The Detroit Lions broke out a nifty trick play against the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday.

In the second quarter, with about 11:49 left in the first half, Jared Goff tossed the ball to David Montgomery, who then handed the ball to Amon-Ra St. Brown. The wide receiver came around only to give the ball back to Goff, who found tight end Sam LaPorta trailing down the sideline.

LaPorta caught the Goff pass and rumbled into the end zone for a 52-yard score. Detroit took a 17-3 lead at that point. Later in the first half, Montgomery ran the ball into the end zone for his second touchdown of the first half.

Detroit led Dallas, 27-6, at halftime.

Goff went into the locker room with 178 passing yards on 11-of-16 throwing. Montgomery had 58 rushing yards on nine carries with the two scores. LaPorta had only been targeted once in the game, and that was the touchdown pass.

CHARGERS’ JIM HARBAUGH ABRUPTLY LEAVES GAME WITH MYSTERY ILLNESS, RETURNS MINUTES LATER

Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff celebrates after throwing a touchdown pass to tight end Sam LaPorta on Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)

Tim Patrick, whose completion led to Montgomery’s score before halftime, was leading the Lions with three catches for 68 yards. St. Brown also had three catches and 33 receiving yards.

Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott was 11 of 20 with 115 passing yards and an interception. CeeDee Lamb had four catches for 46 yards, leading the game.

Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff throws a pass in the first half in Arlington, Texas, on Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Dallas only had 14 rushing yards in the first two quarters of the game.

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On the darkest night of their season last week, the Dodgers didn’t linger in their hushed home clubhouse.

The team had just been blown out in Game 2 of the National League Division Series. They’d lost their cool (and watched their home crowd do the same) in a 10-2 rout to the San Diego Padres. But rather than dwell on the disaster, they quickly packed team-branded duffel bags and boarded a charter bus waiting out in the parking lot.

With their season on the line, they were headed to San Diego.

And, this time, they decided as a team to all travel together.

“For as long as I’ve been here, we’ve never taken a team bus to San Diego, ever,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said. “And that’s not a bad thing by any means. But us saying, ‘We’re all gonna ride a bus down there, no families, nothing else, just us on a bus,’ It was great.”

And as the Dodgers prepared to open their NL Championship Series against the New York Mets on Sunday, it served as one of the many little examples that ultimately helped them advance.

Entering the playoffs, the Dodgers tried to be different in their postseason process, with a player-driven emphasis on cliche traits like togetherness and team unity generating a more resilient, combative mindset.

During the past few seasons, the Dodgers have lacked such ingredients once they’ve reached October. In NLDS eliminations in 2022 and 2023, their inability to conjure a heightened level of intensity seemingly contributed to stunningly early exits.

“We haven’t had that edge,” Muncy said. “We haven’t had that attitude.”

So, as they embarked on a third-straight postseason that began with an awkward first-round bye week, players brainstormed ways to avoid that pitfall again.

The process started during the final week of the regular season, when Muncy, catcher Will Smith and shortstop Miguel Rojas concocted a plan to hold team watch parties at Dodger Stadium during the wild-card round; aiming to not only scout potential NLDS opponents as a group, but also spend more of their week off in one another’s presence.

“I think just talking with some of the other guys, the leaders, it was, ‘How can we stay in a rhythm?’ ” Smith said. “It’s hard to come out of a rhythm in baseball. We’re playing every day and all of a sudden we get a week off. So how can we stay in rhythm? Be at the field for a decent amount of time like we do in the season.”

It also bled into the way the Dodgers handled their team workouts during the five-day break, with players agreeing to stay at the ballpark until the end of each session.

“I think a lot of guys maybe got a little bit complacent with the bye week the last couple years,” Hudson said, using the word “informal” to describe the mood of their 2022 and 2023 preparation. “We came in this year and tried to make sure we didn’t do that again.”

Ideas for change, Muncy said, not only originated in the clubhouse, but were presented by players to front-office officials.

“What we did for the five days off, everything was constructed by the players,” Muncy said. “Instead of us saying, ‘What does the organization want us to do? What are we going to do for that?’ It was the players saying, ‘No, this is what we’re doing. This is how we’re going to do things as a team.’ That’s been 100% player-driven.”

The bus ride to San Diego became another prime example.

Typically, when the Dodgers head south for road games against the Padres, most players drive down Interstate 5 themselves with their families. While the team does offer a bus for those wary of battling traffic, “not a lot of people take it,” Kiké Hernández said.

But, in a postseason all about doing things differently, even something as small as a more unified travel schedule proved to have profound team-wide effects.

Rather than stew on the Game 2 loss individually, the Dodgers’ ride last week transformed into “a party bus for two hours,” Hernández recalled with a laugh.

Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy (13) celebrates on second base after hitting a third inning double in Game 4 of the NLDS at Petco Park.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

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“Especially,” he added, “when the driver is hauling ass and we make it to San Diego in an hour, 40 [minutes].”

To Muncy, it became something of a turning point in the series.

“We needed that,” he said, “to help us get over that shellacking we took in Game 2.”

The Dodgers didn’t win Game 3, but their near-comeback from an early five-run deficit showcased some fight they’d been missing in the past.

