The Detroit Lions saw their league-best four-game win streak snapped on Sunday night, getting outplayed in Kansas City by the Chiefs. Dan Campbell’s Lions fell 30-17 in a game where Detroit did not play its best, and the Chiefs were sharper and more disciplined on both sides of the ball.
Detroit played the game shorthanded, with several starters sidelined. Even so, the depth has executed better than it did on this night. That’s the primary takeaway: the Chiefs were the better, sharper team on Sunday night.
Here’s what else I took away from the game while watching in real-time, in quickie format:
Too many errors
From Amon-Ra St. Brown dropping an early 4th-down pass to coverage mixups in the red zone, the Lions made too many errors to beat a good team. The margin for error in facing Andy Reid’s Chiefs, with Patrick Mahomes playing like an MVP at quarterback, is too small to miss opportunities that were there for the taking for Detroit. A missed tackle here, a blown blocking assignment there–it doesn’t take much to give the Chiefs the advantage. The Lions were close to being good enough but not clean enough to pull off the win.
Offense got away from what was working
Detroit scored on its first two offensive possessions and had a nice third drive that stalled in Chiefs territory on the St. Brown drop. Three of the next four drives ended in 3-and-outs, and that was a byproduct of softening the attack. Instead of running hard between the tackles and picking at the intermediate throws that were working well, the offense got too horizontal and unaggressive. It allowed the Chiefs defense to use its speed to its advantage and sapped any positive momentum the impressive early ground game developed for Detroit.
Penalties, and lack thereof
Detroit lost a touchdown on its opening drive thanks to an officiating technicality. QB Jared Goff was found guilty of illegal motion very late after catching a touchdown pass from David Montgomery on 4th-and-goal. Goff never reset after motioning out, an obscure rule most of America learned together in this one.
The Lions were guilty of four penalties on the night. One of them was a roughing-the-passer call on Aidan Hutchinson that was well-deserved; Hutch took 2-3 steps after Mahomes let the ball go and slammed into the Chiefs QB. There was a defensive pass interference call on reserve (but starting in this one) CB Rock Ya-Sin that felt ticky-tacky. Perhaps it felt that way because of the way the officials called the game otherwise.
Kansas City was not penalized once in the game. This tidbit from Al Karsten sums up just how freakish that seems:
The Lions (and Lions fans) cannot and should not blame the officials for the loss. But that crazy officiating anomaly certainly raises an eyebrow…
Chiefs exposed the Lions coverage woes
Mahomes was very sharp, and he frequently exploited lapses in the Lions coverage. But it wasn’t the dilapidated cornerback room that he attacked. It was the linebackers.
Next Gen Stats laid out the ugliness succinctly,
The safeties, notably Brian Branch, playing behind the LBs also did not look impressive in coverage. Film study will break that down deeper, but the Chiefs found something that worked very well against the Lions defense and didn’t go away from it.
Brian Branch needs to chill
Branch ended the game by inciting a brawl in an egregious display of poor sportsmanship. Dan Campbell strongly condemned Branch’s actions after the game, noting, “I love Brian Branch, but what he did was inexcusable. It’s not going to be accepted here. It’s not what we do. It’s not what we are about.”
This is not the first, nor the second, nor the third incidence of Branch committing fine-worthy acts outside the physicality of playing football. Campbell spoke strongly, but he needs to back it up to make sure Branch gets the message. He’s a great, impactful player but can’t keep hurting or embarrassing the Lions with his actions. Sitting him in Week 7 seems like a prudent idea, both punitively and also to give him extra time to heal from a foot/ankle injury that was clearly inhibiting his play on Sunday night.
Pass rush struggled
The stat sheet says the Lions sacked Mahomes three times, but the Lions pressure from the defensive front was sporadic. It wasn’t Aidan Hutchinson’s best game, even with a strip sack to his credit. The Chiefs, unexpectedly playing without starting left tackle Josh Simmons, protected well and handled stunts, twists and blitzes well.
There is always the worry about pressuring Mahomes and not getting home, opening up opportunities for him to gash the defense with his legs. He did run 10 times for 32 yards, but at least a few of those runs came as the result of good downfield coverage and not pressure losing containment.
It’s one loss
There’s a temptation to jump to bold conclusions about the Lions’ ultimate 2025 fate after the loss. Many folks did that after the ugly (far uglier than this one) loss in Green Bay, and those hot takes didn’t age well, rather quickly. The ones after this game won’t either.
The Lions are still as good as any team in the NFC. They lost a game to a team that’s been in five of the last six Super Bowls, winning three of them. The Chiefs were the better team in Week 6. That doesn’t mean in any way, shape or form that the Lions can’t be the better team in a rematch in February. That’s something Dan Campbell has proven time and again as a coach–he knows how to get his team to move on from a bad game. It’s a disappointing loss, no doubt. It’s not the Lions’ window of being a legit contender slamming shut.