The Bears’ bizarre clock management at the end of Thursday’s game in Detroit became the story of the Lions’ 23-20 victory and shifted attention from how the Lions left the door open for the Bears to mount a comeback to make.
The Lions dominated the first half by racking up 279 yards on 47 offensive plays, while the Bears managed 53 yards on 19 offensive plays that didn’t result in a first down until the final minute of the second quarter. However, the Lions only turned that lead into 16 points and the Bears defeated the home team 20-7 after halftime, giving them a chance for a miraculous comeback.
A penalty and a sack helped pave the way for the clock blunder that helped the Lions escape with their 11th win of the season and that result was the most important to head coach Dan Campbell.
“If you’re not careful, you start judging your own wins, and that’s good, because you have these standards, the way you think you should play, by your own standards, by what you have, it has nothing to make with the opponent,” Campbell said via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. “If you’re not careful, you go too far in that thing, then you start to take the wins for granted. And at the end of the day, man, that’s a good win against an opponent that has fought every week, and this was the third match on row, division game, that those guys took it there. So we did what we had to do to win. And we’ll clean up the other things that cost us some points. But I’ll take this one W and I’m not going to do that don’t sleep about it.”
The big picture for the Lions is that they are now 11-1 and they remain in control of their chance to be the top seed in the NFC playoffs. That’s a great place to be, even if the journey was going to be rockier than anyone would have liked.
