By the time the Grand Opening was over, the Lions couldn't wait to go home. It was 27-7 before they forced Buffalo's offense off the field. It wasn't nearly as close as the 41-31 final would indicate. The Bills christened Highmark Stadium by baptizing Kelvin Sheppard's defense.
"It was bad ball out there," said Aidan Hutchinson.
Hutchinson was one of the only players on defense who showed up. The rest of the unit look underprepared and overwhelmed. Allen and rookie head coach Joe Brady toyed with the Lions for most of the night, starting with the first play from scrimmage when the Bills got Detroit's defense moving one direction and threw back the other for an easy gain. On the next play James Cook ran almost 10 yards before getting touched. He would get used to that.
The Bills finished their opening drive by going from midfield to the end zone in five plays, tearing off yards in chunks: a scramble by Allen, an uncontested catch, a run through the trenches -- right this way, please. The Lions could do nothing but watch it happen, then line back up and watch it happen again. They might as well have started carrying the chains.
Explosive plays were an issue for Detroit last season. Sheppard was adamant that this year's defense would fix it. Instead, the problem might be worse. The Bills marched down the field on their second drive with a 25-yard catch by tight end Dalton Kincaid, who was uncovered down the seam, and a 43-yard catch by Joshua Palmer on a decoy route that turned into a touchdown when safety Avonte Maddox inexplicably abandoned the deep part of the field.
"The explosive plays will be limited this year, if we do nothing else," Sheppard said a few days before the Lions' season opener. "But it goes back to, the players must go out and execute. I ask these guys, no explosive plays by way of mental errors or missed tackles -- because that's on us."
And this is on Sheppard. His secondary looked lost Thursday night, after listing in the second half of a near-disaster against the Saints. His front seven looked flimsy. His entire defense looked like it had no idea what to do with Allen, who accounted for five touchdowns and ran for more yards on fewer carries than Jahmyr Gibbs. The players were out of sorts, and the coordinator was out of answers.
On the other side, the Bills' execution was crisp. Their offense was physical and diverse, like the Lions want theirs to be. Their third drive featured a long gain for Kincaid on a bootleg out of 13 personnel, followed immediately by a 22-yard play-action pass to Keon Coleman who was wide open over the middle. The Lions were caught in between all night. The few plays they did make were usually wiped out by penalties, like an interception at the goal line that was erased by holding in the secondary just before the Bills' third touchdown.
The Lions knew they had to keep Allen in the pocket to limit his damage. Why'd they keep letting him escape? He found easy lanes and little resistance, often running in the same direction as defenders who were still trying to cover receivers downfield. Linebacker Derrick Barnes admitted that "I caught myself a few times in coverage, I’m on a man and I gotta stay with my man, and then I turn around and the quarterback is on my back."
Jack Campbell was so ashamed by the performance, his own in particular, his eyes were welling up as he spoke with reporters. He stopped talking multiple times to keep himself from cracking. Detroit's All-Pro linebacker did not play well in Week 1 and was worse in Week 2. The emotions stem from the feeling that he's letting down his teammates.
Asked what was most frustrating about Thursday night's showing, Campbell said, "The run game." It's supposed to be the hallmark of the Lions' defense. It was stout in Week 1. Four days later, the Lions allowed over 200 yards on the ground.
"Just put it on me," said Campbell. "I played terrible. I gotta be better, especially for the offense, and all these guys in the locker room."
A known demon against the run, Campbell was often in the wrong gaps Thursday night. He was far from alone. The first play of the Bills' fourth drive, immediately after the Lions had gotten on the board, was a 20-yard run by Cook through the right side of the line. The second play was a 35-yard run by Cook through the left side of the line. In both instances, the defensive front was blown apart, with Campbell taking an especially poor path on the second run. Cook gained seven more yards on the third play, right up the gut.
The Bills weren't doing anything special on the ground, other than abusing Detroit's base defense. When Buffalo ran all over the Lions in 2024, Hutchinson remembers the Bulls pulling tackles and running "a lot of weird gap" concepts the defense might not have been expecting.
"But this game it was crunch, it was stretch open (outside zone), belly open, just a lot of basic NFL stuff, and we were struggling," Hutchinson said. "I don't know what that was exactly. But definitely gotta figure out that out soon. And we’re going to be in a hurry. We’re going to have a sense of urgency, too."
