The pass rush came for Nick Mullens on 2nd & 10. The Minnesota Vikings QB dropped back to throw and Aidan Hutchinson came on a speed-rush around the right side. The right tackle David Quessenberry managed to bump Hutchinson around Mullens, but the QB made one little hop to sidestep the noise. That movement put Mullens right into the path of Romeo Okwara, who had gotten free against the left side of the line on a stunt. Okwara hit Mullens and before his arm came forward, the ball was free on the ground.
Detroit Lions defensive lineman John Cominsky was the closest man to the ball, knowing that a recovered fumble would end the game and give the Lions franchise their first division title in 30 years. Cominsky, rather than just falling on the ball, attempted to scoop it up while still running, as if returning it for a touchdown would meaningfully alter the game. The hulking Cominsky was unable to reach his arms far enough to snag it, instead kicking it some and the ball squibbed free. Vikings WR Justin Jefferson was the next to it, falling on the ball and saving the game for Minnesota.
The Vikes were still alive, but now needed to gain 27 yards in two plays to keep breathing. On 3rd & 27, the Lions rushed only four and Mullens did what you ought to do when you need a miracle and have the best WR in the NFL on your team: heave it to him and pray. Justin Jefferson did the sort of thing Lions fans remember Calvin Johnson doing so fondly, post up against two well-positioned DBs and dunk on them.
The referees gave Jefferson the first down and Vikings got up to the line quickly and spiked it so there could be no review of the spot. Then on 2nd down, Mullens found a wide open Brandon Powell, who took it well into Lions territory. Minnesota was 30 yards away with a minute to go from coming back from the brink to win the game. The Lions had let them off the hook.
[Associated Press]
On November 10, 2013, the Detroit Lions defeated the middling Chicago Bears at Soldier Field in Chicago. A week earlier, the Green Bay Packers had played the Bears on Monday Night Football and didn’t just lose the game, they lost superstar QB Aaron Rodgers in the process. Rodgers suffered a broken collarbone and was presumed to be out long-term (he would end up missing seven of the final eight games of the season), leaving the Packers with a questionable backup QB to steer the ship. To say the Lions had been dealt a good hand was an understatement.
The Lions played the Bears on that day before Veteran’s Day, 5-3 Detroit against 5-3 Chicago with first place in the division on the line. It was a tight and dicey game, but the Lions fended off two potential two-point conversion attempts (roughing the passer negated one failed attempt) and held on for a 21-19 win. With the win, Detroit jumped to first place in the NFC North for the first time since early 2005. They now owned the tiebreak over Chicago, Minnesota was 2-7 and out of it, and Green Bay was going to be playing for over a month with a backup QB. The Lions hadn’t won a division title in 20 years and for once, it felt like God was smiling on this team. The NFC North was being served on a silver platter.
What happened next was a collapse for the ages, one of the most soul-crushing seven weeks of football ever, even for a fanbase whose entire experience is soul-crushing football. First they went on the road and lost to a mediocre Steelers team after leading 27-20 at halftime. They led 27-23 and had the ball inside the Steelers 10, failed to score a TD, and then tried one of the worst fake FG attempts of all time, beginning the 4th quarter spiral that lost them the game.
The week after that was a loss at home to a Buccaneers team that would finish the season 4-12. Two game-winning TD drives in the 4th quarter went haywire after a fumble by Kris Durham (untouched!!) at the Bucs 46 and an interception that started in the arms of Calvin Johnson at the Tampa 5 before being punched out and into the arms of a DB to end it. The Lions got temporary reprieve next week with a beatdown of Green Bay and QB Matt Flynn on Thanksgiving but in the first week of December it was back to meltdown mode.
Next was Philadelphia and the iconic snow bowl game, a blizzard that rendered the first half a mockery before a slightly more watchable second half. The Lions initially led 14-0 but then let LeSean McCoy run rampant over them for a 34-20 Eagles win. The Lions were now 7-6 and in seeming freefall but could stay in first with a win over Baltimore at home on Monday Night Football. In the first of two incomprehensible Justin Tucker Games, the Lions committed three turnovers and the Ravens did not score a touchdown or a safety but still won 18-16, with Tucker kicking six field goals, including a 61 yarder at the end to win.
