They have not had their best playmaker, Kenny Golladay, on the field in more than a month. They cut their fastest deep threat, Marvin Hall, last week. And their quarterback, Matthew Stafford, still has a bum thumb on his throwing hand.
Yet somehow, the Detroit Lions were able to unlock the big-play portion of their passing game in last week’s win over the Chicago Bears to the greatest extent they have all season.
“We have those built in, we’re trying to look for them,” interim Lions coach Darrell Bevell said. “But we did talk about just aggressively how much we wanted to take them, and I think it was a perfect storm that we were finally able to get as many as we got.