It was dangerous to have a big lead in the second half of Sunday's Week 12 games. Sure, the Packers and Rams had no trouble and ended up with comfortable wins. But other teams that took big leads had to fight to hold on for wins. The Falcons allowed the Saints to march up and down the field in the second half, though New Orleans fell apart near the goal line. The Seahawks let the Titans get within one score after a series of late touchdowns. And the Bears needed two stops against the Steelers at midfield to hold onto yet another narrow victory in Chicago.
Three teams, though, could not hold on. The Giants fell apart with a big lead in the second half yet again, as the Lions came back from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter to win in overtime. The Eagles got out to a 21-0 start on the Cowboys and spent the rest of the game seemingly hanging on in desperation, with Dallas eventually breaking through for a game-winning field goal as time expired. And the Colts, looking for a statement win over the Chiefs, led 20-9 with the ball in the fourth quarter but somehow still managed to let Kansas City win.
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Did the playoff door creak open for the Chiefs? Is there something to worry about with the Lions? And was this a sign that the Cowboys were right to trade so much draft capital for Quinnen Williams? Let's take a closer look at these three comeback wins and what they meant around the league.
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Chiefs over Colts
Cowboys over Eagles
Lions over Giants
Chiefs 23, Colts 20 (OT)
Not surprisingly, this game was presented over the past week and throughout the 60 minutes of football on Sunday as a referendum on the Chiefs. The talk that Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City were essentially playing for their postseason lives was overblown, as the Chiefs still had a little bit of runway left even in the case of a loss. Still, the idea of Kansas City dropping below .500 this late in the season would have been almost unfathomable.
It was also a time to take the Colts' temperature. This organization traded two first-round picks for cornerback Sauce Gardner at the deadline in the hopes that he might be a critical part, both now and in the years to come, of their defense. They were getting Charvarius Ward (concussion) back from injured reserve, giving defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo his full complement of cornerbacks and the freedom to go create whatever he wanted on the defensive side of the football.
It was also a moment to wonder whether the Colts have an offense worthy of that sort of all-in move on defense. Indy's numbers were otherworldly during the first half of the season, of course, but unlikely MVP candidate Daniel Jones struggled badly over his two prior starts, more than doubling his sack and turnover totals relative to the first eight games of the season. Coming off the bye with a healthy offense around him, this was a chance for Jones to leave the doubts behind.
Jones didn't melt down, but this wasn't the sort of performance that's going to inspire comparisons to the 2007 Patriots or 2018 Chiefs like we were seeing from Indianapolis earlier in the season. He went 19-of-31 for 181 yards, coming just short of the 6 yards per pass attempt barrier. Jones didn't turn the ball over or take any sacks, a welcome return after the negative plays of the prior few weeks, but he missed multiple open receivers, including a potential first down in the red zone on third down while under pressure from Chris Jones. He was lucky on a second-half pass that could have been intercepted when two Chiefs defenders ran into each other. It was a performance more like the better versions of Jones we saw in New York under Brian Daboll than the ones we saw as the Colts stormed through the NFL in the first half of 2025.
Jones didn't attempt a single pass of 20-plus air yards on Sunday. When the Colts did create explosive plays, they came through shorter throws and yards after the catch, like Ashton Dulin's 48-yard gain sneaking across the formation on leak. Jonathan Taylor had one 27-yard run. It felt like coach Shane Steichen wanted to keep life easy for Jones by getting the ball out quickly, and his average of 2.4 seconds before throwing was his fastest in a game this season.
Steichen has been one of the more aggressive coaches in the league during his time with the Colts, but facing one of the NFL's most successful franchises, he chose to lean more conservative. The Colts took a delay of game on fourth-and-3 just past midfield on their opening drive and then again on fourth-and-1 from their own 40-yard line. They kicked a field goal on fourth-and-4 in the red zone and fourth-and-goal from the 5-yard line.
Patrick Mahomes converts a huge third down to Xavier Worthy to set up Harrison Butker for a 27-yard field goal to defeat the Colts.
