The Detroit Lions defense was abysmal on Sunday, but head coach Dan Campbell somehow decided to go further and lament the pick-six Jared Goff threw.
In an otherwise good outing for him on Sunday, with an injury-thinned group around him, Lions quarterback Jared Goff openly acknowledged the interception he threw that resulted in a pick-six was a poor decision and throw. In a 48-45 loss to the Seattle Seahawks, that play was the technical difference in the game.
A Seattle offense piloted by Geno Smith never punted on Sunday, as they scored 41 (offensive) points and put up 555 yards of offense. The Lions’ defense is literally on a historically bad pace for points allowed. Even one stop of one of the league’s worst offenses on Sunday would have been nice, and Seahawks’ kicker Jason Myers missed a field goal.
After the game head coach Dan Campbell said everything is on the table to fix the defense. How much things can actually be changed, or changed for the better, is the open question with personnel a core problem alongside some scheme predictability.
Dan Campbell tries to pin blame on Jared Goff’s interception
Goff is easy to criticize, plain and simple, and any throws he misses or mistakes he makes become highlighted points for some. But he has played very well this season, and the offense is not the problem for the Lions right now.
But, via SI.com, Campbell still found a way to lament the pick-six Goff threw.
"But, we’ve got to outscore them. Honestly, there again, is — as messy as some of it was early, offensively we can’t — you can’t be that way when you get in this type of game,” Campbell continued. “The offense is, that’s where this game went. It was high scoring, and so we have to outscore them. If you make a mistake, it can’t be for seven points.”We spotted them seven. So, you take that away, we win this game.”"
The offense, or Goff, did technically “spot” the Seahawks seven points with the pick-six. There’s no getting around that in a three point loss. But the Lions’ defense also “spotted” the Seahawks’ offense 41 points, when they had scored 47 in their first three games combined.
But Campbell went beyond talking about his team’s horrid defense to try to pin some blame for Sunday’s loss on the mistake Goff made.
Campbell’s willingness to say what’s on his mind in an unfiltered way should be appreciated most of the time. But here, before publicly pointing out something the offense did wrong when it scored 45 points, he should have thought twice and kept his mouth shut about it.