Everyone knows by now that the Detroit Lions will go for it on fourth down at just about any spot on the field, at any time in the game, from any distance away from the first-down marker. It’s head coach Dan Campbell’s way, and he’s obviously fine living with the results.
Some nights, like Sunday night at the Philadelphia Eagles, that hyper-aggressive approach looks needlessly reckless.
The Eagles got a big 16-9 win to improve to 8-2. The Lions fell to 6-4 and their chances of getting the No. 1 seed in the NFC for a second straight season suffered a serious blow. The Lions won’t regret going for it over and over on fourth down. That’s what they do and it’s not changing. But they might regret not executing better on those downs.
The Eagles and Lions were pretty evenly matched on downs one through three on Sunday, and Philadelphia flipped the game on fourth downs. In a six-possession stretch on Sunday night (not counting a kneeldown at the end of the first half), the Lions turned it over on downs five times. One was a failed fake punt, which didn’t fool the Eagles because nobody will be fooled by the Lions’ tricks at this point. The Lions are predictable in their unpredictability.
In a loss on Sunday night, the Lions’ failures on fourth down were their undoing. They went 0 for 5 on fourth down.
Another low-scoring Eagles game
The Eagles played a Monday night game against the Packers that was low on scoring and action six days ago. Sunday night against the Lions looked the same.
The wind affected both offenses. Jalen Hurts in particular had trouble, completing just three of his first 12 attempts. Cooper DeJean had an interception for Philadelphia off a deflected Jared Goff pass, and DeJean returned it to the Lions’ 11-yard line. The Eagles gained only 2 yards on that drive and kicked a field goal.
That was how most of the night went for the Eagles’ offense. Even their tush push was stuffed three times, including once on a fourth down late in the game. But Philadelphia’s defense was stellar. The story with the Eagles heading into Week 11’s action was the offensive struggles, and particularly A.J. Brown’s griping about them. At some point, maybe the conversation will shift to the Eagles’ defense returning to what it was during its Super Bowl run last season.
Philadelphia held a very good Detroit offense to one touchdown, which came from Jameson Williams in the first half.
When the Eagles had to make plays on fourth down against the Lions’ offense, they did. Last week the Eagles also looked very good on defense, holding the Packers to a single touchdown in a 10-7 win. That’s two straight quality wins in which Philly’s defense, which had been good but far from its championship form this season, controlled the entire game.
The complaining about the offense gets more attention, but the strides the defense is making is probably more noteworthy to the Eagles’ quest for a second straight Super Bowl championship.
Eagles increase their lead
The Eagles started to slowly pull away, mostly because the Lions kept turning it over on downs.
To start the second half, the Lions’ first three possessions ended at the Eagles’ 32-yard line, 3-yard line and 45-yard line. All three ended on Goff incompletions on fourth down.
The Eagles weren’t taking full advantage of the Lions’ fourth-down issues. The offense was sputtering yet again. But a Jake Elliott field goal in the fourth quarter increased Philadelphia’s lead to 16-6. The defense was playing well enough that it seemed like that lead was fairly safe, even against a Lions offense with many big-play threats.
Philadelphia could have put the game away but suddenly the tush push wasn’t working. It tried it on third-and-1 from its 29 and got nothing, then instead of punting it with about three minutes left the Eagles tried another tush push on fourth down and were stuffed again. That’s a rarity, and it gave the Lions some life.
The Eagles’ defense kept the Lions out of the end zone though. A sack of Goff pushed the Lions back and they settled for a field-goal attempt at the two-minute warning, which Jake Bates made to get Detroit within one score. But on the Eagles’ next drive the Lions picked up a pass interference penalty that didn’t look like a penalty at all, and Philadelphia ran out the clock after that.
The Eagles are far from a complete product, but they keep winning games. That’s not the case for the Lions, who already have four losses after losing twice all last regular season. The Lions can’t blame the fourth-down failures on the loss. But it would have helped to pick up a few of them.
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Ryan Young