At 7-7 it wasn’t over, but the Lions were now behind Green Bay in the division. Hosting the Giants in the 4:00 window game, the Lions watched as the Packers lost to Pittsburgh, giving back to the Lions control of their own destiny in the NFC North. All they had to do was beat 5-9 New York and 5-9-1 Minnesota. Of course they couldn’t do it. The Lions led 20-13 over the G-Men with the ball and only 6 minutes to go in the 4th quarter, but a Stafford pick-six tied it and sent the game to OT. Despite recovering a Giants fumble in OT, the Lions punted it back to New York and the Giants would drive and kick a FG to win.
Green Bay was back in the driver’s seat, Rodgers made his valiant return for Week 17, and that was all she wrote for the Lions. Not that it mattered, but the Lions mailed it in against the Vikes and lost their sixth in seven games, finishing the season 7-9. No division title as the drought reached 21 seasons, and no playoffs either. Head Coach Jim Schwartz and his staff was fired and an era of Lions football came to an end. They had blown it and done it in comical fashion, losing four one-score games and the two double-digit losses saw the Lions hold leads in the second half of both games. The losses featured plays that belong only on blooper reels, mind-numbing mistakes, and late-game collapses, as if they were designed to cause the maximum pain and anguish to the long-suffering Lions fanbase.
For a 14-year-old Lions fan who was watching his team have a chance to win the division for the first time in his life, it’s hard to put into words how devastating the 2013 collapse was. The Lions had a chance to win the division again in 2014, needing to beat the Packers (with Rodgers) in Lambeau in Week 17 to get it done, which of course did not happen. Then two years later in 2016 the Lions were 9-4 while the Packers were 7-6. They lost twice in tough road games at playoff contenders to fall to 9-6 while Green Bay surged to the same record. Once again the Lions were one win over GB from the division title but this time it was in Detroit, on Sunday Night Football. The Lions led at halftime. The Lions did not win the game. No division title.
After that, the Lions bumbled to 9-7 and fired Jim Caldwell, then the Matt Patricia era of misery followed. Fast forward three years and a full-scale rebuild was underway, pushing the division title drought to 30 years. With each passing year that brought either total irrelevance or another near-division title quest that came up short, the pain and anguish of 2013 loomed so much larger. That was our chance, the one year Rodgers gets hurt and we blew it. Handed to us gift wrapped and we tossed it out the window. Maybe one day we’d get a chance like that again.
[Detroit Free Press]
2023 seemed like the chance. The Lions entered season after finishing 2022 hot, winning eight of their final ten. The Bears were still rebuilding and the Packers in a bit of a re-tool after losing Rodgers and moving onto new QB Jordan Love. The Vikings had won the division the previous season but seemed decently primed for some degree of mean reversion after having a historically lucky 2022. The Lions entered the season as the betting favorites to win the NFC North and had it as their goal all along. This very blog predicted a division title at the outset.
For awhile it seemed like something of a cakewalk. The Lions had their best start in 12 years while the Vikings’ epidemic of turnovers buried them to a 1-4 start. The Bears and Packers both looked like two of the worst teams in football through seven or so weeks and some were declaring the NFC North race over. The Lions’ probability of winning the division always seemed high, but when Vikings QB Kirk Cousins went down with injury in late October, a day before the Lions beat the Raiders to go to 6-2, it seemed in the bag.
Hence my flashbacks to 2013. Ten years later, the Lions were in first place in early November when their primary contender for the NFC North lost its starting QB again. A second chance at a silver platter offering and ending what was now three-decades of divisional failure. At that point in time, despite the hauntings of the past, your author would’ve set the probability at something like 99% to win the division. The 1st seed in the NFC looked far more likely than not winning the NFC North.
November was quite choppy. The Packers began to find some offensive rhythm and looked like a functional football team. The Bears acquired an elite defensive lineman and got their QB healthy and also turned into a semi-functional football team. The Vikings struggled with backup QBs, riding the Josh Dobbs Linsanity run until it ran out of gas, but leaned on a suddenly excellent defense to remain relevant in the hunt even when Dobbs was replaced by Mullens.
