Column: A Lambeau leap for the Lions on a full-contact day

On the same day Pittsburgh receiver Antonio Brown punctuated a touchdown by sticking the landing on a full front flip, Detroit flipped the script on Green Bay.

The Lions won at Lambeau Field for the first time since 1991, ending a 24-game drought that was older than many of their players. Detroit, an 11 1/2-point underdog, built an early lead and held on for an 18-16 victory. The widespread thinking heading into the game was the Packers would use the hapless Lions to get back on track after back-to-back road losses to Denver and Carolina.

“We don’t really care who gives us a chance,” Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford said Sunday, “because we feel good about ourselves in that locker room and we know what we’re about.”

The second half of the regular season kicked off with some surprising twists and turns — none more cringe-worthy than the twist and turn of Johnny Manziel’s helmet. A Steelers defender wrenched the facemask of the Cleveland quarterback so violently that the helmet did a 180-degree turn, and Manziel wound up losing a contact lens.

Make no mistake, it was a full-contact day. That was evident from the start of the Browns-Steelers game, when Pittsburgh quarterback Landry Jones — forced into action because of a mid-foot sprain to Ben Roethlisberger — was carted off within a few minutes with an ankle injury. That meant a taped-up Roethlisberger had to gingerly return to action.

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger unleashes a pass as he scrambles from pressure against the Browns on Sunday.

(Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)

And, boy, did he. Despite predictions he’d miss a month, Roethlisberger threw for 379 yards and three touchdowns to lead the Steelers to a 30-9 pounding.

The situation didn’t work out so well for a prominent quarterback on the other side of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia’s Sam Bradford sustained a concussion and an injured left shoulder against Miami, and left for good in the third quarter.

With his team trailing, 20-19, late in the fourth quarter, backup Mark Sanchez drove the Eagles inside the Miami 10, only to be intercepted on second down from the nine. No chance for a chip-shot field goal, and the game became about what might have been.

The Eagles weren’t alone in the NFC East. The New York Giants lost too — coming oh so close to beating New England again — and so did Dallas.

That muddled division got even more confusing thanks to Washington’s blowout win over New Orleans — a 47-14 laugher that included four touchdown passes by Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins. He finished with a “perfect” passer rating of 158.3.

“I’m getting better as a quarterback,” said Cousins, 20 for 25 for 324 yards and no interceptions. “When you’re in the zone and things are going really well, you’re just playing and your mind is free and you’re not allowing things to inhibit your play.”

Denver’s Peyton Manning was anything but “in the zone,” and his 0.0 passer rating was diametrically opposed to that of Cousins.

Manning entered the day at home against Kansas City with 71,836 yards, two shy of Brett Favre’s all-time record. He claimed that mark with a four-yard pass to Ronnie Hillman, but everything else about his afternoon was forgettable. Hampered by injuries to his foot and ribcage, and relentlessly harassed by a Chiefs pass rush, Manning was intercepted four times before being benched in the second half in favor of Brock Osweiler.

Broncos Coach Gary Kubiak told reporters he was “disappointed” in himself for making the decision to have the hobbled Manning play.

Kubiak said as soon as Manning is sufficiently healed, he will return to his No. 1 role.

“Peyton’s our quarterback,” he said. “If Peyton is healthy and ready to go, he’s our quarterback.”

Among the few predictable elements in Week 11 were that Carolina and New England remained undefeated, with both improving to 9-0. It marked the fourth time in NFL history there have been multiple 9-0 teams in a season, with that also happening in 1934, 1990 and 2009.

The Panthers won handily with a 27-10 victory over Tennessee. But the Patriots just slipped past the Giants, 27-26, on a 54-yard, upright-scraping field goal by Stephen Gostkowski with one second remaining.

Cincinnati is undefeated too and hosts Houston on Monday. If the Bengals were to win — and they’re favored by 11 — it would mark the most 9-0 teams in league history.

Catching grief

A pivotal play that will haunt the Giants came on first-and-goal with 2:06 to play, when Eli Manning hit Odell Beckham Jr. with a five-yard pass that first was ruled a touchdown. Although Beckham got his feet down in the end zone, he turned away from a defender and the ball was raked from his grasp. After studying the replay, officials ruled he did not complete the catch.

The Giants wound up kicking a field goal, and worse, they left too much time for Tom Brady and the Patriots.

“We lost the game,” said Beckham, who conceded he didn’t know the whole rule about completing a catch. “I lost us the game with the play down in the end zone, a play that should have been made. You can’t leave it up to the officials to get anything right. You’ve got to make the play yourself and it was just a case of playing the play longer than the opponent.”

Ground control

Minnesota isn’t running away with the NFC North yet, but the Vikings ran all over the Raiders on Sunday.

Adrian Peterson rumbled for 203 yards and a touchdown in a 30-14 victory at Oakland, taking full advantage in the standings of Green Bay’s loss to Detroit. The 7-2 Vikings have a one-game lead in the division.

Vikings running back Adrian Peterson finds some room to run against the Raiders in the first half Sunday.

(Beck Diefenbach / Associated Press)

Minnesota, which hosts Green Bay on Sunday, has won five in a row. But the Vikings have no intention to exhale.

“It doesn’t matter where we are right now,” quarterback Teddy Bridgewater said. “The only thing that matters is where we finish the season at. So we can’t just be satisfied with being where we are today. We have to continue to work hard, continue to just ride the wave that we have now.”

Doubling down

In Chicago’s 37-13 rout of St. Louis, Bears quarterback Jay Cutler threw an 87-yard touchdown pass to tight end Zach Miller, and an 83-yarder to rookie running back Jeremy Langford. That made Cutler the first quarterback in franchise history to throw two touchdown passes of at least 80 yards in the same game.

Double threat

Carolina quarterback Cam Newton just keeps rolling. He ran and threw for a touchdown Sunday, marking the 30th time he has scored both ways in the same game. He joined Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young (31) as the only players to have at least 30 such games.

After nearly frittering away leads in consecutive weeks to Green Bay and Indianapolis, the Panthers slammed the door this time, outscoring the Titans, 13-0, in the second half.

On the rebound

The most bizarre touchdown of the day came in the Miami-Philadelphia game, when a Ryan Tannehill pass was deflected high in the air at the line of scrimmage and sailed about 15 yards forward where it was reeled in by the Dolphins’ Jarvis Landry.

“It seemed like it was up there for about 10 seconds,” Tannehill said. “When the ball goes up in the air like that, good things tend not to happen. My heart slowed down. The ball was in slow motion coming down. But I saw Jarvis see the ball, and the defender did not see the ball.”

What goes up, must come down. It’s a lesson that’s all too clear to those NFL teams — Green Bay, Denver, New Orleans, and even Oakland — who not so long ago were riding high.

sam.farmer@latimes.com