Goff ’s last-second pass ends winless streak at 15 games
DETROIT — Cal alum Jared Goff dropped back, looked left and let the football loose that Amon-Ra St. Brown squeezed tight as he sat in the end zone.
That set off a roar in Ford Field loud enough it might’ve been heard on Detroit’s streets.
Goff ’s 11-yard touchdown pass to St. Brown as time expired lifted the previously winless Lions to a 29-27 victory over Minnesota on Sunday.
“It feels good to stand in front of you now,” Goff said to reporters before answering a question.
Not only was the finish dramatic, it was stunning.
Goff led the Lions on a 75yard decisive possession without a timeout after Kirk Cousins threw a go-ahead 3-yard touchdown pass to Justin Jefferson with 1:50 left. The Vikings failed on a two-point conversion for the third time, and those missed opportunities proved costly.
Goff threw two touchdown passes in the first half to put Detroit ahead by 14 points, its biggest lead this season. Then he committed two turnovers in the second half to help Minnesota rally.
He delivered in the end, though, leading the long drive and delivering a sharp pass without pressure against a three-man rush to a rookie receiver, who took advantage of the Vikings’ secondary playing too deep in the end zone.
“It was actually crazy,” St. Brown said. “They were 3 or 4 yards in the end zone.”
The Lions (1-10-1) ended a 15-game winless streak that lasted 364 days since winning at Chicago last season, giving first-year head coach Dan Campbell his first victory with the franchise.
“You want this so bad for the players because they’re the ones who put in all the hard work, the sweat, the tears,“Campbell said. “When you lose, it hurts, but it’s also why winning is so great, because it isn’t easy to do.”
The Vikings (5-7) hurt their chances of earning a wild-card spot in the playoffs by losing a game they were favored to win.
Minnesota head coach Mike Zimmer defended the decision to drop eight defenders on the final snap, but lamented that the secondary didn’t follow the plan on the play.
“We weren’t covering very well, so we felt we needed to get more guys into coverage,” he said.
Minnesota has the dubious distinction of being the first team the Lions beat this year because it missed chances to score more often, and allowed an offensively challenged team to score more than 17 points for the first time since Week 1.
Red-zone woes, though, will haunt them when the Vikings look back at how they let the Lions win. Minnesota had the ball inside the Detroit 20 twice in the first quarter, settling for field goals and a 6-0 lead, and kicked another field goal in the third after a drive stalled at the Lions’ 12.
“We came out pretty slow and when we did get into the red zone, we only came away with three,” Jefferson said.
Goff finished 25-for-41 for 296 yards with three touchdowns and an interception.
Goff, drafted No. 1 overall by the Rams in 2016, had lost 12 straight starts for the longest skid for a quarterback taken first in the common draft era that started in 1967.
“It’s obviously a tough loss, and I’m going to think about it for years,” Cousins said.