Early in the week when Dan Campbell was announcing the latest in a ridiculous rash of Lions injuries, Ben Johnson was having a quick conversation with Jared Goff.
“He asked me on Monday,” Goff recalled for FOX’s Megan Olivi after Detroit’s 34-17 win over the Bears, “like if I think I could fake fumble. I’m like, ‘You want the ball on the ground?’ And he was like, ‘Uh, I don’t know; we’ll see.’ And we kind of cooked it all week and we had a good moment for it there and it worked.”
It worked just after halftime, when Goff took a snap and appeared to stumble to his left. As Jahmyr Gibbs rolled like a man on fire in the backfield and the NFL’s Enhanced Audio system picked up several Bears players shouting “fumble,” Goff calmly righted himself and threw a 21-yard touchdown to Sam LaPorta.
Detroit (13-2) now has a franchise-record 493 points this season but they entered Sunday knowing they had to score at an even higher clip due to so many injuries on defense. They just decided to score those points in creative fashion.
Goff finished 23 of 32 for 336 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions. He tied Hall of Famer Dan Marino (41 games) and Matt Ryan (41) for the second-most games with at least 300 passing yards by a player in his first nine seasons in NFL annals, and now trails only Patrick Mahomes (47).
“It feels really good,” said Goff, who also threw an 82-yard touchdown to Jameson Williams. “We’re playing good ball right now and it was good to get back on track after last week. On the road, it’s never easy here at Soldier Field and we got it done.”
In the team’s first game without injured David Montgomery, Gibbs recorded 154 yards from scrimmage, including 109 yards and a touchdown on 23 carries. Meanwhile, Amon-Ra St. Brown became the third player in league history with 100 receptions in three of his first four seasons, joining Brandon Marshall and Michael Thomas.
And after walking off the field, the Lions got to watch Washington storm back to beat Philadelphia (12-3), giving Detroit breathing room in its quest for the NFC’s No. 1 seed. The Lions are at San Francisco on Monday Night Football next week.
For more information on the Lions and Bears, visit the Detroit and Chicago team pages at ProFootballPost.com.
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