DETROIT – The Detroit Lions have no answer for Josh Allen.
Now, they’re hoping their poor defense will stop others.
Detroit’s patchwork defense became even more vulnerable in a 48-42 loss to Allen’s Buffalo Bills on Sunday, with three contributors facing potentially season-ending injuries.
Defensive tackle Aleem McNeil suffered a knee injury, cornerback Carlton Davis III suffered a broken jaw and backup cornerback and key special teams player Khalil Dorsey suffered a broken right leg, head coach Dan Campbell said. This is similar to Aidan Hutchinson’s season-ending injury.
“We’ll know more about Aleem and (Davis) tomorrow, but I don’t feel good about either of them,” Campbell said. “If I say I don’t feel good about the injury, that means I don’t feel good about the rest of the season.”
The Lions have more players on injured reserve than any other team in the NFL, and a large portion of those players are on defense. They’ve managed to overcome the loss of Hutchinson, the league’s best pass rusher, but Allen shows just how far things have gone.
Not only did the Lions not sack him, they rarely put any pressure on him. They had just three quarterback hits on the day, with Allen throwing for a season-high 362 yards and two touchdowns and running for 68 yards and two other scores.
“He’s a huge problem for any team and we knew that was going to happen,” Campbell said. “We wanted to treat him better but we didn’t. When he was playing I could live with it but it was frustrating with all the self-inflicted injuries.
“You can’t give that team anything, but I feel like we helped them a little bit.”
Buffalo’s 48 points and 559 yards didn’t even tell the full story, as Tyler Bass missed a 24-yard field goal that would have put the Bills over 50 points. The performance came on the heels of Buffalo’s 44-42 loss to the Los Angeles Rams last Sunday.
“We knew they were ready after the blowout loss on West Coast,” Campbell said. “They had this sense of urgency and we just didn’t keep up. “That’s my thing. I didn’t prepare those guys for a game like this. We have a lot of guys that can play better than them and that’s my job. “
The final score didn’t look too bad for the Lions offense, which had 521 yards, including 494 from Jared Goff, but only lost by six points.
Goff passed for 333 yards in the second half, but Detroit gained just 7 yards. Detroit trailed 38-21 early in the fourth quarter but still trailed by two points until its final touchdown with 16 seconds left.
“If we could have played like that at the beginning of the game, maybe we would have kept it closer through the first three quarters,” Goff said. “It might not feel so much like garbage time in the end.
“They hit us in the mouth early and it took us too long to react.”
However, Goff believes the game could have value in the long run.
“We would have loved to win, including the Super Bowl, but that didn’t happen,” he said. “I hope we can take this as a good lesson and use what we learned to win the next three games.”
