Man, that sucked. Facing the pressure of being the #1 seed, the Detroit Lions couldn’t get the job done and fell to the Commanders and Jayden Daniels, ending their season. As a witness to that disaster, I want to dive into what went right and what went wrong as the Lions’ season ended.
Before we look at the bad, I want to take a moment to focus on the good. For the most part, the offense did their job, scoring 31 points and punting only once. Jahmyr Gibbs was fantastic, scoring two touchdowns and putting up over 150 total yards. He’s cemented himself as a top-5 back in the past few weeks and will look to build off of that in the next season. It’s difficult to place any blame on him for the game played. The other player who I think is devoid of blame is Sam LaPorta. LaPorta made some big catches early on to pick up first downs and made a clutch one-handed grab for a touchdown in the second quarter to give Detroit the lead. I didn’t see any issues with either of these two, and it at least left me with some optimism going forward on the talent of the team.
There was a lot of bad in the game. I panicked early on when I saw the defense come out in zone coverage on their first few plays of the game, something that I’ve legitimately never seen work for Aaron Glenn’s group. In defense of Glenn, it’s easy to assume his entire game plan went out the window when starting corner Amik Robertson went down with a broken arm on Washington’s first series. Even so, watching the team come out in zone coverage early was cause for concern, and they consistently stayed in that defense for the entire game. I don’t blame Glenn too much for what happened, Robertson being hurt greatly affected the team, but 45 points isn’t exactly a positive.
The other coordinator is also not safe from blame. Obviously 31 points would normally be enough to win a game, but the circumstances were clearly a little different knowing that the offense would be under intense pressure to keep pace. There were two key mistakes in play calls that Ben Johnson made that turned out to be costly during the game. One came in the first quarter on 3rd and 1 with Detroit up 7-3. Instead of feeding Jahmyr Gibbs, who was already off to an amazing start in the game, they came out with an empty backfield. The intended target on the play, Amon-Ra St. Brown, slipped and fell down, leaving Jared Goff to hold tight in the pocket until he was strip-sacked, giving Washington the ball to start a drive in which they would go down and score. Then, down 10 with 10 minutes left, Johnson called a trick play to have receiver Jameson Williams throw the ball downfield and his throw was intercepted. Now, obviously, Williams receives partial blame for forcing the ball into coverage, but given his lack of experience and the amount of pressure on him, it’s not hard to understand why he did it. The upsetting thing is Johnson called a trick play down 10 with the season on the line. Besides these two snapshot issues, the offense had a much bigger issue throughout the game. Jahmyr Gibbs averaged six yards per carry throughout the game and was given the ball just 14 times. If Detroit had run the ball 20-25 times, the game would have looked much better.
Jared Goff struggled as well, throwing three interceptions, two of them hurting drives that had promise. His first pick was crushing; a pick-six immediately after Washington went down and scored to go up 17-14. The score put the Commanders up by 10 as the game neared halftime and the Lions would never get the lead back.
This isn’t the end of the world. The Super Bowl Window in Detroit isn’t closed. All of the young talent Detroit has is still locked up for the foreseeable future. This loss, however, was backbreaking. After all the injuries and adversity the team had overcome to keep winning and improve to 15-2 doesn’t seem worth it now. The Lions will be back with an even better and even more talented roster, but for now, the Pride will be left to wonder about what could’ve been in the 2025 playoffs.