'Undisciplined' Lions fall apart in loss to Bears: 'It stings'
Justin RogersChicago — There would be no comeback this time around.
With the postseason on the not-so-distant horizon, the Detroit Lions are supposed to be playing their best football. Instead, they can't get out of their own way as they try to lock down their first division title in three decades. They turned the ball over, committed untimely penalties on both sides of the ball, and struggled to contain Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields to the pocket, falling to Bears, 28-13, Sunday at Soldier Field.
"Undisciplined game," Lions coach Dan Campbell said. "That's a good team, that's a talented team, and they're playing good football. We had to play well, and we did not play well enough. That's a credit to them. That's a tough pill to swallow. It is what it is. I thought we played hard, I thought we did some really good things at times, but honestly, it was the discipline. I mean, penalties cost us today, and that's really the story of the game."
Similar to the previous meeting between the teams, the Lions (9-4) struggled out the gate, but still managed to grab the lead at the half.
Abusing Detroit's defense on the ground, Chicago (5-8) took the opening kickoff and drove 69 yards on eight plays for a touchdown. The Bears had four runs of 10 or more yards during the possession, including two by Fields, before wide receiver DJ Moore took a direct snap, faked a handoff to Fields, and raced around the left end untouched for a 16-yard score.
After a Lions punt, the Bears expanded their early advantage to 10 with a 42-yard Cairo Santos field goal. Fields kickstarted the series with a 19-yard scramble to convert a third-down deep in his own territory, and the offense vaulted into the red zone after cornerback Cam Sutton missed a diving attempt to break up a short pass, resulting in a 28-yard gain, plus a 15-yard unnecessary roughness penalty against linebacker Alex Anzalone at the end of the play.
But Detroit was able to limit the damage when linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin shot through an interior gap on a blitz and sacked Fields on third down. It was the first sack for the defender since his rookie season in 2017.
Detroit's offense continued to sputter as a dropped pass on third down led into quarterback Jared Goff throwing his ninth interception of the season. But with Chicago driving again, fueled by a drive-opening 41-yard pass to tight end Cole Kmet, the Lions managed to tighten up and force a turnover on downs on their side of the field as safety Ifeatu Melifonwu stuffed Moore behind the line after the receiver took a pitch on fourth-and-1.
"We were going to fake the (tush) push play, the rugby play, and then we were going to flip it to DJ," Bears coach Matt Eberflus said. "Detroit did a great job of really executing on that play, and they made a nice tackle."
That play sparked a momentum swing that saw the Lions gain the lead.
Opening the ensuing series with three straight runs for David Montgomery, Goff delivered the key play with a tight-window, fourth-down completion to Donovan Peoples-Jones on fourth down to keep the drive alive. Three snaps later, running back Jahmyr Gibbs took a pitch heading right and scooted across the goal line behind key blocks from right tackle Penei Sewell and tight end James Mitchell, cutting the Bears lead to 10-6 after a missed extra point.
The defense stayed hot, too, forcing the Bears into a three-and-out behind an Aidan Hutchinson sack on second down and another hit on Fields on third, forcing an drive-killing incompletion. It was just the second sack in the past eight games for Detroit's leading pass rusher.
"Early in that game, Fields is running around, he got us a couple times, and then we settled in on defense," Campbell said. "I thought we played pretty good (the rest of the half)."
Eating up nearly all of the remaining time in the first half, the Lions converted a trio of third downs before Goff found receiver Josh Reynolds for an 8-yard touchdown to cap a 53-yard drive, sending the Lions to the locker room with their first lead of the day, 13-10.
Coming out of the break, the third quarter continued to be a trouble spot for the Lions, particularly for the offense, which punted three times after going three-and-out each time to open the frame.
The Bears, meanwhile, managed to knot things up with a 12-play series that ended in a 26-yard Santos field goal. Fields was sharp to start that drive, completing 5-of-6 for 53 yards, but couldn't find an open man on second- or third-and-goal from the 7-yard line, leaving the Bears to settle for the chip-shot kick.
And Chicago was able to grab the lead at the end of the quarter when Fields got Hutchinson to jump offside with a hard count on fourth down, using the free play to throw a bomb to Moore, over the coverage of cornerback Jerry Jacobs, for a 38-yard touchdown. A failed two-point conversion left it, 19-13, with 1:36 to go in the third.
"When he jumped, I was like, 'Shoot, I'm out,' and it was like, 'meep meep,'" Moore said, mimicking the Road Runner from the classic Looney Toons cartoons.
The Lions managed to dig their hole a little deeper before the end of the frame when Goff and center Graham Glasgow botched a snap exchange, which the Bears recovered at Detroit's 29-yard line.
"Just a poor exchange," Goff said. "It's on me."
Capitalizing on the gift, Fields found a lane around the right edge after Hutchinson looped inside on his rush, freeing the QB to scramble for an 11-yard touchdown on third-and-goal. Another failed two-point conversion left Detroit's deficit at 12 with a little more than 14 minutes remaining, 25-13.
"I'm looking for DJ to throw to because he was one-on-one in kind of the back corner, but then I looked down and saw green grass right there, so just ran," Fields said.
Fields finished with 58 yards rushing and the touchdown on 12 carries. He added 223 yards on 19-of-33 passing.
Like the first halves of the two games, Chicago building a 12-point lead in the second half mirrored the first matchup. The similarities stopped there as the rally Detroit managed to orchestrate at Ford Field three weeks earlier never materialized in this one.
As the Lions' offensive misery persisted, the team provided more free points to the Bears by turning it over on downs in their own territory. Facing fourth-and-one from their 34, the Lions handed the ball to Gibbs on a slow-developing run play, resulting in the rookie back getting stuffed short of the line to gain.
"We knew they were going to give us something (unique) every once in a while coming off a bye week, and that was an unscouted look," Campbell said. "They gave us a curveball and we didn't handle it well."
That premium field position translated into another Santos field goal, extending the lead to 15 as the clock drained under 10 minutes.
Detroit would turn it over twice more, once on downs and a second Goff interception, failing to score a single point in the second half for the first time this season.
Goff finished 20 of 35 for 161 yards, with a touchdown and two interceptions.
"Look, I'm not going to change who I am," Campbell said. "But sometimes I need to apply pressure in different areas and that's fine. I can do that. But, hey, this is the league, man. We're in December. That's what this is all about, you know? It's like I said, we've got a pretty resilient team here and we'll bounce back, man. It was a loss and it stings. Nobody feels worse about it than those guys do, and the coaches. We all feel it. This is hard, it's a hard pill to swallow, but with the guys we've got, it only motivates you to want to move on and get a win. That's what it does."
The Lions will try to get back on track when they return home to play the Denver Broncos next Saturday night.
jdrogers@detroitnews.com
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