoffs since Jim Schwartz was coaching the Lions. The Legion of Whom stopped the bleeding vs. the Bucs, before a post-bye loss to “9” and the Vikings. Campbell took over plays in a 22-point win over the Commanders, only to watch his offense score 9 points in a loss to the Eagles. They needed overtime to beat the Giants, before an unhappy Thanksgiving vs. the Packers.
Even the high of a gotta-have-it win over the Cowboys was quickly erased by a Rams team that proved to be everything these Lions aren’t.
W-L-W-L-W-L-W-L-W-L
“The win, lose, win, lose — we gotta get out of that rut and it can’t be OK,” Campbell said after his team’s 41-34 loss. “It should burn at you. It should eat you up.”
The latest L came at the hands of a Rams team leading the NFC. Check the basic stats, the advanced metrics, hell, your eyes. They’ll all tell you the same thing: This is one the league’s best teams.
Los Angeles plays complementary football, in ways that have escaped the Lions. They’re efficient in the run game. They have two of the league’s best receivers in Puka Nacua (9 receptions for 181 yards on Sunday) and Davante Adams (league-leading 14 touchdowns).
After feasting on a depleted Lions’ secondary, Nacua made sure to leave a little extra room after the game.
“My mom and I do have a dinner reservation, so if we could be quick, Mama Nacua is waiting for me,” Nacua said after the game.
The Rams’ young defensive line has paved the way for a defense that ranked top 10 in sacks (sixth), pressure rate (10th) and points per game allowed (third) entering Week 14. They make you work for everything in the red zone. Nothing comes easy. They’re the antithesis of the city they play in.
Oh yeah, and there’s this guy Matthew Stafford. Still throwing jump balls and side-arm passes, finding the fountain of youth and perhaps an MVP award at age 37. It’s a team built for the postseason.
“You can’t stop us. You can’t stop us,” Kyren Williams said. “You know where the ball is going and you still can’t stop us. For me, it’s so cool being out there on the field with great guys like Puka and Davante and all the tight ends and all the offensive linemen. It’s fourth down and they think that they’ve got us and we get the first down. To me, that feeling is, ‘Ha ha ha. You can’t stop us.’”
The Lions certainly couldn’t Sunday. The Rams averaged 5.5 yards per carry on 29 rushes — totaling 159 yards and three touchdowns. Stafford diced up a Lions’ defense to the tune of 368 passing yards, two TDs and an interception. That’s how you finish with 519 yards of offense and 41 points.
It felt like the Lions needed to be perfect. For a while, they nearly were. They jumped out to a 24-17 halftime lead behind a sharp passing attack. The first three players mentioned by Campbell after the game were Jared Goff, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams. He said they “played their tails off.” Can’t say the same of the rest of this team.
Goff completed 25 of his 41 attempts for 338 yards, three touchdowns and zero interceptions. He was making confident decisions with the football, finding the soft spots and layering the football against a Rams defense that plays the third-most zone coverage in the NFL. St. Brown and Williams combined for 20 receptions, 298 receiving yards and all three of Goff’s scores. But in a game where points were needed, a stagnant third quarter in which the team was outscored 17-0 forced them to play from behind.
Three consecutive three-and-outs will do that.
“I mean, I got beat,” said left guard Trystan Colon, who allowed pressure that affected a potential touchdown to Williams as well as a sack as the Rams took a 27-24 lead — one they’d never surrender. “I’ll take the blame on that one. I got beat two plays back-to-back on a drive where we needed to go down and score and answer back. I take that personal, so it is kind of what it is.”
That’s where the Lions are. They scored 34 points — double what the Rams allowed entering Sunday’s contest as the third-best scoring defense in the league — and were met with a guilty conscience.
It wasn’t good enough. This team might not be good enough.
The Lions have played four games against the Rams, Eagles and Packers — three of the better teams in the NFC. They’re a combined 0-4 against them.
According to The Athletic’s playoff simulator, the Lions currently have a 26 percent chance of making the playoffs. Winning out against a schedule that features the Steelers, Vikings and Bears would improve that number to 94 percent. That’s not new information, and a loss to the Rams was always likely when carving out a path to three wins over these final four weeks. The formula remains unchanged.
But after a game where the Lions couldn’t stop a nose bleed, after a game where the Rams imposed their will, after a game where this team once again looked like it didn’t have what it takes to compete with the NFC’s best, what should we even make of the Lions?
What do the Lions make of the Lions?
“We’re resilient, we really are,” Goff said. “I expect us to bounce back from this, and we still have plenty of stuff in front of us. We do. And we’ve got a great group that can win a championship here and we know that. We just have to stick together and not allow some of the narratives to pull anything apart. Our captains need to step up, our leaders need to step up and be vocal and have energy. … We gotta show that resilience a few more times here.”
They have three weeks to prove it.