FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — It’s all gone.
Any sense of progress for the Detroit Lions has disappeared.
All the smiles and laughs that came from “Hard Knocks” have turned into disgust and disappointment.
And any belief that things will change seem based in nothing but foolish hope.
Yes, we have seen this before.
For more than half a century.
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To say that Lions coach Dan Campbell was outcoached by New England coach Bill Belichick would be an understatement. It’s almost an insult to Belichick to put them in the same sentence.
Belichick was starting a rookie quarterback, a third-stringer two weeks ago making his first NFL start Sunday, and found a way to just dominate the Lions.
The Pats put up a 16-0 halftime lead.
Campbell, meanwhile, came into the game with the NFL’s highest scoring offense. So he decided to ground and pound, putting handcuffs on his offense.
Why? I’m not entirely sure.
Because he was afraid of getting into a shootout against Bailey Zappe?
Because he was afraid of Matt Patricia’s offense?
Good grief.
When will this end?
This shouldn’t be acceptable. This team was outplayed and outcoached.
And as the game ended, Patriots fans were chanting: “Zappe! Zappe!”
This was a new level of embarrassment. A new way found to crush the souls of Lions fans.
It’s almost impossible to list everything that went wrong for the Lions.
Early in the first quarter, Lions defensive back Saivion Smith suffered a neck injury and was taken to a local hospital. It was a heart-wrenching scene, watching his teammates gather around him and then seeing his father (according to Fox’s broadcast) jump into the ambulance.
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Truly frightening.
That was a real-life injury.
Truly heart breaking.
The rest of the pain was all self-inflicted — wounds of the football variety of which Lions fans are so familiar with.
This Lions team is just so confusing.
They don’t have an identity — other than losing.
It’s almost like they don’t know who they are and are trying different formulas every week.
They tried to outscore teams, but that didn’t work.
They tried to keep it on the ground against New England, but that failed spectacularly.
And even the in-game decisions are wild, flip-flopping every week.
Campbell went for a 54-yard field goal on a fourth-and-4 two weeks ago against Minnesota. That didn’t work and he immediately — and publicly — regretted his decision.
So on Sunday, Campbell went for it on a fourth-and-9, passing on a 51-yard field goal.
But Matthew Judon beat Penei Sewell and strip-sacked Jared Goff, leading to a scoop-and-score by Kyle Dugger.
Ugh.
Whatever can go wrong, did go wrong.
Including failing on six straight fourth-down attempts. An NFL record. Of course.
Campbell came into the game promising to make changes on the defense.
And he did that.
But that didn’t work, because so many guys in the secondary got hurt.
You can say Goff had a bad game, and you wouldn’t be wrong.
But it felt like he was messed up by the run-heavy game plan — 13 of the first 18 plays were runs — and never got into a rhythm.
Of his first five attempts, he completed three, threw a pick and took a sack.
Maybe the run-heavy approach was because of injuries to their wide receivers.
But whatever the reason, it didn’t work.
In essence, the Lions tried to shrink the game, limiting possessions, creating a slugfest.
But that only works when you don’t make mistakes.
And then Goff forced a ball to T.J. Hockenson and threw an interception near the goal line, killing a drive.
To be fair, the Lions entered this season in full rebuild mode.
Drafting injuried players.
Wanting to develop young players rather than bring in short-term fixes, especially on defense.
Thinking about the long term.
But at some point, you have to show some progress.
And this disaster in New England was an incredible digression.
A game they should have won.
Or, at least, they should have competed.
They did neither.
Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff. To read his recent columns, go to www.freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel