The results spoke for themselves. With Dan Campbell taking over for John Morton as play-caller in hopes of helping his offense find more of a rhythm, the Lions ended their first three drives in touchdowns and scored on every possession with their starters on the field in a 44-22 rout of the Commanders.
"I think he’s just got a great feel for us as a team," Jared Goff said Tuesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "He knows when to pull, when to push, when's the right time to take a shot, when's the right time to run the ball, and just has a good feel for that, he always has. He's always been involved in it through the years and has had his input on everything. He's an offensive guy, so he's very aware of what we've been doing every week, and for him to have his finger on the trigger this week I thought it was great."
No, it doesn't mean that every problem is solved. The Lions' outburst came against the NFL's 28th-ranked defense. With Morton calling plays, the Lions had similarly prolific showings against the Bears' 27th-ranked defense, the Ravens' 26th-ranked defense and the Bengals' 32nd-ranked defense, while they had a harder time moving the ball against the defenses of the Packers (No. 5), Chiefs (No. 6), Browns (No. 2) and Vikings (No. 12).
Sunday night's game against the first-place Eagles will be a truer gauge of where the offense stands with Campbell on the call. Philadelphia's defense ranks 18th overall, but held the Packers to seven points in a win at Lambeau on Monday Night and boasts playmakers at every level.
Still, with Campbell stepping in for Morton, the Lions found the flow they've been missing, and reversed some troubling trends. Here were three of the biggest differences in Detroit's offense with Campbell calling plays for the first time since 2021.
Stay Action
The play-action passing game has been a staple for Goff and the Lions for several seasons. It's where the star quarterback is at his best. Last year, in the best season of his career, Goff led the NFL in play-action passes and took a higher rate of drop-backs in play-action (37 percent) than any other QB in the league with at least 100 drop-backs, per PFF.
In eight games with Morton calling plays this season, Goff was dropping back in play-action 27.7 percent of the time. He entered the Washington game 10th overall in play-action passes. In the Lions' prior three games, when the offense was clearly lacking a rhythm, Goff attempted just six, seven and six play-action passes. A big piece of Detroit's aerial attack was missing.
The Lions found it in Washington: Goff was in play-action on more than half of his drop-backs. His 17 play-action passes were a season-high and the second most in the NFL this week, per PFF. He went 12-for-17 for 186 yards.
It helped, of course, that the protection held up in front of him a week after it broke down against the Vikings and that the Lions forced the Commanders to respect the run (more on that later). Backup Kayode Awosika stepped in for the injured Christian Mahogany at left guard and held his own.
"I thought our O-line was incredible," Goff said Tuesday. "Anytime they play like that, we’re going to be awfully tough to heat. It all starts with them, always."
Campbell, who told Goff early last week that he was taking over play-calling, has been in the offensive meetings for the duration of the season, including those the night before games, "and I’m listening, I know what he likes, I know what he wants," said Campbell.
"The difference is, 'OK, now I’m going to call it,'" he said. "But I know what he feels comfortable with, I know what maybe he doesn’t. Or, 'Hey, maybe you’re not as fired up about this, but I really believe it’ll work.’ Those are things we talk about, we hash out. There again, Goff makes it easy. He’s such a dang pro, and he’s a machine right now. This guy, the amount of information that he can take in and process and deliver, I’ve got to be on my stuff. So, he’s the X-factor."
Campbell noted after the game that Goff "bailed me out of some" calls that he'd like back. Goff downplayed it Tuesday and said that it was business as usual between play-caller and quarterback, "getting in and out of the right personnels, in and out of the right play. There’s times where he picks me up, and there’s going to be times when I have to pick him up."
The two of them have developed a chemistry in their fifth season together that's simply impossible for Goff and Morton to match. Their relationship, Campbell said Tuesday, is "very strong, very tight. I think we see the game very much the same way. It’s really good, man."
Solving Third on First and Second
The play-action game had dried up for the Lions largely due to their struggles running the ball, especially on early downs. Defenses were stacking the box and the Lions weren't making them pay. Excluding Jahmyr Gibbs' 78-yard touchdown against the Bucs in Week 7, Detroit's rushing attack entered Week 10 averaging just 3.5 yards per carry over the prior five games, which would have ranked last in the NFL over the course of this season. The offense was too frequently behind the sticks, which led to all sorts of problems on third down.
The Lions' first play against the Commanders was an eight-yard run up the gut by Gibbs. After another run by Gibbs for a first down, the Lions' first pass of the day, which came out of a tight formation in 12 personnel that suggested a third straight run was coming, was a 14-yard catch-and-run by Amon-Ra St. Brown out of play-action. The Lions already had the Commanders on their heels.
On their opening three touchdown drives, the Lions faced a total of four third downs; their longest distance-to-go was seven yards. They faced third-and-10-plus just once all day, after being in that predicament six times in their loss to the Vikings. The run game, which was stale against Minnesota, averaged 7.6 yards per carry on first and second down and looked much more diverse.
"You want to try to hit from all sides, things you know you do well with those guys between Gibbs and David Montgomery. It’s gap, it’s wide zone, it’s gap with pullers, it’s G-scheme, it’s perimeter. And then it’s play-pass off of those and then it’s three-step, then it’s five-step, then it’s gadget, then it’s screen. You’re just trying to get everybody involved and make smart decisions and let the players do what they do and get the hell out of the way," said Campbell.
