There was plenty of blame to go around for the Lions' stunning loss to the Commanders. Dan Campbell took some. So did Jared Goff, who committed four turnovers in Detroit's 45-31 meltdown that ended its season early.
"Obviously, the pick-six is really the one I’d like back," said Goff. "That was just a poor decision by me. The other ones were just sometimes part of the game, but yeah, it’s on me. I have to take care of it better and certainly would have given ourselves a better chance to win had I done that.”
The pick-six came on a bad overthrow and gave the Commanders a 10-point lead in the second quarter. It came between a fumble in the first quarter that killed a promising drive for Detroit in the red zone, and an interception at the end of the first half with the Lions in field goal range. Goff summed up his feelings afterward as "numb."
"Trying to process it and it sucks. Again, I’m so painfully disappointed and sorry to our fans," he said. "It sucks. This is as tough as it gets. I know I’m rambling and repeating myself, but it’s hard."
Asked about the fans, Goff said, "I appreciate them standing behind us all year. They should feel disappointed as much as we are.”
Goff said that he's "going to have some hard nights coming up" as he tries to make sense of what happened to a season filled with so much promise: "We had everything we wanted -- home-field advantage, fans were incredible -- unfortunately, we just let it slip out of our hands.”
Goff teammates came to his support when asked about the criticism he'll take for the loss.
"I will ride with Jared Goff until the day I die," said Frank Ragnow. "Any aspect of life, football, it doesn't matter what it is. One of the most standup human beings, players, leaders, you name it. I'll always have his back."
"Jared’s a phenomenal leader," said Taylor Decker. "He deserves a ton of credit for getting us where we are now. We will always ride or die for him, because we’re not 15-2 with the 1 seed without him playing the way he did this year."
Fellow co-captain Alex Anzalone said the scrutiny on Goff is "part of playing the position. I know that not all of those (turnovers) were his fault."
"He got us this far, and there were opportunities for us to turn the game for him and for where the offense was at and we just couldn’t get it done defensively," Anzalone said. "And that’s the hard part, because that’s kind of what we’ve been proud of all year."