The Lions need to do everything they can to avoid Thursday night’s disaster, Detroit has already made similar mistakes every week

What a horrible way to lose

Mike Payton — Detroit Lions Beat Writer
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If you watched Thursday Night Football this week, you saw a pretty good game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Arizona Cardinals. Especially late in the game, when the Cardinals fought as hard as they could to turn a 20-6 deficit into a 20-20 tie with less than 28 seconds left.

Then, all hell broke loose.

The Lions need to avoid trying to be smart about late-game kickoffs. Jake Bates has already been flagged multiple times

In theory, I get what Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon was trying to do. The thought process is probably “there’s 28 seconds left, if we squib this kick into the landing zone, we can burn maybe five to 10 seconds and take this thing to overtime.” But what happened was Cardinals kicker Chad Ryland kicked it short of the landing zone and got flagged for it.

That set the Seahawks up at the Cardinals’ 40-yard line, and with kickers these days, just getting it into the 50-60 yard range is good enough. That’s all the Seahawks did. One 22-yard pass and then a four-yard run, and they were in range for a 52-yard attempt. Jason Myers nailed it, and the Cardinals lost what should have been a game that had begun to swing in their favor.

The reason I even mention the Lions in this story is that they have faced some similar issues this season. Jake Bates has been flagged every week of this season on kickoffs.

Jake Bates Kickoff Penalty Facts

  • Bates was flagged for sending a kickoff out of bounds in Week 1 against the Packers
  • Bates was flagged for kicking short of the landing zone in Week 2 against the Bears
  • Bates was flagged for sending a kickoff out of bounds in Week 3 against the Ravens

All three of those penalties set the Lions’ opponents up at the Detroit 40-yard line. The Lions have been lucky that none of these instances led to scores, but you saw on Thursday night how quickly a penalty like this can go so badly that it costs you a game.

With that said, the league learned the valuable lesson that the squib kick is probably dead now. Also, it’s fair to believe that if the Lions were in a similar spot early in the season, maybe Dan Campbell goes for the win on the two-point conversion. Although that wasn’t necessary. The Cardinals’ defense was doing enough to have a shot in overtime had they not won the toss.

You get the sense this is something that would have cost the old Lions a win. Let’s hope it doesn’t cost the new Lions one.

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