After winning the coin toss in overtime, Steichen faced a fourth-and-3 on the opening possession and decided again to punt, even knowing that his defense had faced 79 offensive snaps during regulation and would be in position to lose if the Chiefs managed to get in field goal range on the ensuing drive. Those decisions combined to cost the Colts more than 8 percentage points of win probability by the NFL Next Gen Stats model -- the sort of free gains one cannot afford to hand to the Chiefs.
What might haunt the Colts the most, though, is what they did in the fourth quarter when they had that lead. After Kareem Hunt's fumble in the red zone gave the Colts the ball with an 11-point lead, Steichen's offense proceeded to go three-and-out on three consecutive drives. Just one of those nine plays -- the first one -- was a handoff to Taylor. In addition to not running much time off the clock, the Colts curiously didn't try to decide the game with their star back.
Did the first run spook Steichen? Maybe. The Colts didn't look good inside their own 5-yard line, with Quenton Nelson not blocking anybody and two linebackers flowing into the backfield to tackle Taylor for a 2-yard loss. A screen to Taylor did get 7 yards. But with the Chiefs blitzing down after down and seemingly unconcerned about Jones taking a shot downfield, Steichen didn't get to any of his menu of trap, wham or pin/pull concepts to take advantage of an aggressive defense with the run. The Chiefs weren't loading up the box with eight or nine men, and frankly, the Colts have been good enough running that no box count should scare them.
In overtime, Steichen did pick up 5 yards with a Taylor run, but facing a third-and-1, no one blocked linebacker Drue Tranquill, who took down Taylor for another 2-yard loss. Would Steichen have gone for it if that run had simply gone for no gain? It didn't matter, as the Colts punted and never saw the ball again. Indianapolis scored a first-quarter touchdown on a short field after a spectacular interception by Laiatu Latu, but the league's best offense by the numbers generated just 13 points and nine first downs across 10 other possessions.
The Chiefs, on the other hand, racked up 33 first downs, the most by any team in a game this season. We normally associate that sort of production with dominant offensive games; the other teams that generated 30 or more first downs in a game this season also averaged more than 39 points in their offensive explosions. The Chiefs got to only 23, and even that took a late comeback and overtime.
That's a reflection of where the Chiefs are and what Anarumo wanted to do to them in this game. With Gardner and Ward on the field, he played man coverage on nearly 63% of Mahomes' dropbacks, per ESPN's tracking, comfortably the highest rate of man coverage the Colts have played in a game this season. He showed light boxes to the Chiefs and essentially dared coach Andy Reid to run the ball with Hunt, whose 30 carries were a career high. Those runs might be successful, but Anarumo wasn't going to give up any explosives on the ground, and he trusted that the Chiefs would run into a mistake, penalty or sack on their way to the end zone.
Kareem Hunt leaps over the line and scores a 1-yard rushing touchdown to cut into the Colts' lead.
Even with all of Kansas City's first downs, that game plan generally worked. The Chiefs had six drives of 50 yards or more versus two from the Colts, but it didn't matter for most of the game. Mahomes had one deep completion, while Hunt had just one run over 10 yards. The Chiefs had one touchdown drive nullified by a face mask call on Jawaan Taylor, while time ran out on a second at the end of the first half. Hunt's fumble brought another deep drive to a halt.
Impacted further by several special teams penalties on returns, the Chiefs were forced to go on a series of long journeys throughout this game. Their average drive started on the 20-yard line, and just one of their 11 possessions began beyond Kansas City's own 30-yard line. That drive, which opened up on the 44, produced a fourth-quarter touchdown to get within three.
It will be lost to the sands of time by virtue of being a Chiefs victory, but this was very nearly another crushing loss. Noah Gray had to catch a pass seemingly with his legs to set up a fourth-and-3, which Mahomes converted on a throw to Rashee Rice for 18 yards. The Colts still managed a whopping 50% pressure rate on Mahomes in the fourth quarter and overtime, but he took just two sacks on 24 dropbacks -- both on long scrambles, with one going for no gain.