And of course there’s the Lions component. Offensive line injuries hampered the dominant offense, while the defense put up stinker after stinker. They lost games that once seemed like sure wins against GB/Chicago, making the division rather hairy for a couple weeks, but no team got within obvious striking distance. But Minnesota wasn’t totally out of it, either. The situation heading into this weekend was straightforward: the Lions needed one win or one Vikings loss the rest of the season to win the NFC North and end the drought. Problem is, the two teams played each other twice, and the Lions’ other game is on the road at a great Dallas team while the Vikings’ other game is at home against Green Bay.
If you’re a seasoned Lions fan, you understood the situation: win at Minnesota on Christmas Eve and it’s finally done with. Lose and well… there’s a very real probability that this thing is coming down to Week 18 and a winner-take-all clash, just like 2014 and 2016 (except with Minnesota instead of Green Bay).
That’s where we stood as the Vikings had the ball on the Detroit 30, down six, with a minute to go. The Lions had led most of the game but needed one more stop to close it out and clinch the division. Fail to do so and the nightmare scenario grows evermore in the back of your mind. Come up with the stop and it’s the pure ecstasy of winning the division and finally vanquishing the drought and all associated horrors.
In a certain poetic way, clinching the division came down to staring down the SOL Demons. You know what I’m talking about: Same Old Lions. The same kind of demons that cost them the division in 2013, turnovers, bad bounces, braindead penalties, wacky weather, and supernatural events that only happen to the Detroit Lions. Mistakes, bad luck, injuries, gaffes, whatever you want to call it. They combine to torture this franchise and fanbase, having denied us division titles several times over. To finally win the NFC North, the Lions needed to stare down SOL right in the face and drive a stake through its heart. Of course.
There was a lot of SOL going on in this Lions/Vikings Christmas Eve clash. Jahmyr Gibbs fumbled around midfield. Dan Campbell took an aggressive (and questionable) timeout late in the first half in an attempt to get the ball back, which backfired and eventually led to seven Vikings points before the break. Jameson Williams was out of bounds before he caught a pass despite no pressure from the defense. Khalif Raymond lined up offsides and negated a nice play to Sam LaPorta. It had been a lot of sloppy football through the first 55 minutes from the Detroit side.
But the final five minutes was an exquisite crash course on SOL. The Lions’ drive trying to salt the game away went off the rails after two pre-snap penalties, a false start and then a delay of game, their third delay of game of the contest. They never got back on schedule and punted, the first punt attempt being a perfect kick that didn’t count because the Lions lined up in an illegal formation. Then Minnesota got the ball and the Cominsky biffed fumble recovery happened, followed by the Jefferson highlight reel catch and then the Brandon Powell catch after that. It had the makings of one of the greatest- and most painful- SOL collapses of all time.
And then fate went the other direction. Mullens had plenty of time to throw, sidestepped what little rush there was, stepped up and had Jefferson open. Ifeatu Melifonwu, lurking in the background and baiting Mullens, saw it coming all the way. The ball was a bit of a duck too, wobbling in the air, but Melifonwu had it dead to rights from the start. He jumped the route, hopping in front of the unknowing Jefferson to snatch the ball. It bobbled briefly up in the air but Melifonwu hung on. He started to run it back, just to annoy us SOL sufferers screaming “FALL DOWN!!!!” a little bit more, before tumbling at the 18. The Lions-iest 4ish minutes of football followed by the least Lionsy ending. The offense took over, kneeled it down twice, game over. At long last, the NFC North was Detroit’s. At long last, the pain of 2013 hurts just a little bit less.
[Matt Krohn- USA Today]
When Michigan beat Ohio State for the first time in ages in 2021, many Michigan fans remarked that if nothing else, we’d get to stop seeing a few very annoying infographics during games. For this Lions victory, let’s take a chance to finally lay to rest the incredibly annoying “the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have won the Detroit Lions’ division more recently than the Lions, and the Buccaneers haven’t played in the Lions’ division since 2001!” Also let’s bury “the Lions have never won the NFC North. Last division title was the NFC Central!” while we’re at it. Farewell, old friends. We won’t miss you.
Winning the NFC North took a team effort, a shift in organizational philosophy and personnel. It started with Sheila Ford Hamp taking over for her parents, giving the Lions ownership who had studied her whole life how to succeed in the NFL rather than the status quo of well-meaning but ultimately clueless ownership. SFH taking over led to the hiring of Brad Holmes as GM and Dan Campbell as Head Coach, each in their own ways the perfect people to lead the franchise to this point.
