My youngest daughter has zero interest in anything football, but she know the “Bachus” name because of the amount of times I screamed it with an expletive attached. I was not a fan at all.
Backus didn’t have a ton of negative plays, so I’m not sure why you would be screaming it out so much. Here are a few random snippets. I think the longer one perfectly tells the story of who Jeff Backus was.
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I’m contending that he was above average.
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I think the kid will be a very good player. It just may take a year or two of development.
Godser too was good enough
Decker is the superior LT to both Backus and Reiff.
I appreciate Backus for what he provided through the years, but he was the epitome of mediocre. He and Raiola you wouldn’t want to describe as part of the problem, but Decker and Swanson and Ragnow were significant upgrades, stats be damned.
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Jman, you often post things that I was thinking. Something about how he moves, he looks too clumsy and not good in space. I can remember seeing Stenberg’s first few reps in an exhibition game and thinking he’ll NEVER make it. The difference between him and Jonah, drafted a round apart was night and day. And Sorsdal was getting beat the same way. I’d love nothing more to be totally full of sh-- on this.
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Sewell IS the best option at LT.
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We definitely on the same wave length…I hope I’m wrong on this too.
Still don’t get why we didn’t keep Ifedi
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Agree - Starling and Ifedi were the two regrets on the cuts for me.
Backus ranged from average to below average most of his career. It’s the classic case of the stats don’t support what you’re seeing on the field. He allowed a lot of pressure on the QB and run plays for negative yards. Fans nicknamed him backup because he was always getting blown off the ball.
The quotes you provided support just that.
My recollection was him having good and bad games based on who he was facing. When up against a quality player he would get a lot of penalties for holding.
He was just good enough that you kept around because it wasn’t easy to upgrade from him but bad enough that you wanted to.
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It could be an interesting case study to go back in time and analyze Jeff Backus career with a play by play study of him, with everyone seeing each play and taking score as things unfolded. I love that kind of stuff. However, since I have already done the film study on Backus, I know how it ends. The end game is that Backus was not the player many Lions fans seem to “remember.”
The biggest problem with Backus is he played for a team that sucked. He also played for a team that had some issues on the offensive line. The line is 5 separate players, but for whatever reason many people do not seem to attribute line play in 5 different 20% increments. They “feel in their gut” that the left tackle is responsible for 70% of the line play. We had gaping holes at spots on our offensive line, and fans were still convinced that if we upgraded Jeff Backus to a “dominant OT” it would change everything.
I remember all of the same bad moments for Backus that others remember. The only difference is how we “remember” what happened between those moments.
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I didn’t think Backus was good because we ran the West Coast offense. That is a short passing, timing routes, etc. kind of game. So he wasn’t required to hold a block long. Also, our until Stafford, our QBs didn’t hold on to the ball to go through progressions. Joey Harrington usually had one read, then checkdown. And a lot of that was because he had a guy in his face. If PFF were around we’d be able to analyze his wins per pass attempt and really know how bad he was. But, we didn’t.
Steinberg played 4 offensive snaps in his first 2 years. Sorsdal played 31 snaps in his third game at a position he wasn’t practicing in during a game the Lions won. He wasn’t great, but he also wasn’t totally ass. I’ll treat your vibes the same way I’d treat my grandma’s, so have a cookie and watch your soaps.
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Be glad I’m not your grandmas vibes, because if I was I’d kick you out of my basement and make you get a job!
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It’s a strange take that you think I’d want to share your grandma’s basement with you.
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Do you want to tho?
Need to get bunkbeds so we can have all that floor space for activities
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