Three key Lions called themselves out and delivered

After a week of accountability in Allen Park, a dominant day in Arizona -- one the Lions badly needed.

"The important thing is that you go all-in, no matter what you’re gonna do, and either it crumbles or they rise up," Dan Campbell said after the Lions' best performance of the season. "But you gotta push your chips all the way in. So we applied a little pressure, the players really responded, did a great job, and they brought it to life here."

To a man last week, the Lions called on themselves for more. Some of their best players had been letting them down. Three, in particular: their All-Pro linebacker, their No. 1 cornerback and their most explosive receiver. All three showed up and stepped up in the Lions' 45-21 win over the Cardinals.

In the locker room last Thursday, Jack Campbell spelled out the obvious: Detroit's defense had been "terrible" in the first month of the season, "and it’s not gonna win football games ... And it starts with me." A year after being named the top linebacker in the NFL, Campbell had looked out of sorts against the run and out of his depth against the pass. It was jarring.

"There’s been plenty of mistakes by me in the past four games, 100 percent," he said.

There were few, if any, on Sunday. After the Cardinals went right down the field on their first drive, Detroit's defense stiffened with five straight three-and-outs -- as many as it had forced in the first four games. The first one was sealed by Campbell, who was lined up in the slot in a 1-on-1 matchup with Trey McBride on 3rd and 7 and was with him every step of the way to force an incomplete pass.

"For me, the mentality is, whoever the matchup is, if you’re being challenged, go win. Whoever’s on him, I’m gonna go challenge him," Campbell said last week. "S**it, he’s getting 12 targets a game, he’s probably gonna catch a ball. But if he’s gonna catch that one ball, he’s gonna have to fight his ass off for it, and then he’s gonna have to pay for it."

Tight ends killed the Lions in the opening month of the season. Dan Campbell publicly challenged his defense last week, his linebackers in particular, to embrace the matchup with McBride. And while he ultimately caught nine passes for 66 yards and a circus touchdown late in the fourth quarter with Jack Campbell draped all over him, McBride, indeed, had to fight for everything he got.

More than the coverage, it was refreshing to see No. 46 in white play so cleanly against the run. That's always been Jack Campbell's strength. He looked like himself again Sunday, hunting the ball, getting off blocks and making plays. For example: 2nd and 9, early second quarter, Campbell found the lane for running back Tyler Allgeier and quickly erased it by shedding an offensive tackle and bringing Allgeier down for a minimal gain.

The Lions held Arizona's running backs to 2.3 yards per carry on 16 attempts. Campbell finished with season-highs in tackles (11) and defensive stops (4).

The day after Campbell took responsibility for the struggles on defense, D.J. Reed stood at his locker and said, "I'm pointing the finger at myself of, what can I do better? What I can do better is a lot of things. For one, my coverage has not been to my standard by any means this year, so that’s what I’m focused on."

Indeed, Detroit's supposed CB1 had been getting cooked, allowing a near perfect passer rating in coverage through the first four games. The defense as a whole was getting abused by No. 1 receivers, from Chris Olave to Garrett Wilson to Tet McMillan. Reed and the Lions had to respond Sunday against the next No. 1 in line: Michael Wilson.

Reed did surrender a first down to Wilson on a slant on the opening drive. He was stingy the rest of the way. He was all over Wilson on 3rd and long in the second quarter, forcing an incompletion on a throw to the sticks. Reed started the next defensive drive with a strong tackle on Wilson on a quick throw to the flat.

Early in the fourth quarter, Reed had his best rep of the day in coverage, sticking to Wilson's hip on a double move down the sideline, 1-on-1 with no safety help. These are the matchups the Lions are paying Reed to win. He had lost a number of them in the first four games. He had this one the whole way, jumping into the air and breaking up the deep ball just in front of the end zone.

Reed finished the day allowing four completions for just 30 yards on seven targets in coverage, easily his best game of the season. It was one of Wilson's worsts. Reed was also highly effective against the run. On the Cardinals' first attempt of the second half, Reed took down third overall pick Jeremiyah Love in space for a two-yard loss. He finished with a career-high three tackles for loss.

