After the latest loss from Dan Campbell and his Detroit Lions, it’s a struggle to figure out exactly where to point the fingers of blame. There are many deserving targets, to be sure. But in this one, a 13-10 loss to the Cleveland Browns, the biggest culprit in the immediate aftermath of the game was the passing offense, both the design and the execution.
The word that kept coming to mind was “dreadful”. Be it quarterback Tim Boyle’s passing touch, the insistence on throwing short of the needed yardage on third downs or the choices of when to kick and when to stay on the attack, it was all the same word.
Dreadful.
On a day where D’Andre Swift churned out 136 rushing yards on just 14 carries, the Lions offense should have done more. Note the number 14 there. That’s not nearly enough carries for Swift on an afternoon where Boyle, making his first career start, was not up to snuff.
Boyle was not good, to be blunt. He completed 15 of his 23 passes but netted just 77 yards in the air. He was not sacked once and the line performed admirably, especially given the team was forced to play undrafted rookies Ryan McCollum at center and Tommy Kraemer at right guard for most of the second half due to injuries.
Boyle’s first interception came in the red zone on a miscommunication with Swift on an option route. That cannot be an unexpected outcome when asking a quarterback who wasn’t activated off injured reserve until Friday afternoon into making a critical decision under stress in his first real NFL game action. Maybe, just maybe, having only one route option there would be more prudent.
Dreadful.
Campbell took over more control of the play-calling during the bye week. After two weeks, the results have been very good in the running game but dreadful in the passing attack. The decision to go more smashmouth with the run has been fantastic, but it is not helping the passing game. Both Boyle and Goff have been astonishingly inept at quarterback in their own rights, but they’re not aided by the play decisions and the dreadfully conservative overall passing game philosophy.
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Cach Campbell deserves scrutiny for his choices in a couple of critical situations. The first was electing to kick a field goal on 4th-and-1 from the Browns 25-yard line with just over nine minutes to play and his Lions trailing 13-7. At that point, the offense had produced one drive that gained more than one first down without the aid of a Browns defensive penalty. This was the best chance to try and score the go-ahead touchdown.
Kicking the field goal made sense from an analytical standpoint, but it ignores the game context. The Lions trotted out kicker Aldrick Rosas for his first attempt in a Detroit uniform. He was 1-for-4 with the Saints before New Orleans dumped him earlier this year, and the weather and field conditions in Cleveland were not great. Give Rosas credit for delivering a dead-solid perfect kick in those circumstances, but Campbell probably should have gone for the throat.
Then again, that would require trusting Boyle to convert the play. The previous short-yardage run attempt, a foolish dive play to FB Jason Cabinda, failed miserably. The decision to take the (potential) points there is understandable.
On the Lions final drive, Campbell also decided that kicking was the better option. After a Swift 5-yard run on 3rd-and-14, it’s again understandable to not trust the Lions offense to keep the ball rolling forward. But with under three minutes to play and the NFL’s best running back in Nick Chubb on the other side, punting the ball away was a de facto white flag.
That’s not playing to win. Sure, converting 4th-and-9 was wildly unlikely, but maybe the Browns would commit a costly penalty. Maybe Swift breaks a tackle and makes something happen. Maybe Boyle throws the ball beyond the sticks and Amon-Ra St. Brown or T.J. Hockenson deliver. We’ll never know, because Campbell punted the opportunity away.
Dreadful.
