Allen Park — Through the first five games of the season, no one was scoring more points than the Detroit Lions. And within that success, the offense was pushing the ball downfield far more frequently than the previous season, seemingly putting a narrative to bed that the team and quarterback Jared Goff were incapable of utilizing the deep ball.
But as the offense has gone into hibernation the past couple of games, failing to score a touchdown and mustering a measly six points, it’s probably not coincidental that the deep-passing game has evaporated.
Through those five contests, Goff attempted 26 passes of 20-plus yards beyond the line of scrimmage. That ranked among the top five in the league, and even though he only connected on eight of them, the threat alone can be enough to keep a defense honest and create better spacing for both the ground game and underneath passing lanes.
But in the past two matchups — a pair of losses by a combined 47 points — Goff has thrown it deep just once. That pass, intended for Josh Reynolds, was intercepted early in the third quarter against the Cowboys, starting a cavalcade of turnovers that ultimately did in the Lions.
“First half last game, we didn’t have any explosives by our standards, and that’s not for lack (of) trying,” Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson said. “We had a plan of attack to generate them and we didn’t quite get it done. I don’t know that necessarily the 50-yard bombs are the most consistent ways to generate explosives. but I think we all saw in training camp what our quarterback and our receiver corps are capable of in terms of throwing the ball down the field, so it’s just a matter of time. We’ve got to continue to rep it, continue to practice it with the guys that we have available, and I think it’s a matter of time before we start connecting on some of those.”
Johnson is right. The deep ball did show up in training camp, just like it did early in the regular season, but the Lions are lacking a critical component to that operation, after placing speedy outside threat DJ Chark on injured reserve. At the time of the injury, he was pacing the roster with seven targets on deep throws.
Chark only caught two of those, after Goff misfired on a few others. Deep-ball accuracy has been a consistent issue that’s plagued the quarterback, and his 34.6% adjusted accuracy, which factors in drops, ranks 25th among 33 quarterbacks with at least 10 throws. That’s actually up from 28.9% last year, but he hasn’t been above 37.5% since 2018, when he was selected to the Pro Bowl.
“I mean, just because the ball doesn’t travel down the field doesn’t mean we’re not trying to get it to go down the field. Yeah, we’re selective in when we try to dial up some of those plays, some weeks more than others. But yeah, I think it is important to challenge teams down the field. There’s no doubt about it, because you’ll see a number of teams in this league. They’ll play a single-high safety, and once the single-high safety starts getting involved in the run game, that’s when you know, ‘Holy cow, they’re not respecting us at all.’ We’ve got to avoid that.”
End-of-half approach
After recovering a fumble with 1:53 remaining in the second quarter against the Cowboys, while holding all three timeouts, the Lions opted to run out the clock instead of attempting to extend their 6-3 lead before the half.
Johnson said the approach was based on field position, more than anything. The Lions had started the drive at their own 3-yard line.
“I think that had something to do with it, just where we were,” Johnson said. “I don’t want to speak for coach (Dan Campbell), but there’s a time that momentum plays a factor, as well. We hadn’t exactly moved the ball up and down the field that game. And so, I think when we got the ball with that amount of time, I know we’ve got the timeouts, if we would’ve popped one of those runs and made it a little bit more favorable field position, I’m sure we would’ve become a lot more aggressive quickly.
“We came very close to do that,” Johnson continued. “They were in pass-rush mode … so we were trying to take advantage of that while still being smart and not allowing them to get the ball back. But we were ready to flip over to aggressive mode if the situation presented itself.”
The Lions ran the ball three times, gaining 13, 4 and 6 yards before time expired in the half.
Injury update
The Lions got three players back on the practice field Thursday, with tight end T.J. Hockenson (knee), guard Jonah Jackson (neck) and wide receiver Josh Reynolds (knee) returning in a limited capacity.
Six players remained sidelined: Safety DeShon Elliott (finger), defensive end Charles Harris (groin), Mike Hughes (knee), cornerback Chase Lucas (ankle), safety Ifeatu Melifonwu (ankle) and offensive tackle Matt Nelson (calf).
jdrogers@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @Justin_Rogers