The Detroit Lions saw their playoff hopes get even slimmer after two go-ahead touchdowns were wiped away in the final minute of regulation in Sunday’s loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Quarterback Jared Goff didn’t agree with one of the overturns, but still refrained from putting the onus of the blame for the loss on the referees’ shoulders.
“[The officials] have a hard job, and I don’t want to make any excuses or anything like that. We’ve been on the right side of a lot of these, and we’ve been on the wrong side on a lot of these,” Goff said after the game, according to ESPN.
“I think a few plays prior, the one on TeSlaa was a little bit more in my head up for interpretation, but listen, man, they’re going to make the calls, and I promise you if I was sitting on the other side of that right now, we’d be saying, ‘Great job,’ but those sting for sure and you wish they weren’t called, but so be it.”
Head coach Dan Campbell shared a similar sentiment.
“We weren’t able to close it out. And at the end of the day, that’s on us,” Campbell said of the loss, which all but ended Detroit’s chances to make the playoffs. “We did that. We’re the ones who put ourselves in that position to where we had to try to score on the last play.”
The Lions aren’t totally out of contention for the postseason. Detroit’s final remaining path is to win out and have the Green Bay Packers lose each of their final two contests.
“You can’t feel sorry for yourself. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting, it doesn’t feel bad,” Campbell said. “But we have nobody to blame but ourselves. It’s on us. And it’s also on us to finish. We’ve got two to go.”
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.