Editor’s note: This is an opinion piece from MLive.com reporter Kyle Meinke.
CHICAGO -- Matthew Stafford threw for 402 yards and the Detroit Lions scored 34 points without Kenny Golladay or D’Andre Swift on the field. How’s that for fun?
Romeo Okwara high-stepped off the field after stripping Mitchell Trubisky inside the 10-yard line. Matthew Stafford headbutted Adrian Peterson after the Hall-of-Famer plowed into the end zone for a game-winning touchdown. Kevin Strong, listed at 285 pounds, was lifted off the ground in a bear hug after stoning David Montgomery on fourth-and-1 with 11 seconds left. How’s that for fun?
The Detroit Lions roared back from a double-digit deficit in the final 5 minutes to stun the Chicago Bears 34-30 on Sunday at Soldier Field. That snaps a five-game losing streak against the Bears, a nine-game losing streak against the NFC North, moves the Lions (5-7) within one game of the NFC playoff field, and made Darrell Bevell a winner in his debut as interim head coach. And a replay review after the fourth-down stop gave a long line of players the chance to hug a man who just did something Matt Patricia never did.
Beat the damn Bears.
How’s that for some fun?
“I wish you could be in this locker room right now, I think that would answer your question,” Bevell said a few minutes later. “I mean, it’s a’buzzing in there. Yes, definitely I think those guys really, truly believed in themselves all the way again.”
Bevell’s message all week was clear. He wanted to make the Detroit Lions fun again. They haven’t been fun in a long time. Not for fans, who had to watch them pile up losses like it was 2006-08. And certainly not for players, who actually had to take those losses, then head into work on Monday to get their butts chewed out by Matt Patricia.
Patricia ran his team into the ground, on the field and away from it. The negativity was unrelenting. He would constantly change the meeting schedule that first year, still show up late almost every day -- that is not hyperbole; he was late basically every day according to players in the room -- and then start mother-bleeping everyone and their grandmother. The more they lost, the longer those meetings got.
Patricia was fired because he lost too much, make no mistake about that. But he lost too much because he smothered guys, splintered the locker room, and spent a whole lot of time trying to find ways to get rid of some of his best players because he couldn’t get along with them. And that’s a big reason why the Detroit Lions chose Darrell Bevell to replace him. Because Bevell is not like Matt Patricia. He’s a positive guy with good energy who just wants to have fun playing a kid’s game.
“I think (working with Brett Favre) probably rubbed off on him a little bit, just how much fun a grown man can have playing a kid’s game,” Stafford said. “He brings that sort of youthful joy to the game, and always has since I met him. That’s really never changed.”
Stafford had a strained relationship with Patricia during that first season in 2018. Almost everyone did, so that shouldn’t be a surprise. Then Bevell walked through that door in 2019, and things started to get better for Stafford. He loved working with Bevell, loved the collaborative nature of his coaching style, his inclination toward aggression, his desire to actually have some fun playing this game.
Stafford rediscovered the deep ball. He threw for more yards than every other quarterback in the first half of last season, and had a career-high QB rating of 106.0 while doing it. Of course, that aggressiveness never quite squared with how Matt Patricia actually wanted to win football games. Patricia wanted to shorten the game with a ball-control offense that would keep his defense off the field. He wanted to force the opponent into making more mistakes than Detroit, which turned Stafford into a risk-manager rather than a game-winner.
That’s a joyless way to play the game. Everyone in the building knew the problem, and that’s why you’ve heard Bevell talk so much about having some fun again this past week. Because that’s what he’s about anyway, and the Lions weren’t having much of it either.
So Bevell immediately shortened meeting times last week. He cranked up the music at practice, never turned it off, and actually played the tunes players wanted to hear. That ratcheted up the energy on the field, and Bevell maintained it by picking up the pace at practice. They were in and out of the huddle quicker, got in the work, then called it a day. A new era, indeed.
Oh, and please have some fun while you’re at it.
