I have been following NFL football for nearly two decades. I have never seen what the NFC heavyweight Detroit Lions accomplished on Sunday against the lowly Tennessee Titans.
After Detroit’s 52-14 win was cemented into the scoring books, I’m definitely not alone in that regard.
The Lions scored 52 points and had just 225 yards of offense. That is not a typo. They converted only three third downs on offense, but they somehow scored 50-plus points anyway. That’s because the Lions had nearly 300 combined kick and punt return yards, while punter Jack Fox dominated the field position battle by averaging 60 yards a punt.
Despite doing almost nothing on offense, this was officially the best scoring output for the Lions in decades. Ah, the power of the glorious third phase:
https://twitter.com/LionsPR/status/1850620108890046803
As crazy as this offense-to-point statistic is, it wasn’t even the most unbelievable Detroit outcome of the day. With Jared Goff finishing with less than 100 net passing yards, the Lions officially became the first NFL team to score at least 50 points with almost no passing production since 1955.
Eat your heart out, old-school Chicago Bears:
https://twitter.com/BrettKollmann/status/1850621268707647636
Man. Do you know what the lesson is here? Don’t mess with these Lions.