Roll tie: Coach calls draw ‘improvement’
PITTSBURGH — The Lions’ losing streak is over. The threat of a winless season still remains.
For now, they’ll take it, no matter how ugly it looks.
The Lions slogged their way to a 16-16 tie in dreary conditions Sunday, surviving a nearly fourhour marathon against the Ben Roethlisberger-less Steelers.
Sure, it wasn’t a win. Still, it beat the usual alternative, a feeling the Lions (0-8-1) had endured since knocking off the Bears on Dec. 6, 2020, a stretch of 12 games over 11 agonizing months.
“I don’t know how to feel about that, necessarily,” first-year Lions coach Dan Campbell said. “It’s like I told the guys, I was upset we didn’t win, but I was also proud of them because of the fact that we put ourselves in position to win the game in overtime.”
Only they didn’t. The Lions’ forced two fumbles in overtime, including one by Pat Freiermuth with eight seconds left that prevented the Steelers from trying a game-winning 55-yard field goal.
Lions kicker Ryan Santoso badly missed a 48-yard field goal with 4:03 left in overtime.
“We didn’t win, but we didn’t lose, either,” Campbell said. “All you can ask for is improvement, and we improved.”
The only consistent thing in the game might have been the steady stream of punts. Jack Fox booted it 10 times for Detroit, tying the most in a game this season.
When they weren’t punting, the Lions were manhandling the Steelers’ defensive front. D’Andre Swift rushed for a career-high 130 yards as the Lions relied heavily on the run with quarterback Jared Goff rendered almost completely ineffective. The Lions ran for 229 yards, only the ninth time in 51 years the Steelers have allowed more than 200 on the ground at home.
“Our run game was tremendous,” Goff said. “It felt purposeful. It felt like we were really on top of what we were doing offensively. It was something we can build on.”
Goff connected on 14 of 25 passes for just 114 yards while playing with a strained oblique as the NFL saw its first tie since the Bengals and Eagles on Sept. 27, 2020. Detroit’s last tie was against the Cardinals in the 2019 opener, while the Steelers’ last tie came against the Browns in 2018.
The Steelers (5-3-1) saw their four-game winning streak halted.
Roethlisberger was put on the COVID-19 list Saturday night after testing positive. Coach Mike Tomlin said Roethlisberger is symptomatic and his status for next week is in doubt.