Patience is a virtue few coaches can afford in the NFL, and Dan Campbell ran out of patience against the Buffalo Bills. Watching his squad get torched for nearly 30 points before halftime was even over, the usually fiery Lions head coach let his frustration boil over on the sideline, dropping an expletive that cameras couldn’t miss
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“Well, we got to quit making some of these costly errors right now. We’ve had five possessions on both sides of the ball; we let them score on four of them, which we knew is going to be a tall task, and offensively we have not handled what we need to be doing right now,” Dan Campbell said, via NFL on ESPN. “So we scored on two of them; one of them’s a field goal right there, we just got to stay on the field, and we got to score points, cut out the penalties because they’re killing us right now. The little is killing us.”
Dan Campbell’s sideline outburst pretty much summed up how ugly this Week 2 primetime game got for Detroit, and honestly, both sides of the ball were struggling equally.
Start with the offense. Detroit racked up seven penalties for 36 yards in the first half alone, and the timing couldn’t have been worse. A false start turned a manageable third-and-1 into third-and-6 late in the second quarter, and Bradley Chubb made them pay immediately with a 13-yard sack on the very next snap.
Earlier in the first half, a promising second-and-1 from Buffalo’s 41-yard line unraveled completely, first from a Greg Rousseau sack, then a high snap that Goff had to fall on for an 11-yard loss, leaving Detroit facing fourth-and-22 from their own 30-yard line.
But if we’re being honest, Buffalo’s offense was the real story. The Bills scored touchdowns on all four of their first possessions and finished the half with 299 total yards. Josh Allen carved up Detroit’s secondary and scored three touchdowns, while James Cook ran wild for over 100 yards on the ground.
Detroit’s defense didn’t do itself any favors either, with a holding penalty erasing an interception in the red zone.
The lone bright spot came when Goff hit Jahmyr Gibbs for an 11-yard score, a drive Gibbs single-handedly carried.
Right now, this looks like a team searching for answers on both sides of the ball, and time is running short to find them.