In the second half, Aidan Hutchinson could feel the game start to turn. After cruising down the field on their first drive of the day, Kyler Murray and the Cardinals had been spinning their wheels. James Conner was stuck in the mud. Murray had no choice but to drop back and pass, except he couldn't find any open receivers. The hottest quarterback in the NFL was shaking his head by the end of the Lions' 20-13 win.
"That’s probably our best defensive game I’ve ever been a part of, just collectively," said Aidan Hutchinson, who picked up another sack to push his NFL-best total to 6.5. "With what they were giving us, I thought we executed the game plan very well."
For the past two years, the Lions' strength has been their offense. Through three weeks this year, it's their defense. As Hutchinson said after Detroit's Week 1 win over the Rams, Aaron Glenn's unit is keen on "changing the narrative." The Lions want to be "a more balanced team," said Hutchinson, a team that can "anchor on its defense when times get hard." The offense didn't score a point in the second half in Arizona, and the Lions' lead was never really in jeopardy.
Throughout last week, Glenn and Dan Campbell challenged the defense to bring it. Murray and the Cardinals had been nearly unstoppable through two games. In their Week 2 rout of the Rams, Murray had a perfect passer rating and Conner ran for 122 yards.
In the past, Glenn might have schemed to hide the Lions' weaknesses. Talent changes that. Instead of "worrying about how they could attack us," said veteran corner Carlton Davis III, the Lions focused on "how we could attack them." Glenn told his players, "We gotta establish our identity."
"Coach Campbell was talking about it all week -- coming in here, applying pressure and putting it on ‘em early, so that’s what we wanted to do," said Davis. "We wanted to stay physical and aggressive."
The Cardinals didn't miss a beat on their first drive, racing down the field in eight plays. When Marvin Harrison Jr. left Davis in the dust on a slant across the end zone to tie the game, it looked like a track meet was taking shape. Arizona spent the rest of the day running into a wall. On their next nine drives, the Cardinals totaled six first downs. It added up to five punts, two turnovers on downs, an interception and a field goal.
Arizona scored 69 points in its first two games by bullying teams on the ground and then breaking them through the air. Conner, one of the more bruising backs in the NFL, was on the other end of a licking on Sunday. Despite entering the game without their defensive captain Alex Anzalone and then losing Alim McNeill, Derrick Barnes and Brian Branch to injuries of their own, the Lions held Conner to 17 yards on nine carries, his worst rushing game in more than four years.
It cannot be understated how well the Lions defend the run. Aside from Christian McCaffrey in last season's NFC championship game, they haven't allowed a running back to rush for 70 yards since Christmas Eve of 2022 -- a stretch of 25 games. They continue to make offenses one-handed, and now they have the pass rush and the playmakers in the secondary to handcuff them completely. It won't always look like Sunday, but Sunday looked exactly like the Lions wanted it to.
"It was a weird game," said Hutchinson. "We were stopping the run, so they turned into more of a three-step, shots, shots, shots, because they weren’t really getting a ton an offense. I think the game shifted quickly in the second half when we were just getting three-and-outs after three-and-outs. That was just a credit to everybody doing their job."
Rightfully skewered for the past three years, the Lions' secondary continues to grow. It delivered the two biggest plays on defense against Arizona. Kerby Joseph, who's playing the best ball of his career, intercepted a deep shot to Harrison Jr. on the Cardinals' first drive of the second half, with Terrion Arnold in good position himself. Two drives later, Davis met Murray at the sticks on a fourth-and-1 scramble to stop Arizona on the doorstep of the red zone.
Davis grinned and said that when he saw Murray tuck it and run, "I was like, I know he's not doing this. ... I just saw the play, knew I had to beat him to the point, and I did."
"You talk about momentum, I mean, there it is," said Hutchinson. "It’s exactly what you ask for out of your defense, is when you have that sudden change. We have the mentality that it’s more TV time for us."
Anzalone, who missed Sunday's game in concussion protocol, has talked a lot this year about the defense feeling more "squared away." What he means is that "coming off the bus ... we have guys, very high-quality starters in all different areas." And what that means for Glenn, said Anzalone, is that "now he can play into not necessarily covering things up, but playing to guys’ abilities, which is a way different way of game-planning."
Hutchinson had the Lions' lone sack of the game, but the defense contained Murray for the bulk of the day. That was the plan, to rush with discipline and collapse the pocket from the outside in. Murray got out a couple times, but for the most part had nowhere to go. Over one stretch in the third quarter, the the Cardinals mustered 15 yards on 10 plays. The Lions limited them to 1-for-9 on third down, after holding the Bucs to 2-for-10 last week.
Detroit ranks third in third-down defense through three weeks, up from 12th last year and 30th the year before that. There's "no magic" to it, said Davis. The defense is "just playing our game, man," with more good players than it's had in a while.
"We got press corners, we got great pass rushers and we got linebackers who are going to hit and move," said Davis. "We just stuck to the game plan, honestly. Just believe in each other and played good ball."
It hasn't been especially pretty for the Lions' offense thus far, though they were happy to win ugly in Arizona. Detroit is 2-1 because the defense has picked up the slack. That bodes well for a team that has quietly piled up the fourth most yards in the NFL. If the defense is really as strong as it's looked, the Lions have the muscle they've been missing. Between Murray, Conner and Harrison Jr., the Cardinals posed a lot of questions on offense.
"We made it our job to come in here and have an answer," said Davis.