ATLANTA -- Two seconds left. One shot at the end zone. No room for error, everything on the line.
The pressure was turned all the way up on Detroit, still trailing by six points on Sunday afternoon in Atlanta. Then the Falcons brought even more of it, flushing Matthew Stafford from the pocket as he waited for someone to get open, and waited, and waited some more.
Finally, there he was. T.J. Hockenson found the soft spot in zone while working right to left, and Stafford hit him with an 11-yard touchdown pass with no time showing on the clock. Matt Prater punched in the extra-point attempt, and the Lions escaped with a 23-22 win on Sunday against the Falcons.
“We’ve talked about Dagger Time all the time, and I think we obviously showed it today," Hockenson said. “Just trying to believe in what we’ve done in practice and what we’ve done throughout the week. We work on drives like that, and situations like that, all the time.”
They do, it’s true. The Lions work on situational football every single day, even back in training camp. But all that work hasn’t always paid off. They did win on a buzzer-beater in Arizona, but also coughed up a 17-point lead against Chicago and an 11-point lead against Green Bay and a 14-point lead against New Orleans.
On Sunday, though, all the pieces came together. The defense baited Todd Gurley into scoring a premature touchdown, which gave the ball back to the Lions with 1:04 left on the clock. Stafford misfired on his first pass to start the final drive, then connected on consecutive passes for 13 yards (Hockenson), 22 yards (Danny Amendola) and 29 yards (Kenny Golladay).
Just like that, the Lions were at the 11-yard line with 2 seconds left for one final play.
They emptied out the backfield and sent five players into the end zone. Hockenson rubbed off tight end Jesse James near the goal line, and is usually open coming out of his break on the play. But the Falcons were sitting back in a Cover 3 that had seven men in the end zone. Five-on-seven aren’t great numbers for Detroit, and one of those defenders -- linebacker Deion Jones -- was sitting in the middle of the field at the goal line. So when Hockenson rubbed off James, he was still covered.
“They played a different coverage than we thought, and it ended up being zone," Hockenson said. “There was (Jones) sitting right in the middle at the goal line.”
Stafford, meantime, was starting to feel the heat. So he pump-faked, then pump-faked a little harder, which got defensive end Steven Means to leave his feet. Stafford stepped up in the pocket, and that’s when he saw Hockenson freelancing into a soft spot in the zone.
“Hock did a great job of working the end-line," Stafford said. "Sometimes I can hit that ball right out of the break as Hock goes in there, but (Jones) did a nice job of just squatting in on the end-line. So, I had to buy a little extra time, and Hock just kept working the front end-line, got lost, and I was able to shoot it to him and he made a nice catch for a touchdown.”
Stafford is no stranger to comebacks. This was his 30th-career fourth-quarter comeback, which leads the NFL since he turned pro in 2009. But he hasn’t played as well this season -- not badly either, but also not well enough to carry a team with problems on defense.
Hockenson has faced scrutiny too, a former first-round pick who has been dogged by unhappy fans for much of his year-plus in Detroit.
This was a huge moment for this team, and for these two players in particular. Stafford was so fired up with emotion that he was the first player to sprint to Hockenson after the TD, even though he was 11 yards from the play. They jump-hugged and screamed stuff at each other that is not fit for a family publication.
“I was just fired up," Stafford said. “We were probably just screaming inaudible things at each other, but then I saw Danny (Amendola) quickly after that and was trying to tell Danny to put his helmet back on. But he was going bananas, and wasn’t going to listen to anything I said.”
Amendola was actually flagged for it, and drew an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that pushed Matt Prater’s point-after attempt to 48 yards. That’s no gimme, even for Prater. He had missed a 46-yarder late in the fourth quarter, after all.
But Prater split the uprights, then ran off the field thinking the game had been won -- but there was another penalty flag on the play. The official did the hand motion for a false-start too, which would have been a bit of a problem with the kicker already running up the tunnel. But the penalty wound up being for an illegal formation against Atlanta -- it has the same hand motion as a false start -- and the game was over at last.
“Yeah, I saw the flag too and was not happy," Stafford said. "A little scared of what it was. Then I saw this motion and it was illegal formation, and I thought, ‘How did we get it?’ Then it was on them, and I was all happy again.”
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A look inside Matthew Stafford’s game-winning touchdown pass to T.J. Hockenson - mlive.com
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