Bad officiating hurt the Lions, but wasn't the reason they lost

On a day when this post could very easily get negative and complain-y, I'm going to focus on a couple positives from the Lions' loss on Sunday. First, that defense looked pretty good. Aside from a couple of blown plays and a bit of shoddy tackling, they held down the Cards. They only allowed 14 points, they got 2 interceptions. That's more than enough to win, unless your offense is completely inept. Second, Joique Bell was great. He had some nice moments against Miami (I'll never get tired of this), but this week he looked All World. 85 yards on 14 carries which is good for 6.1 yards per carry, along with 3 catches for 30 yards. AZ was one of the top run defenses, and Joique ran all over them. That was nice.
 
Unfortunately, Joique was the only good thing about the offense. Calvin Johnson was targeted for 15 passes, catching 5. Golden Tate was targeted for 2 passes, catching 2 (seriously? 2 targets??). Stafford completed 60% of his passes (which is mediocre to average), but the reason that number is so high is because he often settled on a dump-off pass to a RB (11 targets for Bell & Riddick combined). Stafford was facing a good defense that didn't give him much time and also covered his WRs well, but he was also inaccurate on his longer throws and made poor decisions in the pocket and on who to pass to. 3 of his 4 sacks appeared to be self-inflicted, meaning a QB with good pocket presence would have moved differently and extended the play instead of getting sacked. One of his worst passing decisions was on the 4th and 2 attempt, when he missed a difficult pass to Calvin (who was covered) instead of throwing a much easier ball to Tate (who was open).
 
Obviously this can't ALL be on Stafford. His 1 interception was basically a punt & I don't know what else he could've done. He was under a lot of duress (although, again, it was self-inflicted to some extent). Lombardi's playcalling hasn't been the greatest... and that's a bit of an understatement. His 3rd down calls were pretty much all bad (except a couple of screen passes that were well executed), and his run on 1st down % is pretty high...

Let me break down that last comment a little further: running on 1st down is predictable. OCs like to get a chunk of yards on 1st down to open up some options on 2nd down and 3rd down. 2nd & long is usually a passing down, 3rd & long is almost ALWAYS a passing down. This is Pop Warner-level playcalling though. An NFL OC should aspire to be unpredictable. Run when they expect you to pass, etc. Out of 19 running plays, 8 came on 1st down and 2 came on 3rd & short. Probably the worst playcall of the game was on a 3rd & inches, when Lombardi had Stafford in the shotgun and he handed off to Riddick (not a short yardage back). If he was going to run, put Stafford under center, have a FB in there and give Joique the ball.

On top of Lombardi's predictability and spotty playcalling, I though Caldwell made a couple of questionable decisions as well. There were two 4th & shorts (one of them only inches) that Caldwell decided to either punt or kick on. This offense had very few sustained drives. The first was a 4th & 1 on Arizona's 10 yard line, with 30 seconds left in the half and down 14-3. Prater kicked the FG & Detroit never got closer to the end zone. The second time was on 4th & inches on Detroit's own 45. This is just after the ill-fated Theo Riddick counter-play on 3rd down that netted 0 yards. Still, it was 4th and inches, Detroit needed a TD badly, and they were 4 inches away from extending the drive. They punted instead, and I'm sure they regretted that later.
 
Detroit's offense was TERRIBLE, their coaching was poor, and they committed a ton of penalties (12 called, 9 accepted for 80 yards), 1 of which negated an INT that would've prevented Arizona's first TD. That said, there were 3 bad calls by the refs that didn't help.

 1. Eric Ebron's 1st down that wasn't.
 

 
The 1st down marker was just inside the 9, Ebron caught it, leaned forward and got knocked out of bounds. The official marked the ball where Ebron's foot was, not where the ball was. Since it there was less than 2 minutes to go in the half, the booth official decided the play needed to be reviewed. On TV, Mike Perreira (who has REALLY good judgment on these things) said it looked like Ebron got the 1st down but spot calls rarely get overturned. He was right. They upheld the call on the field, despite it being most likely the wrong call. Detroit ended up kicking the FG instead of going for it, so the call probably cost Detroit 4 points.

