Interim head coach Darrell Bevell revels in Detroit Lions’ unlikely comeback vs. Chicago Bears
In his debut leading the Lions after the franchise fired general manager Bob Quinn and head coach Matt Patricia, Bevell and his team had a come-from-behind 34-30 win over the Chicago Bears unlikely enough that the excitement and enthusiasm were still radiating from Bevell almost 20 minutes after it all ended.
“My emotions right now, I can’t even think straight,” Bevell said. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around this whole thing, what just happened. Like I said, it was a great job by these guys of believing from the moment we started until the end.
“My mentality was that. If I’m going to lead these guys, I got to have the same belief. I believe in these guys. I believe in what we’re trying to do and it goes to them. Those guys believe in themselves as well and I think it showed with how they reacted in those situations and how they played [Sunday] .”
That belief carried through, especially since Detroit trailed by 10 points, 30-20, when it got the ball with 4:33 remaining. Stafford, who threw for 402 yards, three touchdowns and an interception, led a 96-yard drive in 2 minutes, 15 seconds to bring the Lions within three.
Then Detroit’s defense, which had struggled to stop Chicago’s run game and quarterback Mitchell Trubisky for much of the day, came up with a massive play — defensive end Romeo Okwara strip-sacking Trubisky on the Bears’ 7-yard line with 1:48 left.
Detroit scored two plays later on an Adrian Peterson 5-yard run to take a 34-30 lead — and then the defense stopped a driving Bears team on a fourth-and-1 with 11 seconds left to seal the win.
“I think I was in shock a little bit,” Trubisky said. “I thought we were pretty much in control the whole game. … I was just in shock because I felt like we were going to win that one.”
After the game, Bears coach Matt Nagy said to lose in that fashion “stings. It hurts.” It was Chicago’s sixth straight loss and Nagy, asked about his job after the game, didn’t want to speculate about his future.
“What my job is to do is to make sure that each and every week I’m giving it everything I can as a coach and as a leader with these guys,” Nagy said. “I have to make sure that I do that. Any other thing that’s a distraction, that would be taking away from our team. And that would be not good for me or them, so I don’t even get into that.”
That speculation is something Lions players and coaches dealt with all season surrounding Patricia until his dismissal on Nov. 28, which promoted Bevell to interim head coach.
All week, Bevell had preached to his players to come out with a high level of joy and enthusiasm. He told his players they couldn’t think about the past — the Lions had lost five straight to Chicago entering Sunday — and couldn’t think about their 4-7 record entering the game.
“I told the players from day one,” Bevell said. “We had a windshield with no rearview mirror so we’re not looking back on anything that happened in the past.”
He wanted to make sure his players were having fun. That they believed. He stressed it all week in practice and in meetings. He talked about it with the media throughout the week, too. It was something he also stressed at halftime, when the Bears had a 23-13 lead.
He just wanted the Lions to keep playing no matter what.
“I’m obviously really happy for him, happy for our team,” Stafford said. “He cares about our guys. He’s only been on the offensive side of the ball for the majority of his time here, obviously only one week here with everybody.
“But I think his energy is infectious and guys feed off it and I really appreciate him as a person and just happy that he helped us get the win today. Guys went out there and played fast and free and it wasn’t perfect, you know, there’s plays we want back, but never quit, never really looked at the scoreboard. Just keep playing and let it all kind of figure itself out and it did.”
It wasn’t necessarily the magnitude of win the Lions had the last time they had an interim head coach or general manager in a debut — Detroit beat the Green Bay Packers in Wisconsin for the first time since 1991 in Sheldon White’s first game as interim general manager in 2015 — but it was a big deal.
Detroit won for the first time when trailing by double digits since Nov. 19, 2017, a 23-game streak. It was the team’s first win when trailing by double digits in the fourth quarter since Oct. 26, 2014, snapping a 40-game losing streak.
It’ll be something Bevell will likely never forget.
“It was a crazy, amazing week,” Bevell said. “And I just couldn’t be happier with how they did today.”
ESPN’s Jeff Dickerson contributed to this story. Information from ESPN Stats & Information was used in this report.