2024 NFC Championship Game: Detroit Lions (14-5) @ San Francisco 49ers (13-5)

[Motown Bombers]

1 minute ago, Shinzaki said:

What it comes down to is this...do you trust Goff to make the right read and throw on 4th and 2 or do you trust Badgley to make the kick.

On the 1st one i have no quarrel...2nd one i tend to lean towards trying the FG...but Campbell knows Badgley...so...i don't think this loss is on Campbell. He made the same choices that have worked (mostly)all season

To be honest I thought the first one would be the one to kick the FG. You're up 14 so a FG makes it a 3 score game. The 2nd one they are down 3 but have shown no ability to stop the 49ers. The 49ers proceeded to just march down the field with ease and get a TD. The Lions needed a TD there. 

[buddha]

i wouldnt call this SOL, but i wouldnt call it BNL either.

it was one really good season.  they had a really good season in 1991 and it looked like they were ready to break out and be a contender for the next 5 years.  they got to the playoffs pretty regularly (even won a division)but couldnt get over rhe hump.  same thing could happen here.

i think they have better leadership now, so i hope it will be different this time.  but its the nfl, things change week to week, much less season to season.

i hope we become the ravens (consistently good and very good talent evaluators) and not the early 90s lions.  

[Motown Bombers]

The 90's Lions never had a QB. Goff would be better than any QB the Lions had that decade. Also, the Lions were clearly not in the same class as Washington that year. This Lions team showed they are right there with the best in the NFC. 

[Motown Bombers]

Why can't the Lions be the 90's Cowboys who the Lions blew out in the playoffs? 

Edited January 29, 2024 by Motown Bombers

[Mr.TaterSalad]

They had TJ Lang on this morning on Stoney & Jansen on 97.1. Lang, who is the sideline reporter for the radio broadcasts, did say he would have kicked both field goals, but especially the one to go up 17. He said having a 3 score cushion changes the way a defense plays and how tightly they press against the offense. I know what analytics say, but analytics don't account for momentum and the way an opposing team responds to a situation in a game. I would think an opposing team would almost certainly respond differently, at least in some way, being down 3 scores versus only 2.

[RatkoVarda]

3rd PO game with no turnovers for Goff, but he was not at his best; pressure him out of the pocket and yikes!

no idea how to get better at the QB spot; Hooker might never close get to Goff's level play, but I do wonder what they have with Hooker

[RedRamage]

14 minutes ago, Shinzaki said:

What it comes down to is this...do you trust Goff to make the right read and throw on 4th and 2 or do you trust Badgley to make the kick.

On the 1st one i have no quarrel...2nd one i tend to lean towards trying the FG...but Campbell knows Badgley...so...i don't think this loss is on Campbell. He made the same choices that have worked (mostly)all season

I think that's too simplistic. It's not just a question of how confident Campbell is or isn't in Badgley, there's also the question of 7 vs. 3 points. Even if they get the FG if 49ers turn around and get 7 points, that's still a losing proposition. And yeah I know we technically only lost by 3 points, but how the teams would have played out the rest of the game would have changed radically with a different score.

[NYLion]

8 hours ago, buddha said:

 

cjgj is gone. 

This guy especially needs to be gone. Ran his mouth all season and was a complete dud when it mattered, got run right over on a few notable occasions in the playoffs. Nothing worse than a constant trash talker who can't back it up. The Lions are good at safety anyway.

Holmes objective, and I know he loves to go BPA regardless of position in the draft, is to snag an outside corner and pass rusher opposite of Hutch. Also, need to shore up the O-Line depth with Decker and Ragnow getting older. Team is close but has a few very obvious holes.

Edited January 29, 2024 by NYLion

[Motown Bombers]

Not surprised to see people turning on Goff again. 

[NYLion]

1 hour ago, Motown Bombers said:

I don't expect the Lions to be aggressive in signing big time free agents. That doesn't seem to be their philosophy. Build through the draft and supplement through free agency. I would sign someone like Stephon Gillmore. He's old but still producing. One year contract while you draft and develop a young corner. I would even bring back Moseley. Non guaranteed contract and bring him to training camp and see if he can earn a spot. CJGJ, Branch and Melifonwu are all redundant. I probably wouldn't bring back CJGJ unless he comes on a cheap prove it deal. The Lions can save at least $5 million in cap space if they cut Walker so I think he's gone. Your starting safeties would be Melifonwu and Joseph with Branch as the hybrid. 

They need to stash a lot of that money for extensions to core players. It'll be more of the same as the last 3 offseasons, 1 year deals and heavy on draft picks filling roles. Now that the Lions are contenders, I think Holmes needs to start thinking need at the draft instead of BPA.

[CMRivdogs]

1 hour ago, romad1 said:

 

I've got people here in Northern VA who are not Lions fans or Detroit ex-patriots coming up to me more upset about it than I am.  The cynical asshats are SOLing this.  I'm not.  

I had a lot of folks down here pulling for a Ravens/Lions SB matchup. We were running errands yesterday and I had my Lions cap on. That was pretty much the reaction.

[Motown Bombers]

Goff should have threw the ball off the defender's facemask for a 50 yard gain. 

[Sports_Freak]

After sleeping on it, I think the main issue with Campbell going for it on multiple 4th downs was our poor FG team. We need a good to great kicker. Bagley isn't that guy. And going for it on 4th downs may work fine against a regular season game against non-contenders but doing it against other SB contenders has to have a much lower % of success. And yet, the plays were there if the players had just executed. And coming back and scoring a late TD shows this team does have grit and never surrenders. I'm proud to be a Lions fan and I feel really good about our future. 