Mahomes threw an ugly interception on an RPO in the first quarter, and Hunt's fumble in the red zone cost the Chiefs points. Unlike Mahomes' three picks in (and just outside) the red zone earlier this season, though, the fumble didn't turn into a touchdown for the Colts. And while the Chiefs lost all three of those games that Mahomes had interceptions in scoring range by three points, the Colts not getting anything out of their turnover helped swing the pendulum back toward Kansas City.
I'm not sure this game tells us much about the Chiefs beyond offering some comfort that all of the luck had in 2024 hasn't abandoned them for good in 2025. Winning their first one-score game of the year was inevitable. But doing so against the Colts could be extremely valuable for the Chiefs, especially if Indy does blow its once-substantial lead in the AFC South and ends up in the wild-card mix. The numbers that say the 2025 Chiefs are great under the hood will continue to say as much, and yet the skeptics who watch the Chiefs and wonder whether the numbers are misleading also have every reason to question whether we're going to see a dominant version of this team for any length of time.
For the Colts, though, what was a 2½-game lead in the AFC South as recently as Week 10 is suddenly down to one game. The Jaguars aren't exactly winning pretty every week, but they still have two games against the Colts to come, plus a pair against the Titans and a home game against the Jets. Indianapolis has home-and-homes with the Jags and Texans, but it also hosts the 49ers and has to travel to Seattle to play the Seahawks. Trading two first-rounders for Gardner felt like a big bet on Jones and the team's chances of actually holding onto the top spot in the AFC. But right now, with Jones playing disjointed or conservative football, it feels like the division might be wide open -- let alone the top of the conference.
Cowboys 24, Eagles 21
Through two weeks, the massive trade deadline move for Quinnen Williams has to be considered a success for the Cowboys. A dominant performance by the Dallas defense against the Raiders contributed to Las Vegas offensive coordinator Chip Kelly getting fired Sunday. And after the defense held the Eagles scoreless for the final 41 minutes of Sunday's victory in Dallas, Philadelphia sports radio callers are going to fire offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo about 700 times on Monday.
Eagles fans skeptical of Patullo and coach Nick Sirianni got more fuel for their fire Sunday. Going up 21-0 wasn't exactly a bad start, of course, and Sirianni had never blown this sort of lead before as a head coach, but this was another day for the Eagles offense where things simply didn't work for long swaths of time. After the early scores, the Eagles had just one first down on their next four drives, gaining a total of 26 yards across those four possessions.
The offense got going a little bit in the fourth quarter, but the Eagles were let down then by sloppy play. An offensive pass interference penalty on DeVonta Smith and a false start on A.J. Brown put them in first-and-25, and while they picked up most of that yardage, a 56-yard kick by Jake Elliott was no good. On the ensuing possession, Jalen Hurts hit Smith for 16 yards to get in the red zone, only for the play to be wiped out by an illegal use of hands penalty on Fred Johnson, filling in for the injured Lane Johnson. A checkdown from Hurts to Saquon Barkley on the next snap resulted in a fumble and a Cowboys recovery.
This isn't the first time the Eagles have enjoyed significant success in part of a game and seemingly been totally hopeless in another. They scored 21 points in the first half against the Cowboys in the opener and then three over the final 30 minutes. They went up 24-3 on the Buccaneers by halftime and mustered only seven points the rest of the way. And the Eagles scored early against the Rams and then didn't do anything else in the first half on offense.
There's no offensive consistency. The Eagles are 25th in success rate this season, measuring how often they stay on schedule. Last season's offense wasn't as good as you might suspect by this metric, as the Eagles were 16th (up to 14th if we remove plays where one team's win expectancy had fallen below 10% to try to take out runs where the goal was simply killing clock with big leads). Success rate isn't the only offensive metric that matters, but it's good for seeing how consistently a team is moving the ball and getting in more advantageous scoring opportunities.
