Every week this season, more than half of the NFL's games have been decided by one score. Not that this is as any surprise: the NFL is meant for teams to play close games. It is not meant for the same team to lose them.
The Lions have played four one-score games this season. They have lost all of them. They have played 13 one-score games in two seasons under Dan Campbell and won two of them. Their 10 one-score losses since 2021 are the most in the NFL.
"We’ve been saying we’re close for a while and it means nothing, really," Jared Goff said Tuesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "We’ve been close for a long time and need to start winning and finishing these games off."
By the measure of close games, every bad team in the NFL is 'close' to being good. And every good team is close to being bad. Which isn't the case, of course. Truth is, bad teams lose and good teams win. Well more than half of the NFL's games this season -- 71 of 123 -- have been decided by one score. Nearly a third have been decided by a field goal or less.
In a one-score league, the Lions keep finding ways to lose. They're one of only two teams, the 2-5 Raiders being the other, that hasn't won a one-score game this season.
"That’s always the question, right, what does it take to get over the top?" said Goff. "And if we knew the answer, it would have been solved by now. Typically the teams that are winning these games at the end, someone’s making a play, someone’s not making a mistake, someone is doing something extraordinary. It’s typically when those plays happen that good teams finish games like that."
These are the plays the Lions keep leaving on the field. There were several of them just last week in their 31-27 loss to the Dolphins. On Detroit's final drive,
T.J. Hockenson gained 11 yards on 3rd and 12. The drive ended one play later when Goff just missed Josh Reynolds on a deep shot. When the Dolphins faced 3rd and 8 on the ensuing drive, Tua Tagovailoa played pitch and catch with Tyreek Hill for the eight yards they needed to seal the game. And this was all in the span of two minutes.
It feels close because it looks close in hindsight: one yard here, one yard there. But those yards add up to the chasm between a good team and a bad team, between a team that's there and a team that still has a ways to go. Of one thing, Goff said he's certain: "We'll continue to fight."
"In our locker room, it’s a good group of guys that don’t quit on each other, that do our best every practice, every day," he said. "There’s no, ‘Oh, shoot, we’re whatever our record is and this sucks.’ There's none of that, there’s no moping. It’s good energy every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and good energy on Sundays.
"We just gotta find away to make one or two more plays and come out with a W."
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