There were no silver linings in Sunday’s season-opening defeat to the Philadelphia Eagles, neither to Amon-Ra St. Brown nor to the Detroit Lions.
The Lions lost to the Eagles, 38-35, in a game that was more competitive than last year’s 44-6 blowout, but a similarly disappointing scenario followed.
The Eagles gobbled up chunks of ground—they ended up rushing 216 yards, after running 236 yards at Ford Field last October. The Lions defense couldn’t stop Jalen Hurts. And the offense – the team actually – ran off the field and kicked itself over a multitude of missed moves and self-inflicted errors.
“I don’t think any of us were happy,” St. Brown said after the game. “We felt we could have won that game. Obviously mistakes were made there. We would have liked to have had certain plays back. But no, resilience? We know we are resilient. That’s something we are as a team “We already know that. But we feel like we have to win those games. We’re not going back to last year, those exciting games that we couldn’t finish, so we have to win them.”
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On a day when D’Andre Swift ran 144 yards on 15 carries for a career high, Hurts showed that the Lions defense is still mediocre by NFL standards.
The dual-threat Eagles quarterback completed 18 of 32 passes for 243 yards and added 90 yards rushing, extending countless plays with his feet and stepping aside at least five sacks.
Hurts, Miles Sanders, Kenneth Gainwell and Boston Scott all scored lightning-fast touchdowns for an Eagles team that built a two-touchdown lead in the second quarter and led in double digits for almost the entire second half, until Jared Goff took the Lions to a three-on-one lead. 22-yard touchdown pass to DJ Chark with 3:51 to play.
The Eagles ran the ball seven times in a row in the ensuing drive, picking up two first downs—one on a 24-yard run by Sanders on third-and-2 and one on a 1-yard sneak by Hurts on fourth- and-1 – to end the game.
“They understand,” said Lions coach Dan Campbell. “It hurts them more than anyone, and we were so close, so it’s really like, ‘Look, man, this is Game 1 and we’ve got a long season here.’ And I said, ‘The good news is we didn’t play very well and we lost by three.’ “That’s what you can get out of this. Now if we just take this whole approach where every week it’s like we played and we lost by three, we lost by three, we lost by three, what do we do?” So we have to clean this up and we have to get better, we have to be a lot better in all areas.”
Defensively, the Lions, who haven’t won an opener since 2017, need to get better at stopping the run, especially against mobile quarterbacks.
Hurts had four rushes of at least 10 yards in the first half as the Eagles built a 24-14 lead.
The Lions started with a nine-play, 75-yard touchdown drive marked by Swift’s 50-yard run, then failed to catch a first deficit on their next four possessions. Hurts tied the game to 7 with a 1-yard touchdown run early in the second quarter, Sanders gave the Eagles the lead with a 1-yard touchdown and James Bradberry followed with a 27-yard interception return on a tipped pass.
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The Eagles had 111 yards rushing in the first half, while Goff started 3 of 10 passing for 6 yards. Goff, who passed 88 yards late in the third quarter, finished 21 of 37 for 215 yards with two touchdowns.
“That’s probably what hurt us the most, those three-and-outs there in the middle of the second quarter,” Goff said. “A lot of mental mistakes especially, and things that can be easily cleaned up, but things that can’t happen on race day. Hopefully we can attribute it to things from the first game and hopefully that kind of thing won’t happen next week. But just mental stuff that myself, everyone else, can clear up and do better.
The Lions had six passes that could reasonably be considered drops and Goff seemed out of sync with his pass catchers for part of the day. His interception came on a pass he threw to the sidelines when TJ Hockenson reversed his route to the field, and he was booed by home fans after knocking over an open Kalif Raymond in the fourth quarter.
The Lions gave the Eagles three points at the end of the first half, when AJ Brown defeated Will Harris with a 54-yard deep ball after Campbell called a timeout after a sack with 54 seconds left; Harris played in place of Jeff Okudah, who was cramping on the sidelines. The Eagles scored again in the third quarter on a short field after receiving a surprise onside kick back. And Lions safety and defensive captain Tracy Walker was ejected in the third quarter after pulling two personal fouls on the same game.
Brown finished with 10 catches for 155 yards in his first game as an eagle, and Sanders had 96 yards rushing on 13 carries.
St. Brown led the Lions with eight catches for 64 yards and a touchdown, and Jamaal Williams ran for two scores.
“I think, what mistakes did they make? They really didn’t,” Campbell said. “They played well. They performed well. We struggled with their quarterback. It hurts us. So he’s a good player, but we have to be able to react to those things. And you know, at the end of that game we got a chance, it’s the fourth deficit, to close it.”
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