Week 7 - Lions vs Ravens Post Game Observations

[Just Want A Title]

This was a tough game to watch.  Nothing really worked for the Lions today.  Some it was due to the fact that Ravens played a fantastic game, particularly on defense.  Some of it was bad execution on the field.  Some of it was from problems that have been with the Lions most of the season.  One loss isn't the end of the world but there are some things are concerning going forward.  That said:

Head Coaching:  Sometimes you get kicked in the gut.  I don't think Dan Campbell was horrible during the game but he wasn't perfect either.  Coaches can only do so much when players just don't execute.  However, I think where I could find fault with Dan Campbell is for allowing the team to lose its identity as aggressive and smart football team on both sides of the ball.  This is the second week in a row where penalties have become a problem.  Even Special Teams has gotten a bit sloppy.  He needs to get his staff to make better adjustments and get his players back to playing smart as well as disciplined football.  

 Ben Johnson:  This is the first time I can recall his offense being completely stone-walled and manhandled.  It seems like the Ravens used the Buccaneers game as blueprint/starting point to shut down the Lions offense.  The Ravens seemed to know what was coming on every play.  I can't remember ever being critical of the O-Line but they got their back-sides handed to them for the second week in a row.  The Ravens played exactly like you would expect them to play right from the outset.  There were no adjustments, no answers and no production until the game was way out-of-reach.  I would say the blocking schemes need some significant changes.  Last week might have been Ben Johnson's best game as the Lions OC but this was his poorest outing.   The offense wasn't very aggressive and he seems to have had a tough time finding anything to work against the Ravens even with a Josh Reynolds, ARSB, Jahmyr Gibbs and ARSB healthy.  It happens to all coaches but business-as-usual isn't going to bring the offense back to the level we have gotten used to seeing.

Aaron Glenn:  Much like Ben Johnson, he went from having a great game last week to a really bad game this week.  The same problems that have hung around the defense reared their ugly head today.  The zone coverages were way too soft and let Lamar Smith make a lot of easy completions.  The D-Line didn't do a good job of putting pressure on Lamar Jackson.  Their "containment" strategy was too passive.  Most of the D-Line stayed engaged in hand-fighting way too long and seemed to think that was more important than getting off their blocks and locating the ball.  It was eerily reminiscent of the Seahawks game where most of the D-Line played like 3-4 D-Lineman whose focus is to tie up blockers.  Maybe I am wrong but Aaron Glenn's background in 3-4 defenses and this pattern of having our D-Line play like 3-4 D-Lineman is becoming problematic.  Maybe some scheme changes should be considered

Offense:

Jared Goff-This was the first game where the pressure he has been facing affected his game.  He has been under significantly more pressure this year and today it finally became a problem.  He was clearly frustrated and at times seemed like he was pressing quite a bit.  Still, it could have been a lot worse considering how much pressure he was under.

O-Line-  The O-Line wasn't great today.  For the 2nd week in a row they got punched in the mouth by a very stout D-Line and didn't have much of a response.  Big V was back in the line-up at LG and the O-Line still got man-handled.  Maybe it is the blocking schemes.  Maybe its something else.  There is clearly something not right with the O-Line right now.

Penei Sewell-  I have mentioned the inconsistent play of Penei Sewell before and it was a lot more obvious today.  He isn't playing like the Pro Bowl tackle people were hyping in the off-season.  My personal opinion:  He has gained too much weight and that has neutralized his athleticism and movement skills.  He isn't moving and adjusting nearly as well as he was last year and is too reliant on brute strength.  Maybe he is playing through an injury but it doesn't look that way.  Not sure what is going with that

Craig Reynolds- He had a couple of nice runs and did exactly what your #2RB should do

Jahmyr Gibbs-He might have been the lone bright spot for the offense.  Some of it came when the game was out of reach but he made plays when he was given a chance.  His wheel-route for a nice gain was good to see.  His late TD-run was really good also.  It may not have made a difference to day but those are the types of live-game reps that may make a big difference later-on.

Jameson Williams- I don't know what to think.  He had problems getting open for most of the game.  Nothing Ben Johnson did today really worked so maybe it isn't all on him.  The first "drop" shouldn't be called a drop because Rock Ya Sin basically tomahawk-chopped his right forearm before the ball arrived.  That was a horrible missed PI call.  The second drop was him having difficulty to adjusting to the ball.  The Ravens played very physical football.  It seems like he may be having difficulty adjusting to the strength and physicality of NFL-Level DBs.  It is mostly in his head and hopefully he can grow from a game like this.

