Lions hope to keep momentum after bye week, hosting Packers and Vikings in next 2 games

DETROIT (AP) — Jared Goff wishes the Detroit Lions were playing this week.

Detroit is coming off its best performance of the season, beating Arizona 45-21 on the road ahead of its bye week.

“Wish we could play tomorrow after a game like that,” Goff said last Sunday.

The Lions (3-2) opened the season with a 31-30 overtime win over New Orleans at home and have alternated losses and wins since.

Detroit was dominated at Buffalo, hung on to beat the New York Jets, played poorly in a loss at Carolina and bounced back with a blowout against the Cardinals with a defense that suddenly didn’t look like the NFL’s worst.

“It is a complementary football game and you could certainly feel it,” Goff said. “They were playing with energy and swagger and then we were feeding off that, getting short fields, scoring and then they would multiply that.”

The Lions go into Week 6 as one of three 3-2 teams in the NFC North. Chicago and Green Bay are the others, while Minnesota is 5-0 and has a bye this week.

Detroit will see how it stacks up in the division with its next two games at home against the Packers on Oct. 25 and the Vikings on Nov. 1.

The Lions host the Bears on Thanksgiving Day and in a stretch that may decide the division, they play at Minnesota in Week 15 and close the regular season at Chicago and Green Bay.

Detroit’s offense ranks as one of NFL’s best

The Lions and Bills are leading the league in scoring, averaging 32.8 points per game.

Detroit is the NFL’s first team to have a quarterback (Goff) with at least 1,400 yards passing and 12 passing touchdowns and a running back ( Jahmyr Gibbs ) with 500-plus yards rushing and seven scores on the ground through the first five games of a season.

Gibbs is the fourth player in league history — and the first since Christian McCaffrey in 2019 — to have 500-plus yards rushing and at least 240 yards receiving through the first five games of a season.

The three-time Pro Bowler has scored the most touchdowns (57) by an NFL player before his 25th birthday. He wants to break LaDainian Tomlinson’s single-season record of 31 touchdowns.

“I’m trying to get that,” Gibbs said.

Goff has thrown 12 TD passes without an interception through five games. He joins Russell Wilson, who did it in 2019, as the only NFL quarterbacks to accomplish that feat.

Receivers Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams, along with tight end Sam LaPorta, give Goff plenty of options in the passing game when defenses are stacked to stop Gibbs on the ground.

Detroit’s defense is among the league’s worst

The Lions are allowing a league-high 404.4 yards per game, and they are third-worst in scoring defense, allowing 29.6 points per game.

Fifth-year defensive back Roger McCreary has heard the talk about how poorly the unit has played.

“That’s the part of business,” said McCreary, who defended six passes at Arizona for the highest total in a game by a Detroit player since Bryant Westbrook in 2000. “If you not playing good, critics going to say something.”

Despite the poor team stats defensively, the Lions are pressuring quarterbacks. They have 20 sacks, the most they’ve had through five games in a season, and have four players with at least three sacks for the first time at this point of the season.

Detroit’s injury list may get shorter soon

The Lions might get a boost on both sides of the ball after their bye.

Hard-hitting safety Brian Branch and veteran center Cade Mays are getting close to returning after being out with injuries.

Branch tore his left Achilles tendon late last season against Dallas. He was voted to the Pro Bowl in 2024.

Mays has been out for two months with a wrist injury. He was a key acquisition in the offseason, signing a three-year contract to fill a void left by Frank Ragnow’s retirement entering the 2025 season.

While Goff would have picked another week for a bye, Campbell said it’s right on time to give Branch and Mays another week to get cleared to play.

“We got the opportunity to get a couple of guys back potentially here, so that extra week early right now buys us that,” Campbell said. “So, I think it’s good. Yeah, after you feel like you play your best game, there is part of you that’s like, ‘Boy, it’d be nice to keep going.’ But, I think this is a good thing. I think it’s good that it’s happening now. We can kind of get some guys back, get rested up and be ready to go after that.”

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