Detroit Lions have 99% chance to make playoffs, so is the sky really falling?

Four facts about the Detroit Lions’ recent struggles with four very important games to go:

Fact: The Lions aren’t the only contenders to hit a rough patch.

We all live in a bubble to some degree, especially when it comes to sports. Lions fans (and the reporters who cover the team) watch Lions games way more closely than they do other NFL games and are more exposed to their team’s flaws and imperfections.

When things go wrong, it’s natural to think things are broken. But the reality is, there’s nothing linear about an NFL season.

The San Francisco 49ers are the best team in football right now. They lost three straight games in October to the Cleveland Browns, Cincinnati Bengals and Minnesota Vikings, all of whom might miss the playoffs.

The Philadelphia Eagles, owners of the best record in the NFL most of the season, have lost two straight in blowout fashion, 42-19 to the 49ers and 33-13 to the Dallas Cowboys. The Eagles rank 25th in the NFL in scoring defense, three spots behind the Lions.

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The Kansas City Chiefs, last year’s Super Bowl champions, have lost four of six and can’t get their receivers to line up properly. And the Cowboys, now proud owners of the No. 2 seed in the NFC playoffs, lost to the lowly Arizona Cardinals in Week 3 and didn’t have a win over a team with a winning record until December.

The Lions haven’t played good football since Halloween. They've lost two of their past three games and are coming off a sloppy 28-13 defeat to the Chicago Bears, but their struggles aren’t unique.

“At some point, every team reaches adversity,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said last month, after his team’s Thanksgiving loss to the Green Bay Packers. “That’s what I do know, every good team I’ve ever been a part of. You don’t know when it's going to hit. Sometimes it’s September, sometimes it’s October, sometimes it is December. I don’t think that’s going to happen to us, but who knows? This may just be the beginning of it and we may have to get through a couple games before we find our footing again. I don’t think so, but it wouldn’t surprise me, either.

"That’s the nature of this league, man. You hit adversity, you reach it and it either makes you a little bit better of a team or you just crack under it.”

Fact: The Lions are still a good bet to make the playoffs.

Better than good, in fact.

According to the New York Times playoff predictor, the Lions woke up Monday with a 99% chance to make the postseason and an 86% chance to win the NFC North.

The Lions’ most likely playoff scenario after 13 games is that they win the division and host their first home playoff game in 30 years as the No. 3 seed.

That might not be the dream scenario from six weeks ago, when the No. 1 seed and a first-round playoff bye were well within reach. But as hopeless as things seem today, the Lions are still in pretty good shape as compared to most of their peers.

Now, hosting a playoff game is not the goal and never should be. And if the Lions somehow miss out on the postseason (or even fail to win their division), it will be the biggest gut punch this fan base has ever experienced, and that’s saying a lot.

But in a single-elimination tournament, anything can happen. And once the Lions get in, they’ll have a chance to do some damage.

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Fact: The Lions won’t go anywhere in the playoffs the way they’re playing now.

The sky isn’t falling the way the Lions have played of late, but if they don’t turn things around quickly they’ll be one-and-done in the playoffs and squander all the good will they built up from last November through this Halloween.

In the five games since the bye, the Lions are allowing 29.8 points per game and have a minus-6 turnover differential. Jared Goff has completed 64.5% of his passes in those games with nine touchdowns and a hand in nine turnovers (Sunday’s fumbled snap exchange was credited to center Graham Glasgow). And the offense has had long lulls of inefficient play.

Things are not trending up, and that’s not the direction good teams go in December.

“I feel like we kind of lost our swagger and our confidence,” defensive lineman John Cominsky said Sunday. “When we play with that swagger and that confidence, guys are loose, I think that’s when we were playing our best ball, so it’s got to be a point of emphasis to have that discipline this week but also get that swagger and that confidence back and proceed as if success is inevitable. That’s kind of the mindset I want to bring to the guys, and so we’re 9-4, we’re not going to panic. We’re going to get this thing together. We’re going to use this to our advantage, this loss to our advantage, use it as some momentum going into the rest of December just in time for the playoffs."

The Lions have a tricky but not treacherous end-of-season schedule with games remaining against the Denver Broncos, Vikings (twice) and Cowboys.

They likely need to win two of those games to claim at least a share of the division; the red-hot Packers close by playing four of their final five against teams with losing records (including Monday night’s game with the Giants). And Saturday’s game against the Broncos is starting to feel like a must-win.

The Broncos have won six of seven to get back in the playoff hunt and are one of the best teams in the NFL at forcing turnovers. If the Lions don’t take care of the ball and get their offense back on track, they’ll find more people fleeing for the exits.

Fact: The Lions need more from their best players.

Let’s start with Goff. He played high-level football for most of September and October and has been just OK since. He’s fortunate not to have committed at least four more turnovers in the past four games; the Bears dropped a potential pick-six in Week 11 and another on Sunday. And his limitations as a player have shown as defenses have harassed him with pressure and taken away looks to his favorite receiver, Amon-Ra St. Brown.

Goff is in line for a massive contract extension after the season, but if he and the team continue their slump down the stretch, the Lions will have to ask themselves some hard questions before writing him a check.

St. Brown, like Goff, had a rough day Sunday, and top pass rusher Aidan Hutchinson was at the center of two critical mistakes. Hutchinson jumped offside to give the Bears a free play on their go-ahead touchdown late in the third quarter, then called an ill-advised stunt that left his edge unprotected when Fields ran for the game-clinching score.

The Lions, like every team, have holes on their roster and count on their best players to shorten those gaps. They could be getting some key players back from injury soon (Frank Ragnow, C.J. Gardner-Johnson, James Houston) to help on both sides of the ball.

But when Goff, St. Brown and Hutchinson play like they did Sunday, the Lions don’t have much chance.

“Here is the most encouraging thing about what happened yesterday,” Campbell said. Some of our best players on the team did not play well and that’s encouraging going into this one because those are prideful guys, and those are our dudes. And believe me, those guys are going to come back — no different than us as coaches, too. We’re going to be at our best. And I just know what kind of locker room we’ve got, what kind of players and we will respond. We will respond.”

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

Next up: Broncos

Matchup: Lions (9-4) vs. Denver (7-6).

Kickoff: 8:15 p.m. Saturday; Ford Field, Detroit.

TV/radio: NFL Network; WXYT-FM (97.1).

Line: Lions by 4½.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Four facts about Detroit Lions' slump: Reasons for hope and despair