One play.
For the better part of two seasons, that’s been Dan Campbell’s mantra, that his Detroit Lions are one play away from turning things around.
Only 24 games into Campbell’s tenure as Lions coach, there have been too many “one plays” to count.
The Lions lost their fifth straight game Sunday, blowing a 10-point halftime lead in a 31-27 loss to the Miami Dolphins at Ford Field.
They dropped a touchdown pass just before halftime and had to settle for a field goal, a four-point swing that would have made a difference in the game. They threw an incomplete pass deep on fourth-and-1 with just under 3 minutes to play. They committed three penalties in a four-snap sequence in the third quarter that grounded their high-flying offense. They couldn’t get off the field eight times on third down.
“As frustrating as it is, I know how close we are because we are still talking about one play,” Campbell said. “And the hard thing is to just keep doing your job and staying in the thick of the storm, and the easy thing is to go down below and get under the blanket and eat all the food and whatever. It’s the guys who are going to stay on the deck and just continue to do their part cause they know the sun’s coming, those are the guys we’re looking for. So that’s how I choose to think of this. The only way to clean up everything is to go back to work.”
SHAWN WINDSOR:This Lions season is sadly familiar — road team has its way with Dan Campbell’s bunch
At 1-6 and with the worst record in the NFL, the Lions have lots of work to do and lots of excrement to clean up.
On Sunday, Tua Tagovailoa shredded their league-worst defense for 382 yards and three touchdowns and the Lions failed to force a punt until the fourth quarter for the second time three games.
Tyreek Hill caught 12 passes for 188 yards, Jaylen Waddle scored two touchdowns and Tagovailoa helped the Dolphins convert 8 of 12 third downs.
Tagovailoa was 9 of 10 passing for 139 yards and two touchdowns on third downs, with his only incompletion coming with less than nine minutes to play after a premature snap.
The Dolphins converted two third-and-13s in the first half and picked up 10 yards on another third-and-13 to set up a fourth down conversion. Tagovailoa threw touchdown passes of 29 yards to Waddle and 11 yards to Mike Gesicki on third down.
Gesicki’s touchdown, with 12 seconds left in the third quarter, helped the Dolphins (5-3) erase a 10-point halftime deficit for their second straight win.
LIONS GRADES:Jared Goff wilts under pressure, DBs get another F
“We did not do well in this game plan that was designed for these guys,” Campbell said. “It’s something we worked all week. We were trying to take away these bend throws on speed, and layer over the top. Let Kerby (Joseph) kind of spy a little bit, and we just — we didn’t handle it well. We didn’t. So they didn’t do anything. I mean, they did exactly what we knew they would do. They just did it. Did it over and over and had their way.”
As bad as the Lions were defensively Sunday, allowing more than 30 points for the third time in four home games, their problems were compounded by an offense went AWOL at the most inopportune time.
The Lions scored on five straight possessions to start the game, but managed just 67 yards of offense in a scoreless second half.
Jamaal Williams opened the game with a 7-yard touchdown run, and Jared Goff threw a 7-yard touchdown pass to D’Andre Swift on the Lions’ second possession, after Joseph forced a Miami fumble.
Williams scored his second TD on a 1-yard run early in the second quarter and Michael Badgley made field goals of 42 and 26 yards as the Lions took a 27-17 lead into halftime. Badgley’s second kick came one play after Josh Reynolds dropped a would-be touchdown in the end zone with 3 seconds left in the half.
The Dolphins (5-3) opened the second half with a nine-play, 75-yard touchdown drive and took the lead on their next possession, after a barrage of penalties — false starts by Taylor Decker and Penei Sewell and a holding penalty on Sewell — forced the Lions to punt on their first drive of the third quarter.
CARLOS MONARREZ:Awful showing vs. Dolphins means Lions will have to fire Aaron Glenn at some point
Trailing 31-27, the Lions had more self-inflicted wounds on their next possession. Decker had another false start. Swift lost 2 yards on a run and Jared Goff took a sack on third-and-9.
“The first drive, that can happen,” Goff said. “There’s teams that have four, five, six wins right now that that happens to them, too, at times. You just get in a little rut. But it’s like you said, how do you put that away? ‘OK, move forward, that’s not who we are and move forward and flush it.’ And unfortunately we didn’t. But that is a problem to solve is how do we put that away and move forward on the next drive.”
The Lions forced their only punt of the game with 8:28 to play and drove to the Miami 35-yard line on the next possession, but Goff threw short and behind Reynolds on a fourth-and-1 shot to the end zone.
Goff said he checked out of the Lions’ original play call when the Dolphins showed a Cover 0 blitz, and when Miami didn’t bring pressure Reynolds was “kind of my only option.”
“Wish I would have thrown a better ball,” he said. “If I would have left it outside maybe I had a chance there. But they called a good coverage and we had a one-on-one shot down the field and we just didn’t connect.”
Goff finished 27 of 37 passes for 321 yards for the Lions, who play NFC North foes the Green Bay Packers (at Ford Field) and Chicago Bears (on the road) the next two weeks.
Williams led the Lions with 10 carries for 53 yards, Swift had five rushes for 6 yards and five catches for 27 yards in his first game since spraining his shoulder in a Week 3 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, and Amon-Ra St. Brown had seven catches for 69 yards.
Tagovailoa was 29 of 36 passing for the Dolphins, who finished with 476 net yards of offense.
“(Losing is) exhausting,” Decker said. “But there’s nothing I can do other than go back to work. There’s nothing this team can do other than go to practice Wednesday with a good attitude and try to get this thing right. When there are opportunities, we have to capitalize on them. There’s no other way to put it. It sucks, but like I said, there’s no alternative to how we’re approaching it.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.