The film doesn't lie, which is why it can be so difficult for the Lions to watch. It's a reminder of who they used to be, and proof of who they've become. They are a good team that's no longer great, sliding in the playoff race after a crushing loss to Matt LaFleur and the Packers on Thanksgiving. For the first time since his first season, Dan Campbell and the Lions have been swept by a division opponent.
"It sucks, especially in past years with what we’ve done to that team," said Derrick Barnes after Detroit's 31-24 loss. "Kudos to them. Coach mentioned something after the game, that in the past, when we got down to the wire in these close games, we always found a way to come out on top. We always found a way to eliminate the minor mistakes. We learned how to do that in the past. And I think we still do (know how). It’s just, when it comes down to games like this, it’s whoever's more disciplined."
Discipline shows up in the details, which dictate the execution. On the Packers' opening drive, Detroit's defense had 10 men on the field on a third down run by Josh Jacobs that went for 13 yards and set up a field goal. On the first play of the Lions' opening drive, Jared Goff tripped over the foot of backup center Trystan Colon and fell to the turf on a clumsy handoff to Jahmyr Gibbs as the offense went three and out.
A year ago, on the same field against the same opponent, Goff stumbled into a handoff to David Montgomery with the game on the line and the Lions were good enough to overcome it. They went 4-for-5 on fourth down in a crucial clash with the Packers and won the game on a bold call by Campbell that Montgomery and his offensive line converted into a first down. On Thursday, it was the Packers who went 3-for-3 on fourth down and LaFleur who made the winning decision at the end.
"This game came down to fourth down in those critical moments and we were 0-2 and they were able to capitalize on three of them," said Campbell. "Those are the one or two plays that really make the difference when you're playing a really good team."
That is what the Packers have become, in a role reversal with the Lions. The Packers finished third in the division last season and grabbed a wild card at 11-6, which is now the only realistic path to the playoffs for Detroit. Bounced in the first round, Green Bay shifted the sands in the North by trading for a game-changer on the defensive line. Brad Holmes responded to doubts about the Lions' pass rush throughout the offseason by insisting that they already have one of the "one of the elite guys," one of the "four or five" best edge rushers in the NFL.
It was defensible with the way their guy was playing last season before he broke his leg. It was also a tad shortsighted, Holmes perhaps a prisoner of the moment. If we learned anything on Thursday, Micah Parsons is one of the four or five best edge rushers in the NFL. Aidan Hutchinson is not. In a game that was otherwise remarkably even, Hutchinson had his usual pile of pressures and a goose egg in the sacks column. Parsons turned his pressures into three sacks, two of them on third down.
In two meetings between these teams this season, Jared Goff was sacked seven times, Jordan Love not once. The difference between Parsons and Hutchinson is slim, but glaring in a game like Thursday's. On Parsons' final snap, he got off a block by Penei Sewell, crashed through Detroit's wounded offensive line and planted Goff into the turf. On Hutchinson's final snap, one on one with the right tackle with the game in the balance, he and Alim McNeill were an arm's length away from bringing down Love, who flung a fourth-down dart to seal the Packers' win.
"Jordan does a good job of drifting back in the pocket and then throwing off his back foot, and he’s really accurate when he does that. That gives him a lot of time, being so far back," said Hutchinson. "I know me and Alim were there, but it’s tough. It is what it was."
And the Lions are not what they were. So familiar with winning these games in the recent past, they were grappling with their flaws and repeating the F word after this one: Frustrating. There were two controversial calls on fourth down that swung the Packers' way, yes, and there were self-inflicted wounds that sunk the Lions on the plays in question.
When Dontayvion Wicks caught a 22-yard touchdown to give the Packers a 10-0 lead on a play where he didn't appear to have complete control of the ball with both feet in bounds, Brian Branch inexplicably pulled up in coverage at the last moment while backup safety Thomas Harper arrived a split-second too late to break up the pass. Maybe All-Pro Kerby Joseph, who missed his sixth straight game with a knee injury, gets there in time, but Branch already was there. He just didn't complete the play, as Wicks completed the catch -- at least the NFL said he did.
And when the officials granted LaFleur a timeout that left him winking to reporters after it erased a false start by the Packers' right guard that would have forced them into a field goal, don't forget that the Lions gifted Green Bay four free yards a couple plays prior when their defense, this time, had 12 men on the field on third down. Without that gaffe, the Packers never get to 4th and 1. Jack Campbell shook his head a couple hours later and said, "It comes down to little things, little plays, one play, two plays can change the whole game and that’s on us. We gotta do better at getting off the field." And on it, as it turn outs.
Campbell, Detroit's green-dot linebacker who plays every snap, didn't have an answer for the substitution errors, which popped up out of nowhere for Kelvin Sheppard's defense. He said in regard to the 12-men penalty that he's "just trying to communicate the personnel within the huddle" to ensure the right players are getting off the field "and I’m not even aware of who’s coming on the field." The latter variable is determined on the sideline, either before the snap or before each series.
"But that’s the stuff I feel like I need to do a better job at, is making sure that I get that out, because we can’t have that. It’s just unacceptable, honestly," said Campbell.
