Talking Grit: A Detroit Lions Podcast
Talking Grit: A Detroit Lions Podcast
E44: "Biting Re-Caps" Thanksgiving Win!- Week 13: Lions vs Bears
In this episode of 'Talking Grit,' hosts Jacob Litton and Jason Harwood discuss the Detroit Lions' narrow 23-20 Thanksgiving Day win against the Chicago Bears. They explore key game moments, including the firing of Bears coach Eberflus and the unusual handling of his dismissal. The hosts highlight the Lions' defensive performance, noting significant pressures without blitzing, and the need for better red-zone efficiency by the offense. The conversation also covers possible changes to reviewing penalties like pass interference and the impact of injuries on the team's performance. They wrap up by looking forward to the upcoming game against the Packers and the hope of extending their winning streak.
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Welcome to talking grit. Jacob Litton and I Jason Harwood are here with another edition of biting recaps. We are here to review and give our thoughts on the big Thanksgiving day win 23 to 20 of those Chicago bears. The game really was a tale of two halves and the referees, unfortunately, were the big stories of the game. However, we have two, before we started talking about the game, we have two developments that happened after the game today, that we can go over with. First one, Jacob, Eber Flus, the coach of the bears fired today. Was that surprising at all to you?
Jacob:Does that, does that surprise anybody? Is that a serious question?
Jason Harwood:I know the bears bungle a lot of things and it doesn't shock me that he's fired, but honestly, this is the first time the bears have ever fired a coach mid season, this,
Jacob:Wait,
Jason Harwood:right now. And so from that standpoint, yeah, it's a little shocking.
Jacob:what did you think of them letting him do the press conference first before firing him?
Jason Harwood:that is,
Jacob:What? What did you let him do that for?
Jason Harwood:Epic, like miscommunication or whatever. How, why would you do that to a coach? And then like for the next coach that comes in, that like, how can you trust anything that
Jacob:that's how they handle business
Jason Harwood:I know it's like, were they while he's doing his press conference where you have in the meeting, then were you waiting until that morning to decide you're going to fire him? I don't get it. It's messed up, man. I would be really mad if I were him that they let him hang out like that.
Jacob:and make him answer all those questions. You know, every reporter is like leaning towards it and he's of course answering, you know, I'm preparing for next week as usual. It's just business as usual. I'm operating as if I'm the head coach of this team.
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob:you're right. Like they could have just, they already have that determined and they just let them go out there and do that anyway. That, yeah, that's not, there wasn't nobody going to handling stuff like that.
Jason Harwood:No. And so the offensive coordinator is now the interim head coach. So this guy went from like passing game coordinator to offensive coordinator to head coach in a month. fast rise, man.
Jacob:Yeah, right. Hey, good for him though. I do want to say something about Eberflus at least as, you know, They asked him after the game, like, what, you know, what he was doing or whatever, which didn't help his cause at all, because his answer was, you know, I like the way that we handled that there. What, what do you mean? And after watching the replay and watching back, you know, What happened is he wanted to save that time out. They wanted the quick play. He wanted to try to save that time out. Caleb Williams kind of botched that he changed the play call. He took way too long to go through it. And if you look at the sideline, everybody on the bear sideline is signaling. They're trying to get him to snap the ball. They're like, we have to go. We have to go. We have to go. Obviously hindsight is 2020. He should have called a time out there when they didn't have it set. So if they had maybe 10, 11 seconds left.
Jason Harwood:bye.
Jacob:do think he still was trying to protect Caleb Williams by just saying, you know, I like what we did there. And that's how, you know, whatever the coach speak that he used there. But I mean, obviously the right call would have been to use the timeout right away. You could tell they had predetermined, you know, if this happens, if they're down in bounds, where you're going to run another play really quick, try to catch it out or do something. And then Caleb Williams checks into a deep pass and then just throws out the clock. Just absurd way to end the game.
Jason Harwood:Yeah. I don't know if I'd really say that they, once you got down to I'm saying like 10 seconds, they should have called the time. The coach should have just called the
Jacob:Right. Right.
Jason Harwood:Once you get to that era, flu set in his conference at eight, they ideally wanted to snap it at 18 seconds. Cause they're also thinking of the lions, we're thinking of they're getting in field goal range and they don't want to leave the lions. Time on the other hand of this, cause Dan Campbell even mentioned, he started thinking in his head, am I going to have to start using my timeouts, to try to preserve it so we could score before regulation ended. There was a lot going on there. And obviously what happened was the best thing, best possible situation to happen for the Lions, getting that sack, running clock. And the confusion, I was a little bit worried because, it's a Darius, did his full army crawl celebration. And I was like, you need to like, no time for this. We need to get online. Cause the worst, if they'd have got back on there and snapped it real quick, could have been enough sides. And I gave him five yards and a stop clock and all that stuff. So I You know, there was just so much going on in my head during that last 30 seconds. It was, it felt like I was watching Love Lions 5 years ago. Just something that, that would happen. That you would think, hey, this game's, locked. And then, I don't know if you, did you watch any of the Raiders Chiefs ending or anything like that today?
Jacob:I didn't see it live, I saw it after the fact.
Jason Harwood:Yeah, so you know what happened? It was like a bungled snap and it was like that same thing where it's you just going to shoot yourself in the foot and the, like these least talented teams, the teams that aren't very coached very well, whatever. There's multitude of reasons. They just. We'll screw that up. And then you could point at the refs along the way. We'll get into the referee stuff, but I feel like that's what, as Lions fans, five, six years ago, before Dan Campbell, we were like latching onto all that stuff because a small critical call will make a big difference. In the game, but it's a matter of. not having enough talent. You're not being coached. And all those things showed out for the bears at the end there that it was, you get the full Caleb Williams experience, right? Just look like crap in the first half looked really good second half until the very end and the pressure was on him and just, yeah, he forgot how to run the two minute offense at the end. No.
Jacob:you know, they asked him about the so called dirty hit that Jack Campbell gave, you know, he's inbounds, he's a runner. He kind of, I don't know if he like fake slides, like he thought about that he was going to juke back up fueling. Because, you know, sometimes quarterbacks will try to catch you sleeping. They'll make you think that you're going out of bounds, then you sneak a couple more yards out of it. So, you know, Jack Campbell wasn't having any of that, and he kind of slowed down. It was a nice hit by Campbell. I mean, that was perfect. There's nothing illegal about it. But if you ask Bears or other NFC North fans, those are the only ones that I see really saying you know, that it was a dirty play and that Jack Campbell was trying to take out his knees, which wasn't the case. But I mean, did you see what Caleb Williams said about it? I mean,
Jason Harwood:he said he didn't appreciate it or something like that. If you don't appreciate you slide or you get out of bounds, that's Jack Campbell was that's about as clean as a hit. You're going to get he aimed for his hip. He hit his hip, but it was the way Caleb was juking. He was juking back into the field. So it looks like a whiplash the other way because the way that Jack Campbell hits him. It looked scary at first. I thought he really screwed his knee up and I think that's what everybody's reacting to. But he didn't hit him in the knee. He hit him in the hip. He slid down a little bit, but you're gonna, that's just natural to do when you're tackling, but his initial force wasn't to the knee. It was to the hip, it was a clean hit and that's all Caleb Williams fault. If he doesn't want to get hit, then slide or get out of bounds.
