The Detroit Lions made some truly puzzling moves on Saturday when they only elevated guard Michael Niese for their game against the Bears. When they did that, they left out Bruce Irvin, Michael Schofield and Quinton Bohanna. After Sunday’s game, most of those moves look even worse now.
Let’s start on the interior of defensive line. Quinton Bohanna had been elevated the previous three weeks in a row and started the two previous games. The expectation was that he was going to be added to the Lions active roster and he would start. The team instead went with Isaiah Buggs, Benito Jones and Brodric Martin. It did not go well at all.
Buggs had another pretty bad performance in this one. He graded out at 56.4 for the day per Pro Football Focus. He generated no pressure at all and couldn’t stop the run either. Worst yet, he had one of the lowest tackle grades on the team with 28.9. Guys were running right past him.
Brodric Martin looked better in this outing than he did in the first one, but he only played eight snaps. Benito Jones was good against the run but bad pretty much every where else. He also couldn’t tackle on Sunday. Had a grade of 30 in that department.
On the edge, this might have been Aidan Hutchinson’s worst game of the year. He made a lot of mistakes in this one. The Justin Fields rushing touchdown is clearly the one that everyone will zero in on. I don’t know what he was doing there.
John Cominsky actually had a good game in this one, but he could have used some help. Both Hutchinson and Paschal were bad. Bruce Irvin surely could have helped there. Romeo Okwara only played eight snaps. Julian Okwara played 17. Neither did much on those snaps.
Lastly with Niese. He didn’t play a single snap in this game. Which begs the question of why you would elevate him at all? The Lions also didn’t elevate Michael Scofield for this game. I will say that everything worked out on this end though. Kayode Awosika stepped in at right guard and had a pretty good game across the board. He was good in both pass blocking and run blocking. So the Lions were right on this one. The other two though, I don’t know what they were thinking.