The Detroit Lions have been the worst second-half team in the NFL this season, and it’s costing them a chance to win games.
The Lions have not scored in the third or fourth quarter of their past three games, blowing halftime leads in two of those contests. They’ve allowed a league-high 127 points in the second half this season — the Buffalo Bills, for comparison, have given up 98 points over all four quarters all year — and were outscored, 48-0, in the second half of October losses to the Miami Dolphins, Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots.
Lions coach Dan Campbell said “turnovers and penalties” have been the root of his team’s second-half woes, not a lack of halftime adjustments.
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“That to me is the starting point,” Campbell said. “We have to hold onto the ball, we need more takeaways on defense, and, man, we got to be laser focused on all the small things when it comes out. I mean, if we’re going to do a hard count, like we should know inside and out when these things are coming, because ultimately that’s what’s done us in. And then once that’s happened, we have not been able to get our momentum back out of those, and so we can’t be so fragile as to — you don’t want them to happen, we can’t have them happen, but if they do we have to find our way to get back out of it.”
The Lions, 1-6 and riding a five-game losing streak, have led at halftime of both their games since the bye.
Last week, the Dolphins erased a 27-17 halftime deficit by scoring touchdowns on their first two possessions of the third quarter. In Week 7, the Cowboys trailed 6-3 at the break, then rattled off 21 unanswered points after halftime.
Jared Goff threw an interception on the third play of the third quarter to spark the Cowboys’ comeback, and last week the Lions’ offensive line committed three penalties in a four-snap sequence against the Dolphins that left them trying to dig out of an unmanageable first-and-30.
Miami scored on the next series to take the lead for good.
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“Typically self-inflicted, it’s been, and that’s the kind of frustrating part,” Goff said. “I wish I could say, ‘Yeah, the defense came out and did something we weren’t expecting and kind of caught us off guard,’ and that hasn’t been the case. It’s been self-inflicted, and for a variety of reasons but this past week unfortunately there was some penalties.”
Offensive coordinator Ben Johnson said Lions coaches typically spend the first five to seven minutes of halftime meeting, then get with their units to discuss “the plan of attack going forward.”
Johnson said the Dolphins played “a little bit more vanilla brand of football” last week than they had in their first seven games, but the Lions could not capitalize in the second half because of their own misdoings.
“We had a good feel with how the rest of the game was going to be played, with how it started and what they were doing,” Johnson said. “It just came down to execution, which we didn’t do a good enough job of.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.