By the fourth quarter, Aaron Glenn was reclining on the Lions' bench. He had a foot up on a knee, an arm draped across the backrest and a tablet in his lap, reviewing another dominant drive for his defense. In the locker room a short while later, Carlton Davis III was genuinely surprised to learn that the Lions' 24-6 win over the Colts marked their second straight game without allowing a touchdown -- for the first time this century.
"Oh, sh*t," said Davis. "I didn’t even know they didn't score. We just be out there playing defense, man, trying to get a dub. ... I guess we did play good."
That's putting it lightly. This defense is doing some increasingly heavy lifting. Despite missing six starters by the end of their ninth straight win, the Lions kept their opponent out of the end zone on a day their offense dared to score fewer than 30. They were stingy on third down and stiff in the red zone. They swarmed the run and mounted enough pressure on Anthony Richardson to keep him from finding a rhythm. Sound familiar?
"We’ve been doing that all season, man," said Davis. "If the offense isn’t going crazy, we going crazy. We’ve been back and forth with each other, just playing complementary football."
The Lions boast the No. 1 scoring offense in the NFL -- and now the No. 2 scoring defense to go with it. They haven't surrendered a touchdown since the first half of their comeback win over the Texans, 10 quarters ago. The Colts had them briefly on their heels with a series of scripted plays on the opening drive, before the Lions found their footing and stood their ground. They allowed 46 yards rushing -- 35 of them to Richardson -- out of the gate, 50 the rest of the way.
"We knew they couldn’t sustain that through the whole game," said Davis. "Running their quarterback that often is pretty hard, so we just stayed with it and made the adjustments."
The errors were self-inflicted, which made the adjustments simple. The Lions cleaned up a few sloppy run fits and started mopping the floor with the Colts' offense, which was coming off its best game of the season. Richardson was coming off the best game of his young career. And while the Colts were down three starters on the offensive line, Davis was one of those six starters for the Lions sidelined by the end of the day.
They also entered the game without co-captain and green-dot linebacker Alex Anzalone and corner Terrion Arnold -- on top of Aidan Hutchinson, Marcus Davenport and Derrick Barnes -- and left it with the satisfaction of another good day at the office.
In a way, the attrition has made the unit tighter. The defense hasn't had a choice but to come together and find a way. Davis, who injured his knee late in the game but doesn't expect to miss any time, called it a "tight-knit group" that understands each player depends on the other. A defender out of place is like a frayed seam. The Lions are well-stitched in year four under Glenn. Alim McNeill, who busted the seams of the offense Sunday, said this is the best the defense has played since he's been here. What does he like best?
"Our togetherness and our camaraderie," he said. "The good teams that go on later in the playoffs, they (have) good chemistry. They trust each other and know that if I’m in this gap, I got this guy right here beside me who’s going to do his job. That’s how I feel when I’m out there and how everybody’s feeling."
Take nose tackle DJ Reader, said McNeill. "Knowing that DJ’s going to set the edge or nobody’s going to run through his gap" allows the defensive linemen around him and the linebackers behind them to "play a lot faster." They don't have to worry about executing any assignment but their own. Or take Malcolm Rodriguez, who stepped in Sunday for Anzalone and took home a game ball with eight tackles, most since his rookie season. The Lions practice with such intensity during the week that the games often feel like they're played at a lesser speed.
At one point in the first half Sunday, Davis looked up at the scoreboard and saw that the Colts were converting more than half of their third downs. That bothered him. The Lions aim to hold their opponent under 30 percent each game. The Colts went 0-for-their-last-7 and finished 3-for-12. Two years ago, Detroit ranked 30th in the NFL in third down defense. Now they rank first, "and today it showed," said Davis. "We pulled it out at the end." They're the only team allowing a conversion rate under 30 percent on the season.
Three years ago, the Lions ranked 29th in red zone defense. Now they rank second. The Colts made two futile trips Sunday. The Lions were bailed out by a dropped touchdown in the second quarter -- and some costly penalties by Indy littered throughout the game -- but good teams take advantage of their breaks. They also force their opponents into mistakes. The Colts didn't come close to scoring a touchdown the rest of the day. As Campbell noted, "good red zone offenses can run the ball ... and we're really good at shutting down the run."
"It starts there, but the amount of detail that goes into what we do, A.G. every week, the plan is good. It's something we preach. We know it has to be part of our DNA. The coaches do a great job, and then our guys are just taking it to heart, and we're applying pressure.”
That, again, is putting it lightly. McNeill, a 315-pound dancing bear, said that "when teams get in the red zone, for us personally, our mentality is you break something before you let them score a touchdown."
"We do that in practice, too. We don’t even let the running backs run it in, we don’t let them finish in the end zone. We'd never. We don’t like to see anybody in the end zone, we don’t care who it is. Our mentality is we’re liable to die on that field before we let someone score, in my mind," said McNeill.
Detroit's defense is fueled by grit, of course, but also "the passion and the love for the game," said Davis. The Lions compete as much against their own standard as the team on the other side. Glenn has challenged his players for the past two years to reshape the narrative that the offense carries the bulk of the weight in Detroit. Now they share the load. McNeill laughed when he saw Glenn's posture on the bench Sunday and said, "That's AG!"
"He knows that play-call like the back of his hand. He could call it from right there," said McNeill.
For a long time, the Lions' defense felt nothing but emptiness after games. Now it's becoming numb to its own dominance. For Davis, four more quarters without giving up a touchdown felt routine. The plaudits, he said, feel good, especially in a game that glorifies offense, but "we don’t ever want to get too much praise or feel too good about ourselves." After all, it's only November. The Lions have plans to play into February.
"We just try to stay dialed-in, man," said Davis. "We’ll celebrate after the season, after the Super Bowl."