Penalties were a big part of the story in the latest Lions loss.
A delay of game penalty for calling consecutive timeouts helped the Bears pick up a first down that ensured they’d kick a game-winning field goal as time expired and the Lions had 10 accepted penalties against them over the course of the game. Four of those were offensive holding calls and they had two others that were declined during the 16-14 loss.
Detroit faced a pair of third-and-32 situations thanks to some of the holding calls -- and some of their four false starts -- that quarterback Jared Goff said he felt were “not fair” when he spoke to reporters after the game.
“The false starts are absolutely on us,” Goff said, via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. “Those can’t happen, but you can call holding on every single play. It’s no excuse. We’ve done it too much and I know those guys are hard on themselves front, but back there they can throw that flag every play. To me, it seemed like it was a little too often on that call.”
Left tackle Taylor Decker had one of the holding penalties and said after the game that he’d never seen that many calls, but “if they interpret it a certain way” then “it just is what it is.” Decker said the penalties “killed us” and it’s hard to argue with that assessment of another close Lions loss.