The Lions tried. They really did. They botched a bunch of special teams plays early, committed bad penalties, made mistakes. Yet the Cardinals would not take the game. When the Cards were finally ready to take the game — that third-quarter sequence in which they went on a 94-yard touchdown drive to take a 17-9 lead, and then forced a punt — the football gods spit on them.

Not only did David Johnson fumble — the second time in the game, a bugaboo he had when he got into the league but one he had seemed to have overcome — but he got hurt on the play. I mean, the guy had just gotten whacked on his previous touch, an impressive seam catch on the TD drive that got a first down at the Detroit 3. Johnson didn't get up right away on that, but apparently he had the wind knocked out of him.

It wasn't the wind but his wrist the second time. Fingers are crossed everywhere, from the Cards' organization to fantasy football players across the globe. Bruce Arians didn't indicate one way or another on Johnson's health — or D.J. Humphries' knee, for that matter — but in the context of Sunday, it was a crushing turn of events.

That wasn't the reason the Cardinals lost, although it would've been interesting to see them try and follow up that long TD drive. The defense couldn't hold up by the end. There was some pressure, but not enough on Matthew Stafford on key plays, and missed sacks a couple times that were costly.

-- Carson Palmer took all the blame afterward. He knows he wasn't good for too much of the game. It wasn't so much the interceptions that were bothersome (I mean, you can't have interceptions, but …) as much as a couple of out routes, about 12 or 15 yards down the field. Both plays I'm thinking of should've been easy completions. They were short. Bruce Arians lamented Palmer's accuracy and said Palmer's arm was fine. They're going to need him to fix that, quickly.

-- Palmer is going to be the quarterback. So anyone asking/complaining that there isn't a switch is just yelling to nowhere.

-- If Humphries is down for some games — Ian Rapoport was tweeting it's a sprained knee that could be a few weeks — I wouldn't be shocked if the Cards flip Jared Veldheer back to the left side and let John Wetzel play the right side. But we'll see how that plays out.

-- Arians noted it, and so did many players, but in the NFL, if you are handed red-zone possessions and don't get touchdowns, that's usually going to turn out poorly.

-- One plus for the Cardinals was the speed of rookie linebacker Haason Reddick. He had eight tackles, and showed his range sideline-to-sideline. I also thought John Brown played pretty well too, and Andre Ellington flashed in his brief appearance. New safety Antoine Bethea looked good too, especially in the first half.

-- You don't want to see Justin Bethel, after a solid game, be on the wrong side of those two late TD passes. But that last catch by Kenny Golladay was amazing, the way he laid out.

-- Long flight back to Arizona coming. It'll be longer because of how the game went.