The Lions were riding high heading into Week 7 as they held the best record in the NFL but were served a piece of humble pie from the Ravens in the form of a 38-6 thrashing in Baltimore. Detroit found itself trailing 28-0 by halftime, which is the largest halftime deficit by a team with the best record in the league this late in the season in NFL history.
"They kicked our ass," head coach Dan Campbell told reporters postgame, via ESPN.
The loss snapped a four-game winning streak for the Lions (all of which they won by at least 14 points) and was their first road loss of the year after going 3-0 away from Ford Field to begin the season. While his club was rather easily taken down, Campbell did admit that "we probably needed" the loss to bring his team back down to earth.
"You don't want these to happen, but when it does, it re-centers you, it refocuses you. And that's all I know. I don't want it to happen. Nobody wants it to happen," Campbell said. "Nobody likes to look over there and watch them having a great time because they kicked our ass. Nobody thinks that's fun, but I know that motivates me for next week, it motivates our team. You'll do any and everything you can not to have that feeling again. That's all I mean by that."
The Lions' inability to contain Lamar Jackson was the story of their defeat. The Ravens quarterback was 21 of 27 passing for 357 yards and registered four total touchdowns (three passing, one rushing).
"Lamar beat us. He hammered us with his arm. He threw the ball extremely well, he ran when he needed to, and we did not handle it well," Campbell said. "Our energy was good, which is crazy when you come out of a game like that and look at the score ... our energy was good, but our detail and discipline, which has been so good over the last four or five weeks, was not good enough, so self-induced. That was a combination of a lot of different things, and just like we win as a team, we lose as a team. That was one of those."
The Lions will get a little extra time to gear up for what they hope will be a bounce-back performance against the Raiders on "Monday Night Football" to wrap up Week 8 and head into their bye.
