'Rock bottom:' Detroit Lions lose to New England Patriots in embarrassing shutout, 29-0

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — This is what rock bottom looks like: Losing to a rookie third-string quarterback, in his first career start, with your old defensive-minded head coach calling offensive plays on the other sideline — and getting shut out to boot.

And if it’s not rock bottom, then Dan Campbell and the Detroit Lions have a lot more problems than anyone realizes.

The Lions’ league-best offense failed to score a point Sunday for the first time all year, and their league-worst defense made New England Patriots quarterback Bailey Zappe look like a young Tom Brady in a disheartening 29-0 loss at Gillette Stadium.

“To me this is about as bad as it gets,” Campbell said. “I mean, this is worse. This is where we're at. And sometimes it's going to get bad before it gets better. And I believe we hit rock bottom and so now the only place to go is back up.”

The Lions, who led the NFL in total and scoring offense entering the week, had a season-low 312 yards of offense Sunday in a game that was somewhat reminiscent of their 2014 loss to the Buffalo Bills. The Lions lost 17-14 that day, and Bills players celebrated by hoisting former Lions coach Jim Schwartz — then Buffalo’s defensive coordinator — on their shoulders after the game.

On Sunday, it was ex-Lions coach Matt Patricia, now the offensive play caller in New England, who helped orchestrate the win over his old team.

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Zappe completed 17 of 21 passes for 188 yards and one touchdown, Rhamondre Stevenson ran for a career-high 161 yards and the Patriots scored a season-high in points.

“Hell yeah, this is rock bottom,” Lions safety DeShon Elliott said. “How do we get (out of) there? We’ll figure that out. At the moment, obviously we don’t know. At the end of the day, we’ll figure it out. We need to figure it out and if you don’t want to figure it out, you’re going to be out of here. So we got to do what we got to do.”

The Lions head into their bye week 1-4 and in last place in the NFC North.

They’ve lost three straight games, the last two to teams with sub-.500 records, and their season is on life support before Thanksgiving for the fifth straight year.

“Bro like, 1-4 going into the bye week is horrible,” Elliott said. “That’s disgusting and we want to be a great team in this league, better be able to bounce back. So coming out of this bye week, bro, we just got to go ahead and do what we need to do.”

The Lions set a modern NFL record Sunday by going 0 for 6 on fourth down conversions, failed to force a punt until early in the fourth quarter (after not forcing any punts in last week's 48-45 loss to the Seattle Seahawks) and committed two first-half turnovers that led to 10 Patriots points.

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Jamaal Williams was stopped on a fullback dive on fourth-and-1 from the Patriots’ 45-yard line on the game’s opening series, and New England took a 3-0 lead on a short field goal on the ensuing possession.

Jared Goff threw an interception in the red zone on the Lions’ next drive to set up another Patriots field goal, and Kyle Dugger returned a Goff fumble 59 yards for a touchdown on another failed fourth down attempt late in the first half.

Goff’s fumble came on fourth-and-9 from the New England 32-yard line, with 3:40 left in the first half of a 6-0 game, one play after Craig Reynolds was thrown for a 7-yard loss on third-and-2. Campbell said he passed on a 50-yard field goal attempt because “I had a yard marker I knew that we needed to get inside of to feel good about” a try with new kicker Michael Badgley.

Badgley, the Lions’ third kicker of the season, is 3 of 10 on kicks of 50 or more yards in his career.

“When you're not able to convert those you're going to struggle offensively,” Campbell said. “So too many of them. We weren't efficient enough on first down. Now, I did think we got some manageable downs, we just, we couldn't convert them. It was one of those days. Our offense has been pretty steady, played pretty well, and this was a day we didn't do well. And we really never got in a true rhythm and we couldn't convert. We couldn't stay on the field.”

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Goff completed 19 of 35 passes for 229 yards, but the Lions struggled to move the ball through the air with DJ Chark and D’Andre Swift out and Amon-Ra St. Brown playing at less than 100% with a high ankle sprain.

Goff failed to throw a touchdown pass for the first time this season, and had his lowest single-game passer rating (62.7) as a Lion. Of his five turnovers this season, three have been returned for touchdowns.

“Obviously, at the quarterback position, turnovers are a part of your business,” Goff said. “And you want to limit them. It's an occupational hazard. But, yeah, for a few of them to go back for touchdowns, it's not good. And I don't know if — there's no rhyme or reason why they do or don't. I just got to be better.”

Nick Folk made field goals of 37, 32, 44, 37 and 29 yards for the Patriots, whose lone offensive touchdown came with 1:51 left in the third quarter on a 24-yard Zappe pass to Jakobi Meyers.

Meyers finished seven catches for 111 yards and had his way with a Lions secondary that benched three starters Sunday — Amani Oruwariye, DeShon Elliott and Mike Hughes — and lost several more players to injury.

Saivion Smith, who started in place of Elliott, suffered a neck injury in the first quarter and was taken to a local hospital, and Will Harris (groin) and Ifeatu Melifonwu (ankle) left the game with injuries and did not return. Elliott (cramps), Jeff Okudah and Kerby Joseph also left with injuries, but returned.

Offensively, the Lions were shutout for the first time since Nov. 22, 2020, Patricia’s second-to-last game as Lions coach.

“I mean, this better be rock bottom, right?” Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone said. “But yeah, you just have to figure out a way. You’ve got to look yourself in the mirror. How can I improve for the team? And we have this bye week to re-evaluate, reassess everyone at the facility so just got to figure out a way to win these games. And yeah, losing like this sucks.”

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions: 29-0 loss to Patriots has to be 'rock bottom'