The difference is that last season's offense created explosives through the air and on the ground, and this year's offense has been capable only of the former. The Eagles had 19 designed runs gain 20 or more yards in 2024, second behind the Ravens, then added six more in the postseason. Many of those were authored by Barkley.
This year, though, the Eagles have only four designed runs of 20 yards or more, and just two of them have come from Barkley. Three of those four big runs came in Week 8, when the Eagles were playing the Giants, who have the league's worst rush defense. The other one came in Week 1, and it gained exactly 20 yards by Will Shipley against the Cowboys.
During his time with the Giants, Barkley turned about one of every 28 carries into a gain of 20 yards or more. In his debut season with Philly, that jumped to once every 20.2 attempts. This season? He has those two 20-plus yarders on 185 carries, good for one every 92.5 rushes.
It's tempting to assume there's something physically wrong with the star back, but if there is, it's likely not significant. Barkley has had a couple of big plays after the catch as a receiver, so we have a decent idea that he's physically capable of getting to top speed and running away from defenders. His missed tackle rate is down from 22% in 2024 to 20% in 2025, per NFL Next Gen Stats, but that's a small difference, and Barkley wasn't an outlier by that metric relative to guys like Derrick Henry a year ago.
Brandon Aubrey hits a field goal as time expires to give the Cowboys the win over the Eagles.
And while the lack of big runs mean Barkley hasn't hit top speed very often in 2025, he maxed out just under 22 mph on his two big runs against the Giants. That's right where his top speed landed on runs in 2024, as Barkley didn't have a single play with a top speed over 22 mph last season. There's more to physical health than missed tackle rate and top speed, but the idea that Barkley is visibly diminished is going to require some meaningful evidence. The simplest explanation is variance: Barkley ran a little hot last year on big plays and has been spectacularly cold in generating those same runs this season.
Sunday was the nadir of a frustrating season for the reigning Offensive Player of the Year. With the Eagles attempting to hold down a substantial lead, Barkley's 10 carries turned into just 22 rushing yards, one of which was really a swing screen. There were obviously no explosives. He averaged 1.8 yards per carry against light or neutral boxes, down from 6.2 yards per carry in that spot last season. The Eagles posted their worst rushing success rate of the Sirianni era. And Barkley's fumble cost the Eagles a shot at a field goal in the fourth quarter.
After the game, Landon Dickerson noted that the Cowboys showed more five-man fronts than the Eagles expected, which led to struggles on the ground. You'd like to think that a team with Sirianni and offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland on the sideline would have more answers to those sorts of unexpected looks. One way the Eagles might typically have responded is by using a sixth offensive lineman, but that had been Fred Johnson's role. And with Lane Johnson out, Fred Johnson was playing right tackle. The Eagles tried Matt Pryor as a sixth lineman for one snap, with Barkley gaining 1 yard.
At the same time, the struggles of the run game leave the Eagles in a weird playcalling spot. Should they have leaned further into the run? Without much success on the carries they did attempt, we can understand why throwing seemed like a better idea. The Eagles clearly didn't want to put Fred Johnson into third-and-long pass-blocking spots, but when the run struggled on early downs, those spots became inevitable. By the end of the game, they abandoned the run almost altogether, as Barkley didn't have a single carry in the fourth quarter.
Cowboys fans will understandably suggest that their new star defensive tackle helped slow down Barkley and the Eagles' run game. Quinnen Williams had a massive game against the Raiders in his Cowboys debut, but the Eagles were going to be stiffer competition for the 2019 Jets first-round pick. Did Williams blow up the run game?
Yes and no. Barkley had nine true carries, and Williams wasn't on the field for two of them. Two others were outside runs that were nowhere near the defensive tackle, and a couple more were runs away from his side of the field. Williams did beat Johnson for a tackle for loss on Barkley in the first quarter, and the DT nearly blew up another run with penetration later in the game, so he made a definite impact. But we have to get into the murky causation of how often he created single-team blocks for other players (as opposed to the scheme creating those opportunities) or whether Williams dissuaded the Eagles from running altogether as real signs of his impact. So far, though, the Cowboys have to be thrilled with what Williams has done.
