American football
Surprise at the start of the NFL season: Lions defeat Chiefs
Amon-Ra St. Brown of the Detroit Lions celebrates after a touchdown. photo
© Ed Zurga/AP/dpa
Amon-Ra St. Brown scores the first touchdown of the NFL season – and the Detroit Lions cause the first surprise. The team won away from home against the Super Bowl winners Kansas City Chiefs.
Defending champion Kansas City Chiefs around star quarterback Patrick Mahomes kicked off the season NFL season surprisingly lost at home to the Detroit Lions.
At 21:20 for the guests, Amon-Ra St. Brown scored the first touchdown of the season and took the lead. The 23-year-old now has twelve NFL touchdowns in his career and has extended the German record. He also had the most of the football game with six caught passes and recorded a total of 71 yards.
“It was fun. At the end of the day, we played together as a team, which is what mattered most,” St. Brown said. In the past, it was often difficult for the Lions to win close encounters. “Now we go into the games and feel like we can’t lose,” he said, adding: “Even if we’re behind, we feel like we can come back.”
Lions quarterback: “We played hard the whole game”
The Chiefs turned the game around before halftime and went into halftime with a 14-7 lead. After the break, the Super Bowl champions’ offense, which had to do without the injured Travis Kelce, only managed two field goals. The Lions, on the other hand, intercepted a pass from Mahomes, scored a touchdown out of the situation and took the lead for the second time a good seven minutes before the end of the game – which the highly rated team from Detroit defended until the end.
“We played hard the whole game. We didn’t play our best, but we were made for it,” Lions quarterback Jared Goff said. “He’s a great player and can do it again and again, but our defense did a really strong job,” he said of the defensive performance that prevented Mahomes’ late touchdown drive.
Lions notoriously weak team
With eight wins in the last ten games of last season, the Lions caused great euphoria and made themselves so interesting that the NFL wanted the team, which had been notoriously weak for decades, to take part in the prestigious season opener.
How serious the Lions were about not just traveling to Kansas City to shake hands was shown in the first quarter when the score was 0-0: instead of kicking the ball far in the direction of the Chiefs on the fourth attempt deep in their own half, as usual , the Lions pretended to surprise the hosts and keep the attack alive. The result a few minutes later: St. Brown’s touchdown.