HOUSTON -- Sam Martin said the Lions saw a look. Houston didn’t have its hands team out. So he was going to attempt an onside kick.
The Lions had just kicked a field goal to cut the Texans’ lead to 17-10 -- yet another one-possession game with Detroit trying to come-from-behind late to win for the fourth straight week. And even though the Lions defense had started to give up rushing yards in chunks, it had been playing one of its best games in weeks.
With all three timeouts and 2:53 left in the game, Detroit coach Jim Caldwell chose to try the onside kick instead of kicking it away, all but ensuring that a first down or long gain would put the Texans in field-goal range or end the game.
And that’s exactly what happened in the eventual 20-13 loss. Both of the commentators on FOX said, as they watched Martin line up for the onside kick, that they felt it was too early for that call.
Of course, the Lions defense has been one of the worst in the league all season, so Caldwell trusting his defense there could have been tricky -- even if they have been largely decent in big spots during what was Detroit’s three-game win streak.
Here’s how Caldwell explained it after the game.
“Obviously, we were trying to recover the ball, is what we were trying to do in that situation. You have to weigh it out,” Caldwell said. “You could either kick it deep and use your timeouts -- we hadn’t been stopping them very well on the run. They controlled, really, the line of scrimmage on us the last segment, so we wanted to take another shot and if they were in the right look, which they were, we had kind of the numbers we wanted.
“We weren’t able to get the right bounce. But even before that, it’s just a matter of we couldn’t put enough points on the board. Offensively, we were stagnant, really, that first half. Defensively, I thought we stopped the run all the way up until somewhere midway through the third quarter, so they really took control of the game on the ground.”
Detroit did a good job against the run in the first half, holding Houston to 1.9 yards per carry, but in the fourth quarter, the Texans averaged 5.4 yards per carry with Lamar Miller gaining 6.8 yards per rush and Alfred Blue picking up 8 yards per rush.
So Martin attempted the kick and it went pretty much directly to Houston’s Robert Nelson, who recovered it, ending that part of the Lions' threat. Martin said the Lions tried to get the kick off quick.
“They weren’t in hands team so we wanted to catch them off-guard,” Martin said. “And the guy made a good play.”
With the way the ball bounced, the only way the Lions would have recovered the ball is if Nelson bobbled it. Linebacker Brandon Copeland got behind him in decent position had the ball bounced high, but it didn’t.
From there, the Lions couldn’t do much as Miller rushed four times and then Brock Osweiler kneeled three times.