Jacob:Exactly. I mean, it's as simple as that. The only reason that it looked as bad as it did is because of the awkward, you know, whatever Caleb Williams was trying to do. If you run straight out of bounds, that doesn't happen. I mean, maybe he still makes some contact and pushes you off. He'd probably lay down a little or lay off a little bit. Yeah, but he does that little slide or whatever, and that's also why he was kind of lower to the ground and why he kind of hit him lower than what you would, you know, expect. It just, it definitely looked really bad live for Caleb Williams though. I mean, right when he got hit, nothing about that was dirty,
Jason Harwood:No, that was a clean hit by Jack Campbell. The only, there was one earlier by Jack Campbell when he smoked the ref at the same time that he hit Caleb, he hit him like as an emotion. There was that one was more questionable than that, that he's a runner. Caleb runs past the line scrimmage. He's a runner at that point. All protections are off of him unless he slides. And yeah, no, he deserved everything he got like that that's his fault
Jacob:right?
Jason Harwood:And I didn't appreciate his answer afterwards trying to insinuate that Jack Campbell did anything wrong in that, that take ownership of what you did.
Jacob:I just think, especially across the league, he's not doing himself any favors to be any more well liked than he already is.
Jason Harwood:Yeah,
Jacob:Just the way he answers questions, his mannerisms, everything about just, you know, he's not off to a great start.
Jason Harwood:no, he runs, rubs people the wrong way. The other big news today, Malcolm Rodriguez was announced that he had tore his ACL. That really sucks. I'm really tore up about that. We did sign Quan Alexander from the Denver Broncos practice squad. Pretty good response signing veteran. He'll probably be able to come in and play fairly quickly. We signed David Long and he was out there quite a bit, and it's a good thing we've gotten these linebackers, because ours just keep dropping like flies, unfortunately.
Jacob:Yeah you know, I like the signing. I gotta tell you, I am, you know, really concerned now. The drop off, you know, cause Anzalone went down, but Rodriguez, he had missed the game before that. Anzalone gets hurt, we're like, at least we get Rodrigo back. And the drop off from Anzalone to Rodrigo is much smaller than the drop off from Rodriguez to Ezekiel Turner or Ben Neiman. You know. We did sign Quan Alexander, so hopefully there's a veteran presence, even if he's just helping them get ready or whatever. Basically, I know, I've got the quote here from Dan Campbell. You have to do your job. Everybody around you is looking for you to do your job. We'll put you in the best position to have success, and we'll go. I mean, that's really all you can do at this point. We've got so many injuries we've had to overcome so much already, and we're still, we're 11 and one right now. And if you look back on teams in history that have had as many injuries, if we had most of them have losing records and most of them are well out of the playoffs at this point and, you know, despite our entire, you know, with, I guess, except for Jack Campbell, our, every other starting linebacker that we've had has been hurt and out on IR. You know, We can go over the list, but it's a pretty long list. There's a bunch of people on IR, there's a bunch of people that have missed games. Our initial 53 man roster, half of, we've had 24 players on the initial 53 that have at least missed one game.
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob:And you've got at least 10, 11, or more that are on injured reserve. That just doesn't happen.
Jason Harwood:Yeah, I had someone come comment to me on Twitter Michael Boyle, one of our, avid listeners and avid commenters, he's at some point, do we start talking about, is there an issue with the training staff? Like cause, that they're not doing. And my answer is an emphatic, no, like a lot of these injuries, like a tour ACL, that's not on the training staff. And if anything, the lions are very careful with injuries and they hold people back and to not push them back quicker than they need to do. Do you feel like that Jacob or
Jacob:I do. I feel the same way. I mean, they try to be careful about injuries. If they're not, you know, back to 100%, there's no reason for them to play. We kind of let them, you know, fully recover. You've seen Laporta. You know, miss a game when he may have been able to play. It's hard to say. Montgomery was hurt, didn't play you know, the second half of that game. He, you know, could have gone. There was no reason for him to go. There's other things like that, and you're right, the ACL injuries and things like that, that's not something, you know, that the training staff can really prepare for. I know we've had you know, some torn pecs and different things like that. Maybe that's overtraining or something like that, but overall, I don't think so. I, you know, you got the injury bug, right?
Jason Harwood:yeah.
Jacob:playing hard every single play, and that happens sometimes when you're giving it 110%. We're not taking any plays off.
Jason Harwood:Yeah. I just think sometimes you get unlucky. You mentioned, I don't know if you mentioned, were you talking to ahead of time? You got the 2020 49ers. There's a 2021 Ravens were just hit by the injury bug and that just seems to happen. I, it just, none of it was funny, but it was just. Every after every play, it seemed like every couple plays in the defense, especially that second half, there's a lion laying on the ground and it was like who's going who's out next? And, know, when Mel, when Rodrigo went down and then they immediately took him to the locker room, I was like, no, that's not good. They didn't even go to the blue tent. They just went to the locker room. I was like, that's a bad sign. Then Dan Campbell alluded to it. At the end of the, at the end of the game during his press conference that, that's might be the worst one. We also have to worry, Pascoe went down and Levi went down. We have a game against Packers next week. We need, we're going to need some bodies, right? We got to feel the defense. I know we got next man up and we talked about it with Miko on our last podcast about can they sustain this? my thought. And I still think they can sustain a winning culture and a winning record. However, at some point there's gotta be a drop off. You can't just keep pulling people
Jacob:Okay. Okay. Okay.
Jason Harwood:because
Jacob:I'm not, I'm not sure what the, the, the what the, the, what the, what the, the, very much.
Jason Harwood:then we're ready to go in the playoffs. I think, but you're right. There's a big drop off after Rodrigo. We were lucked out that, we had Malcolm Rodriguez as a backup Linebacker when Ancelone went down.
Jacob:Yeah, I mean, pro football focus is right on, like, top 10, top 15, and it's looked that way. I know sometimes the pro football focus numbers are kind of crazy, but I mean, Rodrigo has been very good. You know, kind of speaking of what you said before, you know, we have went through all these injuries. This game, it was like, it's hard to complain about the victory, but I don't feel great about it. You know, it wasn't like the Texans game where we overcame the adversity and you know, we just, everything was going wrong and we came back, we battled back, we came out on top. This was kind of the opposite where, you know, we really, we just shot ourselves in the foot. It was like the first half, almost everything was going right. You know, we had to settle for field goals a couple times, but those are still scoring drives. We put points on the board like 4 out of 5 drives in the first half. The only time we didn't was when Jameer Gibbs fumbled, you know, right there, outside of the goal line. So, for the offense to then only score once in the second half, and, you know, You allow the three touchdowns to the Bears. We were able to win this game, but this was the easiest game that was left on the schedule. We got five games left and they're all going to be harder. We got the Packers. You got the Bills. We have to play the Bears team again, but we play in Chicago next time. We got the 49ers and then a potentially huge Vikings game at home to end the season. So it only gets harder for here.
Jason Harwood:I agree. I think, uh, we could look at the schedule and the strength of the opponent and say, yeah, that looks harder. We were also playing on four days The Thursday games are always wonky, especially we have the early Thursday game. And you're playing a division opponent, which are typically tougher. The bears played us really tough last year. I should have beat us twice. They, the first game, they let us back into that game and, we ended up winning it. So I tend not to look at things like, Oh if we barely beat the bears and how are we going to beat the Packers? I don't like looking at that. Cause. The games go differently. The lions by all accounts should have, been up by 28 points at halftime, if not 35, we should have
Jacob:Right.
