The Lions beat the Cowboys by 38. They had so much fun hanging 52 on the Titans, they turned around and hung 52 on the Jaguars. And if you want them to stop ... then stop them.
"If people got problems with what we’re doing or complaining about it, then they can just come out here and play better football," Carlton Davis III said after Detroit's demolition of Jacksonville last week. "Like, that’s the only fix to this problem. And we’re welcoming it, too. We don’t shy away from nothin'. Whether you’re good or bad, we’re going at you the same way every week."
The Lions lead the NFL with a point differential of +159, more than 50 points better than the next-closest team (Buffalo), nearly 80 points better than the next-closest team in the NFC (Philadelphia). Against the Jags, they became the first team since the 16-0 Patriots to score a touchdown on their first seven drives of the game and had their starters on the bench in the fourth quarter.
To the critics who say the Lions are running up the score on their opponents, A) "I don't know where all that's coming from," Dan Campbell said Tuesday on 97.1 The Ticket, and B) "We’re just playing football."
"I mean, hell, we pulled our freaking guys out early fourth quarter. We’re just playing ball, man. This is what we do, and we’re not playing any different than we have since I got here. We’re an improved team, we’re a better team and we’re going to play football the way we believe in football. That’s the bottom line," Campbell said. "We got a confident team."
On top of that, the games are a reward for the players after "they freaking work their tails off" in practice," Campbell said.
"You should’ve seen how they worked on Thursday and how they worked during the week for all these games," Campbell said. "I mean, they bust their ass. They believe the way you practice is the way you play, and as long as we keep doing that and keep trying to improve and clean up our errors, we will be a tough team to beat."
To the Lions, every game is "serious business," Davis said.
"You can laugh about it, but it’s not as if we’re taking it for a joke," he said. "When you come into our stadium or you know we’re coming out to play you guys, take it serious, because we’re bringing everything we got. That’s the message."