Holmes led the team through a complete and total rebuild of the roster, astonishing even for a league like like the NFL with lots of player movement. Just nine players, Tracy Walker (S), Taylor Decker (OT), Frank Ragnow (C), Jonah Jackson (G), Will Harris (DB), Jalen Reeves-Maybin (ST/LB), Romeo Okwara (OLB/EDGE), and Julian Okwara (OLB/EDGE), and Jack Fox (P), remain from the roster that was inherited. And among those nine, only the offensive linemen are every-down starters on offense or defense. 19 of the 22 true starters for the 2023 Lions are Holmes acquisitions.
The scope of the rebuild is humongous and the result of needing so many new players is the Lions having the 4th youngest roster in the NFL. This was a rebuilding project and it’s not totally over, something Holmes silently acknowledged by not making any trades of consequence at the deadline. The Lions have come a long way in three years, but the clay is not done being molded. There is still a road ahead in the way of roster building and the Lions know that. But this week is a cause for celebration and a recognition of the work done.
Rebuilding a roster from near-scratch to win 11+ games in the NFL in three seasons is not easy. Winning 11+ games alone isn’t easy, evidenced by the fact that most teams finish between 7-10 and 10-7. The Lions roster has its flaws but they are an undeniably good team and have a good chance to win 12 games, which is hard to do in the National Parity League. Just over two years ago the Lions were 0-10-1 in year one of the rebuild, looking for their first win as the present laughingstock of the league. Now they are NFC North Champions.
Dan Campbell was the perfect coach to lead the franchise there, the man who could make players believe in themselves, the coaches, their teammates, and the ultimate goal. The only kind of man who could’ve made players think the Lions are building something special and exciting even when they were 0-10-1. The Detroit Lions were the embodiment of losing for decades and everyone knew that, including every player on the team. Campbell made the players believe that could change.
Campbell also embraced analytics in decision making and has built a staff of coaches who has grown talent at key positions, embracing this extremely young roster. He’s instilled a killer instinct that Jim Schwartz’s Lions lacked. And so did Jim Caldwell’s Lions and of course, so did Matt Patricia’s Lions and their so-called “Dagger Time”. It’s not perfect, and inevitably the Lions will lose some close games in the future, even some they lose, but the Lions winning this game today, New Orleans a few weeks ago, KC at the start of the season, and Green Bay to finish last season proves they’ve got a bit of moxie late in games when it’s time to slam the door. You couldn’t overcome a full-throttle SOL attack against Minnesota without that moxie.
It goes without its saying this goes out to the players too. Jared Goff, Jahmyr Gibbs, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Sam LaPorta, the entire OL, Aidan Hutchinson, Alim McNeil, Alex Anzalone, Brian Branch, Ifeatu Melifonwu, and on and on. But the player I’ve thought about the most since the game against the Vikings ended was the one crying on the field: Taylor Decker. The longest tenured Lion, the only one left who stayed with the franchise continuously from that 2016 team that lost the NFC North at home to Green Bay.1 Decker saw that season, saw Caldwell’s firing, survived the Patricia era, and then made it to now. Taylor Decker went through it all with us the fans, and he deserves this minute more than anyone. A Lion hero for life.
And so that’s where we are this Wednesday, December 27, 2023. The Lions are 11-4, having clinched the NFC North and guaranteeing Ford Field’s first ever playoff game. The regular season demons are gone for now but there is still a long road ahead in the playoffs and beyond. I will discuss that later in this piece but it ought not be in the narrative. This is too special to be sullied by speculation of the future. Sometimes it’s better to take a breath and appreciate where you are.
The Detroit Lions will blow games again in the future and inevitably break our hearts again some day. We will have moments of anger and discontent and fury as we have in the past because that’s part of what being a sports fan is. It’s most of what being a Detroit Lions fan has been. But today it isn’t, nor was it yesterday, on Christmas, or on Christmas Eve. Today, that broken-hearted 14-year-old inside me still sore over 2013 feels healed. And for today, that feeling is enough.