Jason Harwood:score in the red zone. We get down to the three. We didn't score, got a field goal. Jamir goes fumble, which you mentioned already that those are fluky things, which I don't think is going to keep happening. It's not like the bears figured out something and the lions are going to be shut down. We have penalties. We had things that we just, we did not run the ball very well in the red zone. We'd run it really good between the twenties. We're not running especially well in the red zone.
Jacob:Well, we also just weren't running the ball in the red zone, but we can talk about that when we break it down in the offense.
Jason Harwood:yeah, that's, yeah, we can get over there. Before we get into the game let's just talk about these umpires, these refs, pure garbage from both aspects. I, I'm not going to sit here and complain that pass interference penalty was egregious and terrible. But the calls went bad on both ends. That horse collar call, that was. Not a horse collar call. He
Jacob:Yeah.
Jason Harwood:like his hand rubs the inside of that, but at no point did he pull him down by, the back. So that was crap. I also thought the roughing the passer call that they called on that, that they hit it with Jared Goff. really didn't feel like that. That was, the passer either. I'm happy that we get the call. I'm not saying we shouldn't, I'm not going to be sitting here complaining about all the calls that we got called against and then say, to ignore the fact that we benefited from. The awfulness of the referees too, they missed multiple delay of game calls
Jacob:Yes, right.
Jason Harwood:And it wasn't even like close to where the clock hit zero and then they hike it. It was like zero for a full second. my kids are screaming. They're like, it's at zero. And then there was multiple times that they reset the clock too, that I felt like this is not normal that they reset the clock this late and it,
Jacob:Yeah, if you're gonna reset the clock due to cause you can reset it if they don't spot the ball or whatever, you can pump the clock back up. That's not something that happens when there's only three or four seconds left on there, you don't, that's right, that's not when that happens.
Jason Harwood:No, exactly. So I thought that was. know, pretty bad and inconsistent. And then also there was like, I think it was a bear's first touchdown. They had like basically Muhammad in a choke hold
Jacob:Yes, yep.
Jason Harwood:putting them in a sleeper hole, like WWE style and they don't call it. And. It was really egregious such that when you get the stop video on it, his arm is just right around his neck and he's, you're fully past the offensive lineman. They should not be touching you at all because, that's holding.
Jacob:Yeah, I mean, the game was just as much about the calls that they did make as the ones they didn't. They had those delay games. There were a couple, like, you know, a couple false starts as well. Where it's like, hey, you know, they clearly jumped ahead of time. Why, you know, what are we doing? We're not calling it there. And then they called Obviously the huge pass interference at the end of the game. It just seemed like that last drive especially is when they finally were like, Okay, we're gonna let the flags fly now.
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob:was bad enough that, you know, if you're outside of the pocket, the quarterback's scrambling. It's bad enough if you don't take in the down or anything about the game in consideration. The quarterback is scrambling out of the pocket. He just chucks it deep. You know, they're kind of, Vildor, DJ Moore, they're kind of hand fighting a little bit. DJ Moore doesn't even go for the ball. DJ Moore didn't even try to make an effort to go for the ball. Fildor kind of broke off and was trying to dive for an interception. I don't, like, there's just no way that you call it pass interference. And then you also say, hey, it's a one possession game, and it's fourth and 14, this is the ball game, basically.
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob:then you get together and you talk about the flag, you know, they had that discussion about whether they should pick it up or not, and then they stick with it. It's just insane to me.
Jason Harwood:I know I if you look at the replay, DJ Moore's yelling back at his team or Caleb or something like what the heck that wasn't even close because I they should have been picked up for just not, for being an uncatchable ball because
Jacob:Right, right.
Jason Harwood:no way that he was going to get there. Tony Romo made a, the only small comment that they made on the broadcast was like, Tony Romo agreeing with the call. And that doesn't surprise me. Romo is, I'm not a huge fan of him calling anything. He's definitely not a huge Lions fan, I don't think, but it was just like, I didn't call and that it was so bad because they did not show any replays, they did not show
Jacob:started, yeah, they circled, they circled them, they started to, and then it cut.
Jason Harwood:And then it cut and then they didn't mention it again. And I think, the NFL or someone's yeah, let's not just talk about that. Cause that was, know, and at that point I was like they just put them in field goal range. It's definitely going to go to overtime at least now. But then we, the Darius came through and they unblock sack and
Jacob:right.
Jason Harwood:I like what we already talked about what happened.
Jacob:I felt bad for Vildor, too, though, because Vildor actually played a pretty good game.
Jason Harwood:did, he
Jacob:And if, you know, God forbid, if they would have scored and we would have lost that game, all fingers would have been pointing to him. And that was not fair because it just wasn't the P. I.
Jason Harwood:No, he played, no, he definitely played much better. I think
Jacob:Yeah.
Jason Harwood:is that Caleb is not the best deep passer, and we discussed that in the preview. that's where he was getting burnt last week. And also. That was his first start in a long time. I'm sure that he reviewed tape and got, just got more comfortable, cause he hadn't played much. And last week was his first week. I would expect him to be better. We'll see if he's going to be back next week or if Carlton's going to be back. I thought Terrian had a pretty good game. So we can get that when we get to the defense. The only other call I want to talk to you about the Jameson Williams on sportsman That cost us pretty big. I'm not going to bury him for that, but that was a costly penalty. And I feel like that he threw that ball and it wasn't necessarily because of something he said. It looks like that guy almost tripped him on the sideline or something like that. And he was just jawing at him and just, threw it and hit it in his face. But that was that was a pretty hurtful penalty.
Jacob:Yeah, definitely damaging to the drive, it was funny when it happened though, you know, he comes off the sideline and he instantly, I think it was Stevenson, right? I think it was a Tyreek Stevenson. Whoever it was over there was talking, you know, they're talking trash back and forth. He gets up and kind of, you know, tosses a ball at him, hits him right in the face. Had it not been called, that's like a funny little thing you talk about. They called it unsportsmanlike conduct, and now it's like, man, what are we doing out there?
Jason Harwood:Yep.
Jacob:think it was funny. I think it was Romo. You know, somebody, you know, they're talking, and he was like, It looks like they're wishing each other a happy Thanksgiving. Ha ha.
Jason Harwood:Yep.
Jacob:Right.
Jason Harwood:so that sucked. He art, if you didn't hear about it, he did apologize, like to the team, unprompted after the game. He took responsibility for it, but you, I'm sure you saw it. Did you see Antoine Randall L talking to him on the sideline.
Jacob:Yes. I showed, I showed my son that. I showed J Day that.
Jason Harwood:I
Jacob:He kind of like, points a finger at him, and he's like, Don't!
Jason Harwood:if I seen that finger before I know my boys have like I'm not gonna even say anything I'm gonna point my finger and you're gonna know that this is
Jacob:I'm just so mad, we're gonna go.
Jason Harwood:Yeah,
Jacob:man. Yeah, that was good.
Jason Harwood:that was a dead finger for sure. No, not one more word. You can't justify anything that happened over there. So I know that people are going to probably bury him because they're going to look for a story with this sucks, but, move on. We won the game. So anything else you want to talk about before we get into the.
Jacob:No, let's break it down.
Jason Harwood:All right. First thing, we're going to start off with special teams. Jake Bates, missed his first field goal. It's good. Let's get it out of the way. We won the game. It wasn't a game winner or anything like that. If he's going to miss one, it's going to be in this instance. Three for four long of 48. know, he's still, his kicks look pretty good. That one just didn't hook on anything. It just went straight. He said he knew it right when he kicked it, that it wasn't going to go through. Which it is what it is.