“Since when coach got fired, Bev was just like, ‘Man, y’all just let loose and have fun, just keep being y’all selves,” said linebacker Reggie Ragland, who was in on that fourth-and-1 stop that sealed Sunday’s win. “I love to play music and things like that, but I think everybody, man, was just loose, and some guys who felt like they couldn’t really be loose, they was loose. I’m just excited for this team to go out there and get this win after being down 10. Being down 10, again, it showed the type of heart we got as a whole, man. I’m excited. Like, winning games like that? It’s fun.”
The Lions didn’t look loose in the first half, when they allowed three touchdowns, more than 100 yards rushing against the worst-rushing team in the league, and fell behind 23-13. It just felt like more of the same. So Bevell stood in front of his team in the locker room, and reminded everyone to lighten up.
“I addressed the whole team when we called them up before we went out,” Bevell said. “I just told them to continue to keep playing, don’t measure the game, play until there’s no time left on the clock and continue to play with the joy and enthusiasm that we wanted to play with. We’ll see what happens at the end. I think they really did exactly that, and good things happened.”
No doubt. It was all over the field. There were hugs and headbutts and backslaps and big plays. After getting just one stop in the first half, they got five out of six to finish the game. More than anything, they got a vintage performance from Matthew Stafford.
Stafford threw for 400 yards just once in 35 games under Matt Patricia. On Sunday, he threw for 402 yards without his best receiver or running back on the field. He averaged 12.9 intended yards per attempt, the highest number in the league on Sunday. When his passes traveled at least 13 yards through the air, he was 17 of 22 passing with three touchdowns, including a 49-yard TD bomb to rookie Quintez Cephus that will go down as one of his best-ever passes in Detroit.
And when Detroit needed him most, Stafford delivered his best.
The Lions were down 30-20 with just 4:29 showing on the clock and 96 yards standing between them and the end zone. That’s an awfully tough spot. Then Matthew Stafford gave them all 96 yards on six straight completions, the last of which was a 25-yard dagger to Marvin Jones behind the defense in the end zone.
“That was really vintage Matthew Stafford right there,” Bevell said. “We kind of let him play today, and he just responded in a big way.”
Of course, the Lions still needed a defensive stop. They haven’t gotten many of those since Matt Patricia installed his system in Detroit either, and fewer yet in crunch time. On Sunday, Romeo Okwara delivered just three plays later. He bent the edge, then left his feet to fully extend for Mitchell Trubisky. His hand met leather, ripped out the football and rookie John Penisini fell on top of it.
Lions ball, 7-yard line, 1:48 left.
Two plays later, Taylor Decker pushed Adrian Peterson into the end zone for the game-winning score. And Matthew Stafford, after a really tough year that has him heading into the most uncertain offseason of his career, celebrated with a headbutt right to the face of the future Hall-of-Famer.
A few minutes later, he presented Bevell with the game ball in the locker room.
“Happy for Bev, man,” Stafford said. “Happy for our team. Just excited to get a win and thought it was fitting he needs to get that game ball. You know, it’s his first game as a head coach and to get a win is huge.”
Darrell Bevell has made the Detroit Lions fun again. Of course, just how much better he’s made them remains unclear. Their defense still looks like a mess, and they needed some late-game heroics to fend off a team that has now lost six straight and could fire its coach any day now. With some very tough games to come against Green Bay, Tampa Bay, Tennessee and Minnesota, the Lions could be exposed for what they are -- a deeply flawed team head for a badly needed makeover.
But, they won. They won while their defense was a mess. They won without their top three draft picks. They won without their top free-agent signing. They won without either of their projected starters at cornerback. They won without Trey Flowers. They won without Kenny Golladay.
After 43 games of needing everything to go exactly right to grind out a win under Matt Patricia, they won when they were very far from their best. And they had fun doing it. On this day, after so many very hard days and with so many uncertain days to come, that was enough.
“My emotions right now, I can’t even think straight,” Bevell said. “The players, they responded today. Hopefully, you can see it. Hopefully, it showed in the way that they played and it just showed up in their demeanor as they were on the field flying around.”
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