For better or worse, the Lions have always been a man coverage team under Dan Campbell. They have acquired man cover corners. They veered from this identity over the first month, playing tons more zone, with disastrous results. Missed assignments and blown coverages were frequent. As Reed said himself last Friday, "When you play zone, you have to work with guys, you have to know where guys are going to be, you have to trust where guys are going to be. And I feel like that’s been a big thing, not knowing that guys are going to be there for sure. It’s created a little bit of gray area."

Kelvin Sheppard and the Lions eliminated that gray area, at least for a game, by getting back to their man coverage roots against Arizona. Asked afterward what he liked most about the defensive performance, Dan Campbell nearly dropped a four-letter word he was so fired up about the coverage.

"I just love the fu -- the pas defense," he said. "I almost threw an F-bomb there. The PDs (passes defended), man. We got our hands on some footballs, we knocked some footballs down, I didn't feel like we were stressed. That's good to see. Roger (McCreary) wasn’t perfect but I thought Roger really played some sticky coverage today (six pass breakups!) and I though Reed played some sticky coverage. That was just good to see us challenge some footballs on the backend and work in unison."

On the other side of the ball, Jameson Williams wasn't ducking his own poor start to the season. In fact, after dropping two more passes in last week's loss to the Panthers, including a potential 89-yard touchdown that would have given the Lions a two-score lead early in the game, Williams had this to say of his first four games: "Probably one of my worst starts to my career."

"I see a lot of people saying I haven't been involved a lot -- but I have," Williams said. "We just gotta play better ball and execute when the ball comes our way, each and every one of us."

The first time the ball came his way Sunday, out of the slot on 4th and 4 inside the 10, Williams left star safety Budda Baker in the dust on a slant for his first touchdown of the season. Jared Goff went right back to Williams on the first play of the next drive on a deep shot down the middle of the field, but the pass was broken up. There was a clear intention to target him over the top for the second week in a row.

On 3rd and 10 of Detroit's first drive of the second half, Williams, again working out of the slot, turned a post route into a deep corner route, left another safety in the dust and hauled in a 39-yard touchdown to put the Lions ahead 31-7. The rout was on. Williams caught just two passes on four targets for a modest 47 yards, similar to his production in Detroit's Week 2 loss to Buffalo. Except, on this day, those two catches came in the end zone.

The Lions went three-and-out on their first three drives, and scored on their next seven. After Dan Campbell called on the offense for more last week -- "Man, if you want to be great, they should want to score 35 points a game, at a minimum," he said -- Detroit dropped 40 for the first time this season.

Most NFL teams, by the way, would kill for the Lions' problems on offense. Passing game coach David Shaw said last week of the unit as a whole, "We are nowhere near what we’re capable of." Campbell cited all their weapons, centered on a quarterback at the top of his game, and said, "We are not going to be average."

"We’re going to raise the floor on these guys, man," Campbell said. "We’re going to push ‘em. We've got too much offensively right now. Our quarterback’s too good, our playmakers are too good, and we've got a young, hungry offensive line that’s got a ton of room to grow."

It was ugly in the first quarter on Sunday. The Lions literally went backwards, totaling negative nine yards on nine plays. They went downhill for the rest of the day.

"It felt like Drew could've called whatever he wanted and we were going to make it work," said Goff. "Today was a good example of where we can go. We've been good, and today we were great. And still some things to be better at certainly, but today was, OK, that's what we're capable of. And it's good to know that's our standard now and we can hold guys accountable to what we just did today."

The defense established the same standard, against an offense that was pretty potent, at times, in the first month of the season. They kept a lid on Arizona's two biggest weapons, thanks to strong efforts from their top linebacker and top corner. And they took the top off the Cardinals' defense, thanks to their big-play receiver.

All three were down. All three stepped up. If those versions of Jack Campbell, D.J. Reed and Jameson Williams are here to stay, the Lions aren't going anyway anytime soon.