Lions Notch First Win: 'Nobody Ever Said It Had To Be Pretty'
By Ashley Scoby
@AshleyScoby
For as many metaphorical elephants and trapeze acts the Lions may have had to dodge on their way to their first win of the season Sunday, they still got there, 37-34 in overtime against the Bears.
Make no mistake: The game was a circus. From 19 combined penalties and a comical amount of officiating reviews, to being about two and a half minutes away from only the fourth NFL tie since 2012, Sunday was a mess. About half of the Ford Field crowd even bothered to stay for the beginning of overtime. But those who stayed saw Detroit – in all of its ugly, bizarre glory – win a 2015 football game.
Things started innocuously enough. The Lions took a 7-0 lead in the first quarter after a 10-play, 80-yard drive that included competent rushing (five attempts, 30 yards, nearing Detroit's season average of 45 per game) and long passing plays (Matthew Stafford to Golden Tate for 22 yards, to Lance Moore for a 20-yard touchdown).
And Detroit's defense held its ground on the ensuing Chicago possession: A 10-play, 71-yard drive ended in a field goal. For a quarter, it looked like the Lions would win a football game in a normal fashion.
Even in the second quarter, after Detroit took a 14-10 lead off a touchdown to its only active tight end of the day in Tim Wright, things hadn't gotten weird yet.
But as it so often has happened with the Lions, the officiating crew got involved. With less than a minute until halftime and the Lions driving, Stafford zipped a pass into Tate, who made it over the goal line before the ball popped out of his hands and into the awaiting arms of Jonathan Anderson, a third-string Chicago linebacker. Officials called for a review and decided that Tate had broken the plane before the ball came loose, and awarded a Detroit touchdown.
The decision comes on the heels of several controversial calls in the NFL over the past couple of seasons over what is and is not considered a "catch."
"Oh man," Calvin Johnson said, laughing. He was on the losing side of a similar call in 2011, in a play that created the "completing the process" standard for NFL catches.
"I'm just glad it was a catch," he continued. "I'm just glad it was a touchdown for us."
Holding onto the margin that touchdown provided, at 21-13, the Lions started fumbling.
First it was Ameer Abdullah, who was benched for a similar crime last week. He recovered his own fumble in the third quarter, but was holding his left wrist as he came off the field. He didn't play again until the overtime period.
"We didn't bench him for a period; he was hurt," said head coach Jim Caldwell. "He got a little stinger and couldn't go back in."
Not long after Abdullah's fumble, TJ Jones muffed a punt that was recovered by Chicago on the Detroit 19-yard-line. The teams traded field goals to close the period, but the fourth quarter began with déjà vu: another Lions special teams gaffe, as Corey Fuller was blocked into the ball, allowing the Bears to recover on the Detroit 21. Four plays later, Jay Cutler tossed a touchdown to Alshon Jeffery, and the team elected to kick the extra point and stay one behind, 24-23.
Fans began emptying out of Ford Field when Chicago took a 31-24 lead on their next possession, with 7:50 to play.
And the circus hadn't even really started yet: The Lions drove to the Chicago 13-yard-line – thanks in large part to a 30-yard Isa Abdul-Quddus rush on a fake punt – yet elected to kick a field goal on fourth-and-four, still down by seven points.
"We had timeouts left, we had a chance to get it back and it played out exactly like it played out," Caldwell said. "That was what we had planned."
If Caldwell had planned for the Lions' defense to force a three-and-out, then for Theo Riddick to take a screen pass 34 yards, then for Stafford to connect with Moore (who had eight catches all year) down to the six-yard-line for a 26-yard gain, then for a Stafford intentional grounding penalty to be eventually nullified by a Bears roughing the passer penalty, then for Johnson to catch a six-yard touchdown pass, then for Chicago's Robbie Gould to make his 29-yard field goal at the end of regulation, then to go into overtime and eke out a win with less than three minutes remaining, then crown him as the genius he is.
In the end, it was a simple play that etched a W in the Lions' 2015 schedule: a 57-yard Stafford bomb to Johnson, who finished with six receptions for 166 yards and a touchdown. That old-fashioned Megatron play got Detroit to the Chicago six-yard-line with about three minutes remaining in overtime. A 27-yard Matt Prater field goal made it official, 37-34. Bizarre game or not, the Lions are 1-5, and not an ugly 0-6 (or 0-5-1).
"I think we had 500-plus yards; hopefully we can keep that going," Moore said. "Hopefully we can eliminate some of those penalties, the one turnover, obviously, on offense that we had. It's fun when you have a game like that and nobody ever said it had to be pretty. We won ugly, but we got our first win."