Jacob:Yeah. I mean,
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob:I was just going to say, I, I agree, you know, let's let's get that out of the way now so that an announcer can't use that in the playoffs or somewhere like, Oh, he hasn't missed yet this year and put that jinx on us. Now there's at least one out of there. He knows what it's like to miss a kick in the NFL. I will say when he missed that kick, you know, I was, you know, this is Thanksgiving. I don't usually watch the game with anybody. You know, I'm usually locked in and I'm sitting there. There's other people around. He missed that kick. So this is where it unravels if we don't stop them here. And then they scored a huge touch on that drive and I got a little worried.
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob:Anyway. Yeah. Moving on.
Jason Harwood:Jack Fox, two punts, 50 yard average is pretty decent for him, but they were both inside the 20, including the one that they downed at the one that, there's a blade of grass between when he grabbed that, I don't know what, I don't know what special team or down that ball, but
Jacob:Dorsey,
Jason Harwood:was,
Jacob:it was K. D.
Jason Harwood:Dorsey. I was like, God, please tell me he wasn't on the ad line. And the one view looked like there was green in between it. The other view, sideline to sideline, look like his heel may have been over
Jacob:Yeah,
Jason Harwood:But whatever they were down at the one, cause that's a huge difference starting at the one and starting at the 20, when you have a quarterback like that rookie quarterback. I thought that could have been a huge advantage, but to Jack Fox or pinning him down there. That was great. He got a game ball for it.
Jacob:That was a crucial play because, you know, it's deep in the fourth quarter. We already, you know, our defense was out there way too much. They're already gassed. And then we, that was right after we were on three and owl. We go three and now the defense has to come back out there. And then, yeah, then it being a difference maker, will you get down there at the one yard line? That was, that was awesome
Jason Harwood:Yeah. And then, know, then it looked like they almost got bailed out at the one yard line because. I don't know what Keenan Allen's helmet came off or whatever, but then they threw the flag and I was like, Oh my God, they got out of it. Even the announcer, it's Oh, they're going to get some breathing room now. And it was like, Nope, the penalties on the bears for, you're reacting or
Jacob:at the ref, right?
Jason Harwood:but he didn't, it wasn't a penalty. He didn't rip, I don't know how his helmet come off. It's not like the lions player ripped it off. I don't,
Jacob:He did tackle him up high. And I mean, it did look like when he was coming down that he might've ripped it off or it could have just been the momentum of bringing him down and that's why it came off. I don't know. They rip off a Liam's helmet at least once a game. So
Jason Harwood:Yeah. They called that penalty and you're like, my mom was in the room. She's yeah, that's a penalty.
Jacob:yeah, right.
Jason Harwood:guys,
Jacob:Clearly.
Jason Harwood:off. Let's get on, talk about this defense. We talked about the injuries. basically playing with a second team out there, almost across the board. It's crazy. Other than DJ reader and a Lee McNeil, it's crazy. What we're able to do. They had the most, they generated the most pressures. All Zadarius, Muhammad and DJ reader all set season high end pressures. Zadarius had eight, Muhammad had seven, DJ reader had seven. DJ reader, two sacks. The Darius had a sack and a half. Muhammad have had a sack. That was the difference of the game putting pressure on Williams. especially at the end there, were you able to get a sack on him? So I very, the defensive line, I was super impressed with.
Jacob:Definitely. I mean, they, they needed to play well for us to win and they definitely did. I mean, I was really impressed by Al Qadeen Mohammed. I mean, you know, obviously it's a tall task for him to come in and have to play. And I think he played a really good game. He had a clutch sack too, you know, Zadarius being unblocked off the edge, but just being able to get there so quick. It really just threw everything off, you know, towards the end of the game there. I do think that Caleb Williams holding on to the ball a little bit longer and not being able to, you know, necessarily check or call himself out of plays probably, you know, gave us a few more pressures than normal. But yeah, heck of a game by the defensive line and a game where we really need them to.
Jason Harwood:Yep. Lions the next gen says Alliance pressured Caleb Williams on 17 dropbacks without blitzing. It was the most non blitz pressures in a game in the Dan Campbell era.
Jacob:Yeah. All right. Exactly.
Jason Harwood:get some pressure on him. And, he escaped a couple times, but it wasn't, too bad. He didn't gash us too much. So it was good play all around our defense played, I think, pretty well considering everybody going down with injuries and second half Caleb Williams went on his little tear, but the offense wasn't helping them either by controlling anything like we were in the first half. Gashing and everything like that. So we weren't playing very good complimentary football. I thought in this, in the second half, as much as the first half, It is what it is. I thought Terrian actually played a pretty decent game. Like I said earlier, he almost there was pretty close. Like he almost got his pick there. and if the tables had turned that was pass interference, that wide receiver was on his back and his arm was. Contacted him before the ball even got there. You had mentioned this before, penalties are so tailored towards, for the offense's favor that if a defender was doing that same exact thing, that's pass interference all day.
Jacob:100%. And, you know, they also they I'm on rocket away with that sometimes, too. But that's really that's just what it is. They will not call on the offense like they do on the defense. The receiver can basically grab and wrap up or do whatever the defender to keep him from getting there and they just refuse to throw that flag. But you get those times where the defender touches the receiver's hip the wrong way when they're diving for the ball and all of a sudden it's a P. I. I just can't stand passing interference calls, man.
Jason Harwood:Yeah,
Jacob:gotta do something. Why can't they do the quick review of those? You know, now they've got the quick reviews upstairs. Why don't they do the quick review of that? And then when the, this game would have been over.
Jason Harwood:yeah I was gonna ask you about that. Let's save that for the end because I'm going to come
Jacob:Okay.
Jason Harwood:I have some stuff I want to ask you about that.
Jacob:Okay. Back to the defense though. Like, you know, first half was great. First half was great. Second half was not, you know, for as good as things went in the first half, it went bad in the second half. We had three, three, straight three and outs to start the game. They go for it on fourth down. You know, they're down 16 0, so they try to go for it on fourth down. That was a play Rodriguez was covering DeAndre Swift on a wheel route. You know, that was a good play by Rodriguez right on him. It's one of those times where, you know, if it was a little bit more underthrown and Swift tries to get to the ball, that's probably P. I. on Rodriguez. And had it been a better throw, maybe Swift would have been able to catch it. But, you know, That was a great play. We we weren't allowing anything in the first half. The defense was just playing lights out and you're right. It was complimentary football because they couldn't get anything going and then we were sustaining long drives and getting points at the end and it was just the opposite in the second half. You know, then then it's like we flipped the script. They have a decently long drive to start the second half. They score. We answer, we score back and that's when it kind of unravels. Then the offense isn't moving the ball. Yeah. The defense is tired. You already said, you know, it's basically second team. We've got reserve players out there that are just playing way too many snaps and. You know, it just got ugly there at the end. They never gave up. You know, we'll say that. I don't think that the defense started getting softer as the game went on. I just think that they were tired. I don't think it was necessarily that, you know, the Bears made excellent adjustments or anything like that. There were just a few, you know, they had a few plays. Honestly, a few of the plays that they made you know, Blanche and Kirby kind of did not look good on some of those touchdowns, some of those things. They just were not They weren't making the plays they normally do, and I don't know if that is just because they retired, if it is just a fluke. I mean, the first touchdown, you know, Vildor lined up over Keenan Allen. I think that was in zone defense, actually. They dropped back you know, Keenan kind of goes up the middle. Vildor passed him off. Kirby's just a second late realizing it, but Branch is already in the middle of the field. He's already running that way. He sees the throw coming to Keenan Allen. You know, it was one of those things where it looked like he was gonna lay a big hit on him, but he was just a second late getting there, and he ends up whiffing on it, and then Kirby also misses. That's just the worst thing imaginable for us as Lions fans, is seeing Keenan Allen up the middle, and our top two safeties both miss tackles on him, and he scores.
