Pittsburgh — It was absurd and confusing, as Lions games often are. And for this team this season, it was strangely appropriate.
The Lions can’t win even when they don’t lose. They couldn’t make the decisive catch or decisive kick or decisive play, but then neither could the Steelers. In a steady rain that turned a football game into sloppy, oddly fascinating theater, the Lions somehow ended their 12-game losing streak, yet extended their misery.
You could say they deserved a better fate than a mind-bending, heart-rending 16-16 tie with the Steelers, but truly, both teams got what they deserved. Jared Goff strained a rib muscle but kept playing, and maybe that wasn’t a good idea. Then again, since the Lions’ running game with D’Andre Swift was working well on a wet field, passing wasn’t the best option. Then again, if the Lions made a couple kicks it wouldn’t have mattered, as Ryan Santoso, replacing injured Austin Seibert, flubbed an extra point and badly missed a 48-yard field goal in overtime.
The teams took turns turning away chances Sunday, bouncing madly from the verge of winning to the verge of losing. By the end, I’m fairly certain fans were ready to tie one on. All we know for sure is, the Lions can’t finish 0-17. They can finish 0-16-1, although with this type of feisty effort against a tough opponent, I doubt it. At 0-8-1, they sit somewhere between encouraged and crushed, pleased with improvement but mystified by the outcome.
“I’m in this twilight zone,” Dan Campbell said. “I don’t know what this is really. … I was upset we didn’t win, but I also was proud of the way they played and snapped back, better than two weeks ago.”
A backyard two-hand touch game would’ve been better than the Lions’ last outing, a 44-6 embarrassment against the Eagles. They used the bye week to revamp their offensive tendencies, install a jumbo run package, reinsert tackle Taylor Decker from the injured list, and restore faith that they’re still willing to fight.
Bittersweet result
Their reward? Something like purgatory, freed from 0-17 talk, burdened by their unrelenting penchant for blowing things. After Pittsburgh’s Chris Boswell nailed a 51-yard field goal to tie it 16-16, the Lions had six more possessions through the fourth quarter and 10-minute overtime, and here’s how they went: Punt, punt, punt, punt, missed field goal, punt. Undeterred, the Steelers rattled off their own string: Punt, punt, fumble, punt, fumble.
On one preposterous sequence, the Steelers were poised to win in overtime, then the Lions were poised to steal it. Pittsburgh backup Mason Rudolph, filling in for Ben Roethlisberger (COVID protocol), fired a 39-yard pass to Diontae Johnson, who was churning toward field goal range in Detroit territory. But here came Mark Gilbert, the cornerback who’d just been beaten on the play, knocking the ball loose, and the Lions recovered.
They moved into field goal range but T.J. Hockenson — who didn’t have a single reception — was called for holding, pushing the Lions back a bit too far for Santoso, whose 48-yard attempt fell well short. Campbell called the tie “bittersweet” and players were similarly conflicted. I imagine a tie is like eating plain pizza, better than nothing, but leaves you craving more.
“It’s definitely weird,” said rookie Penei Sewell, who played well in his return to right tackle. “I kind of take this as a loss. Gotta keep grinding and finding our identity.”
The Steelers had their own struggles and Rudolph threw often and ineffectively, 30-for-50 for 242 yards. The weather did the quarterbacks no favors. Goff played just as poorly — 14-for-25 for 114 yards — and admitted the injury and rain were factors.
Campbell took over play-calling duties and the emphasis clearly was to slug it out with the bruising Steelers. With the kickoff temperature at 39 degrees and rain sweeping in, the plan made sense, until it became apparent Goff couldn’t function well enough to wing it. But he wasn’t turning it over, and although he had 11 passing yards at halftime, it was 10-10.
Understand, the Steelers were riding a four-game winning streak and generally win games like this. If the Lions had a seasoned backup, they absolutely should’ve pulled Goff. Campbell kept checking with trainers, assistant coaches and Goff himself, but David Blough has played sparingly, and in a game this tight, wasn’t a great option.
“(Goff) wanted to go,” Campbell said. “And he felt good enough to do what he wanted to do, so we stuck with him.”
Inching closer
Goff did connect with Amon-Ra St. Brown on a 30-yard pass in overtime that briefly put the Lions in position to win. But for the most part, he presented no threat, and Pittsburgh knew it.
Goff gets some credit for gutting it out in awful weather against a rugged defense. He’d have gotten real credit if he’d pulled it out. He said the rain was much more of a problem than the muscle strain.
“I don’t want to sit here and makes excuses, but it was bothering me,” Goff said. “But if I felt I couldn’t throw and it was a hindrance, I wouldn’t have gone. … I don’t know whether to be happy or sad. Really, you’re not happy because we could’ve won it and we didn’t. It is better than a loss, I guess. It feels like we’re inching closer to where we want to be to win games like that.”
One of these days, the inches have to lead to yards, and please, no more maddening backsliding. The Lions have a pattern of following up solid efforts with abysmal efforts, and that’s one reason Campbell tried to shake things up. So did defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, who literally dug a hole behind the practice facility and buried the computer hard drive from the season’s first half.
Some of the tactics worked, and the use of tackle Matt Nelson as an extra blocking tight end helped open huge holes. Swift again showed he can be a game-changer, running hard for 130 yards on 33 carries.
So what should we take from this chaotic no-decision? For one, the NFL remains a theater of absurd parity, where there’s no such thing as a heavy favorite, no linear path to success or failure, and no such thing as an 0-17 team. It showed the Lions aren’t as beleaguered as they appeared the last time they played, and Campbell will keep shuffling players and plans until he finds a win.
That’s some sort of progress. At least this game tape doesn’t need to be buried with all the others, although I doubt anyone ever wants to see it again.
bob.wojnowski@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @bobwojnowski