On offense, the Lions operated as they have for most of this season. As quarterbacks coach David Shaw put it earlier this month, "we are explosive but inefficient." They are supremely talented and perhaps fatally flawed. Their biggest issue used to be their greatest asset. If the stunning return of Frank Ragnow doesn't stabilize their offensive line, the Lions simply are what they are.
"It’s been frustrating because we’ve established such a high standard for ourselves," said left tackle Taylor Decker. "Not to pat ourselves on the back, I think we’re still one of the top offenses in the NFL, but our standard is really high and we’ve fallen short of that at times. We just need to search for more consistency. What we’ve put on tape the last few years, that’s what we measures ourselves by, and we’re not matching that standard."
The Lions hit several big plays Thursday, many of them coming from Jameson Williams on a day that Amon-Ra St. Brown went down with an ankle injury that could cost him a couple more games. They also gained 10 total yards and one first down in the first quarter when they dug themselves a deficit, with the offensive line whiffing on blocks left and right and failing to pick up blitzes on the rare occasions the Packers sent them. The interior was especially leaky with two backups and a rookie struggling to hold their ground.
Despite that, Dan Campbell stubbornly stuck to his guns on the Lions' first drive of the second half and went for it on 4th and 3 from midfield. Goff appeared to check into a run to Gibbs, who was unsurprisingly swallowed hole, just like when he was stuffed near midfield on another brazen fourth down decision by Campbell in the Lions' Week 10 loss to the Eagles. It feels more and more like Campbell is viewing his team through the lens of last year's roster, as if by leaning on his offensive line he can will it back into a strength.
The Packers took over on downs and Jordan Love promptly fired a 51-yard touchdown to Christian Watson, who got the better of Amik Robertson for most of the game, to restore Green Bay's 10-point lead.
Campbell acknowledged that he didn't like his fourth-down play call -- "I don’t know how good of an opportunity we really gave our guys," he said -- but it's the decision to even go for it that deserves more scrutiny. Campbell is a smart, strategic coach, highly in-tune with the players at his disposal. But he appears so hellbent on maintaining the Lions' hard-earned identity as a physical, fearless offense that it's beginning to undermine the team. There are too many calls that seem destined to fail.
At the same time, Campbell was failed by his players on their second fourth down miss. Together, this is how a great team becomes good. On the verge of the red zone early in the fourth quarter, Goff rolled out, had Williams open coming across the middle, threw slightly behind him and Williams couldn't corral the catchable pass. The receiver called it a drop. The quarterback called it a bad throw. It was both.
Maybe a different player like Sam LaPorta, who's done for the season, makes the play, which calls back into question the decision to pass on fourth down without Detroit's two most reliable pass-catchers on the field.
"You’ve just got to execute in those big moments," said Goff. "That’s really it. I wish there was some magic potion to take to be better on fourth down, but there’s not. I had Jamo open, he’s streaming across, I’ve got to hit him. That’s the bottom line. There’s no other way to fix it."
Goff called it "one that will hurt me for a while," knowing that a better throw might have led Williams to the end zone and the Lions to an entirely different result. Campbell said the fourth-down backfires won't necessarily "have an effect" on his approach moving forward, which makes you wonder how many, if any, every would. It was a smart game to play with an elite offensive line; it's becoming dangerous with an average one.
The Lions have alternated wins and losses since a 4-1 start. Williams echoed his teammates and said, "We’re making mistakes and only losing these games by, like, one thing. We can get these things fixed, turn things around and have a good stretch at the end of the season." A 4-1 finish would cover for this 3-4 morass, which still feels attainable given the schedule. Of course, maybe the Lions' most winnable game remaining is against a Vikings team that already beat them at Ford Field this month. Getting swept by the Packers, said Decker, is "brutal."
"In the past, up until this year, we’ve hung our hat on being able to win those close divisional games, and I feel like in those divisional games typically we make more plays down the stretch than they do, and we didn’t do that today," Decker said. "It’s pretty simple. We need to start faster, we need to play well throughout the entire game, as opposed to in spurts, but obviously this one hurts."
Campbell nodded at the Lions' reality with a 7-5 record and five games to go: they will "need a little help" to have any chance of defending their division title and perhaps even to make the playoffs. Not only are they two games out of first, but they're 1-3 in the North. It's unfamiliar territory for a team that went 15-3 in the division the last three seasons and has grown accustomed to "controlling our own destiny down the stretch," said Decker.
All the Lions can do now is win the next game in front of them, which is a crucial clash with a charging Cowboys team that's pulled within a half game of Detroit in the NFC. If the pass rush doesn't come to life next Thursday against Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, George Pickens and the No. 1 offense in the NFL, the Lions will be staring at consecutive losses for the first time in three years and an uphill climb to the playoffs, perhaps before Ragnow has even played a game.
"We really wanted this one," said Decker. "We knew it was really important. ... We’re in a little bit of a hole and we put ourselves in it, so we’re going to have to dig ourselves out of it."
The Lions are still a good team, full of great players. Whether they remain a great team, remains to be seen.