Defense:

- Aidan Hutchinson was in the backfield a lot and creating pressures but not getting home for sacks.  Yes, he gets held a lot.  However, there are still times when he gets too far upfield and doesn't seem to transition to a different line-of-attack if his initial pass-rush is stopped. In his defense, he isn't getting much help from anyone with respect to pass-rush though

- I don't know what happened at the beginning of the season but Isaiah Buggs has been our most disruptive DT so far this year.  He is having a pretty good season so far.  

- Alim McNeil is back to being very good at tying up his blocker but not getting off his block in-time to make a play.  That was his MO for most of last year.  For two games out of seven was the disruptive 3-technique DT we have been hearing about but he definitely wasn't crashing the pocket today.  He seems to be frequently playing too high and getting stood-up before he can affect the pocket.  What is interesting is that the reason for not activating Brodric Martin was that he is still playing "too high".  Given the inconsistent and sometimes lackluster play of our interior D-Lineman, it seems like Brodric Martin should be getting live reps sooner rather than later.  His size and length can compensate for a lot of "pad-level" issues.

- Romeo Okwara made a nice play early to force a grounding penalty early.  It was good to see but we need to see more of that along with actually hitting the QB.

- Kirby Joseph made some decent plays to prevent long plays from scoring but his play isn't exactly jumping off the tape right now.  

- Alex Anzalone, Jack Campbell and Derrick Barnes seemed to take a step back today.  Lamar Jackson burned them on a number of blitzes and made it look easy.

- Cam Sutton had a decent game but I think the soft-zone coverage that the Lions played today kind of limited his effectiveness

Special Teams:

- Jack Fox made a couple of nice punts today.  He is under-used due to the aggressiveness of the Lions offense but he is really good helping win the field position battle.

- We had some good returns to day and it seems like we have been close to breaking one for a while.  It was a solid day in the Return Game.

- We had an uncharacteristically dumb penalty on special teams.  Whatever is caused folks to lose focus today affected Special Teams also

 

The Lions took a tough loss today but it isn't the end of the world.  They were playing on the road for the second straight week without a couple of key starters.  I might be wrong but I think the physical demands from the Bucs game carried over to this week.   A lot of players seemed a bit flat.  The Lions have had a good season but they are still a very young team.   I suspect that showed up a little bit today.  The O-Line and D-Line have a little bit of soul-searching to do.  The most important thing they need to do is bury this game and not let it affect their confidence going forward.  Still, when you lose like that it shouldn't be "business as usual" for the next game. 

 

 

 

Edited October 22, 2023 by Just Want A Title

[detfan782004]

Hope they are humbled. 
 

They need CB, Pass rush, WR and RB depth.

 

This team has a lot more holes in the second tier of their depth chart that people thought.

 

[Sllim Pickens]

The O line was bad, and Goff was what he always has been when he isn’t protected.  Some of that is scheme related and knowing how Baltimore attacks and having plays designed to take advantage of their aggressive style. Some of that is just bad O line play and bad decision making by Goff.  Either way, we didn’t make adjustments and that’s on the coaching staff.  We also didn’t make plays when we had opportunities.  It was a tough game for everyone on offense and will chalk it up as an outlier for now, but nervous that we become inconsistent.  
 

The defensive scheme was disheartening today. We ran a zone, likely to contain Jackson which we really didn’t do.  We got pressure, couldn’t get home, and can’t expect our back end to cover for 8 seconds.  We have to bring pressure and we have to make the plays when we get our hands on him.  Sitting back is a good way to let Lamar pick you apart. We have struggled with mobile QBs with this system and need to make adjustments since we likely will see them in the playoffs with Hurts, Dak, and maybe Lamar/Mahomes/Allen.  
 

Im having a hard time blaming one position group or player, in general this was just a bad game all around and the blame should be spread out.  My hope is that this was a one time deal, we are humbled, and come out strong next week.  If we let this linger and grow, it could ruin a promising season. 