Jason Harwood:Yep. Yeah, that was rough. And then they put meek got put in a blender on that site. I think that was the second touchdown where they just, Oh my God, puts a move on him and, know, they score that touchdown that, that was just good play. But for all the plays that they were missing in the first half, like you said, they started making them in the second half and once they couldn't get in a rhythm in the first half, they're going three out, we're keeping the ball for seven, eight minutes.
Jacob:Right, right.
Jason Harwood:It, just didn't, when we talk about complimentary football, we, our offense wasn't sustaining enough. And, the JMO penalty hurt us on that one drive. We could have probably
Jacob:Yeah,
Jason Harwood:scored on that one. That could have been a big difference in the game. all in all. I think the defense played, that first half is probably the best ever half of defensive football you're ever going to see the team didn't, what they didn't need, did they end up getting first downs at the end, that last
Jacob:they did the very last one, yeah.
Jason Harwood:the two. And, but we were just embarrassing them. And then the fact that they went for it on fourth we got it on their side of the field, it reminded me of the Cowboys game where the team already recognized. That, the score is not really out of hand yet, but it's quickly going to get there and we need to stop this. And outside of Jameer Gibbs fumbling it, would have, it would have been a 23 nothing score at the end of, the end of the half. And
Jacob:Right.
Jason Harwood:When it come to what it came in the second half, I don't think it was like any defensive calls or any adjustments that the
Jacob:Right.
Jason Harwood:Bears made. I just think it was a matter of them getting in rhythm and that's, Partially the offense's fault for not, able to control the clock as well, when you talk about commentary football, all that goes together, like all it's I've learned that more now with Dan Campbell, the way he talks and just watching more football through his eyes, that. the offense can affect that affect the rhythm of the defense, keeping them, rested and, especially with all the injuries, we want to keep that defense on the sideline as much as possible. So they're not playing as many plays, not getting injured. And, when we're down with our, we're on our third team or whatever, guys aren't used to playing that many snaps. They're just not. And then you're asking them to play, 30, 40 snaps and they're wiped out by the end of the game.
Jacob:Definitely. Yeah. I mean, it just right. I don't think it was anything. They didn't make some kind of crazy good adjustments. They weren't making better play calls or doing anything like that. It was really like a combination of just. Them being tired and just not being with it. I mean, honestly, DJ Moore had 16 targets and he only caught eight passes and you can say probably three or four of those were just bad throws by Caleb Williams. But DJ Moore also was dropping the ball and giving up on plays. I mean, it was kind of crazy. It was like he already wanted the game to be over with, but like when you did score that touchdown. That was her third touchdown. It was third and one. It's empty backfield, and it's just D. J. Moore, Brian Branch lined up, and man, and he doesn't even put that much of a move on him. He just kind of hesitates, and then he just beat Branch deep, and they scored that huge touchdown, and it's just things that you don't see very often, but I mean, when, when anybody's out there as much as him, I don't I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but I believe Branch played every snap.
Jason Harwood:He did.
Jacob:Yeah,
Jason Harwood:Ham Kirby and Jack Campbell are the only Lions defensive on the defense to play every snap.
Jacob:right. I believe that. You know, as it should be, probably. But yeah, you know, just things like that don't happen very often. But when you're gassed, you're tired, when things like that happen, it, you know, it all goes together.
Jason Harwood:It's a matter of how many snaps, but it's how much work they were doing in the second half as compared to the first half, if it's like that way, the whole game, you have time to recover or whatever, but we were, they were definitely, had more control in the second half. And so you could understand why he's more gassed at that point. Cause it wasn't equal distribution of snaps. Like in the first half, they probably had 15 snaps in the second half, was the rest of our snaps. You're talking about 35, 40 snaps, maybe more in the second half.
Jacob:Right, yeah it's just hard for anybody. I mean, especially, that's what I was gonna say about the second touchdown, it's, it's very hard to play cornerback or safety in the league. Yeah. The second touchdown that you talked about, it was like, it's second and goal, and, you know, Keenan Allen kind of just hits Amik Robertson with a juke move, but it's like, he was like the third or fourth read on that play. You know, Caleb Williams drops back, we only rushed three on that play from second and nine. So he actually had plenty of time, you know, he wanted DJ more. Terry and Arnold is all over him. You know, he checks down and down to Ray Swift and Rodrigo's right on top of him. He kind of comes over and looks towards commit and commit as bracket coverage or two guys over him. And it's just Keenan Allen streaking right over the middle of the field with nobody else around.
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob:So, you know, he drops back, he has time, he looks around and then it's just like it dropped right in there. And you look at the replay and it's just, you know, how do we really defend that? You know, one on one, you're on an island like that, that's one, you know, one quick move away, and then he's open.
Jason Harwood:Yeah. No, it was a, and, know, he's a good player. You can't fault
Jacob:Right. Exactly.
Jason Harwood:you're hoping that the defense line gets home before it gets to that point, but, usually in the red zone, we're usually lights out down there.
Jacob:I didn't see who it was, but usually that bracket coverage in that zone like that would be right over the middle. But whoever it was dropped back with Comet. So we had two people actually on Cole Comet, and Keenan Allen came up to the middle, there was nobody guarding the middle anymore, because we had already dropped back.
Jason Harwood:Yeah we talked about in the preview that Cole Comet is definitely, he's a red zone threat, and he's also, Caleb Williams safety blanket, so I could understand why they doubled him there. It's one of those things, you set up defense, and we just didn't hold. All right, is there anything else on the defense that you wanted to talk about?
Jacob:No.
Jason Harwood:Let's move on to this offense. I start with the running backs. Dave Montgomery, he's He was 21 21 carries for 88 yards. Jamir had half as many carries, but one less yard, nine carries for 87 yards. But there's a, big, but cause he had the huge fumble, which was a game changing fumble, in my opinion, just. Gave, we could have just ended that thing right then. Even if he'd got tackled at the three, I think the lines would have just end up scoring on that. We'd at least got a field goal. It went up 1916, but I think we would have done more than the way we were rolling right there because the momentum had was with us for the whole first half, but it was, we'd stopped them on fourth down. Gibbs just streaks up the middle. Looking good. And then gets popped from the side ball, pops way off in the air just right into the bear's hands. Unfortunate. How many you commented on Twitter? Gibbs had what, how many carries in the second half too?
Jacob:Good of a first half as Jameer Gives had, we get him the ball twice in the second half. That's, you know, that, that's what was unbelievable to me. And I think that was a big part of why the offense wasn't working as we went away from the run.
Jason Harwood:yep.
Jacob:Except for the one drive. The one drive when we got the ball back, we went three and out and it was with Demo. He goes forward, carry five yard carry. And then they had that third and one. Where they just had everybody, everybody up the middle. You know, it was one of those things where they knew they were running. They bring everybody, and they end up getting the penetration. They get right in there, and then we lose a yard.
Jason Harwood:Yep, yeah,
Jacob:think about going for it there? Did you think there was a chance we were going for it, or you thought we were punting for sure?
Jason Harwood:I always think there's a chance we're going to go for it, but I
Jacob:Right.
Jason Harwood:why he punted it away. I agree with the punting. I
Jacob:It's, yeah.
