In his third NFL game, all of which have been decided by a touchdown or less, Lions rookie Stanley Berryhill couldn't stop shaking his head on the sidelines.
After losing their first four one-score games of the season, the Lions were on their way to their second straight one-score win, this one a 31-30 comeback last Sunday against the Bears.
Sitting on Detroit's bench, Berryhill turned to Lions star receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, who was mic'd up for NFL Films, and said, "The NFL's the craziest sh*t, bro."
"There's nothing like it, huh?" said St. Brown. "There's no other sport like it."
"No other sport," said Berryhill, an undrafted receiver out of Arizona who joined the Lions last month. "It's always close, bro. You never know. In all reality, everybody's the same."
"Right. Everyone's pretty good," said St. Brown, sounding like a seasoned vet. "It's who makes the least mistakes."
Berryhill simply nodded in response.
The Lions made the least mistakes last week to steal a win from the Bears with a big fourth-quarter rally. Not only that, they turned Chicago's mistakes into game-changing plays, like Jeff Okudah's pick six of Justin Fields that tied the game at 24.
"We didn't give the ball away and then penalties were huge, man," Dan Campbell said afterward. "We played disciplined. We were trying to get off blocks, shed blocks, do the right things and we stayed pretty clean. Only two penalties and they had nine, so that was the difference."
The NFL is seeing more one-score games than ever this season, including eight last week. Six were decided by a field goal the week before that. The Lions are 2-4 in one-score games, but 2-0 since Week 9. That's progress for a young team.
"It's just about continuing to grow, gain your confidence and when you have an opportunity to make a play, we've got to make more plays than they did," Campbell said. "We played disciplined football. And it wasn't always pretty, but man, we did what we needed to do."