Against the pass, the Lions weren't any better in nickel. The drive kickstarted by Cook ended in familiar fashion, with Allen dropping back and finding a wide-open receiver in a stretched-out zone defense. The soft spot in this case just happened to be in the end zone. On multiple occasions Thursday night, the outcome of a pass was clear as soon as the ball left Allen's hand: touchdown. Later, Allen hit Kincaid for 23-yards down the sideline with the Lions in base, an easy pitch-and-catch between zone defenders that set up another touchdown.
Detroit's defense allowed 68 plays of 20-plus yards last season, one of the highest marks in the league, or about four per game. It allowed six last week. It allowed seven Thursday night, frequently for the very reasons that Sheppard deems unacceptable: blown assignments and poor fundamentals.
Sheppard touted the experience in Detroit's secondary as an asset throughout camp. With two veteran safeties in Chuck Clark and Maddox, communication was supposed to be a strength. Sheppard went so far as to say that the savvy of those safeties was allowing the defense to deploy more coverages than it had it in the past. He's deploying them, alright. They're just not working.
"Yeah, just wasn’t a good outing — again," said corner D.J. Reed. "Especially from the start. Give credit to them, they’re a great offense, but we definitely shot ourselves in the foot and didn’t even allow them to beat us. I feel like there were plays out there that we beat ourselves. ... I would just say, miscommunications, everyone being on the same page."
Nothing about this secondary looks cohesive, other than the first two quarters against the Saints when the Lions rattled a young quarterback with a bevy of blitzes. Tyler Shough adjusted in the second half and wound up throwing for over 400 yards. The Lions are rotating so many players in and out of their various packages in the backend that it appears to be limiting their ability to think as one.
Asked if that's part of the problem, Clark said, "That’s the game of football now, offenses are learning to roll multiple personnels and packages out there. This is not 1980s football. We can’t go out there in base defense, with them in I formation and (just say), 'Let’s do this thing.'
"As a defense we have to be able to match and adjust to what they’re giving us and go out there and roll with it. I think we did a good job with that in OTAs, having different personnel, working with different packages. I wouldn’t say that’s (the reason for miscommunications). We gotta be able to match up. It’s a matchup league."
Clark said the secondary simply has to be "more locked in on the little details, knowing and anticipating what each other are going to do," and sharpen their communication. But that rapport can be hard to establish amid such frequent substituting on defense. Operating on the same wavelength is crucial when it comes to passing off assignments in zone. If creativity is coming at the cost of chemistry, it's not worth it.
The Lions are badly missing their two star safeties, of course. The return of Brian Branch will be a big boost -- assuming he looks like himself after a torn Achilles -- but he's out for at least two more games. And at this point, the Lions can't realistically count on Kerby Joseph, whose knee remains a total question mark. The fix isn't as simple as "they'll be back." Maddox, meanwhile, left Thursday night's game with a foot injury, and left the stadium on crutches.
Hutchinson's words to the media typically aren't pointed. He was as stern as we've heard him in the locker room after the game when he said, "Something's gotta change. I don't know what that is ... but it’s not good enough." No, he wasn't calling for a change at coordinator, and it would be a step too far to color Hutchinson disgruntled. But discouraged? And disgusted at allowing 71 points, 915 yards and 63 first downs through two games? Absolutely.
After one rush Thursday night where Hutchinson and the defensive line collapsed Allen's pocket, only for Allen to find an uncovered receiver downfield, Hutchinson briefly turned his palms toward the sky when he saw the result of the play as if to say, Again? Like fellow defensive captain Campbell, Hutchinson was disappointed in the defense for failing to rally in the second half like the offense.
"We were on our heels for the majority of the game," said Hutchinson. "We’ll evolve. We have to. If we don’t evolve — we’re not going to be doing this all season. That’s for sure."
The best teams, like the Bills, play complementary football, one side of the ball fueling the other. Aside from a brief stretch in the third quarter of Week 1, the Lions have yet to find that rhythm in two games. Their defense has mostly been atrocious. Truth is, they've scored 31 points in each of their first two games and are one play away from being 0-2. That's a daunting thought for a team that fancies itself a Super Bowl contender. The Lions saw what one looks like Thursday night.
