Down two touchdowns out of the gate and three in the second half, the Lions never stood much of a chance against Josh Allen and the Bills. Buffalo came out hot and heavy on the heels of a loss last Sunday, and "we just couldn't quite match it," said Dan Campbell.
"Like I told the team, I didn’t have those guys ready to go, not like that. Not when you’re playing a team like that. That’s with me," Campbell said after Detroit's 48-42 loss.
The game was more lopsided than the final score would suggest. The Bills piled up 559 yards of offense and more than eight yards per play against the Lions' injury-ravaged defense. But Campbell wasn't using Detroit's myriad absences as an excuse: "I don’t buy it. We can be better. We should’ve been better. We know how good they are, but that team was more urgent than us today."
Campbell called the defensive performance frustrating, not so much the plays on the Bills' part, but the "self-inflicted wounds" on the Lions' part.
"There’s things that we did on our own, and gave those guys something to where they had better opportunities," Campbell said. "That’s the frustrating part. You just want to know that you didn’t help them, and I do feel like we helped them a little bit there.”
The Lions also lamented blown opportunities offensively. They went nowhere on their first two drives of the game when the Bills jumped out to a 14-0 lead. And they failed to score on their first two drives of the second half, the latter ending in a fumble by Amon-Ra St. Brown that set up another touchdown for the Bills.
While Jared Goff threw for 494 yards, most of his Lions tenure, and five touchdowns, he acknowledged that the bulk of it "felt like garbage time there at the end ... I think early in the game we kind of shot ourselves in the foot offensively."
The Lions got healthier last week, but still went into Sunday's game missing several defensive linemen and four of their top five linebackers. Then they lost cornerback Carlton Davis III (jaw) and defensive tackle Alim McNeill (knee). They wound up forcing just one punt. Campbell pointed to the Bills' intensity and said, "We didn’t play at the same level that that team did today."
"That’s why, honestly, I put this on me," he said. "I just didn’t feel like I had them ready to go, not like we’ve been. You can get away with it (some weeks) if you’re not quite all the way to a 10, but not against the Buffalo Bills, Kansas City Chiefs, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota, Philadelphia -- whoever they are. It’s not going to be good enough, and it wasn’t good enough today.”
Goff agreed with Campbell's assessment that the Lions failed to match the Bills' energy in the early going: "They came out and punched us in the mouth there." And while Detroit pulled within 10 a couple times in the fourth and eventually cut it to six, "against a team like that, you can’t come out and allow them to do that early on and try to claw your way back," said Goff.
"It’s too hard, it really is, and that's the kind of game that we’re going to be playing from here on out, so maybe it’s a good wake-up call for us and a nice little recalibration," said Goff.
If there's any consolation, "at least we know now where we stack up against one of the AFC’s best teams," Campbell said. And if they meet again, safe to say the Lions will be ready.