If you just looked at the statistics from Sunday's game between the Detroit Lions and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, here's some of what you'd see.
Total offensive yards: Lions-463, Bucccaneers-216
Yards per rush: Lions-5.1, Buccaneers-3.0
Total Offensive Plays: Lions-83, Buccaneers-47
Sacks: Lions-5, Buccaneers-0
Of course we know the Buccaneers won 20-16, aided by a disjointed, inexplicably unbalanced Lions' offense that went 1-for-7 in red zone. Dan Campbell took full ownership of a mistake at the end of the first half that essentially took a field goal off the board. That would have changed how the end of the game looked, with the Lions not needing a touchdown to win like they did.
Kevin Patra of NFL.com had this historical anecdote from the game.
"The Buccaneers became the second team since the 1970 merger to win a game despite being outgained by 200-plus total yards (463-216) and having a sack differential of minus five or worse (other: Houston Oilers in Week 8, 1987, at Cincinnati Bengals)."
Note from Buccaneers' insider perfectly sums up Lions' Week 2 loss
That historical nugget is enough to show how rough the Lions' loss to Tampa Bay was. But Greg Auman of FOX Sports, who has covered the Buccaneers for over a decade, had this to put more salt in that wound.
Fourth quarter of Bucs-Lions was a siege.
— Greg Auman (@gregauman) September 16, 2024
Detroit ran 28 offensive plays in the quarter, 23 in Bucs territory, and didn't score a point.
Young guys all over the field for Tampa Bay -- Christian Izien had six tackles in fourth quarter, Tykee Smith five, SirVocea Dennis three.
No only did the Lions run 28 offensive plays in the fourth quarter, 23 of them were in Buccaneers' territory and yet they did not score a single point. A look at the play-by-play log shows the Lions' failures in the red zone in the final quarter, with a penalty negating one play to take them outside the red zone, an interception on the play after that and seven net offensive yards on four red zone plays on their second to last drive of the game.
Before the final kneel down, the Buccaneers ran 11 offensive plays, punted three times, netted 27 offensive yards and had the ball for 5:38 in the fourth quarter.
It's hard to briefly sum up why the Lions lost on Sunday. But the statistical imbalance that existed all game came to a head in the fourth quarter, as reflected by Auman's note about the sheer number of offensive plays the Lions had without scoring.