Sports / Detroit, Michigan — The Lions vs Packers score will sit in the standings forever as a plain 20-17, but almost nothing about Sunday at Ford Field was plain. Detroit survived its own coach's fourth-and-1 gamble from its own 24-yard line, watched Green Bay's go-ahead kick get blocked with 3:21 left, then drove 71 yards in 10 plays so that Jake Bates could end the game from 22 yards as the clock reached zero.
The kick itself was the simplest play of the final five minutes. Jahmyr Gibbs took a knee at the Green Bay 3-yard line, Jared Goff knelt once more to drain the clock, and Jake Bates — who had already made a 40-yarder in the first half — split the uprights from 22 yards on the final play of the game. Detroit 20, Green Bay 17. The win was the Lions' second straight, lifted them to 4-2 overall and 3-0 at Ford Field, and snapped the Packers' three-game winning streak, dropping Green Bay to 4-3 in a division race that grew tighter and stranger in a single afternoon.
What made the finish unforgettable was everything that had to go wrong, and then right, to produce it. The two teams combined for 739 yards of offense and only 37 points. Detroit had the ball at its own 24 with 4:53 left in a tie game and chose not to punt. Green Bay had the ball at the Detroit 17 with the win on its kicker's foot and came away with nothing. The Lions Packers final score was decided, in the end, by the two kickers: one who missed twice, and one who did not miss when the whole stadium was standing.
How the game swung: the Packers Lions highlights, quarter by quarter
Green Bay wasted the game's first opening. Trey Smack pushed a 26-yard field goal wide right on the opening drive, and Detroit answered with the afternoon's cleanest possession: six plays, 80 yards, finished by a 16-yard touchdown pass from Goff to Jameson Williams for a 7-0 lead. The Packers replied with a 12-play, 74-yard drive that Jordan Love ended with a 14-yard strike to Tucker Kraft, tying the game at 7-7. Bates' 40-yard field goal early in the second quarter restored Detroit's lead at 10-7, and the Lions nearly stretched it late in the half, driving 85 yards before Gibbs lost a fumble at the Green Bay 8 — the first of two Detroit fumbles that Packers linebacker Isaiah McDuffie would recover. It stayed 10-7 at halftime, a scoreline that flattered neither offense.
Jameson Williams touchdowns bookended Detroit's scoring
The third quarter flipped the game twice in six minutes. On the second play from scrimmage after the break, Goff lost a fumble, and Green Bay cashed it in: Love found Josh Jacobs — playing his first game of the season after being activated from the exempt list — on a 25-yard touchdown catch that gave the Packers their only lead, 14-10. Detroit's answer was immediate and emphatic, an 80-yard march that Goff capped with a 10-yard touchdown pass over the middle to Williams, restoring the lead at 17-14. Both of Goff's touchdown passes went to Williams, who finished with five catches for 91 yards. Campbell, characteristically, also kept his offense on the field for a fourth-and-5 from the Green Bay 6 during the second half rather than take three points; Goff's throw for Williams fell incomplete, one of three combined turnovers on downs in a game that repeatedly refused the safe option.
Jared Goff stats today, and the Amon-Ra St Brown stats underneath them
The Jared Goff stats today read like a quarterback in complete control of a game that was anything but: 22-of-32 for 303 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. His steadiest target was Amon-Ra St. Brown, whose nine catches for 153 yards were the game's defining receiving line — chain-moving catches that kept Detroit's offense on schedule even as its run game and ball security wobbled. Gibbs carried 29 times for 116 yards and caught five passes for 27 more, a workhorse afternoon undercut only by his lost fumble. For Green Bay, Love finished 27-of-45 for 274 yards with two touchdowns and one interception — and the interception belonged to a story of its own: Brian Branch, Detroit's Pro Bowl safety, picked Love off in Branch's first game back from the Achilles injury that ended his 2025 season, a return the Lions had circled since the schedule came out.
The Dan Campbell fourth down decision that nearly ended Detroit
Smack's 43-yard field goal with 7:10 left tied the game at 17-17, and the afternoon then collapsed into five minutes that will be argued about all week. With 4:53 remaining, Detroit faced fourth-and-1 at its own 24-yard line. Campbell — whose reputation for fourth-down aggression is the league's most famous coaching trait — kept the offense on the field. Keisean Nixon met Gibbs in the backfield and dropped him for a 2-yard loss. Green Bay took over already in field-goal range, drove to the Detroit 17, and watched a Love pass slip through Jacobs' hands in the end zone on third down. Campbell explained the gamble afterward, according to postgame reports: “I thought we would get it... I knew we would get the ball back if it didn't work out.” He was right, but only barely, and only because of what happened next.
Trey Smack missed field goal: the block that saved the Lions
The Trey Smack missed field goal count reached two on the day — and seven on the season — with 3:21 left. His 35-yard attempt to give Green Bay the lead never had a chance: DJ Wonnum got through and blocked it, and Detroit took over with 71 yards between itself and a win. Goff drove them all of it in 10 plays — an 18-yard completion to Sam LaPorta, his first catch of the day, helped by a roughing-the-passer call on Karl Brooks; a 15-yard Gibbs run; a Brooks offside on third-and-5 that handed Detroit a fresh set of downs; and finally Gibbs, twice able to score and twice going down on purpose, taking a knee at the Green Bay 3 so that Bates' kick would be the game's last play. It was.
