Thirteen weeks into the 2023 season, the Detroit Lions have yet to lose consecutive games. They avoided doing so on Sunday by defeating the New Orleans Saints, 33-28. With the victory, Detroit improved to 9-3 and a three-game lead over the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings in the NFC North division. Furthermore, if the season ended today, the Lions would enter the NFC playoffs as the No. 3 seed.
As good as all of that sounds for Dan Campbell’s team, it’s also true that Detroit hasn’t played a full game since its bye week. In its final game before the bye week, it easily defeated the Las Vegas Raiders, 26-14. Since then, Aaron Glenn’s defense has let the Lions down time and again, allowing 334 yards or more in every game since Week 10.
The defense’s most recent lapse occurred this past weekend in New Orleans. Following a 24-7 halftime lead, the Lions were outscored 14-3 in the third quarter, despite little-to-no resistance from Glenn’s unit. Taysom Hill, the Saints’ “Swiss-Army knife,” made it a three-point game with a 1-yard rushing score with 4:40 left in the third quarter.
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Now, Detroit has its fifth road victory of the season. However, as Campbell told reporters on Monday, his team’s performance was insufficient. “We have to deal with our own problems.” But I believe we will and can,” said the Lions’ third-year coach. “So, we might tinker with a few things this week, but we’ll see how it goes.” The guys got a good win, but it wasn’t enough. It’s not good enough, and our guys are well aware of this. More is out there, and we want more. And, man, they’ll be ready to go this week. We know who they are, and they’re coming off a bye week. This is going to be a big week for us.”
Most notably, the Lions struggled after halftime on Sunday. They gave up 254 net yards of offense and three touchdown drives, and were outscored 21-9 in the second half by New Orleans.
Following Detroit’s Week 13 victory over the Saints, Campbell admitted that he may need to reconsider his post-halftime strategy in future games.
“So, look, we know they’re going to adjust,” Campbell explained. “But, I’d say, okay, you come in knowing they’re going to adjust, and this is what we do.” But it’s also fine because we wanted to set them up with these plays. Then, in the second half, you come out, and now we’re going to throw this at them. So you already have a rough idea of what you want to do. Maybe we should go back and say, ‘Alright, let’s not worry about these second-half openers that we were going to do’ – you throw the first curveball, you throw the second. It should focus more on what they did in the first half.
“But you’re always playing that game.” This isn’t the first time something like this has come up. I mean, it was the same in New Orleans. You’re always doing that balancing act. (Do) you keep playing the internal chess game, or do you stick to what you felt you needed to do going into the game?”