Jason Harwood:it, especially with them losing a yard made it even tougher. I get it. You want to impose your will, man, you just knew that, that's what they were for. Even like a rollout to Jared Goff, he would have probably walked for the first down, just do something. It just never worked out for whatever reason to get Gibbs involved in the second half. And that's a fault of the coaching right there.
Jacob:Right.
Jason Harwood:that, he's averaging almost 10 yards to carry in the first half and you, we can't get him at the ball at all in the second half. That's a fault that
Jacob:And there were opportunities. It just, right, it wasn't happening. I mean, after, He was out there for the drive when Jamo had that penalty. So he had the penalty and it was 2nd, 22. That we, we should have ran a draw. We could have did something with Gibbs. And got some of those yards back. Who knows how many. And then maybe we can throw the ball on 3rd down if it's still, you know, 3rd and long. And then, They tried to get it to Gibbs, it was a pass, incompletion, and then we got 18 yarder to Amun Ra, and that's when we missed that field goal. But, you know, we also had a different play where it was, after Laporta had that catch that they overturned, it was 3rd and 7. And I was pretty sure on this 3rd and 7, I was like, I think that we're probably going to run this ball with Gibbs, and You know, no, we dropped back, we threw it, another incompletion there. I just, you know, we've talked about this plenty of times, but if golf is throwing it, you know, I think at 34 attempts, if he's throwing it that much in the game, it's not good.
Jason Harwood:Yeah, I agree. I, it seemed like we just, we couldn't get in a rhythm and that second half at all, whether penalties happened or situational or whatever, we just could not get in the rhythm. But I feel like if we'd have gave it to Gibbs more, we would have created longer drives and been able to hold on, been able to hold off their offense a little bit more and then possibly scored more ourselves. I just don't get. Why they stuck with Montgomery so much in the half when, I don't know if the fumble had anything to do with it, but you
Jacob:mean, if that did, if they can say, come back and say that the fumble made them kind of in any way going against Gibbs and that's crap, that's a big mistake by the coaching staff. I don't think that was the case, but if that ever was on their mind, that's crap that they can do that. Because I don't even think you can really, you know, who's running, he's trying to make a play. He's making guys miss. He's at the six yard line. It was just a good hit. Good hit. Drove the ball loose. Obviously, you want to protect the ball, but I don't think you can follow him for a first half fumble like that. And they really I mean, the first drive in the second half when we scored, you know, they usually switch out by drive. They don't usually, you know, switch up by every play, but that was when they had the horse collar. So, Jameer Gibbs, you know, he ran the ball. He only got like a yard out of it. He got the horse collar tackle, but they ran it with Demo. They had the end around with Jameson Williams when he hurdled the safety. You know, they ran it plenty of times, and it results with us getting down to one yard line, and then we we had that really, really nice play. To Laporta for the touchdown which was amazing. If we want to break that down real quick. I don't know if he had a chance to look at the replay, but yeah, so they've got the ball one yard line. We come out on a jumbo package too, and you know, we fake pitch it to Gibbs, Gibbs is back on the field. We fake pitch it out there linebacker and defensive end both bite on it. Because they have no choice. It gives us running free, you have to get out there. They both play on the fake, they lose it in the middle, easy touchdown to Laporta. They had Laporta and Brock Wright both outside, and they motioned Brock Wright in. So that's, I don't know who the linebacker was, but Laporta is one on one with the linebacker. They motioned Wright. It's just a classic misdirection. I mean, that's usually how the play would work when you're running that pitch. You motion right, you try to get everybody on that side, you pitch it out. And, I mean, it was lucky there was a fake for us because they did have one uncovered defensive end and a linebacker. We fake pitch it to Gibbs, they both bite that way, it was just an easy touchdown on Laporta. So that was a great play design there. Even though, you know, you're on the one yard line and usually we'd like to run that one in second test on the report of the day. And that one, that was a great play and a good answer because they had drove down and scored and we have a nice driving score. It looked like it was going to be the same as the first half.
Jason Harwood:Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yep. I agree with you. That was a huge drive, probably the biggest drive of the game for the Lions, really. We just answered right back. Especially the way how, you know, how close the score was at the end. I also want to highlight Tim Patrick had a couple of huge catches. I just want to see, I want to get that ball, that guy the ball more. He is just so big and just seems like he, He could be a weapon out there and I just want to, especially getting third down catches, I want to see him get the ball more.
Jacob:Yeah. He's done a nice job filling in the Josh Reynolds role.
Jason Harwood:Yes,
Jacob:He shows up definitely when we need him to.
Jason Harwood:The big difference, obviously we've around, this is the red zone two for five the red zone for, as far as touchdowns, could have just had that game blown open by halftime, especially if Gibbs doesn't fumble there. That's probably, I would say at least 28, nothing, we might be up 35 at, we scored every time we get down the red zone, it was shades of the reverse of the bucks game. We're like, we're trying to come back at the end, when you look back on it. We didn't win the bucks game cause we couldn't convert in the red zone. And this is what happens. This is why the lions come up on top of so many of these teams. Generally, we convert in the red zone and we don't let the other teams convert in the red zone. And we just came up short and that's why this game was so close at the end. And, it shouldn't happen. So I, especially with this offense, but again, we shot ourself in the foot with penalties down there and that didn't, that did not help. And then, like you said We were not effective running down there, either not doing it or just, we're not effective at all.
Jacob:Really, I mean, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but we were not running. We were running and moving the ball efficiently when we got down to the red zone. And then when we got down to the red zone, for whatever reason, we decided we were gonna throw the ball. And we had to settle for a couple of field goals. I mean, it just doesn't make sense to me. It, you know, you're supposed to go with what works and what's been working in the past for us and what was working in the game. And, you know, it just, it didn't happen that way, which is frustrating, but I mean, that's, you know, gotta be whatever they saw in film, whatever the play calling was going to be. Like I already said, the Filiporta, I mean, both of those really short touchdowns, we could have tried running those ones in and, you know, for whatever reason, we didn't.
Jason Harwood:We didn't, um, golf for as rough a time as he had with the bears last time. I, he was pressure pretty good, but, he still handled that pressure really well. I thought he ended up being 21 for 34 to 21, two touchdowns. I think there was only like one really past that. Was like really in danger of being intercepted. Most of the other ones, if he was, if he missed the wide receiver he's throwing it away or, he wasn't putting it in danger. So I was, and that was critical because we gave up another possession in that game, we could have been, especially in the second half, been in a big trouble.
Jacob:Right, absolutely. Yeah, at least if you're not completing the passes, we're not moving the ball, we're still not putting it in harm's way.
Jason Harwood:So I'm happy with how golf played that game. We almost had another guy complete a pass for us. So Penesul, what'd you think of that play?
Jacob:I mean, how cool would that have been? That's the kind of stuff we like to see, right? We like these trick plays, we like these little things like that. Unfortunately, he was not able to complete a pass. It would have been cool even if he would have been able to gain a yard. But he ends up losing yards on it the crowd still went crazy though. I mean, everybody loved that. know how many times they cheered for a negative yard play, but
Jason Harwood:I know. I heard it, sometimes with Barry Sanders running, cause even a negative yard play he could make it super exciting. God, if he could have completed that, but kudos to him for seeing that it's not open and then just, he's you know what, I'm just going to truck some guys. I
Jacob:Right.
Jason Harwood:it's, cornerback seeing Penesol run at me, oh my God,
Jacob:Right.