[Just Want A Title]

47 minutes ago, Sllim Pickens said:

The O line was bad, and Goff was what he always has been when he isn’t protected.  Some of that is scheme related and knowing how Baltimore attacks and having plays designed to take advantage of their aggressive style. Some of that is just bad O line play and bad decision making by Goff.  Either way, we didn’t make adjustments and that’s on the coaching staff.  We also didn’t make plays when we had opportunities.  It was a tough game for everyone on offense and will chalk it up as an outlier for now, but nervous that we become inconsistent.  
 

The defensive scheme was disheartening today. We ran a zone, likely to contain Jackson which we really didn’t do.  We got pressure, couldn’t get home, and can’t expect our back end to cover for 8 seconds.  We have to bring pressure and we have to make the plays when we get our hands on him.  Sitting back is a good way to let Lamar pick you apart. We have struggled with mobile QBs with this system and need to make adjustments since we likely will see them in the playoffs with Hurts, Dak, and maybe Lamar/Mahomes/Allen.  
 

Im having a hard time blaming one position group or player, in general this was just a bad game all around and the blame should be spread out.  My hope is that this was a one time deal, we are humbled, and come out strong next week.  If we let this linger and grow, it could ruin a promising season. 

This was definitely a team loss.  Coaches made some questionable decisions for sure.  However, there were some pretty clear execution mistakes.  The coaches can't play the game for them.  

One thing I mentioned was the lingering effects of a very physical Buccaneers game.  They changed their Wednesday practice to a walk-through to help with the various health issues.  I suspect a lot of players were pretty beat-up after that game.  Especially on the O-Line.

[Just Want A Title]

57 minutes ago, Sllim Pickens said:

The O line was bad, and Goff was what he always has been when he isn’t protected.  Some of that is scheme related and knowing how Baltimore attacks and having plays designed to take advantage of their aggressive style. Some of that is just bad O line play and bad decision making by Goff.  Either way, we didn’t make adjustments and that’s on the coaching staff.  We also didn’t make plays when we had opportunities.  It was a tough game for everyone on offense and will chalk it up as an outlier for now, but nervous that we become inconsistent.  
 

The defensive scheme was disheartening today. We ran a zone, likely to contain Jackson which we really didn’t do.  We got pressure, couldn’t get home, and can’t expect our back end to cover for 8 seconds.  We have to bring pressure and we have to make the plays when we get our hands on him.  Sitting back is a good way to let Lamar pick you apart. We have struggled with mobile QBs with this system and need to make adjustments since we likely will see them in the playoffs with Hurts, Dak, and maybe Lamar/Mahomes/Allen.  
 

Im having a hard time blaming one position group or player, in general this was just a bad game all around and the blame should be spread out.  My hope is that this was a one time deal, we are humbled, and come out strong next week.  If we let this linger and grow, it could ruin a promising season. 

With respect to Jared Goff, I don't think it was just today's pass rush that had him rattled.  He has been taking a lot more shots this year, some of them pretty big.  In his defense, He was sacked, hit and pressured a lot today.  That would have rattled a lot of QBs.

[Sllim Pickens]

9 hours ago, Just Want A Title said:

With respect to Jared Goff, I don't think it was just today's pass rush that had him rattled.  He has been taking a lot more shots this year, some of them pretty big.  In his defense, He was sacked, hit and pressured a lot today.  That would have rattled a lot of QBs.

He has taken shots all year and still been great all year.  And he had not been hit and pressured like he was yesterday prior to this.  Our O line and the scheme let him down yesterday.  But he didn't help the cause by holding onto the ball so long. 

[Lions017]

With this game and the Seattle game it really felt like we were out-coached. Baltimore had an answer for absolutely everything that we were throwing at them and knew exactly how to take advantage of our defense. 

Sometimes that happens, but it was troubling to see. 

[Sllim Pickens]

2 hours ago, Lions017 said:

With this game and the Seattle game it really felt like we were out-coached. Baltimore had an answer for absolutely everything that we were throwing at them and knew exactly how to take advantage of our defense. 

Sometimes that happens, but it was troubling to see. 

Thats my biggest issue/concern.  The SEA game we got out coached but we were in that game at least.  This one we were out coached and gave up.  There didn't seem to be any adjustments, we just kept doing what wasn't working on both sides all game long.  The short passing game seemed to disappear, which is crazy when playing a blitz heavy team.  Why do we not have a couple routes 2-4 yards down field to take advantage of the holes left by blitzers?  It just felt like our old coaching issues which we showed at New England last year in a similar beat down.  I get losing and making coaching mistakes, but being out coached in a beat down like this is just nerving.  Like the hype in the media and around the league was too much for our coaches to deal with and they crumbled.  They can't do that in the playoffs when we are in new territory for this staff and the city.  there will be a lot of outside pressure.  