Why this matters: the NFC North standings tonight
Start with the NFC North standings, because Sunday rearranged them. Detroit's win moves the Lions to 4-2, third in the division behind unbeaten Minnesota (6-0) and Chicago (5-2), but with the head-to-head tiebreaker over Green Bay banked and a perfect 3-0 home record intact coming out of their bye week. Green Bay's loss drops the Packers to 4-3 and into last place in the North, with two division defeats now on their record — the standings picture their fans feared when this trip to Ford Field began. A fourth straight win would have pulled Green Bay level with Detroit and kept its momentum rolling; instead the Packers leave Michigan having lost a game they led in the third quarter and had in field-goal range with three minutes to play.
The head-to-head result matters beyond one week. Division tiebreakers decide playoff seeding in December, and Detroit now owns the first one that counts in this rivalry this season. Green Bay's problems, meanwhile, are becoming structural rather than incidental: a rookie kicker who has now missed seven field goals this season, a red-zone offense that went quiet when it mattered, and a defense that played well enough to win and watched the game slip away anyway. Detroit, for all its chaos, keeps finding the final word at home. This is not new for the Packers on the road in a big spot — three weeks after Green Bay's Sunday Night Football win over the Cowboys, Sunday in Detroit showed the other side of their season: close games turning on kicks, calls and one or two snaps.
What the numbers say: 739 yards, 37 points
The strangest line of the day is the simplest: Detroit outgained Green Bay 415 yards to 324, the teams combined for 739 yards — and scored 37 points between them. The explanation sits in the red zone, where the two teams combined to go 3-of-9, and in the turnover column, where three giveaways and three failed fourth downs kept erasing finished drives. Detroit's offense produced three scoring marches of 80 yards or more and a 71-yard game-winning drive, yet needed a blocked kick to survive its own fumbles. Green Bay moved the ball between the 20s all afternoon and finished drives with a missed 26-yarder, a blocked 35-yarder and a dropped touchdown. It was a game both offenses will claim and both defensive coordinators will frame — a contrast with the cleaner divisional rout in Baltimore, where Cincinnati's 35 unanswered points buried the Ravens, and with Matthew Stafford's record-setting afternoon for the Rams, the former Lions quarterback whose old team keeps winning games he would have recognized.
The two arguments that will run all week
The first is Campbell's gamble. Critics — and Sunday's commentary supplied plenty — called the fourth-and-1 call from his own 24 reckless, the kind of decision that loses a division game and a locker room's margin for error; theScore's account described it flatly as ill-advised, and NBC Sports noted the Lions were fortunate it did not decide the game. Defenders answer that the call is the identity: Campbell has built a 4-2 team and a culture on exactly this aggression, his defense and special teams did get the ball back — via a blocked kick after Green Bay reached the 17 — and his own explanation was that he trusted his players on both sides of the ball. Both readings are available in the same five minutes of tape; the result will decide which one gets printed, and on Sunday the result went Campbell's way.
The second argument is the officiating, and here both fan bases arrived at the same conclusion from opposite directions. Green Bay's grievances: roughing-the-passer calls on Karl Brooks and Brenton Cox Jr. that extended Detroit drives, including one on the game-winning march. Detroit's: an intentional-grounding call on Love that Lions fans believed was generous, and an unnecessary-roughness penalty on Derrick Barnes. Fox analyst Tom Brady was critical of the calls during the broadcast, as reported by NBC Sports — commentary that will fuel the week, though it changes nothing in the standings. Signal Post News states both sides' complaints as they were made; the calls were questioned heavily by each team, and neither the league nor the officials had addressed them by Sunday night.
What happens next
Detroit's reward is the division's biggest stage yet: the Lions host the 6-0 Vikings at Ford Field on November 1, with a chance to pull within a game of the NFC North lead and extend a home record that now includes a walk-off win over their oldest rival. The Lions will also monitor Gibbs during the week — NBC Sports' player report noted he appeared to tweak his left knee going down on the final drive before jogging off under his own power. Green Bay, 4-3 and last in the division, has a more urgent file to open: seven missed field goals from Smack this season, two of them on Sunday, is no longer a slump but a roster question, and a team that has now lost twice inside its own division cannot keep donating points in games decided by three. The NFC North race did not end on Sunday. It narrowed, loud and late, in the final five minutes at Ford Field.
Sources: Reuters / Field Level Media (October 25, 2026: Bates' 22-yard field goal as time expired; Goff 303 yards and two touchdowns, both to Williams; St. Brown nine catches for 153 yards; Gibbs 116 rushing yards; the 71-yard game-winning drive; Smack's missed 26-yarder and 43-yard equalizer; Detroit 10-7 halftime lead); NBC Sports Pro Football Talk (October 25, 2026, 7:46 p.m. ET: the fourth-and-1 stop by Nixon with 4:53 left, Wonnum's block of Smack's 35-yard attempt with 3:21 left, Smack's seventh miss of the season, the combined 739 yards and 3-of-9 red-zone line, Branch's interception in his return, McDuffie's two fumble recoveries, and the questioned officiating calls, including Tom Brady's broadcast criticism); theScore (October 25, 2026: Associated Press report — Detroit third in the NFC North behind Minnesota and Chicago, Green Bay's three-game winning streak stopped, Campbell's fourth-down decision and the blocked kick sequence); Detroit Free Press (October 25, 2026: live game account, including the final drive's penalties and Gibbs going down short of the goal line to set up Bates' winner).