Lions playoff post-mortem: 5 turning points that doomed 2018
Week 4: Ezekiel Elliott‘s catch to set up game winning kick for Dallas
Coming off of the dominating performance against New England (one that looks more and more out of place as the weeks go by), the next game at Jerry World gave us the closest thing to a vintage Stafford comeback that we’ve seen this year.
Trailing 20-10 in the 4th quarter, the offense put together two touchdown drives, taking a 24-23 lead with a 40 yard touchdown pass to Golden Tate. Unfortunately, an over-the-shoulder grab by Elliott in the final minutes put the Cowboys in position to ruin the Stafford magic and run out the clock for a game winning chip shot as time expired.
Doom Level: 6
The Lions went on to win their next two games after this to briefly get back to .500, so this last second loss must not have been too much of a shot to team morale.
Even so, in a season where Matthew Stafford just never seemed to find a true rhythm, what sort of jolt could the offense have had if the 24-23 result had held up. Also, does Golden Tate still get traded if the team is 4-3 and gathering momentum in the NFC North division race at that time?
Speaking of which…
Week 8: The Golden Tate trade
The day before Halloween, I got a text from my brother early in the afternoon that read: You’re not going to like what they just did.
If there’s something to be done that I’m not going to like, I can usually count on it being done by the Lions, so it wasn’t hard to guess who he meant by “they”. In shipping away Showtime right before the trade deadline, Bob Quinn essentially folded for this year and cashed his chips for 2019.
Doom Level: 9.5
It wasn’t so much the trade itself that I hated. I’ll admit it, strictly from a front office standpoint, it probably wasn’t a terrible move. The thing that I hated was the implicit message behind trading away your most reliable receiver right before division play kicks into gear.
The move basically told fans they’re not winning anything this year. They weren’t going to win anything with Tate on the roster, and they’re certainly not going to win anything without him. Might as well start playing the future mid-round draft pick game while they still can.
Maybe that extra 3rd round pick in the next draft will make a key 4th quarter play to seal the 2023 NFC Championship game for the Lions, but if you’re looking for one specific moment where the 2018 season slipped away for good, the Golden Tate trade is it.
Oh, and I also don’t see why they couldn’t have held onto Eric Ebron for one more year and done the same thing if he hadn’t became Bizarro Touchdown Machine Ebron yet by midseason.