The Detroit Lions had another outstanding performance on offense Monday night, torching the Baltimore Ravens for 426 yards of offense and 6.5 yards per play in a huge 38-30 road win in primetime.
And offensive coordinator John Morton played no small part in that. Whether it was Amon-Ra St. Brown’s pitch to Jahmyr Gibbs for the go-ahead score on 4th and goal in the fourth quarter, a perfectly drawn up play-action shot to St. Brown on another 4th down to effectively ice the game or Detroit’s seven third down conversions, Morton couldn’t miss.
“I thought he did a great job,” quarterback Jared Goff said after the game. “I thought his rhythm was great. I thought his third downs were probably the best part of everything and everything was great, but the third downs, he was all over it, he really was. We were getting guys open and protecting well and I thought he did a great job.”
Morton proving doubters wrong with Week 3 masterclass
The outburst came just over a week after the Lions dropped 52 points on the Chicago Bears’ heads for their first win of 2025. Detroit’s offense has been rolling these last two games and the team is being hailed as a Super Bowl contender once again.
It’s a far cry from the narrative that emerged after Detroit’s 27-13 Week 1 loss to Green Bay, whereafter the Lions’ past offensive production was deemed a product of former coordinator Ben Johnson. Morton was deemed the wrong hire by at least one former sportswriter.
The Lions didn’t score a touchdown until garbage time. They couldn’t run the ball. Random, extrapolated stills from the game were making rounds on social media as supposed proof that Morton couldn’t design an offense that worked.
And while all of the handwringing from outside the building continued, Morton chalked up Detroit’s Week 1 struggles to communication errors that were “being fixed”.
There’s still a lot of season left to go, but it sure looks like he’s made some serious progress on that.
Morton’s playcalling in Week 2 was lauded across the league and his effort to set up a 44-yard walk-in touchdown to Jameson Williams was hailed by the Athletic as some of the best playcalling work so far this year.
And after another statement win on Monday Night, Morton is looking more and more like he’s gonna have Detroit’s offense running along just fine.
The Lions have scored any way you could want so far this year. They sustained two grueling, physical 95+ yard touchdown drives against Baltimore, the first of which melted nearly 11 minutes of clock. They burned Chicago through the air, with the aforementioned Williams touchdown and three more from St. Brown as Goff threw for over 300 yards.
READ MORE: Jahmyr Gibbs revealed shocking truth about Lions' trick play on MNF
You never want to jump to conclusions after Week 3, but a lot of the growth that Morton and head coach Dan Campbell promised was on the way after the Green Bay game appears to be materializing before our eyes.
Detroit’s two young offensive guards, Christian Mahogany and Tate Ratledge, both struggled in the season opener, but the pair looked much more comfortable and natural against Baltimore. They were a big reason why the Lions were able to rack up 224 rushing yards on Monday, and subsequently burn Baltimore with Goff’s specialty– the play-action.
“They caught a lot of backlash after the first week, and everybody was kind of on them about it,” running back David Montgomery said about Detroit’s offensive line after the game. “And it's really important to keep the horse blinders on when you’re in the midst of the mud. We got the best group up front in the league. So they did exactly what I knew they would do.”
If that kind of performance from the offensive line continues and Morton can depend on the run game, it can open up so much more for this Lions offense– and look a whole lot like the recent ones we’ve seen under a certain Chicago Bears head coach.