Lions QB Jared Goff on his respect for Baker Mayfield’s journey
Jared Goff compared Baker Mayfield’s journey through the NFL to his own, calling his Monday Night Football opponent a good friend.
Homefield advantage didn’t mean much when the playoffs rolled around last year. Ravaged by injuries, the Detroit Lions lost their home opener as the No. 1 seed and fizzled out well short of the Super Bowl.
But a third of the way through the season, the Lions are staring down a chance to chart their playoff course again.
The Lions host the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a “Monday Night Football” matchup on Monday, Oct. 20, in the first of a four-games-in-five-weeks stretch against NFC playoff contenders that will go a long way toward determining whether they get a chance at a postseason do-over at Ford Field.
The Bucs have the NFL’s best record at 5-1 and an MVP-caliber quarterback in Baker Mayfield. After next week’s bye, the Lions host division rival Minnesota Vikings then hit the road for games against the Washington Commanders and Philadelphia Eagles.
All four of the Lions’ next opponents entered Week 7 at .500 or better, and all made the playoffs last year.
Wins over any could give the Lions the tiebreaker edge for playoff seeding.
“It’s one of the first things I thought of going in, it’s like, this will have meaning towards the end of the year,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said. “This will mean something. But at the same time, it’s the next game. And if you make it more than the next game in front of you, you’ve got to be careful with that.
“You’ve still got to be loose enough and confident enough to just cut it loose and don’t worry about a misstep because the fact of the matter is, too, man, it’s a long season. It’s a long season, so let’s worry about playing better than we did last week.”
The Lions (4-2) are coming off a 30-17 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in which they fell victim to their own mistakes.
They settled for a field goal on the opening drive after taking an illegal-motion penalty that nullified a trick-play touchdown. They dropped a fourth-and-2 conversion just before halftime that gave the Chiefs good field position they used to flip momentum with a score. And they twice committed drive-extending penalties that set up Kansas City TDs.
For the Lions, it was an uncharacteristic spurt of sloppy play, after four straight wins, that gave them something to fix this week.
“I think for us, we just want to bounce back,” Lions receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown said. “You lose one, you drop a game in this league, it happens. It happens to the best teams. But we feel like we’ve got a bunch of group of guys that are able to bounce back and we feel as if we didn’t play our best game last Sunday so this is another week to get back on track hopefully, and just do what we do.”
The Lions have not lost back-to-back games since dropping five straight early in the 2022 season, with the last coming in late October 2022.
Of the 10 games after losses they’ve played since, they’ve won all 10, with eight coming by double digits, and have an average margin of victory of 17.8 points.
“Nobody wants to lose. We certainly don’t want to lose,” Campbell said. “But it just, it puts a little extra sense of urgency on you, it puts a little bit of just that bad taste. It just sometimes gives you that extra kick to get things back to where they need to be.”
The Lions, who’ve scored 34 or more points in their four wins this season and have been held to 17 or fewer in their two losses, will face the Bucs missing four of their five starters plus several key backups in the secondary.
Starters Kerby Joseph, D.J. Reed and Terrion Arnold are battling injuries, and safety Brian Branch is suspended.
The Bucs entered the week sixth in scoring and could get a boost from the return of receivers Mike Evans and Emeka Egbuka from hamstring injuries. Mayfield has one interception in 195 pass attempts this season and entered the week fourth in the league in passing yards.
“Baker’s elite,” said Lions defensive tackle Pat O’Connor, a former teammate of Mayfield’s with the Bucs. “He’s a very good quarterback. I know him personally, good friend of mine. He’s always been good, so we just got to go knock him around, see what he’s got in him.”
O’Connor echoed Campbell’s sentiment that tonight’s game could impact homefield advantage in the playoffs come January, but there’s too much football left to worry about that right now.
“That’s a really good team, man,” Campbell said. “You’ve got to be on point when you play really good teams. And that’s what I love about the stretch that’s coming is we’re about to hit a row of them, right? A whole ton of them. And your margin for error’s so small. And that’s what I told the team (this week). That actually fires me up, because you do, you have to be on point. You don’t get the luxury of making a mistake here, a mistake there against these types of teams we’re getting ready to play.
“So, it’s exactly what we need. It’s going to be outstanding competition. And we’ll be better for it, we will, in the long run.”
Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.