They opened the game with two runs that went nowhere and an errant pass that Matthew Stafford sailed wide of an uncovered Calvin Johnson, and when the Detroit Lions settled for a long field goal on their second possession, Dominic Raiola found himself bracing for boo-birds.
“I was just like, ‘Man, can we just score so we don’t have to hear about not scoring touchdowns anymore?'” Raiola said.
The Lions’ touchdown-less streak reached nine quarters after Stafford lost a fumble when he was sacked from behind by Jared Allen late in the first quarter, but with their season on the brink, something suddenly clicked with the Lions’ struggling offense.
Stafford lasered a touchdown pass to Johnson through three defenders on an aggressive third-down call early in the second quarter, Joique Bell jumped over a pile of defenders for his first touchdown in more than a month two series later, and the Lions, one of the lowest-scoring teams in the NFL, rolled to their second-straight Thanksgiving victory, 34-17, over the Chicago Bears at Ford Field.
I knew warm-ups, the way we were going about the game, I knew we were going to have a good game on offense,” Stafford said. “I could feel it, just didn’t happen the first couple minutes of the game. … But I knew we were going to have a good day. I felt confident in our guys and we just decided, made our minds up, and obviously our defense played fantastic again, shutting them down the rest of the game.”
The Lions shredded a short-handed Bears defense for a season-high 474 yards, and Stafford played maybe his best game of the year. He completed 34 of 45 passes for 390 yards and two touchdowns while spreading the ball to nine different receivers.
Johnson caught touchdown passes of 25 and 6 yards, Bell had two 1-yard scoring runs, and the Lions’ up-tempo offense finally looked the well-oiled machine most thought it would be coming into the year.