Dan Campbell couldn't explain it. With their season on the line, the Lions got pushed around by the Panthers. They got punched and then failed to punch back. They got beat at their own game, bullied by a stronger, stouter team, defeated by a more desperate opponent.
"They got after us pretty good, man," Campbell said after Saturday's 37-23 loss in which the Lions were playing catch-up from the start. "That’s a hard pill to swallow. You say things, but ultimately when you play that way it falls on me. I didn’t have them ready to go. That was a hungry team we played and we didn’t look as hungry as they did. That’s the bottom line."
All week, the Lions said they were aware of the opportunity in front of them.
Then the Panthers ripped through their defense on the first drive of the game, fueled by a pair of 30-plus-yard runs by Chuba Hubbard. It would set the tone for the afternoon. After being so good against the run the last two months, the Lions were gouged on Saturday. Both Hubbard and D'Onta Foreman went over 100 yards and the Panthers went for 320 as a team. On the other side, Detroit turned 17 carries into 45 yards.
The Lions had a lot on the line in this one. The Panthers, playing for a division title in the weak NFC South, looked like they had more. They looked like the team the Lions thought they had become. There are predators and prey in the NFL, and the food chain changes by the week.
"That team wanted it more than us," said Campbell.
On top of stopping the run in winning six of their last seven games, the Lions had taken care of the ball, They had also taken it away. They put the ball on the ground -- a fumble by Jared Goff -- in the red zone on their second drive of the game and never took it back. Add it all up, and it looked a lot like the first half of the season when Detroit started 1-6.
"You get what you deserve in this league," said Campbell. "That’s why we all love it. We got exactly what we deserved today by the way we played, just like we deserve what happened to us before that by the way we played. We earned what we got today."
What the Lions got was a whooping. Even their typically dominant offensive line was overwhelmed. The game played out the way they wanted it to, a fist-fight in the trenches, and they were out-slugged from the first snap. This was a reality check for a team that was brimming with confidence and believing it could beat anyone in the league. And then the Lions were beaten, literally, by a team that started the day 5-9.
"Look, I know we’re young," said Campbell. "Believe me, I never lose sight of that. But I didn’t see that coming. I knew what we were getting ready to face. Their style, the way they came after us, that doesn’t shock me one bit. I just thought we would be ready for it, and we weren’t."
The Lions aren't dead, but their playoff hopes are now on life support. They could afford one loss, maybe, in their final three games. They spent it on Saturday. They'll need lots of help over the next two weeks to resurrect the dream that suddenly felt so real. They could see it in color after last week's win over the Jets. They could touch it like it was tangible, "right there in front of us," said Jared Goff. And now they can see it slipping away.
When you lose your appetite in the NFL, there's always someone who's ready to eat.
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