Welcome to the bye the week. The first quarter of the season is over for the Detroit Lions and it went pretty well. The Lions are 3-1 and share the second best record in the NFC with the Commanders and Seahawks.
There’s been a lot said about the Lions in these first five weeks. Some of it was right, some of it was overreactions and some of it was plain old wrong. Today we’re talking about the last one there with a smidge of the second one. Here’s the three things people are getting wrong about the Lions right now.
The defense is still bad
There’s no question about it, the Lions defense struggled a little bit on Monday night against the Seahawks. The response from some was that the Lions defense hadn’t improved much from last year. That’s just not true.
The struggle against the Seahawks was to be expected. Their offense is one of the very best in the NFL. They’re currently ranked fifth in offensive DVOA. Good offenses are going to find a way against any team. The Seahawks are also eighth in defensive DVOA, but the Lions very good offense still put up 42 points on them. Some things you just can’t stop.
You really have to look at the rest of the schedule to see it. The Lions held the Bucs, who have been scoring points at will on everyone and lead the league in points, to just 20 points. They blanked their run game and kept Baker Mayfield from doing just about anything.
The Rams couldn’t get into the end zone despite Stafford putting up yards and the Cardinals, who had looked really good on offense, couldn’t muster up much at all. Plus they couldn’t get mobile on the Lions with Kyler Murray.
That’s not to say that improvements can’t be made, but the Lions ended the year 13th in defensive DVOA last year. It took them time to get to that point. The worked up from the 20’s. This year they’re already 14th and climbing. If they’re this good already, how good can they be in December and January?
Carlton Davis and Terrion Arnold are as bad as Cameron Sutton and Jerry Jacobs
There’s a lot of stat posting going on right now without looking at any context. If you were to go look at what Davis and Arnold have allowed in terms of catches and yards, you’ll see that that Davis has allowed the second most catches and the second most yards this season. Arnold is 14th in catches allowed and 15th in yards.
There’s some context here that’s getting ignored though. The Lions are shutting down run games right now. Only three teams have allowed fewer rushing yards. That means teams need to pass more on the Lions. The Lions are currently seeing the second most pass attempts in the league.
With all those pass attempts is going to come some catches. It’s just math at this point. If you’re getting thrown on way more than you’re getting run on, you cant expect your corners to just stop everything.
the Vikings are the team that’s currently getting passed on the most and they’re stopping the run too. Nobody is accusing the Vikings defense of being bad and they’ve been worse against the pass game. So what gives with the Lions getting this criticism?
The Lions are getting stops in the pass game. They’ve only allowed four passing touchdowns. This thing is working so far. Again, that doesn’t mean it can’t get better. The Lions should be striving to make sure that it does. It’s not great that the duo has combined for 12 penalties and that’s more than any duo in the league. They’ll get better as the year goes on.
The NFL has figured out Ben Johnson
Calling out people is fun, but calling out yourself is way more fun right? Remember this from just a couples weeks ago?
Lol what was I thinking? While it’s true that the Lions offense had a bit of a struggle getting off the starting block, they have been flying in the last two weeks. The Lions are 7-7 in the red zone in their last two games and Ben Johnson is pulling out hook and ladders and touchdown passes to Jared Goff. The NFL hasn’t figured this guy out yet. I was really wrong and it was awesome that I was wrong.
To be fair to myself, I did say in that story that if they got the red zone thing figured out, they’ be ok. But the NFL still has a long way to go before they can crack the Johnson code.