Before Game 4, their new approach was summed up in a blunt rallying cry delivered by Hernández.

“F— them all,” the 33-year-old repeatedly told his teammates.

“That’s the attitude we’ve had here,” Muncy added. “It’s just kind of who we’ve been this year.”

Two shutout wins later, the Dodgers clinched their first NLCS appearance since 2021. And as the team celebrated with a Champagne shower in the clubhouse, their internally stoked fire was evident in a string of expletive-filled answers.

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“We have a lot of ‘F U’ in us,” Hernández said. “We’re all here together for one reason and one thing and one thing only. And that’s to win the World Series.”

To do that, the Dodgers will need to keep those flames burning in their series against the Mets.

Unlike the NLDS, when the Padres were the popular pick among online and television pundits, the Dodgers are now the consensus — or, at least, betting — favorites to win the league championship series and advance to the Fall Classic.

In past years, it’s the kind of situation in which they’ve failed to meet the moment. This time, however, they’re hoping their newfound edge can combat a similar collapse.

“We remember the last two early exits,” Hudson said. “And we want to put that behind us.”

“Usually, when people are in it together,” Hernández added, “good things tend to happen.”

NEW YORK — It’s Thursday night, the final buzzer sounds, media obligations are over, phones are blowing up with messages from anyone and everyone, and one of the most dramatic and memorable WNBA Finals games in league history is in the rearview.

Now what?

You can attempt to live in the emotional high (or low) as long as possible, savoring the joy or remembering the pain for motivation. Or flush everything away and move forward, knowing that at least two more games remain in the series.

One thing Lynx and Liberty players had in common after Thursday’s epic Game 1 overtime win by the Lynx: many of them turned to the film. Even before the teams got together Saturday to regroup before Game 2, several players had to see the game again.

“I didn’t sleep till like 3:30 that night,” Lynx guard Kayla McBride said. “I told everybody my soul left my body when Courtney (Williams) made that 3. I had to watch the game in order to calm down.”

we’re not satisfied with one win. pic.twitter.com/ifWDJoQSWl

— Minnesota Lynx (@minnesotalynx) October 12, 2024

Courtney Vandersloot felt similarly after New York’s loss. Even though she wanted to be intentional about looking ahead to the great opportunity they still have in this series, she had to watch the ending once more with her wife, former WNBA champion Allie Quigley.

“We went back together and watched the last five minutes and overtime, which we usually wouldn’t do that, but there were a couple of things that we were analyzing and disagreeing on,” Vandersloot said. “I think that if we didn’t, we wouldn’t have been able to sleep. So it was kind of like let’s get it out there, let’s figure it out.”

Breanna Stewart wanted to see her missed free throw with 0.8 seconds left in regulation, the one that would have given New York the win, to make sure that she hadn’t strayed from her routine. Leonie Fiebich went through the full game three more times because it was playing over and over in her head regardless.

Lynx star Napheesa Collier, who hit the game-winner in overtime, didn’t want to watch her fadeaway over Jonquel Jones more than a couple times and stayed away from social media. But Williams didn’t have that same luxury. Despite wanting to move on to Game 2, the biggest shot of the night kept replaying around her.

“My daddy overdosed on it,” Williams said. “Even if I didn’t want to watch it, he was overdosing.”

Beyond Quigley and Don Williams, the other families and friends played a big part in the players being able to decompress from the theatrics of Game 1.

Stewart said her kids don’t notice whether she wins or loses, though she finds herself less prone to profanity in the aftermath of losses – even when her reaction to the late misses was “WTF” – because she doesn’t want the little ones hearing swear words. She also had former teammate Sue Bird and Nancy Lieberman reach out, both essentially telling her to bounce back. Sabrina Ionescu had 25 family members from California in attendance to help her think about something other than basketball. Although she said her husband’s optimism can sometimes be annoying, she acknowledged that it was helpful to have positive affirmations from the people around her.

Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve’s family took her to watch “The Lion King” musical in between hours of breaking down film. Her mind wandered during the production, which she had seen previously, but she powered through because she and her wife wanted their son to see his first Broadway show. Many of her players ended up seeing “The Notebook” — Bridget Carleton noted that the first choice, “Wicked,” was sold out – on what ended up being their first true off day in multiple weeks.

Ultimately, the off day doesn’t matter as much as what the Liberty and Lynx will do in Game 2. Stewart and Ionescu both said what made it easiest to move on was that they saw numerous ways for New York to be better than in the opener. They saw opportunities to improve their pace and increase the number of off-ball actions, both of which are in line with how the Liberty played up until this point.

And Minnesota was already thinking about how its last series went, when Connecticut stole Game 1 on the road but lost in five. If the Lynx don’t close out this series, the heroics of Game 1 will diminish and whatever high they were riding Thursday will be lost to history. In the playoffs, there is only so much time to live in the moment. Another game is always on the horizon.

“We’re definitely not coming in thinking we have this thing won,” Collier said. “We were able to steal that game but it means nothing. It means they’re going to come out even hungrier in Game 2. It’s going to be a battle.”

— The Athletic‘s Ben Pickman contributed reporting to this story.

(Photo of Kayla McBride and Sabrina Ionescu: Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)