Dak Prescott finds George Pickens for the 1-yard touchdown to get the Cowboys on the board.
Both teams would have to admit behind closed doors that this was a sloppy performance. The Eagles lost two fumbles in a matter of minutes, while KaVontae Turpin lost one for the Cowboys on a handoff under minimal duress. Dak Prescott threw an interception in the end zone to end a promising drive. CeeDee Lamb's inexplicable issues with drops against the Eagles resurfaced, as he failed to bring in what should have been a touchdown in the fourth quarter. Each side missed a field goal, including a shocking miss from 51 yards by Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey. The two sides committed 22 penalties, too.
The difference might very well have been another Cowboys trade acquisition in receiver George Pickens, and while people will be quibbling about the cost of the Williams trade for a long time, Pickens has proved to be a massive bargain for Jerry Jones. The Cowboys sent third- and fifth-round picks to the Steelers for Pickens, who had spent his entire career with middling quarterbacks in limited passing attacks. There were concerns about the locker room fit, and Pickens was basically a one-year rental before hitting free agency in 2026.
It's impossible to imagine the Cowboys letting Pickens get there now. He continued his spectacular run of form by catching all nine of the passes thrown in his direction for 146 yards and a touchdown. Pickens picked on Adoree' Jackson early in the game for a short score before turning Cooper DeJean around on a fake post and bringing in a throw to the corner for 43 yards.
On the final drive, Pickens made his most important catch of the game. The Cowboys used motion to create late confusion before the snap, and when they did, slot corner Michael Carter II stayed at the same depth as Quinyon Mitchell and ran into him. The self-pick freed up Pickens for a 24-yard catch-and-run, setting up the game-winning field goal from Aubrey.
Pickens got off to a slow start, but since the Week 4 shootout with the Packers, he is second in the NFL in receiving yards per game (111.0) and second in yards per route run (3.4), trailing only the spectacular Jaxon Smith-Njigba. He has been a legitimate superstar over the past two months, and the Cowboys will surely either sign Pickens to an extension or use the $28 million projected franchise tag at wideout to keep the 24-year-old around for another season.
Eagles fans could crow a year ago that they had the best wideout duo in the NFC. Now, with all due respect to the Eagles and Rams, that combo resides in Dallas.
Lions 34, Giants 27 (OT)
I haven't consulted the rules of trap games in a while, but even if you believe they're a real thing, I'm not sure the Giants game could be considered one for Detroit. The Lions undoubtedly have their thoughts occupied with a critical divisional matchup with the Packers on Thanksgiving, but they were also coming off a loss to the Eagles in Week 11. Had the Lions beaten the Eagles, this would have been a classic example of a trap game. With the loss, that seems harder to justify -- but the Lions nearly lost anyway.
For Giants fans, this has become old hat. Sunday's loss marked the fifth time this season that the Giants have held a lead of 10 or more points at some point after the first quarter and still managed to lose. The rest of the NFL has combined to do it only 18 times. Three other teams have managed to pull this off five times in a season since 2000, most recently the 2022 Raiders, but none managed to make it six. And the Giants have done it with two head coaches and three different quarterbacks, which makes for a fun added degree of difficulty.
On Sunday, it was Jameis Winston, who flung the ball around the field and even outmuscled a linebacker for a touchdown catch on what was something close to a broken play. Winston was only 18-for-36 and threw an interception into too tight of a window, but those 18 completions produced a whopping 366 yards. His 83.5 Total QBR led all quarterbacks in Week 12 through Sunday.
One of the reasons why Winston was so impressive -- and why the Lions were not able to stop the journeyman quarterback for so long -- is the inconsistency of Detroit's pass rush. Aidan Hutchinson sacked Winston on fourth down in overtime to win the game, which is the good news. That was Detroit's only sack of the game on 38 Winston dropbacks, which is the bad news.
