The 2025 Lions–Bears series produced two wildly different scorelines and the same winner both times. Detroit beat Chicago 52-21 at home in Week 2. Sixteen weeks later, on the road at Soldier Field, Detroit needed until the final margin to beat Ben Johnson's Bears 19-16. Jared Goff and Caleb Williams started at quarterback both times.

The play-by-play explains how a 31-point win became a 3-point one: the more efficient offense didn't change. It was Detroit in both games. What flipped was what each team did with the ball inside the 20.

Here is EPA per play for each offense in each game (pass and run only, excluding special teams):

Detroit's offense was the more efficient unit in both games, including the nail-biter. The Week 18 gap was much smaller — Chicago's defense cut Detroit's EPA/play by roughly two-thirds relative to Week 2 — but the sign never flipped. Goff wasn't neutralized between the 20s in the second meeting. Outside the red zone, he posted +0.545 EPA per dropback in Week 2 and +0.457 in Week 18. Caleb Williams was underwater outside the red zone in both games, at -0.047 and -0.110 EPA per dropback.

The real difference between a 31-point margin and a 3-point one lived in the 20 yards closest to the end zone.

The red-zone inversion

Same offense, same quarterback, 16 weeks apart: +0.582 EPA/play inside the 20 in Week 2 became -0.304 in Week 18. Chicago's own red-zone number moved the opposite direction, from +0.325 to +0.694. Detroit actually generated more red-zone volume relative to its overall offensive workload in the close win than in the blowout (12 of 72 total plays vs. 16 of 58) — the Lions were living in Chicago territory for longer. They just couldn't finish there the way they had in Week 2, and it nearly cost them the win.

For context: NFL teams averaged 9.8 red-zone plays per team-game across the 2025 regular season, and only 33 of 538 team-games all season featured a team running 12-plus red-zone plays while scoring one touchdown or fewer. Detroit's Week 18 line — 12 red-zone plays, one touchdown — put the Lions in that rare, inefficient company. They still won by three.

Detroit's red-zone offense, in aggregate

Across the 2025 regular season, Detroit converted 62.5% of its red-zone drives into touchdowns (40 of 64) — a strong finishing profile. In Week 18 specifically, that same offense ran 12 plays inside Chicago's 20 and came away with just one touchdown, at a -0.304 EPA/play clip — the opposite of its usual red-zone identity, and a sharp reversal from the 16-play, six-touchdown, +0.582 EPA/play showing in Week 2. The aggregate numbers say Detroit's finishing collapsed for a game; they don't, on their own, explain which specific throws or calls did it, and that's worth being honest about rather than reverse-engineering a drive chart after the fact.

The counterintuitive part: Goff's raw numbers held up in the tighter game. He had 44 dropbacks for 331 yards in Week 18, against 28 dropbacks, 334 yards and five touchdowns in Week 2 (zero sacks that day). Week 2 was a clinic — +0.861 EPA per dropback. Week 18 was still comfortably positive, +0.279 EPA per dropback, with one touchdown, one interception and two sacks mixed in.

Detroit even generated four completions of 20-plus yards in the tighter win, only one fewer than the five it had in the blowout. What collapsed wasn't the offense's ability to move the ball — it was its ability to turn that movement into seven points once it got close.

Ben Johnson vs. his old offense

Ben Johnson coached Detroit's offense for three seasons before taking over as Chicago's head coach in 2025. His Bears didn't beat Detroit in either 2025 meeting, but the tape shows something more specific than a final score: Chicago's offense ran below its own season average in both games (-0.166 and -0.019 EPA/play, against a +0.071 season figure), while Detroit's ran at or above its own season average in both (+0.409 and +0.144, against a +0.082 season figure).

What changed between the two games wasn't the shape of the matchup overall — Detroit was still the better per-play offense in Week 18. It was red-zone execution on both sides. Chicago's own red-zone offense jumped from +0.325 EPA/play in Week 2 to +0.694 in Week 18, while Detroit's fell from +0.582 to -0.304. I'd be cautious about crediting any single Ben Johnson adjustment for that swing — it's a 12-play sample for Detroit in one game — but that swing is a large part of why a 31-point Lions win turned into a 3-point one.

What I'd take from this

I wouldn't read Week 18 as a Detroit offensive-decline story. Between the 20s, the Lions and Goff played the more efficient game in both meetings, and Detroit's season EPA/play (+0.082) still sat ahead of Chicago's (+0.071). The tighter score is a red-zone-execution story built on a small sample — 12 plays inside the 20 — not a possession-by-possession collapse I can fully diagnose from the aggregate numbers alone.