[Abbie Parr - AP]
The Takes: Offense
Goff did his job. I felt coming in that if we got the good version of Jared Goff against this funky Vikings defense, it would be hard for the Lions to lose and this take ended up being correct. Goff was good and the Lions won. The protection gave him the time he needed to be effective and he was. The Lions kept it short out of concern for Minnesota’s astronomically high blitz rate but Goff was efficient and productive working out of that game plan. On my re-watch charting I had him down for very few negatives, a couple missed reads, one plainly inaccurate ball, not a ton else.
He was decisive, got it out, kept the offense on schedule and moving forward. Made a couple tremendous throws, with the play of the game on offense being the 3rd & 8 slant to trade deadline acquisition Donovan Peoples-Jones in the red zone, a great ball from Goff into a tight window and a catch from DPJ. Moved the sticks and Lions would score a TD. Not much else you could want from Goff in this game.
David Montgomery, the bowling ball. I haven’t written this previously when I could’ve earlier in the season, but Montgomery’s north-south, thumping running style has been such an asset this season in the red zone and late in games. It stood out to me during the section of the game where Gibbs was the bellcow, as the Lions encroached on the goal line. There was a 3rd & 2 run where the narrow hole opened and Gibbs stutter-stepped, looking to shake n bake and after doing so, nothing much had changed and he could only get one yard. My reaction at the time, confirmed on re-watch, is that’s where David Montgomery makes a difference. Monty sees that hole and accelerates, lowering the shoulder and dragging tacklers for the first down. Gibbs does so much fun stuff and has a sky-high ceiling he’s only beginning to approach, but in those short yardage situations I want Montgomery on the field because his running style is built for it.
Nitpick: WR blocking. I didn’t notice it too much in-game but on re-watch it definitely stood out that wide receiver blocking wasn’t great. Lions dialed up a lot of screens in this game and left meat on the bone because better blocks on some of those plays lead to many more yards. The culprits weren’t localized; pretty much everyone was on the hook for one whiff, but it’s something to clean up this week for the Lions.
The big problem: pre-snap penalties. Mentioned in the narrative but three delay of game penalties cannot happen. I know it’s on the road, loud building, etc. but it’s bad to have one, let alone three. And the final one coming on such a big drive, turning a 2nd & 12 into 2nd & 17 was killer. Shooting yourself in the foot and that wasn’t the only one. Offensive offsides and a false start (both on WRs!!) backed the team up and impeded offensive progress. It was overall a very strong showing from the offense but a cleaner game from a discipline standpoint could’ve led to even bigger gains for the offense. It goes without saying that pre-snap penalties galore is no recipe for success in January.
A very good Ben Johnson game. I’d put this one on the list of games to show prospective teams looking to hire Lions OC Ben Johnson if I’m his agent. It didn’t have as much of the flash as Johnson is known to dial up but it was one of his best gameplans from a strategy standpoint. The Lions came ready for Minnesota’s blitzes and their uses of screens + taking what the defense was giving them to stay on schedule was tremendous. I saw very little I didn’t like on re-watch and a whole lot that I did. We did still get the treat that was the Montgomery hand-off, then throws to Kalif Raymond play, but this was less trickery and more chess mastery. The Lions’ talent did a lot but Johnson was ready to go against Brian Flores’ defense and it paid off. Kudos.
The Takes: Defense
Sooooooooo what was that? The box score of this game is a doozy. Minnesota gained 390 yards on 7.6 YPP(!!), only 17 rushing yards on 11 carries while Mullens was 22/36 for 411(!!!), 2 TD to 4 INT + 4 sacks for -38 yards. A lot going on there. What follows is my attempt to break it down:
A very good Kevin O’Connell game. I credited Ben Johnson for the Lions’ offensive approach, but I thought Vikings HC Kevin O’Connell came ready on the offensive side of the ball too. It felt very much like a “pull out all the stops to stay alive in the division” sort of game in terms of the offensive approach. He abandoned the run game entirely when it was showing no signs of life and schemed up a lot of good stuff for the Vikings to move the ball productively, especially early on. The misdirection/PA on the first drive was very effective (we should also fault the Lions for falling for too much of it) and then he pulled out the flea flicker/TE wheel play that the Lions first debuted this season against Carolina. A lot of good stuff to give his guys a chance to succeed
Justin Jefferson, freak show. Problems in the passing game could first and foremost be explained by Justin Jefferson being an alien and the Lions being ill-equipped to deal with that. As I progressed through the re-watch, I came across three different approaches to dealing with Jefferson. First they left Cam Sutton on Jefferson without a ton of help and he got cooked (the final drive of the first half). Then they began devoting significant safety resources, which left CB2 isolated on KJ Osborn, leading to the bomb against Khalil Dorsey. After that point it was mostly zone and they had problems dealing with the fact that Jefferson is going to find holes in that sort of defense.