The Lions have a 7.9% sack rate, which is good for fifth in the league. Most of those sacks, though, are of the extended variety. NFL Next Gen Stats tracks how long it takes opposing teams to get after the quarterback, and the Lions rank among the league leaders in the percentage of sacks generated on extended rushes (13.1%) or against scrambling passers (14.6%). A league-low 32.3% of Detroit's sacks are of the quick variety.
Detroit doesn't generate a lot of quick sacks because it doesn't rack up many quick pressures. If we track how often the Lions get immediate pressure just after the snap, their 12.6% pressure rate is the ninth-worst mark in the league. Focus that even further on the Lions rushing four or fewer without blitzing, and the pressure rate drops to 8.2%, which is fifth worst.
The average Lions sack takes 5.2 seconds, which is the longest time to sack rate of any team in the NFL. Quarterbacks have an average of 3.8 seconds on snaps with pressure before getting rid of the football against the Lions (fifth worst). Why that matters is that more time to throw means more time for quarterbacks to potentially find an open receiver before that pass rush gets home. And in Winston's case, even a covered receiver will usually do.
In this game, Winston was 8-of-18 for 211 yards and two touchdown passes (plus his one pick) under pressure, for a staggering 11.7 yards per attempt. The Lions have allowed 7.5 yards per pass attempt with pressure throughout this season, the second-worst figure of any defense. Pass rush and coverage on the back end work hand in hand, and the Lions blitzing at an above-average rate means some of those pressure attempts are going to come from deep. But if they're not creating pressure quickly, they're leaving the opposing offense windows to create completions.
The Giants' trick play works to perfection as Gunner Olszewski finds Jameis Winston, who stiff-arms a defender to power into the end zone vs. the Lions.
Contrast that to the Detroit offense, where pressure can be destructive in the opposite direction. Jared Goff has historically had huge splits with and without pressure, even after accounting for the fact that every quarterback gets way worse when pressured.
Well, 2025 is no exception. Goff is sixth in the NFL in QBR when unpressured and working from a clean pocket. When teams do get pressure, he drops all the way to 31st, behind Cam Ward and ahead of only Joe Flacco and Geno Smith. Goff's minus-11.7% completion percentage over expectation (CPOE) is the second worst in the league under pressure, per NFL Next Gen Stats, and he averages 1.7 yards per dropback in those spots.
On Sunday, Goff went 2-of-6 for 13 yards with three sacks under pressure, landing a QBR of just 1.4 in those spots. Those who have watched Goff play for an extended period of time can see just how locked-in and spectacularly accurate he can be when he has time to throw. But they can also see how erratic Goff can get when harassed. He does not want to scramble or move around unless absolutely necessary, and when he does get asked to create outside of structure, his accuracy collapses.
Coach Dan Campbell responded to his quarterback's pressure concerns by having him get the ball out fast. Per NFL Next Gen Stats, Goff went 16-of-17 for 89 yards and a touchdown pass when throwing to receivers who initially lined up in the backfield, tying him for the most completions out of the backfield for any QB in any one game since 2017. Just eight of his 38 attempts were passes traveling 10 or more yards in the air, a remarkably low figure for an offense that loves to try to hit shots downfield.
The Giants have a solid pass rush, but even with Dexter Lawrence II in the fold, they've been hopeless against the run this season. They're allowing 0.19 EPA per designed rush attempt this season; the 31st-ranked Bills are closer to 25th than they are to the Giants in last.
New York starting linebacker Micah McFadden went down in the opener with a foot injury and hasn't returned, and several of his replacements (or would-be replacements) have joined him on injured reserve. On Sunday, the Giants gave meaningful reps to Zaire Barnes and Swayze Bozeman, who had combined for 21 career defensive snaps before playing 52 more against Detroit.
The run -- and the threat of the run -- saved this game for the Lions. Goff went 11-of-15 for 126 yards and two touchdowns when using play-action, with his passer rating (137.8) more than doubling relative to where it stood when Goff was a standard dropback passer (62.7). Goff's average play-action pass traveled only 5.4 yards in the air, which isn't the sort of downfield creation we've seen this offense support in the past, but it worked against the Giants.