Just wait until next year!! 😆

[NYLion]

7 minutes ago, GoBlue23 said:

Goff didn't make any glaring mistakes, but that that doesn't mean he was good either.  Hell, go back and look at the 4th down drop by Reynolds.  Why is the ball 3 feet to the left of Reynolds instead of right into his gut?  The defender was behind Reynolds so it's not like Goff needed to put the ball low and outside so it wouldn't be knocked down.  

Goff put that in the only spot where Reynolds could have caught it. The defender was right on Reynolds, not behind him.  A throw into his gut gets broken up.

Goff was definitely good yesterday, very good even. He missed a few throws like the flea flicker to Reynolds, one notable one to LaPorta in the Red Zone and Gibbs he missed in the End Zone on a drive that they scored a TD anyway. Other than that, Goff played a very good game and was let down by his receivers time and time again or else the stats would look a lot better.

[KL2]

11 minutes ago, GoBlue23 said:

Goff didn't make any glaring mistakes, but that that doesn't mean he was good either.  Hell, go back and look at the 4th down drop by Reynolds.  Why is the ball 3 feet to the left of Reynolds instead of right into his gut? 

Apparently he drops those too

[Sports_Freak]

2 minutes ago, NYLion said:

Goff put that in the only spot where Reynolds could have caught it. The defender was right on Reynolds, not behind him.  A throw into his gut gets broken up.

Goff was definitely good yesterday, very good even. He missed a few throws like the flea flicker to Reynolds, one notable one to LaPorta in the Red Zone and Gibbs he missed in the End Zone on a drive that they scored a TD anyway. Other than that, Goff played a very good game and was let down by his receivers time and time again or else the stats would look a lot better.

The drops were really uncharacteristic of this team. I never would have guessed that.

[Motown Bombers]

The 49ers pass defense is really good. Among the best in the league good. 

[RedRamage]

58 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

Not surprised to see people turning on Goff again. 

Well Goff didn't have his best game ever. A number of his passes were a bit outside making it harder for the receivers to catch, so I wouldn't say his above criticism. That said, Goff was NOT the reason the Lions lost... not by a long shot.  The Lions would be stupid to move on from Goff now and anyone who says they should based on this game is being idiotic.

[Motown Bombers]

Just now, RedRamage said:

Well Goff didn't have his best game ever. A number of his passes were a bit outside making it harder for the receivers to catch, so I wouldn't say his above criticism. That said, Goff was NOT the reason the Lions lost... not by a long shot.  The Lions would be stupid to move on from Goff now and anyone who says they should based on this game is being idiotic.

If Reynolds doesn't drop two passes and a deep TD pass doesn't go through Williams hands, this is a much different game. They were also going against one of the best defenses in the league and scored 31 points despite all the drops. 

[RedRamage]

Just now, Motown Bombers said:

If Reynolds doesn't drop two passes and a deep TD pass doesn't go through Williams hands, this is a much different game. They were also going against one of the best defenses in the league and scored 31 points despite all the drops. 

I 100% agree. Goff could have been better, but he was more than good enough. The receivers need to catch those balls. 

And I agree that we need to remember that the 49ers are a good team. There is a reason they were the 1-seed. There's a reason they've been to the NFC Championship three years in a row. This is a very, very good team and the Lions hung with them quite well. Honestly if you'd have said to me before the game that the Lions would lose, but just be 3-points I would have said: "That sounds exactly right... maybe even a little better than what I would have thought." It's just heart breaking that they were ahead by so much and then lost.

[Motown Bombers]

2 minutes ago, GoBlue23 said:

That is absolutely not true.  The defender was behind Reynolds by a couple of feet and the ball should have been right into his chest, not low and outside.

https://www.nfl.com/videos/reynolds-drops-fourth-down-throw-for-turnover-on-downs-at-49ers-28-yard-line

You can literally see in that replay Goff had to through it outside or it would have been deflected by the lineman. I'm glad you posted that because I didn't realize how close the lineman came to batting that ball. 

[Motown Bombers]

He avoided pressure, created a throwing lane, and hit his receiver on the hands. Just stop with this. 

[Motown Bombers]

4 minutes ago, GoBlue23 said:

The lineman swipes at the ball long after it had passed him, it wasn't close to being deflected.

I'll tell you what, name me one play from the game where you can say "wow, look at that great play Goff made"?  Dude is a game manager at best and it look like McVay was right about him.  

Don't change the goalposts because you are wrong on this. The title of your video is literally "Reynolds drops fourth-down throw.."

You can literally freeze frame the throw and see the lineman start to swipe as Goff lets go of the throw. Even if he isn't, he risks throwing the ball at the head of the lineman.

McVay literally lost to Goff in the playoffs. 🤣

[Motown Bombers]

Goff was also one of the best deep passers in the league this year.

Jared Goff is one of the NFL's best deep ball passers in 2023 - A to Z Sports

[1984Echoes]

1 hour ago, Motown Bombers said:

To be honest I thought the first one would be the one to kick the FG. You're up 14 so a FG makes it a 3 score game...

This is the one I have the most difficulty with. Also, I believe this one was a 42 yarder (didn't Badgley just kick a 54-yarder a couple weeks ago...?), the second one was a 48-yarder IIRC... 

But matching points wasn't really on my mind until they missed the 4th and 2 and...

Since then, I've been going back-and-forth on that first kick...

Keep with DC's signature aggressiveness, which has won us so many games? Or make it a 3 score game with a matching/ makeable FG (no guarantees of course) and keep pushing the clock?

If we know they miss the 4th and 2, then FG attempt, obviously. But that's 20/20. When they went for it on 4th down, I thought "Of course." Not even an exclamation point. They just didn't execute.