The Lions’ corner situation is woefully ill-equipped to deal with a superstar like Jefferson, lacking a true CB1 and playing a perfectly fine CB2 (Sutton) as CB1 and suffering the consequences, not to mention that the players they have functioning as CB2 should be bench players on most teams. But there’s also the reality that Jefferson made some Megatron plays. I can’t really fault anyone on that 3rd & 27, Sutton and Joseph were both in position and Jefferson just went and dunked on them. Very little can be done to prevent that, but the rest of the issues JJ caused could certainly be mitigated with a stronger CB situation.
Nick Mullens is not your normal backup QB. Most of the terrible backups we see across the NFL are the same sort of thing, noodle-armed guys who coaches hope will dink and dunk and prevent anything BAD from happening. They put a hard ceiling on the offense and don’t threaten you in any real way. Think Bailey Zappe, Aidan O’Connell, Tommy DeVito, etc. Mullens is not that, having now started 19 games in his NFL career (and appeared in 27), boasting a career 12.1 yards per completion. For comparison, Patrick Mahomes has a career 11.9, Matt Stafford a career 11.6, and Josh Allen a career 11.4. Mullens is the rare backup QB gunslinger and you could see that in this game. Dude made some excellent, NFL throws into tight windows down the field (the bomb to Osborn vs. Dorsey was a terrific throw) that look like he could be a star QB.
The problem is that for every good 5-7 throws Mullens makes, he makes one astonishingly bad one. This dynamic also played out last week against Cincinnati, when Mullens mostly carved up the Bengals’ defense but negated a good chunk of his positive impact on the game because of the turnovers. What I don’t want to be forgotten is how his interceptions are linked to his successful throws. It’s too easy to say “Mullens could be great if he just didn’t throw the INTs” because the aggression that defines Mullens’ best moments is inextricably linked to his success down the field. You can’t have one without the other.
If you’re going to go with the swing for the fences strategy on most dropbacks, you have to recognize that sometimes you’re going to get INT’d. Now obviously a better version of Mullens cuts down on his heinous throws, but his successes and failures are closely related and we shouldn’t lose sight of that. The Lions did give up 400 passing yards to a “backup QB” but that backup QB plays the game in a distinct way relative to every other backup QB I can think of and they capitalized on nearly every one of Mullens’ mistakes (the Branch dropped INT the only exception). That’s how you win this game
The Melifonwu interception to seal it was the best example of this. He knows Mullens wants to heave it deep, sees Jefferson open between the LBs and himself, leaves JJ open for just long enough to bait Mullens into the throw, then jumps the route. He almost jumped the route too early because Mullens’ throw was a wobbly duck, slower in velocity than expected, but Melifonwu hung on despite being a little too early.
My kingdom for a 3rd & long blitz. The Lions have had a recurring 3rd & long issue over the last month or so, which is immensely frustrating. In this game they gave up conversions on 3rd & 19 and 3rd & 27, as well as a converted 2nd & 15 and giving up 13 on 3rd & 15 that allowed Minnesota to get close enough to go on 4th down. The common thread in this game is passivity in these situations, 4 man rushes that never get home and playing a soft zone that drops super deep and has far too many holes. This is a bit of a pet issue for me as someone who has argued for years in favor of applying pressure on Hail Marys but I stand by my logic.
When faced with a situation where the opponent has a long way to go to convert a play, the easiest way to prevent that conversion is to not allow the ball to get close to the line to gain. In other words, to stop 3rd & 27, don’t let the ball travel 27 yards in the air, the same reason you should not let the QB get the ball into the end zone on a Hail Mary. By rushing 4 and sitting back, you’re allowing the QB to throw the ball to the line to gain and then praying that whoever is in coverage makes a play on the ball. I hate that against any team, but against a team with Justin Freaking Jefferson, trusting your guys to go up and make a play is crazy. I’d so much rather rush 5-6, make Mullens get it out, and then make a prompt tackle after 10-12 yards than give him the opportunity to put the ball where Jefferson can make a play on it.
