Inside the locker room: Lions CB says refs were on Seahawks’ side

DETROIT — The Lions beat the Seattle Seahawks 42-29 despite getting flagged 12 times.

Carlton Davis, the most-flagged man in professional football this weekend, wasn’t happy about all the laundry on the field.

The cornerback was penalized four times on Monday night, including three times for defensive pass interference. Two of the flags appeared to be ticky-tack against DK Metcalf, one of which led directly to a touchdown. Davis had a hand on Metcalf, but the contact appeared incidental and did not affect the play.

Davis was incensed by the penalty and went after the officials before being held back by captain Alex Anzalone. After the game, he remained hot about it in the locker room.

“Honestly bro, I can’t say what I wanna say, but honestly it’s just I feel like they were on the Seahawks side today,” Davis said. “I don’t know what I did. Maybe I should take them to dinner or something? I don’t know. Follow ‘em on Instagram? I don’t know, but today was not my day. They were just calling PIs that are, like, I’m not even grabbing. It was just touch-touch-bang-bang stuff. Which is football. Which is battling. And DK is a physical receiver. That’s gonna happen when you get a physical corner and a physical receiver. You have to let us play ball. That’s that.”

Davis was also flagged for a key defensive holding penalty that nullified a third-down stop, but also had one of the biggest plays of the game, scooping up a fumble that was forced by Jack Campbell and returning it 49 yards into the red zone. Three plays later, Jahmyr Gibbs raced into the red zone to stretch Detroit’s lead to 14-0.

That didn’t make him feel any better about the flags.

“I lost my cool, I did,” Davis said. “But it was rightfully so because I can’t control it. It’s an emotional game, and the stakes are high. They’re driving down the field, and these PIs are keeping them in the game, extending these drives. That’s where the passion is coming from. Like c’mon man, let us play ball, and if they can’t get open, then it is what it is.”

See below for more from inside the locker room:

Lions HC Dan Campbell, on the penalties: “12′s a lot. We had quite a few. Look, I’ll have to watch the tape, but I can tell you just about every one of them that I saw — like Carlton (Davis III). Carlton’s battling. That’s a good receiver he’s on and that guy is a physical receiver and we needed to be physical, and Carlton was physical. And we played ball. I’m not discouraged about that one bit. I’m just not. So, there’s things we have to clean up, we can’t have this many, but the same token, we’ll figure out what that is and we’ll keep working one-on-one’s, we’ll keep working our craft, and no, we can’t survive 12 penalties every game. But I know this, we needed to be physical, and we’ll get ourselves through this and we’ll hone in on it.”

Campbell, on Jared Goff’s perfect day: “Yeah, well, I just gave the game ball to somebody else, so I feel awful right now. Well, I knew he played a heck of a game. I did not realize he was perfect. I did not know he was literally 18-for-18. But I knew he played really well — you could feel it — and he really found his rhythm early, and I thought he was seeing the field, played with rhythm, he had to move a little bit in the pocket. I thought what really kickstarted him is he had to kind of move in the pocket, got spun around, and hung with Jamo (Williams) and hit him on the hook for the first down. It was big because he was rolling after that. But just a number of huge throws, played with poise, got us in the right play. It was a heck of a play down in the redzone on the catch, good throw by Saint, had been working that. I just thought it was excellent, and credit to Ben Johnson too, I thought he called a heck of a game, it was a good game plan, and really everybody on that offense stepped up and found a rhythm today.”

Goff, on if he’s ever had a day like that: “Never. Never. I don’t think I’ve ever done it. I knew I did it in the first half last week, so I was aware of it then, and I was kind of aware of it today – middle of the third quarter, I was like, I couldn’t think of one. But then I threw the one out of bounds that ended up being offensive pass interference, and I was like, ‘Does that count?’ I didn’t know if that counted or not. But yeah, I didn’t.”

Lions WR Amon-Ra St. Brown, on Williams’ celebration: “I told him, next time you celebrate — He wants to get all 30 of his celebrations off after one touchdown. ’Bro, you’re going to score again. Next touchdown, you do the next one.’ He said, ‘Bro, I know, I know. I have so much stuff in my head.’ I’m like, ‘Bro, I already know you do.’ That’s Jamo, man. We told him, all the teammates, me, D. Mo (Montgomery), we’re in the huddle, like, ‘If you do that again, and you leave us hanging and we’re running around, bro, that’s a fine.’”

Williams, on his celebration: “That was for Calvin. He used to do that back in the day. He was getting honored tonight, so I did that for him. And some people in the facility who thought I couldn’t make the dunk.

Seahawks HC Mike MacDonald, on the loss: “It just shows us we’re not the team we need to be at this point. It just wasn’t good enough. They did what they did to win the game. They did a great job, they had a great plan, and we came up short. So, how do we move forward right now as a football team and take the next step? We’ve got a short week coming up, and there’s urgency. I mean, there’s always urgency, but we’ve got to go to work here over the next few days and make this right.”

MacDonald, on all of Detroit’s big plays: “The one long one to (Jameson Williams) was a good job by them, but it was a massive bust on our end that we have no business making. So, we’ve got to look inwardly. When we hit adversity, we can’t be pointing fingers, we can’t be blaming. It’s just, “Hey, where’s my responsibility? Where did I fall short?” And then as a team, that’s how you grow. So, that’s what we need to do.”

Seahawks QB Geno Smith, on Ford Field: “It wasn’t that hostile. We was out there doing our thing, as you can see. But hats off to the Lions, they beat us today.”

Campbell, on Brian Branch’s illness: “No, he passed the protocol, he’s been sick and so we don’t know what that is and it’s not worth it. I don’t know what it is, I know he’s sick so that’s what it was.”

Campbell, on the timing of the bye week: “Yeah, I think it was good. You don’t often feel that way at first when you see it. You’d rather have it at the end of October, November but — we are, we’re banged up a little bit. We play a pretty physical brand of football, we played some physical opponents these first four weeks and so I do think it’s coming at a good time. And it’s good to get the three. It’s good to get the 3-1 with this bye. We rest up, we heal up, we get fresh again, and then we make a big push.”

• BETTING: Check out our guide to the best Michigan sportsbooks, where our team of sports betting experts has reviewed the experience, payout speed, parlay options and quality of odds for multiple sportsbooks.