The Lions entered the game 25th in the NFL in third down conversion rate (36.2 percent). Facing much more manageable situations in Washington, they finished 5-for-10, tied for their best rate of the season.
Early and Often
Even while putting up points over the first eight games, the Lions' offense was too often a two-man show between Gibbs and St. Brown. There's nothing wrong with featuring your best players, but Morton sometimes prioritized them at the expense of the rest of the armory. As he said in regard to St. Brown earlier this season, "I don’t care what the coverage is, I’m going to call his number. He’s reliable." It made the offense too predictable at times, which made it too easy to defend, especially on key downs.
Campbell clearly wanted to deploy the Lions' entire offensive arsenal against the Commanders. Their four most dynamic playmakers -- Gibbs, St. Brown, David Montgomery and Jameson Williams -- all touched the ball in the first eight plays. Sam LaPorta popped on the second drive, while Kalif Raymond came to life on the third. Montgomery, Williams and Raymond all felt notable.
Asked afterward what elevated the Lions' offense, Williams said, "Spreading it around and letting everybody get going. That's what we did, and you see we got 44 points."
Morton was not finding enough touches for Montgomery, which severed half of the Lions' two-headed monster in the backfield. He leaned especially hard toward Gibbs early in games. On the first two drives of the Lions' prior seven games, Montgomery got zero carries three times, one carry three times and three carries once. Campbell still led with Gibbs against Washington, but got Montgomery involved early with four carries on the first two drives.
Both backs finished with 15 carries, Gibbs for 142 yards and two touchdowns, Montgomery for 71 yards. Asked if he felt a change on offense with Campbell calling plays, Montgomery said, "It felt that way, yeah, it felt good. We’re just kind of rolling on all cylinders."
Williams has been a hot-button issue for most of the season. He was so under-utilized through the Lions' first seven games -- after they signed him to an $83 million extension, no less -- that Morton approached Williams after the bye and told him that "I failed him." Morton vowed to come up with more ways to get Williams the ball moving forward, but it still didn't come to fruition until it was too late in that week's loss to the Vikings. Williams, one of the most explosive receivers in the NFL, went almost two full games without catching a pass beyond the line of scrimmage.
"I think we throw him lower-completion balls, typically, down the field," Goff said the week after the Bucs game in which Williams had two targets and zero catches. "I bet if you looked at under 20 yards, our completion percentage to him and everyone else is pretty dang close. I would love to throw him the ball as much as possible and watch him go."
And there he went against the Commanders. Williams had his best game of the season with six receptions for 119 yards and a touchdown, while catching only one pass more than 13 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. His longest gain came on his shallowest target of the game, a crosser in the third quarter where Williams benefited from a couple defensive backs colliding at the top of his route, caught a pass from Goff's in stride and turned on the jets for 41 yards up the sideline. "A cheat code," Goff called him afterward.
Williams was mostly a deep threat or a decoy in his first two seasons with the Lions when injuries and a suspension limited his role in the offense. He broke through with his first 1,000-yard season last year when his route tree expanded. His average depth of target, per PFF, fell from 16.0 yards in 2023, the seventh highest in the league, to 11.6 in 2024, which was closer to middle of the pack.
Over the first eight games of this season, Williams' ADOT spiked back up to 15.0 yards, ninth highest. Sunday in Washington, it was a much healthier 10.3. Campbell called Williams' number frequently on the opening drive of the second half and No. 1 responded with three catches for 47 yards and a touchdown, the last two grabs on simple drag routes.
Williams beamed on the field after the game and said, "Shoutout to Coach! He told me, 'I'm coming to you,' and all I could do was just be ready. That whole drive was a shoutout to Coach, man. He believed in me and I went out there and made the plays when my number was called. That's all I can keep doing."
Williams also caught a crisp comeback route on third down on the Lions' first drive on a perfectly-timed pass from Goff, which could open up more deep shots on double moves moving forward. Every good rep Williams puts on tape is something else for defensive backs to worry about.
"He matches up pretty good against every defense in our league," Goff said Tuesday on The Ticket. "It doesn’t really matter who we’re playing, we want to feature him as much as possible, and this was his game to get his and get busy a little bit. We just want to keep that going with him, all those guys. It’s a good problem to have when we’re trying to figure out how to get everyone 100 yards."
Finally, Raymond. One of the heartbeats of the team, a personal favorite of Campbell and a dangerous player in his own right with the ball in his hands, Raymond was used sparingly through the first eight games. Campbell noted after Raymond went without a catch for the third time this season in the loss to the Vikings that the Lions came out of the bye wanting "to get Leaf more involved and we didn’t get that going last week."
Campbell got it going the next week. He dialed up a well-executed screen to Raymond to kick off the Lions' third drive and went back to him in various ways throughout the game. Raymond finished with season highs in targets (4), catches (4) and yards (49) and added 10 yards on the ground on a sweep where he made linebacker Frankie Luvu miss in the backfield.
Raymond isn't the ideal complement to St. Brown and Williams as a smaller gadget receiver, which is why Campbell has said that he also wants to find more opportunities for the big-bodied Isaac TeSlaa. But Raymond can place a unique strain on defenses with his versatility and jitterbug quickness. With Campbell calling plays, the Lions weaponized him for the first time this year.
Through Campbell's now-famous lenses, the Lions' offense put up season highs in total yards and rushing yards and looked as in-sync as we've seen it all year. A bigger tests awaits Sunday night in Philly, but the Lions aced their first one with Campbell calling the shots.