[Just Want A Title]

3 hours ago, Lions017 said:

With this game and the Seattle game it really felt like we were out-coached. Baltimore had an answer for absolutely everything that we were throwing at them and knew exactly how to take advantage of our defense. 

Sometimes that happens, but it was troubling to see. 

There is some truth to that.  However, every time that has happened the coaching staff seems to respond.  The timing of the loss has some silver linings:

1.  It has no effect on our post-season chances (unlike the Carolina loss)

2.  It happened early in the season allowing the team to absorb the lessons (hopefully) and understand what it takes to go from good to great

3.  It didn't happen in the playoffs

Edited October 23, 2023 by Just Want A Title

[Sllim Pickens]

36 minutes ago, Just Want A Title said:

There is some truth to that.  However, every time that has happened the coach staff seems to respond.  The timing of the loss has some silver linings:

1.  It has no effect on our post-season chances (unlike the Carolina loss)

2.  It happened early in the season allowing the team to absorb the lessons (hopefully) and understand what it takes to go from good to great

3.  It didn't happen in the playoffs

1. It does effect post season chances.  Any loss does.  We may be in a decent lead for the division but anyone could do what we did last year so any loss could have an impact on the playoffs, we just aren't as aware of that impact at the moment. And it also effects post season standings for potential home games in the playoffs.  

The other two make sense 

[Just Want A Title]

51 minutes ago, Sllim Pickens said:

1. It does effect post season chances.  Any loss does.  We may be in a decent lead for the division but anyone could do what we did last year so any loss could have an impact on the playoffs, we just aren't as aware of that impact at the moment. And it also effects post season standings for potential home games in the playoffs.  

The other two make sense 

The primary factors for our path the playoffs are division wins and conference wins.  Look at some of the teams that got into playoffs last year with their so-so records.  If we control our division that gets us in the playoffs.  Overall record will come into play on whether or not we get a first week bye but this team just needs to get there.  I will say that one benefit of getting a first-week bye in the playoffs is an increased chance of seeing CJGJ back on the field.

[Lions017]

The NFC stinks this year. 9 wins is going to be enough to get into the playoffs this year. 

[Just Want A Title]

One thing to consider about coaching is that a fair number of really good coaches have taken some tough losses on their path to winning a Super Bowl.  Andy Reid was questioned a lot in in Philadelphia and even had some of the same questions prior to Patrick Mahomes taking the reins on offense.  Bill Belichick got fired in Cleveland before he signed on to the Patriots.  Pete Carrol took his lumps when he was HC for the Patriots and made a pretty questionable call at the end of his last Super Bowl Appearance.  Success is in the NFL as well as anywhere else is rarely a straight line.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Just Want A Title

[Sllim Pickens]

1 hour ago, Just Want A Title said:

The primary factors for our path the playoffs are division wins and conference wins.  Look at some of the teams that got into playoffs last year with their so-so records.  If we control our division that gets us in the playoffs.  Overall record will come into play on whether or not we get a first week bye but this team just needs to get there.  I will say that one benefit of getting a first-week bye in the playoffs is an increased chance of seeing CJGJ back on the field.

Yes, tie breakers for the division are division wins and conference wins, but making the playoffs is based on your win loss record.  We should be ok and control our division, but bottom line is that any loss effects your ability to make the playoffs.   Every year there are teams that start hot and fall off.  This could trigger a few game skid, that happens often in the NFL.  So losing any game is bad, but it is also expected throughout the year.  Nobody just skates through the NFL, as seen by New England beating Buffalo yesterday.  

[Just Want A Title]

12 minutes ago, Sllim Pickens said:

Yes, tie breakers for the division are division wins and conference wins, but making the playoffs is based on your win loss record.  We should be ok and control our division, but bottom line is that any loss effects your ability to make the playoffs.   Every year there are teams that start hot and fall off.  This could trigger a few game skid, that happens often in the NFL.  So losing any game is bad, but it is also expected throughout the year.  Nobody just skates through the NFL, as seen by New England beating Buffalo yesterday.  

100% agree