Jason Harwood:I'm done. Cause he did break a couple of
Jacob:Got stiff armed, yeah, and then took three guys and tried to run them out of bounds.
Jason Harwood:Yeah, that stiff arm though, like someone still shouted that on
Jacob:Yeah.
Jason Harwood:and it just, it looks so awesome.
Jacob:Oh, the memes were running wild with that already.
Jason Harwood:Yes, yep. Muhammad had an awesome takedown too. I saw Justin Rogers posted a video of Muhammad just, pancaking the left tackle and it was awesome.
Jacob:Yeah. It was quick, too.
Jason Harwood:It was very fast. Like I watched it like 10 times trying to figure out exactly. It's I'm like, did he trip or whatever? I don't know what Muhammad did, but he just got him on the ground. It was super impressive. It was awesome. Yeah, it was It was just a weird second half for the offense and I don't want to see any more like that. I, but the first half, outside of them not getting the red zone, they played about and then the fumble, they played really well,
Jacob:Yeah, I mean, obviously, If we play the rest of the games like we did that first quarter, first half even, then we're gonna be fine. And I mean the first, the first half is Lions football, that's what we've been doing, that's how we've been playing. This just wasn't a complete game for us.
Jason Harwood:I agree.
Jacob:We did not play our best.
Jason Harwood:No we won and that's an important thing. So we
Jacob:Were you wearing your socks?
Jason Harwood:I was actually,
Jacob:I was, you know, it was late in the game, and I was gonna text you if you were wearing your socks. I was too afraid of the answer. I was like, I can't text him. If I text him and he says he's not, then we're gonna lose. I can't do that, so I'm just gonna assume he's wearing them. We're gonna let this thing ride.
Jason Harwood:No, man, I had, I, nope, I got the socks out, put them on, so I knew we were gonna win, but yeah, it was Yeah, I was, I wore my branch Jersey and everything. I kept everything the same. Just didn't wasn't, it was a little scary. I did, I couldn't eat, like the rest of my family ate around halftime. I could not eat. I
Jacob:Yeah, right.
Jason Harwood:I was just too amped up and I was like, I can't enjoy this. And then, luckily we won. Cause if we wouldn't have won, I don't know if I'd have been able to eat and I'd have ruined my Thanksgiving
Jacob:Yeah, no, if we would've lost that game,
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob:forget Thanksgiving.
Jason Harwood:Yep.
Jacob:you know, I don't really work during the Lions games, and I work every Thanksgiving. So, you know. I'm at work, I can only catch like every couple plays, I'm trying to see updates and everything like that, and Obviously the first half of the game was going really well Half time starts right around the time that we close, so, you know, I'm on my way to my parents house. I get there, it's still half time, they haven't kicked off yet, so I do end up eating a little bit. And then, you know, right away the second half starts okay, and it's just getting worse and worse. To the point where I told my family, like, well, you know, one, I'm going to throw up this turkey, but two, I was like, I'm just going to go back to work. I think it was five when I was at work, I'm going to go back in there and just wait. I
Jason Harwood:yeah, just, yeah, my, my uncle who I was at my uncle's house for Thanksgiving, he come in and he's we've seen this story before, the SOL lions and my presence spoke up right away. And he's We're different now. We're not like that. And my uncle's no, we just haven't been fans of the team long enough. And I agree more with Preston than my uncle, but it did not help my mood at all. At that point that he came in with two minutes left and said that. And I was like, Oh God. And then cause I just don't like that sentiment at all. To be honest with you, the SOL sentiment, it doesn't hold true anymore. Didn't like it then. And I don't like it now.
Jacob:That was
Jason Harwood:so I was
Jacob:before.
Jason Harwood:I don't need to. No, it's no, it's different.
Jacob:It's tough watching those games, you know, with people that don't normally watch football or don't know, or, you know,
Jason Harwood:yeah,
Jacob:there are some, some of my family, that's like, Oh, you know, the lions have been terrible forever. The lions always suck. It's like, well, you know, we're 10 and one right now. We're a really, really good football team and we're going to win this game. And then they're all, you know, whatever. They don't even know any of the players. They don't know anything. I've told you this already, I can't stand watching football games with other people. Like, I'm locked in, like, I can't, like, I can't entertain you right now, stop talking.
Jason Harwood:I, know, I love walked in with my kids cause they, they really think they're going to like to watch the games like I like to watch them. So I have to watch it with certain people I can watch. I
Jacob:Right.
Jason Harwood:refuse to watch it, but yeah, I definitely enjoy watching it with certain people more than the others. And especially when it's a Lions game, if it's just a regular football game that I
Jacob:It doesn't matter as much, right?
Jason Harwood:yeah, then I'm like, okay, here I can spend more time explaining rules and strategy and why they do that. Cause you know, sometimes my wife will ask me strategy questions while the game's going on. And really I'm trying, they move so fast that, it's I'm trying to pay attention because the strategy changed especially that last, The last 30 seconds, the strategy changed for the bears, like three times. Like we need to hurry up and snap it. We, okay. We should take a timeout. Oh no, we just need to snap it and throw a deep like this. It was like, and then some I can't answer the question in real time. That's something I got to revisit and just cause I'm just trying to, like you
Jacob:Right.
Jason Harwood:in and watch
Jacob:Yes.
Jason Harwood:Cause it was like a train wreck. That was just for the bears, a train wreck for the bears that was going on. Yeah, it was crazy.
Jacob:It was funny though, because I don't usually get to watch those games with JJ. You know, they don't usually watch them, Jayden's a Dolphins fan,
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob:don't let him watch the games because he's just gonna talk trash, he can watch whatever but yeah, we were watching that, and my parents TV, we're in the pole barn, and they do have a big TV out there and everything, well the TV starts getting grainy. So it's getting fuzzy and I can tell like, OK, we're lagging. And this is right there at the end. Like the very, you know, like right after where if they called the last time out. So it's getting grainy and I'm nervous that this thing's going to cut out. So then Jay gets his phone out. So then Jay Days ends up being like, you know, 30 seconds or so ahead. And, you know, if it's not real time, like I have to know, like, tell me what's going on. Like, I can't take it, especially like this. And he was like before the sack even happened, he was like, it says the game's over. He said, it says the game's over, like, it's over, it's over. So then we're both, like, looking at the TV, like, what's going on? So it was a little, it was still just as shocking, I would say, I guess, a little less shocking when you, when I knew that it was over. But sometimes that's wrong, and I'm just like, okay, you know, there's, you know.
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob:And I heard that even for the people that were there in the stadium, you know, the game's over and nobody's celebrating, they're all looking around like, did it really end like that?
Jason Harwood:Yeah, I
Jacob:it really over? Can we celebrate?
Jason Harwood:while you're waiting for a flag or something, I was certainly looking
Jacob:What'd I put a second on?
Jason Harwood:yeah, or just yeah, whatever garbage that they wanted to do, but yeah, no, it was we're going to review the grit guarantees. I thought they were going to go over the points. 48. 5 did not wind it up at 43
Jacob:Bad take, Jason.
Jason Harwood:then you
Jacob:400.
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob:you try to switch this and make me wrong too.
Jason Harwood:I know 405 yards. So you were right on your great guarantee. So good call
Jacob:Should have been even more than that. The first half I think was over like 250, 260.
Jason Harwood:I know I should have been let's revisit something that we had talked about at the, in the middle of this podcast should like passing inference plays be up for, the review or whatever, or any penalty really. I, what's your, I want to hear what your thought is and then I'll get my thought and we can go back and forth. Silence.