It stood out even more in this game because the Lions’ blitzes had a lot of success disrupting Mullens. Meanwhile, the DL is not disruptive enough on its own right now to apply pressure on a 4 man rush, so not blitzing is inviting the QB to test Detroit’s wobbly secondary, knowing he’ll have time to throw the ball down the field. I hate that and right now what the Lions are doing in these situations isn’t working, so time to change it up. Aaron Glenn’s new blitz packages of the last few weeks look pretty good, I would like to seem them used on 3rd & long too.
The verdict? All in all, not a *good* defensive performance, but I didn’t come away from the re-watch thinking it was abhorrent. The Lions did a number of good things generating pressure off their blitzes and shutting down the runs, and Mullens only completed 61% of his passes. The Vikings weren’t unstoppable, it was more a matter of their big plays being far too explosive than down-to-down dominance. Some of that was the Lions’ roster issues (weakness at CB in particular), some of it was being fooled by play-action/misdirection too easily, some of it was superstars making superstar plays that are hard to stop. The Lions still need help on the DL and at CB in the long term but there weren’t a ton of fundamental coverage breakdowns so I can’t fault coaching or preparation. And to their credit, Lion playmakers made plays too and won the game because of it.
[USA Today]
The Road Ahead
The Lions are now 11-4 and with the division locked up, we can officially turn our attention to seeding. San Francisco’s loss on Christmas Day has re-opened the door for the Lions making a run for the #1 seed, but they need a lot to still go right. The first objective remains beating Dallas on Saturday. If the Lions can go into JerryWorld and win, they have a good chance to be the #2 seed at least, with a credible path to the top spot. They would then need to beat Minnesota at home and have San Francisco lose in Week 18 to the Rams. Not likely, but not impossible.
The most likely outcome remains the #2 or #3 seed, jostling with Philly depending on if the Lions can beat the Cowboys. I still think the likeliest outcome is a loss to the Cowboys and thus the 3-seed, but the Lions can prove me wrong with a win on Saturday (a development I’d be more than happy about). No matter whether the Lions are 2 or 3 in the NFC, the teams they could be facing probably wouldn’t change all that much since the Seahawks and Rams now have the inside lane for the last two wild card spots.
Seattle got back on track with a win over Tennessee in Geno Smith’s return, while the Rams keep playing well and defeated New Orleans. Both teams are 8-7 and a game up on Minnesota/Green Bay/Atlanta/NO, all 7-8. Seattle has Pittsburgh at home and a road game at Arizona and will be favored in both. The Rams have a seeming layup against the Giants followed by the road game at San Francisco. A win in either game for both teams puts them in good position, winning out clinches for both teams. Saints and Falcons play each other so both can’t be 9-8, the same being true for Minnesota/Green Bay. In other words two of the four teams at 7-8 may be 9-8, but it’s possible none will be, in which case one win for LAR/SEA gets them in. If one of the four 7-8 teams wins out, then we could go to tiebreakers. Whew.
DVOA probabilities have Seattle/Rams at ~67% each, Minnesota 31.5%, Packers ~20%, and NO/ATL down below 5%. The Lions have a major hand in this by playing Minnesota in Week 18, with a loss against the Vikes perhaps letting them into the playoffs. No matter who the Lions draw in the first round (assuming no #1 seed), be it Minnesota, Seattle, or Rams (or Packers), the Lions will likely be favored at home, but they will not be easy games. What you expect for the playoffs.
As for Dallas this week, it’s a stiff test. The Cowboys are a bit of a hot and cold team but at their best, they’ve been dominant. Particularly at home, where this game happens to be played. If there’s a path for the Lions, it revolves around getting home in the pass rush against Dak Prescott, forcing a few turnovers again, and then pounding the ball on the ground. The Cowboys’ run defense has shown some signs of vulnerability, so keeping it on the ground and chewing the clock to limit offensive plays that the explosive Dallas offense has to work with is likely the gameplan, as it was against Minnesota this week.
(Graham Glasgow was on that team but then spent three seasons in Denver before returning)