Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff slaps hands with teammate Jameson Williams after the Lions scored a touchdown Thursday night at Ford Field against the Cowboys.
Jared Goff threw for 309 yards and Jameson Williams caught seven passes for 96 yards in the Lions’ win against the Cowboys on Thursday. Junfu Han / Imagn Images
DETROIT — You have to wonder if there’s a part of Dan Campbell, perhaps deep down, that relishes all of this.
His Lions find themselves on the outside looking in amid a playoff hunt, in need of a run to keep their goals and aspirations alive. It’s been a while since they’ve been in this position. But strangely enough, it feels like a place of comfort. Of familiarity. Of solace.
It’s the sort of space they tend to operate best in. And maybe, just maybe, it’s what was needed.
“Nobody f—ing tells us who we are,” Campbell told his team in the locker room, after a 44-30 win over the Cowboys Thursday night. “Nobody, man. We write our own story.”
The Lions knew what was at stake. It’s all anyone’s talked about in this city, ahead of this game. In Campbell’s words, the Lions were in a hole. At 7-5, they were fighting for their playoff lives. With just a 30 percent chance to make the playoffs entering Week 14, per The Athletic’s playoff simulator, a loss to the Cowboys would’ve dropped those chances to 12 percent.
Not quite cooked, but the oven was preheating.
Two years ago, Campbell said, the Lions were doing backflips at the thought of making the playoffs and competing with the best of them. Entering the 2025 season, the idea of the Lions missing the postseason hardly registered as realistic. It’s an indicator of how far things have come. It’s the bar they’ve set for themselves — the bare minimum when you prove capable of going from good to great.
The Lions were great last year. They aren’t this year.
Throughout the course of the season, though, it’s felt like Campbell has been trying to will this team back to where it was a year ago. He’s said all the right things — that the mistakes we’re seeing are correctable, that they’ll clean things up. For better or worse, there’s been an unshakeable belief from Campbell that a course correction was on the horizon. That the brand of football that’s escaped them will turn up eventually. That the Lions will again look like the Lions.
After a while, though, you just needed to see it — not hear it.
Campbell felt that way, too. It’s why he challenged his team this week, after a 31-24 loss to the Packers on Thanksgiving. After their third loss in five games, the Lions reviewed tape through a different lens. Behind closed doors, the message was more direct than usual. Campbell felt the Lions were better than what they’ve shown.
So, he asked them to show it.
“It felt like we kind of got back to who we are earlier in the week, addressed a lot of what happened in that Packers game, what went wrong, what we could have done better,” Jared Goff said. “I think you could see an uptick in urgency from everybody.”
“We challenged a number of our guys and, man, they really showed up for us,” Campbell said.
One of those players was edge rusher Al-Quadin Muhammad. The Lions brought him in a year ago as depth, only to re-sign him and watch him take on a larger role. One of the most effective pass rushers in the NFL through the first nine or so weeks, Muhammad has seen his usage and production dip since then.
But coaches came to Muhammad and let him know they’d need him Thursday. Detroit entered Week 14 with just four sacks in its previous four games. Generating pressure vs. Dak Prescott was of the utmost importance, in a game plan that called for less blitzing (an 18.5 percent blitz rate vs. the Cowboys, per TruMedia — their third-lowest in a game this season).
Three sacks later, Muhammad proved he was ready.
“We needed this,” Muhammad said. “The coaches challenged us the other day — how we was gonna come into this game, and the type of game plan was gonna come in this game with, and we had to win one-on-ones upfront. And we did that.”
The Lions recorded five sacks against the Cowboys. But it wasn’t just the pass rush. The Lions received contributions from just about everybody defensively in this game. Jack Campbell forced a fumble, recovered by Brian Branch. Derrick Barnes and D.J. Reed recorded interceptions. Those three takeaways were crucial in this game, with the Lions scoring 14 points off two of them.
Not a perfect performance. There were mental errors and costly mistakes. But the aspects the Lions wanted to get back to — creating takeaways, finishing better, etc. — were on display.
It wasn’t just talk.
Another player the Lions challenged was Goff. For a quarterback whose successes are often viewed as a product of those around him, Campbell put a lot on Goff’s shoulders Thursday. The plan was to come out throwing against a secondary the Lions felt was vulnerable. This was a pass-heavy attack that featured short dropbacks and quick throws. Goff got the Lions into the right plays, stood poised in the pocket and delivered accurate throws to his playmakers. He finished with 309 yards and a touchdown to rookie Isaac TeSlaa — helping the offense move the ball before Jahmyr Gibbs (three touchdowns) and David Montgomery (60 rushing yards and a touchdown) capped off the other touchdown drives.
“We want to kind of be on this up ramp, by the time we hit the playoffs, where we’re this dangerous team who can kind of go toe to toe with anybody,” Goff said. “That’s what you want and we’re right there. If we’re able to win one at a time, who knows what can happen. There’s plenty of games left and we’re playing well.”
Detroit’s top receivers — Jameson Williams and Amon-Ra St. Brown — were excellent. Williams’ route tree expanded and he caught seven of his nine targets for a team-high 96 yards. The growth he’s shown in recent weeks, with an increased workload, has been nothing short of impressive. He’s becoming a true top option alongside St. Brown, who defied logic by even being able to suit up Thursday evening — let alone play as well as he did.
In the locker room after the game, St. Brown told the story of the week that was. He couldn’t walk seven days ago, getting around on crutches last weekend. An ankle injury suffered early vs. the Packers lingered. The idea of playing so soon, in so much pain, was hard to process … until Tuesday came around. That’s when the vision began to crystallize.
His ankle felt better — at least enough to give it a try. He took the field for pre-game warmups. He was announced with the starters during the team’s intro. He caught the game’s first pass — likely intentional, if you know how Campbell operates. He finished with six catches for 92 yards, and on his final reception of the evening, hobbled and all, St. Brown helped the Lions create some breathing room, while setting an NFL record in the process.
The Lions saved the ball, then hand-delivered it to St. Brown as a gift. It was a fitting effort, from one of their captains. The sort of gutsy performance that’s emblematic of this group and how it operates.
“For me, it’s just — no matter what our record was, whether we were undefeated right now or didn’t have a win, I was gonna do everything to be out there,” St. Brown said. “… I was gonna do whatever it takes to be out there.”
That’s the collective mindset, as the Lions look to make a run to close the regular season. A game like this, fending off a hot Cowboys team breathing down their necks, makes it feel more real than it did before. At 8-5, the Lions’ playoff hopes are still very much alive. But each week, from here on out, matters more than the last. They’ll need everyone to win like they did tonight. And they’ll need to show the sort of consistency that’s escaped them in order to keep it rolling.
That said, the Lions assembled this group the way they have because they know what each and every guy in this locker room is about. Guys like Muhammad, guys like Goff, guys like Tom Kennedy — who deserves his flowers for his efforts as a return man. This staff knows they can take the hard coaching and direct messaging. They know how they’ll react in critical moments. They know they’re not going to point fingers or pass on blame. They know they can rely on them when it’s time to grab a shovel and dig their way out of a hole.
They’ve seen it. And if they see more of it, well, this thing is far from over.
“I’ve said it all along, we can’t worry about the outside noise,” Campbell said. “We’re the ones who write our own narrative. We’re the ones who know what we are and what it takes and why we’ve had some difficulties. But also, why we’re able to succeed. We know why. It’s about us and it’s about how we handle our business.
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