What Just Happened? Lions vs Seahawks

Oct 2, 2022 - 8:44 PM

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I’ll hand it to the Detroit Lions this one time. They put up as much of a fight as they could in a bad 48-45 loss. There were several times when you thought the game was over and the Lions just kept putting themselves back into it. Still, it’s a bad loss and moral victories don’t count. The Lions move to 1-3 and things don’t look like they’re going to get any better any time soon.

As always, I have thoughts on this game. These are those thoughts:

Defense

This is where we obviously have to start. The Lions defense allowed a team that had scored a combined 47 points in the first three weeks of the season to score 48 points in one afternoon. The Seahawks did not punt once on Sunday. They racked up a total of 545 yards. 545! The worst part is that it seemed like the Lions were playing Madden online against that one guy who runs the same play over and over again until you quit the game and throw your PlayStation out the window.

The Lions just could not stop anything this team was doing. Nothing at all. The worst part is that the Seahawks were one of the bottom offenses in the league coming into this game. This wasn’t the Bills or something. It’s the Seahawks with Geno Smith.

Aaron Glenn looked like a rising star in the coaching ranks of the NFL. Through four weeks of the season, and especially after this game, that star is plummeting.

Kickers are bad

Look, I’m not going to pretend that I know what it’s like to kick that ball. If I tried to kick a field goal today I would probably tear both ACLs and break my neck somehow. With that in mind, I’m smart enough to know that the bare minimum of this job is that you have to be able to kick an extra point. If you can’t do that, you just shouldn’t be in the league.

Jared Goff

Say what you want about Jared Goff, the dude balled out on Sunday. Yes, he threw a pick-six. That did suck. But he also completed 66.7 percent of his passes for 378 yards and four touchdowns. He did all of this without Amon-Ra St. Brown, DJ Chark, D’Andre Swift, and Jonah Jackson. Goff made every player he played with better. You wanted a big game from T.J. Hockenson, It happened. You wanted to see Josh Reynolds do things, it happened. You wanted to see Tim Kennedy make plays on the main roster, it happened. I just don’t know what more you need to see from Goff that shows you that the Lions are in good hands and he has indeed improved drastically.

Jamaal Williams

Pump away, my friend. Pump away. Jamaal Williams is a baller out there. If you need two touchdowns, Jamaal is going to get it for you. He did it again on Sunday when he ran for two touchdowns and over 100 yards. Look at this beautiful run.

TJ Hockenson

This is exactly the type of game Lions fans have been hoping TJ Hockenson would have for a very long time. Much like Jamaal Williams, Hockenson absolutely balled out and made the very most of every opportunity he got. You could forget the rap on Hockenson and his penchant for catching the ball and falling down. On Sunday Hockenson went full Golden Tate and racked up all kinds of YAC yards. He finished the day with 8 catches for 179 yards, and two touchdowns. Hockenson averaged 22.4 yards per catch in this game. He also caught a big pass on a two-point conversion that would help the Lions bring the game to within a touchdown.

Terrible officiating

Let’s be clear. The Lions did not lose this game because of poor officiating. With that said, this was some of the worst officiating I think I’ve ever seen in an NFL game. It seemed as though nobody on this crew knew what they were doing. You could tell that after the crew had to have a 20-minute meeting after every flag was thrown. The worst is the obvious one when the officials did not run the play clock and inadvertently negated a big third down stop for the Lions defense. The next play wound up turning into a long Seahawks touchdown. I get that the game moves really fast on the field and these guys are humans, but this type of day is inexcusable.