The Detroit Lions are not a perfect team. Not even close.
This should not come as a surprise to anyone, yet it’s an hourly struggle to plow through social media and comment sections without coming across scathing criticism of the Lions as if they’re in need of being relegated to the UFL.
Dan Campbell should be fired, Aaron Glenn should be punished, Jared Goff should pay back his salary, Terrion Arnold should have his hands cut off, Ben Johnson should find a different circus to ruin, Taylor Decker should be exiled to a dirt pit in Ohio, Aidan Hutchinson should be publicly shamed for not getting a sack on every dropback, Jake Bates should be relegated back to the UFL.
And that’s all after a win…
The Lions have two of those wins after three games, including Sunday’s hard-fought 20-13 battle in Arizona. Detroit has played two 2023 playoff teams, beating the Rams and falling to the Buccaneers. It has not been a pretty path to 2-1.
The offense is not meeting expectations. Detroit entered Week 3 ranked 16th in scoring offense and that will likely slide after “only” scoring 20 against the Cardinals. There have been ponderous game-management and play-calling decisions from both head coach Dan Campbell and offensive coordinator Ben Johnson that have left more meat on the bone than was widely anticipated. The Lions offense has finished in the top five in both yards and points two years in a row, after all.
There is more than one way to win a game, of course. Sure, the sizzling offense outscoring the opponent with panache and as many style points as actual points was a very fun way to win 12 of them in 2023. But these Lions are not the same team as last season.
No team is, to be blunt. The team that beat the Lions in the NFC Championship game, the San Francisco 49ers, blew a huge lead and lost to the shell of the Rams team the Lions beat in Week 1. San Francisco is now 1-2. So are the Dallas Cowboys after getting run out of their own building by the heretofore winless Baltimore Ravens. That Ravens-Cowboys game was billed by the NFL’s own network as a potential Super Bowl preview during the week, lofty hype for a battle that left both teams 1-2.
Teams that entered the week 0-2 went 6-1 today. #Bengals and Jaguars take 0-2 records into Monday night.
— Jay Morrison (@ByJayMorrison) September 22, 2024
The point is, it’s way too early in a season to make any definitive proclamations about the Lions–or any team. Heck, the Carolina Panthers blew out the Raiders in Las Vegas to get their first win, and Carolina was a universal No. 32 of 32 in the post-Week 2 power rankings.
Nothing is as awesome, nor as terrible, as it might seem at this early juncture of the season for any NFL team. The Lions are a great example. They just beat the high-flying Cardinals offense with great pass coverage, smart tackling, and playmakers like Aidan Hutchinson, Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph making key plays in critical moments. That’s not how the 2023 Lions won games.
Things change weekly in the NFL, often radically. One of the reasons so many of us have ebullient confidence in the 2024 Detroit Lions is that they are capable of winning games in more than one way. They can roll with the changes, surfing the weekly waves and fluctuations that trip up more one-dimensional teams.
Detroit’s defense is better–quite a bit better in coverage and at finishing in the backfield than they have been at any point under coordinator Aaron Glenn. That’s a very positive development and one that doesn’t appear to be unsustainable with this upgraded personnel. Could they get more pressures, sacks, takeaways, third-down stops? Absolutely. There isn’t a football team at any level that can’t do better at all of those things.
The offense has fallen back, and it’s for a variety of reasons. Those reasons include–but are not limited to a shuffled guard situation, opposing defenses having a much better grasp of Ben Johnson’s scheme, Johnson’s questionable plans of attack, new wide receivers in different roles, and Jared Goff starting slowly. Yet they’ve also shown the ability to run at will, and the strong line and diversity of weaponry across the offense means they’ll be a tough unit to keep down for long.
It’s not always pretty or as easy as expected. It’s not supposed to be. That’s football–and that’s life. Right now, life as a Lions fan should feel pretty darn good in the grand scheme of the NFL, all imperfections and flaws included.