What is up with the Detroit Lions offense?

DETROIT — Dan Campbell was on the verge of tears. He wasn’t the only one.

If you’re trying to get from the press box to the basement after a game at Ford Field, reporters share the same elevators as team assistants and front-office personnel. And as the Tampa Bay staff climbed into one of those elevators after taking out the Lions 20-16 on Sunday, it seemed at least one member of that staff was about to lose it.

“You let me know who they are, I’ll find them,” Bucs coach Todd Bowles quipped. “There’s no crying in football Week 2.”

Exactly. Which made it all the more notable that beating the Detroit Lions — in Week 2! — meant so much to a visiting team.

There was a time when Ford Field was merely a footnote on the schedule for opposing teams, and by a time, I mean almost all the time since they opened the doors to that joint in 2002. The Lions have been so bad for so long that a win here or anywhere else against Detroit barely meant a thing. The last time the Bucs played a regular-season game on this turf, they raced to a 34-0 halftime lead and gave Tom Brady the second half off. As if they were playing Prairie View A&M, and it was time to get a true freshman some reps before real football began.

This is the NFL. That doesn’t happen. It was humiliation.

Of course, a lot has happened since. Tom Brady is hawking rental cars now, Matt Patricia has a podcast — welcome to the media, Matt! — and beating the Detroit Lions now means something. That’s what happens when you go to the NFC championship game. That’s what happens when you’re a Super Bowl contender.

There is a target on their back every week now. As Dan Campbell likes to say: It’ll take more this season.

“Yeah, that’s something that we talked about as a team going into this year,” Campbell said. “We felt like we kind of crossed over into this threshold. This new threshold of, all right, we’re perceived as a team that is finding ways to win. We’re pretty tough, physical, we play a certain way, we go to the NFC championship game, so that’s a notch in your hat (if you beat us). You do that, that speaks volumes. I mean, we’re going to Arizona this week. For them, that’s going to be a huge win if they find a way to beat us.”

It takes more, and the Lions have gotten it from their long-suffering defense. They have yet to allow more than 20 points in a game despite facing two of the best teams in the NFC (although the Rams just got whacked by Arizona, so who knows about that). Carlton Davis has been as-advertised at cornerback, Amik Robertson has been better-than-advertised in the slot, and both ends of the new 1-2 safety combo already have picks.

But no one has feasted quite like Aidan Hutchinson, who led the league in pressures in Week 1, shredded Tampa for 4.5 sacks in Week 2 and now has 5.5 of them in all — more than half the teams in the league.

You know how many games the Lions would have won playing defense like this last season?

On Sunday, they lost.

“It sucks,” Hutchinson said. “But I was just talking to some guys, and I think this is gonna be really good for us. We had an early loss last year, too — I remember we lost to Seattle and everybody thought we sucked again, you know? I think we’re gonna keep this one in perspective.”

They didn’t suck then, and they don’t suck now. But it’s going to take more this year, and their offense is giving them less.

Give them credit for rolling the Rams in a dominant overtime in Week 1, but they were still held to 20 points in regulation of that game. They rolled up 463 yards of offense against Tampa — more than doubling up the Bucs — and entered the red zone seven times. Yet they walked away with just one touchdown, and finished with 16 points on nearly 500 yards of offense.

Blame Dan Campbell if you want, because he sure does. Before a single question was asked at his postgame press conference, he was already choking back tears while taking the blame for the operational error that led to at least 18 men being on the field for the final play of the first half. That took a gimme field goal off the board, and the Lions trotted into the locker room with the ball sitting at Tampa’s 9-yard line in what proved to be a four-point loss. Brutal.

But that was just one missed opportunity in a game full of them. Six red-zone trips without a touchdown? That’s a team high since 1981. And half of them resulted in no points at all, with two fourth-down failures and one interception.

Speaking of interceptions, perhaps no one has done less this season than Jared Goff. No one will ever mistake him for Patrick Mahomes, but Goff has been one of the league’s most productive quarterbacks the last two seasons. And right now, everything just feels uphill with him. He’s a rhythm passer, and there just isn’t enough of it.

Goff has thrown for 524 yards this season, but 102 of them — 20% — have come on two passes to Jameson WilliamsYou like the explosive plays, and love that they’re going to Williams. That’s been one of the early bright spots on offense. You just don’t like that Goff’s other 81 passes have gone for an average of 5.2 yards. That’s not efficient.

On Sunday, Goff threw for 307 yards, but needed 55 passes to do it. He got Amon-Ra St. Brown going with 11 catches for 119 yards, but again, needed 19 passes to do it. Simply not efficient. And then there are the picks. You can forgive the first because the officials should have thrown a flag for pass interference that knocked Williams off his route, and Goff was throwing to a spot. Then again, his red-zone pick went right to a white shirt, and killed yet another scoring opportunity in a four-point loss.

There were at least two other passes that should have been picked off, and there have been three of those overall this season.

“I don’t know if a wakeup call,” Goff said. “I think that’s a good (Bucs) team. I think we fought hard. I think we didn’t make enough plays. I think we had too many mistakes, and they had less mistakes then we did. And then ultimately at the end of the game, we kind of had a chance to win it a couple times there, but it just wasn’t enough.”

The Lions drove deep into Bucs territory twice with an opportunity to score a go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter, but Goff threw short of the sticks on the first and Jahmyr Gibbs wasn’t able to pick up the rest, then threw well short of the end zone on fourth-and-10 from the 26-yard line with 6 seconds left. The ball landed at Sam LaPorta’s feet.

Sam LaPorta? Remember him? The All-Pro tight end?

He didn’t catch a pass until the third quarter and finished with two receptions for 13 yards overall. Why isn’t he more involved? Especially in the red zone?

More questions about what was supposed to be the sure thing about this team.

“It’ll be definitely a learning experience for sure for us to look and go, ‘OK, what went wrong and how can we fix it?’” Goff said. “I think if I remember correctly, we started 1-1 last year and we were able to respond from that pretty well. It’s early in the year, but it’s a good learning experience and a chance for us to dive into what went wrong and how to not let that stuff happen again.”

Exactly. They’re 1-1, same as last year. No reason for panic — yet.

Then again, this is a year where it’ll take more. And while the defense is holding up its end of the bargain — the best sign yet that better days could still be ahead — the offense, somewhat confusingly, hasn’t. That proved costly in the first loss of the season, and there will be more tears at Ford Field if they can’t find their way.

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