The origin story of the Detroit Lions’ ‘stumble’ passing TD is awesome

If you liked the Detroit Lions’ fake stumble passing touchdown, you’re going to love the origin story of the play.

On Sunday, the Detroit Lions pulled off what was likely their most creative trick play of the season. In the opening drive of the third quarter, quarterback Jared Goff took the snap, turned toward running back Jahmyr Gibbs, and almost simultaneously, Goff intentionally stumbled while Gibbs fell to the ground, simulating a broken play and/or fumble (you can hear players yelling “BALL, BALL, BALL” on the field). Goff regained his composure, found that the stumble had frozen the defense, and spotted a wide-open Sam LaPorta for the easy 21-yard touchdown pass.

You know you want to watch it again.

After the game, we got a full debrief on how the trick play came to be.

The first notable thing is that this was a play that was developed just this week. This wasn’t a play that Detroit has had in the can for several weeks or a month or since training camp. It was an idea from offensive coordinator Ben Johnson after watching the Green Bay Packers take on the Chicago Bears back in 2023. On a fourth-quarter play, Packers quarterback Jordan Love accidentally fumbled the snap, causing the entire Bears defense to creep up. Love was able to recover the fumble, regain his composure, and find a wide-open receiver for a huge chunk play:

The initial idea proposed by Johnson was to intentionally fumble the ball in a similar way. Goff tweaked that idea.

“It started on Monday with Ben asking me if he thought I could actually fumble on purpose and pick it back up. I said, ‘I don’t know about that,’” Goff said. “We kind of got off that pretty quickly, and we were just like, let’s just pretend we’re falling or pretend I’m fumbling, but I’m holding on to the ball.”

From there, the Lions just worked in practice a handful of times. However, according to coach Dan Campbell, it never worked in practice as well as it did in the game.

“It was just great to see, and it was better than practice,” Campbell said.

The play, which the Lions are calling “stumblebum” (though we like stumblerooski better), was designed to fool Chicago’s linebacking corps, arguably the biggest strength of the Bears’ defense.

“The genesis was that’s a good play for that scheme,” Goff explained. “It is, but they were in tune with it on defense. That is a good play, and it’s hard to get that on them because those linebackers are so danged good at seeing it develop.”

It takes a lot to trick that linebacking corps, but this play certainly did it. Check out the all-22 angle.

#53 (T.J. Edwards), #49 (Tremaine Edmunds), and safety #36 (Jonathan Owens) are all fixated on the backfield and frozen. Meanwhile, LaPorta, who is hidden in-line between Penei Sewell and Brock Wright, leaks out unseen.

Goff gave credit to Gibbs’ hard sell of the fumble.

“I think that part where Gibbs where he dives really sells the play,” Goff said. “I’m only doing half of it. It worked like a charm, and it was nice to score there.”

Campbell believes there’s a value to these kind of plays that go beyond the actual yards gained and points scored. By keeping the game fun, interesting, and challenging, it’s allowing the players to feel both involved and locked in.

“Those make you feel good because everybody is invested in it,” Campbell said. “It’s fun. It’s different. It’s sound. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s sound. It’s like dribbling the ball on the ground. That’s the thing, you have all those elements, and really everybody is involved in it. They’re all kind of accountable to it, too. They want to make it work.”