This was not the Thanksgiving celebration that the Lions had in mind.
The Packers opened Thursday’s game in Detroit with a quick touchdown drive and never trailed on their way to a 29-22 win over the NFC North leaders. Quarterback Jordan Love and edge rusher Rashan Gary led the way to the win for Green Bay.
Love threw touchdown passes to Jayden Reed, Tucker Kraft, and Christian Watson while going 22-of-32 for 268 yards. Love also converted a late third down with a 37-yard run in perhaps his best game since taking over as the starting quarterback at the start of this season.
Watson had his most productive day of the year with five catches for 94 yards and rookie Malik Heath had several key catches while playing in place of Dontayvion Wicks.
The performance comes a week after a strong game in a win over the Chargers and the Packers have to be encouraged by the progress that Love and the offense are showing after some rough outings earlier in the season.
The opposite is true for the Lions defense. Thursday’s outing was their third subpar one in a row and the offense wasn’t able to do enough to overcome it this time around.
Gary had three sacks and forced Lions quarterback Jared Goff to fumble twice. He recovered the second one, which came on a fourth down early in the fourth quarter, and safety Jonathan Owens returned the first one for a touchdown in the first quarter. Goff lost a third fumble on a scramble and the Packers pressured him throughout the game, so there wasn’t much to like on either side of the ball for Detroit for much of the day.
The Lions tried to mount their second-straight comeback from two scores down in the fourth quarter. A drive into the red zone with under seven minutes to play ended on an incomplete pass, but they got a touchdown from wide receiver Josh Reynolds with 41 seconds left to play. They converted a two-point pass to tight end Sam LaPorta to make it a one-score game before failing to recover an onside kick.
Goff finished the day 29-of-44 for 332 yards and two touchdowns, the turnover issues of the last two weeks are likely to be the main focus in the aftermath of the loss.
Playing on Thursday will give the Lions a little extra time to iron out what’s gone wrong for them on that front and on defense in the last few weeks. They’ll be in New Orleans to face the Saints in Week 13.
The Packers are now 5-6 and they’ll try to keep things rolling at home against the Chiefs. If they can pull off a win in that Sunday night game, playoff chatter will start to get louder in Wisconsin.
