Why aren’t we talking about this? One specific penalty keeps killing the Lions, and it struck again at the worst possible time
Detroit’s 10 penalties against Buffalo don’t tell the whole story. One particular infraction erased two potentially game-changing defensive plays on the same Bills possession.
The Detroit Lions lost badly to the Buffalo Bills, and there’s plenty to dissect. Josh Allen’s five touchdowns, the rushing yards Detroit gave up, the defense’s inability to show up. All of that deserves attention. But for this week’s “Why Aren’t We Talking About This” topic, the conversation needs to center on something else: penalties and how a couple of them may have changed the course of the game entirely.
In total, the Lions committed 10 penalties for 58 yards. When Dan Campbell was talking to the Amazon Prime sideline reporter on his way to the locker room at halftime, he brought up the penalties and said, “The little shit is killing us.”
That’s exactly what this is. The little things. And they are a real problem for Detroit.
The Lions don’t commit a lot of penalties, but they commit the worst ones
Here’s the thing. The Lions are not near the top of the league in penalties. They never have been. They’re always in the middle or near the bottom. They don’t commit nearly as many penalties as you might think. What they do happen to do a lot is commit timely penalties. Backbreaking penalties. The kind that come at the worst possible time and just gut you.
There were a couple instances in the Bills game where, if a penalty hadn’t happened, we might be talking about a completely different outcome.
The interception that didn’t count
The one that stands out the most: the Lions got an interception in this game. Roger McCreary makes a play, tips the ball, and it goes into the hands of Skyler Gill-Howard. Lions get a takeaway in the red zone while down 14-0. On the very next drive, Detroit gets the ball, goes down the field, and scores. That could have made it 14-7. Then you follow the rest of the game. The Bills score again, go up 21-7. Lions score at the end of the half, it’s 21-10. They come out and score right out of halftime. Now it’s 21-17. You see where this is going. It’s a closer game. Bills score again, 28-17. Lions answer, 28-24.
I’m not saying the Lions win this game. But I am saying they have a better chance of winning this game if that interception counts. Instead, Rock Ya-Sin commits a defensive holding penalty, and the turnover gets taken off the board. That is the backbreaking type of stuff I’m talking about.
Defensive holding is the common thread
There’s a lot of pressure being put on Kelvin Sheppard and the secondary right now, and believe me, they deserve the pressure. They absolutely do. But we’re not talking enough about the discipline this team is lacking and how they kind of like it. And they shouldn’t anymore.
The Lions have traditionally liked handsy, scrappy cornerbacks, which can be good to some degree. But when it starts to affect you and you get all these defensive holding calls, the same type of penalty the Lions have been begging the NFL to get rid of, it’s killing you. Dan Campbell just talked about it a couple weeks ago on the Amon-Ra St. Brown podcast, about how he hates these penalties and wants them to go away. The Lions even submitted a rule change before the 2025 season trying to eliminate the penalty, and the NFL flat out declined it.
Later on that same drive where the interception was wiped out, Devin White gets a sack for a 7-yard loss on the Bills. But Jack Campbell commits defensive holding. The Bills get a third shot on the drive to score a touchdown, and they do. They score in the red zone.
It is consistently defensive holding. That’s the penalty. That’s the problem.
Something has to change
I don’t know what you do if you’re Dan Campbell and Kelvin Sheppard. I don’t think this is going to go away. I don’t know how you get it to go away. But I know it’s an issue. Defensive holding is not a spot foul, which is fine, but it is an automatic first down. It gives teams extra chances, and the Lions are breaking their own back with what seems to be one penalty over and over again.
The Lions keep getting called for it because that’s just the kind of thing they’ve invited. They want to be a scrappy defense. They want to be handsy. Every team does it. Every team pushes the boundaries, and sometimes they get away with it and sometimes they don’t. But when Detroit gets caught, it always seems to be the worst possible time.
Something has to give, because this is just killing this team.
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