Jahmyr Gibbs shows off the speed as he breaks off a 69-yard dash to the end zone for a Lions touchdown in overtime vs. the Giants.
The run game, meanwhile, produced 237 yards and two touchdowns on 20 attempts. Jahmyr Gibbs was the key figure, racking up 49- and 69-yard touchdowns in the fourth quarter and overtime, respectively, but he also managed a success rate north of 70%. If anything, it seems like the Lions could have leaned into the ground game even more, an argument that should hardly have upset Campbell.
One way to beat a run defense with Lawrence is to run at it while the star nose tackle isn't on the field. Both of the long Gibbs runs came with Lawrence on the sideline, including the first-down rush on the opening snap of overtime that turned into a 69-yard score. Safety Dane Belton, another injury-forced starter playing in the absence of Tyler Nubin this week, couldn't make a tackle on one Gibbs run and then had no hope of getting close to him as the center fielder on the second one.
It could have been easier. Receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown continues to struggle with drops, including one that bounced off him and into the arms of a Giants defender for an interception. On the other hand, he also caught nine of 13 passes for 149 yards and a touchdown and was essentially uncoverable for long stretches. St. Brown and Gibbs had 20 of Detroit's 28 completions, as the cycle of Jameson Williams continued. After repeated pledges to get him the ball in recent weeks, Williams had no catches on three targets despite running a team-high 42 routes on Sunday.
The game swung, ironically enough for Lions fans after last week, on a fourth-down sequence that went their way. After Winston converted a third-and-17 to tight end Theo Johnson for 39 yards, the Giants drove to the Detroit 2-yard line, where a touchdown would have put the game out of reach with about three minutes to go. Winston narrowly missed a throw to Johnson at the pylon, and on third-and-goal, Hutchinson and rookie first-round pick Tyleik Williams both won on the left side of the line, pushing Devin Singletary back for a loss of 4 yards.
The Giants chose to go for it on fourth-and-goal from the 6-yard line. It's a curious move for commentators who are sure that six is more than three, but history suggests that teams down three are far less incentivized to try to score a touchdown to win the game in regulation than those same teams down six. Throw in the chances of winning the game with a conversion, killing significant clock by drawing a penalty and the added field position benefit of starting the Lions inside their own 10-yard line with a miss, and ESPN's model greatly preferred going for it on fourth-and-goal.
Al-Quadin Muhammad was able to get through Andrew Thomas to pressure Winston, though, and with nobody open, the throw to Johnson was incomplete. The Lions got the ball back and moved with a series of underneath and short completions before being aided by safety Jevon Holland, who basically handed a timeout-less Lions team another stoppage by committing a defensive delay of game penalty.
Aidan Hutchinson sacks Jameis Winston to seal the Lions' overtime victory over the Giants.
The Giants did come up with a stop, though, when Belton made a great open-field tackle on Gibbs for a loss of 5 yards on a swing pass. Barnes helped defend an option route by Gibbs on third-and-long, leaving the Lions in position to attempt a 59-yard field goal simply to tie the game. That's a pretty good outcome for interim coach Mike Kafka's decision, to be honest. But, as it often goes when you're 2-10, the Giants watched Jake Bates hit the 59-yard kick to tie the game, and Gibbs broke it open on the opening play of overtime.
It was a much-needed win for the Lions, who jumped to 7-4 and stayed within striking distance of the 8-3 Bears in the NFC North. With the Packers coming up on a short week, though, I wonder how much playcalling and scheming Campbell will be doing for the offense. After an excellent performance in the win over the hapless Commanders defense, the offense didn't do much in the loss to the Eagles and wasn't as consistent as Campbell might like against the Giants.
Then again, consistency isn't a word I would use to describe the Packers, either, which might turn the Thanksgiving game into a matchup of can-you-top-this on offense.