Here's another look. Ebron's 6'4" with a foot on the 10 and he's leaning forward, which means the ball is at about the 9. Replay should've overturned this, but this officiating crew is TERRIBLE

2. Possession? Possession. Possession???

 

Originally it was ruled that the Arizona player batted the ball back in play to avoid the touchback. Cardinals HC Bruce Arians threw the challenge flag, stating that Justin Bethel had "possessed" the ball on the 1 yard line before tossing it back in play. He's subject to the same "complete the process" criteria that Calvin Johnson was on his complete the process TD catch in Chicago 4 years ago. If that's not a catch, Justin Bethel chucking the ball to avoid the touchback isn't "possession". Somehow Jerome Boger (who is a pretty crappy ref, btw) overturned the call and cost Detroit 49 yards of field position that they deperately needed.

  

3. Not again.

 

 

With time ticking down and all the timeouts used up, Detroit had forced Arizona into a 3rd and 11. Stanton threw a ball to Larry Fitzgerald over the middle that was caught but immediately cleaned up by Mohammad Seisay. When Fitzgerald's feet came down he was a yard short, and Seisay tackled him several yards back. Forward progress should have given the Cards a 4th & 1 situation. Instead, the refs gave them a generous spot. Detroit was out of timeouts, and since the play didn't happen AFTER the 2 minute warning (2 minutes was reached shortly after the play was whistled dead), the play was ineligible for booth review and Detroit, having no timeouts, was unable to challenge it.

The yellow line is the 1st down marker, on the Lions' 49. Larry Fitzgerald is clearly inside the yellow marker, and the ball is closer to the 50 than the 49 yard line. Instead, Jerome Boger marked the spot a full yard ahead of where he should have, sealing the loss for Detroit.

 

Don't get me wrong, Detroit lost because the offense couldn't move the ball against a good defense. Even with a short field after a pick they couldn't do it. But a loss like this is harder to take when it feels like the officials were piling on. The reversal of the downing of the punt was unbelievable. I've never seen that play called that way, and if that was correct then they've been screwing this up for years. The NFL's VP of Officiating agreed with the call on the field because OF COURSE HE DID (99% of the time, the VP will affirm the official call and give some explanation that flies in the face of common sense and history - this was NO exception). Former NFL VP of Officiating Mike Perreira had no reason to cover up for a crappy ref, and this was his take on it after the fact:

  

Moving on, I think we all learned a bit about the Lions this weekend. Stafford will probably never be more than what he is now - an average QB with a strong arm, and mediocre accuracy & decision making. He looked bad and my general impression was he was being lazy and doesn't know where to look, so he chucked it to Calvin most of the time. Joe Lombardi isn't a great OC yet. He's not even a good OC yet. Do I long for the days of Scott Linehan? Well, he's calling plays for Dallas right now and they're 6th in yards/game & 6th in points/game. What do you think?

 

The defense was pretty good, shutting down Stanton and Co after a bumpy 1st quarter. The pass coverage looked shaky early on, and the tackling was iffy, but the Lions picked Stanton off twice, one of those pick prevented a third score by Arizona. They got less pressure on Stanton than I had expected, netting 0 sacks and only 5 QB hits, but they were pretty effective against AZ's run game. Special Teams was kind of meh. Prater doinked in a 50-yarder and drilled a chip shot (they should've gone for it!), coverage was pretty good... if Ross's punt return hadn't been overturned, this would've been better.

 

The bottom line is, this was a winnable game and Detroit's offense came out flat. They need to stand up for these big games, or they're looking at a 1 & done playoff appearance. Green Bay is looking better every week & Detroit just stays the same. At this rate, Detroit may go 4-2 down the stretch, finish behind Green Bay in the division and settle for a Wild Card, and then see somebody like Seattle, Dallas or San Francisco in the playoffs.

 

The Lions face the Pats in Foxboro next, and New England is a MONSTER. They're on a 6 game winning streak during which their average margin of victory is 19.2. Detroit is SCORING less than that per game. Time to put on your big boy pants, Lions.