Cal Sports Report

Jared Goff’s Fluttering Fourth-Down Pass Leads to Lions’ Win

Former Cal star threw two touchdown passes but it was an ugly 6-yard completion that was pivotal as Detroit improves to 7-2. Keenan Allen has another big game for Chargers.

Jake Curtis

Jared Goff threw two touchdown passes with no interceptions and had a strong passer rating of 122.4 on Sunday, but it was Goff's wobbly, 6-yard pass to tight end Sam LaPorta that turned out to be his biggest completion in the Detroit Lions’ 41-38 victory over the Los Angeles Chargers.

With the win, the Lions improved to 7-2, giving them the best record in the NFC North and the second-best record in the NFL, behind only the once-beaten Philadelphia Eagles.

And Goff, a former Cal star, had to do a lot of things right to make it happen. His perfect-touch 25-yard touchdown pass to Brock Wright on a third-and-1 play gave the Lions a 38-31 play with 7:30 remaining.

Then another former Cal player, Keenan Allen, enabled the Chargers to tie the score at 38-38 with 3:42 left when he caught a 38-yard touchdown pass from Justin Herbert on a fourth-and-1 play.

That was Allen's final reception in a game in which he caught 11 passes for 175 yards and two touchdowns. He has caught at least eight passes in each of Los Angeles' last three games and needs just 105 more receiving yards for the sixth 1,000-yard season in his career.

Goff put the Lions in position for the winning score when he completed a 41-yard pass to Kalif Raymond on a beautifully designed play:

When the Lions faced a fourth-and-2 situation from the Chargers’ 26-yard line with 1:46 left, most coaches would have put the field-goal team out there to attempt a go-ahead touchdown. However, Lions head coach Dan Campbell knew a made field goal at that point would have given Herbert and the Chargers ample time to produce a tying field goal or a game-winning touchdown.

"I wanted to finish with the ball," Campbell said afterward.

So Campbell opted to go for it, and the play call required Goff to make a pressure throw. His toss was not a tight spiral, but rather a fluttering ball, which nonetheless found the waiting arms of Sam LaPorta for a 6-yard gain and a first down. Los Angeles had no more timeouts left, allowing the Lions to run the clock down to two seconds, at which point Riley Patterson kicked a game-winning 41-yard field goal on the game’s final play.

Goff finished the day 23-for-33 for 333 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions and no sacks.

Cover photo of Jared Goff by Orlando Ramirez, USA TODAY Sports

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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