The Lions fixed 2 major issues against the Commanders by having season lows in both areas

This needs to become a trend for the Lions

Mike Payton — Detroit Lions Beat Writer
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The Detroit Lions looked really good in their 44-22 win over the Washington Commanders on Sunday. So much better than they’ve looked in the last few weeks. A significant part of the difference was that Lions head coach Dan Campbell took over the play-calling on offense.

That was big, but the real thing that made this game so different is the drastic changes in these two areas:

Lions looked so much better on third down

Lions’ third-down conversions in 2025

  • Week 1: 5-15 (33%)
  • Week 2: 4-10 (40%)
  • Week 3: 7-14 (50%)
  • Week 4: 6-14 (43%)
  • Week 5: 2-8 (25%)
  • Week 6: 5-11 (45%)
  • Week 7: 3-13 (23%)
  • Week 9: 5-17 (29%)
  • Week 10: 5-10 (50%)

There are two ways to look at this. The first is that the Lions improved their conversion rate from 30.5% in the last four games to 50%. That’s a big change, and you can see it on the schedule. The Lions win when they convert on third down.

The second part, which Campbell brought up earlier last week, is that the Lions cut down the number of third downs they had to convert. They had 10 in this game, but it was eight because the last two were with Kyle Allen in the game, and one of them was from victory formation.

The Lions shouldn’t have 17 third-down attempts. That is probably a significant reason why Campbell made the change in play-calling. If the Lions can keep their third-down attempts lower like this, they will keep winning games.

Penalties

Last week, the Lions had a season-high 10 penalties against the Vikings. While this hasn’t been a major problem for the Lions, they’ve had some pretty back-breaking ones this year that have cost them some opportunities. You saw that a lot against the Chiefs and Vikings.

On Sunday, the Lions were penalized three times for a total of one yard. Two of those penalties were from the Lions kicking the ball out of bounds on purpose to take advantage of an NFL rule that would put the Commanders on the 25-yard line after they committed penalties, instead of having their penalty yardage affect their kick returns.

This was just all around a clean game of football for Detroit, and if they keep up both of these things, they will be the team you’re used to seeing.

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