Jacob:Obviously some holding calls are more bigger than others so maybe when they actually throw the flag you can review if it was actually holding and pick it up or not. But yeah, I just think pass interference is such a big, obviously, it's such a big turning point that you have to be able to review these. There's just countless times where they get that wrong. There's plenty of times where it's definitely pass interference. There's plenty of times where it's definitely not pass interference. Sometimes they throw the flag, sometimes they don't. I think it should be one of those things where if they throw the flag then yes, it should be reviewable. They should be able to look at it upstairs and have a quick resolution like okay, yeah, we're confirming pass interference or actually, you know what, we're not confirming pass interference. I think it gets more dangerous if you say that if the flag's not thrown, you can review that at any point. I think, you know, if you're gonna throw the flag and like review holding, review PI, I think you should be able to look at those.
Jason Harwood:think on the surface, you're right. I've already thought about this and I think the fallback on that is, you know how they sometimes with a fumble, they let the play run.
Jacob:Right.
Jason Harwood:call it a fumble on the field, there's not enough evidence to overturn it. My worry is a referee in the back of their heads I don't know if this is pass interference or not, but I'm going to throw the flag because review assist will, save my butt if it's, whatever, but if it's like when those 50, 50 calls, they're going to go with the call on the field. So I would hate for all of a sudden there'd be like, in flags by 20 percent or something like that. And so therefore we're calling more pass interference, slowing the game down. More review assist has been amazing. Like they get that thing done even before the next snap. And so I don't know why a regular review takes longer. When review assist can it by the time the ball snapped next, there shouldn't be any review assist should do every challenge or whatever, because it should be that quick that all the reviews should not take as long as they do. I don't want to slow the game down and bog it down. And that's what I'm worried that would happen if all the penalties would be reviewed. And like you said, if you could, you could pick out holding on every play. So my solution would be. 15 yard penalty or longer would go to review assist or whatever. So that, that would take all the roughing, the passer calls that sometimes are garbage. And then also, your past interference or any personal foul, like anything that's 15 yards or more, you could start there. I don't think you start working on offsides and all that five yard penalties. Cause you're just. You know, three hour football game is now going to take four and a half hours because know, and it's just going to ruin the momentum and the fun of the whole game or whatever. It's a slippery slope, but you're right. A pass interference play, especially you get like a 40 or 50 or in this case, whatever that would have been 30 yards, whatever that ended up being a 30 yard penalty. And it was egregiously bad. Or you have one in the Saints Rams game in the playoffs a few years
Jacob:Right,
Jason Harwood:this, and that was a
Jacob:I mean, that was, they didn't throw the flag, right, right,
Jason Harwood:right? And so what you suggested, it wouldn't have been qualified for that. I don't know the exact solution
Jacob:to your point, what you had said before is that maybe, I don't know, it's hard for that one because if the refs, if any ref had their eyes on that play, they would have thrown that flag, I mean, but to what you said before is if it was close like that, they do throw the flag and review it And replay assist has definitely helped you know, speed the game up. I think it would have to be a quicker review like that. There's also, just with the whole pass interference rule in general, how many times do you see where, you know, you could ask 100 people, maybe 50 say it was and 50 say it wasn't. It's because it's still not cut and dry. Pass interference was just meant so that if you're not playing the ball and you're impeding the receiver from getting to the ball, it's pass interference.
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob:And now there's just been way too many where it's like, well, you know, he's going for the ball, but his arm, like I said earlier, his arm's on the receiver's hip. Yeah. It's like, that's not, he's not really impeding him. He's going for the ball. There's a difference between straight up grabbing somebody or holding their arms down or something. And it goes both ways from the offense to how many times does the receiver just get to straight up, shove off somebody or can hold the cornerbacks arm and just keep them away long enough to get the ball. They've gotta do something about that.
Jason Harwood:Yeah, I agree. And it's just, like you said, it's a huge play because it's not subject to just a 15 yard play. It's, that could be a 50, 60 yard play. And there are some teams like Aaron Rodgers used to do that, just throw it up and get the pass interference call. He was the best at doing that and getting the call. So I,
Jacob:Well, cause you throw it short or back shoulder, and then all your receiver's Do is try to make an effort, cause the cornerback can't turn around or can't possibly stop from making any contact altogether. Then that also is times where, hey, why wasn't that rolled uncatchable?
Jason Harwood:right.
Jacob:wasn't gonna get back there anyway, he's just making it look that way because of the circumstances. Yeah, I just don't like P. I.
Jason Harwood:No, I agree with you. I don't know what the solution is to out the penalty calls. As far as like reviewing them and all, but cause I'm scared, it's easy to say, Hey, we, they should just review all past interference calls, but then you run into the case of they start throwing more flags and then that's slowing things down and then they're,
Jacob:Right.
Jason Harwood:and it's just, it's hard because it's, it is so subjective, I wish they would just Not throw as many pass interference, then, sometimes I feel like when they get in those discussions, sometimes they compromise on a legal contact I don't know if it was PI, but we'll say a legal contact. So they, they, but even that's five yards in an automatic first down,
Jacob:Yeah. That
Jason Harwood:first
Jacob:those five yard automatic first downs are ridiculous. Why? That's still a thing. I don't know. Did you see the legal contact they called on Campbell?
Jason Harwood:that's what I was about to bring up.
Jacob:He barely touched him.
Jason Harwood:I know he might've moved him off his route a little bit, but if we watched, if he did the all 22 on. Every passing play that happens by 75, 80 percent of the time, like that kind of contact. He, it wasn't like he, he touched him with his hands. I, basically to check him to don't know, it was,
Jacob:Yeah. How do you call that?
Jason Harwood:I don't
Jacob:And that's nothing that you can review or anything like that. That's just a bad call. But
Jason Harwood:yeah.
Jacob:you know, to the point, you shouldn't be able to get an automatic first down on that. How many times is it like third and long, fourth and long? And then they've got these weird You know, defensive holding, illegal contact, and we're automatically gonna give you a first down.
Jason Harwood:Yeah, it's
Jacob:It's crap, Jason. That's what it is.
Jason Harwood:but it'll be a good off season talk for us and we can go off for an hour about that. All right, bottom line, Lions won, we both got to eat our Thanksgiving dinner, didn't come back up. So it's, it was a good Thanksgiving for both of us.
Jacob:Finally,
Jason Harwood:and a week. We have a game in a week with, you know, with the Packers. It looks like Dusty, who Evely, who we interviewed last week, looks like he's going to join us. Just like last week, we're going to record Tuesday night and have it out Wednesday night because of the Thursday night game, after that we could start to get on our, Back on our regular schedule release on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings, which will be good for us to get back on schedule.
Jacob:Right?
Jason Harwood:things even getting together tonight was, we didn't get together till 10 30 and it's midnight right now. And I got to edit this thing. It's. I'll be glad to get it back on a regular schedule. Just
Jacob:Yeah, for sure.
Jason Harwood:one o'clock games on Sunday. Yeah, I do too. I can see why he likes them. Anything else before we head out of here?
Jacob:No you know, wasn't a pretty win, but it was a win.
Jason Harwood:Yep. it was one of those wins that you don't feel great afterwards. And some of that has to do with the injuries and stuff, but yeah, at the end of the day, we won tied
Jacob:11 and 1.
Jason Harwood:yeah, 11 and one tied our longest winning streak in franchise history. I'd love to see him beat it, especially against the Packers on Thursday. But we'll talk about that next week for Jacob. I'm Jason. go lions.
