Yeah, the Lions made a mistake not anticipating Rags’ retirement, though to be fair, they shouldn’t have expected his abysmal timing. Nobody’s perfect. Looks like they’ve learned, given the attention they gave to the OL this offseason.
But you shouldn’t (because it can’t be done effectively) plan for the devastatingly historic rate of injuries that occurred on the defense the last few years. That’s what deep-sixed the '24 campaign, and kept us out of the playoffs in '25, despite the inconsistencies of the OL.
Two of the top-ten injury rates for the century, yet the only two teams to post winning records. They’re still doing something right.
Anyone who refuses to acknowledge the terrible injury luck of the past two years is hard to take seriously.
We are pretty much done with this haha. But just one last point i wanted to make…
Even if I am presented with all the information in a tournament i still don’t take every spot where i am a statistical favorite. Lets say I am certain you have two over cards and i have a pair, call it 77. Im a ~55% favorite. Now if its for 25% my stack…I’ll take that shot. But if its for 100% my stack…I’m out. Unless we are super deep and the tournament is nearing its end. You dont have to win too many more coinflip scenarios to win that tournament.
That’s what i mean as other factors. And it applies to a football game as well. Going for it with 5 minutes in the 4th at your own 30 is the right decision. Because of how little time is left and because it puts your best unit on the field to end the game regardless of what my opponent does. Now if there were 2 minutes to go…I’m punting. The game is over if I lose that singular decision. Despite me being a statistical favorite…
Yeah I hear you. That’s one way of looking at it. But I guess for me it’s a bit semantics really. Philosophy as you say. Either way you’re trying to get a 1st down. The goal is to hopefully not be in third and long to begin with I would think. I mean given all odds, if you have 1st and 10, why would you want to strategically be planning for a 3rd and long in a manner so that you’re looking forward to a 4th and 2? You kind would not wanna be in that position to begin with I would think. Especially if that 1st and 10 starts on your own 5 yard line right?
So it’s an “it all depends” type of decision and the main factors are probably time, score and field position not necessarily in that order.
I guess for me, fourth down is more about either or both wanting to create momentum shifts and or dealing with crisis management. Sometimes maybe to seal a nail in a coffin too. At least that’s how I would approach it. I would prefer to be winning or beating someone else’s ass outright so I don’t have to get into 4th down risk analysis or analytics. You sleep better at night.
I’m not sure how many SB teams and coaches have been successful to this point using the DC strategy of football. Maybe he’ll start a new trend. You do see other teams using the strategy a lot more now. Sometimes I think it’s more about bravado though and pride. When it works it’s great. When it don’t work well it don’t work!
I posted here mostly to converse on the nature of consistent inconsistency and how it relates to success. My only comment on the 4th downs is solely in relation to how it was used as more a motivational type thing when the Lions sucked and I commend them for trying it. I have no guarantee that there was any strategy for using it at that time though. Maybe Dan just literally had nothing to lose and it just happened to work in his favor. The right place right time.
I wonder what the numbers say on his 4th down success over time though. That might be a more objective way of looking at his success or not.
Yes, they’re a playoff caliber team right now. They’d be the 6 seed.
If the playoffs started right now, they’d win one or two games, based on the skill on offense, but the inconsistency of the re-formed line with Mays taking over at center, and coupled with the demonstrated improvement on defense the last two games.
Thankfully, there’s still another 11 games for the OL to rebuild their chemistry – we should see them fully executing by the Tampa game. There’s still another 11 games for the defense to improve their communication and assignments. There’s still time for Kerby to possibly get back into the game (still a low probability for that, though).
They certainly have the pieces to go all the way this year.
Even so, you have to be very confident that you will be able to grow your stack faster without the extra risk of making that call. And if your skill is that great you are probably better off at cash games anyway
Keep in mind though. The Lions actually had more success when they were injured more heavily on defense when AG was still here vs last year. AG worked way more magic with a lot more injuries than Shep had last year. Shep had Hutch back and a whole draft class of new players. So there’s no excuse there is there?.. We also don’t have any major injuries this year on offense that I know of. You have all your skill players that have been playing together for 4 years now. One new right tackle. A vet center. You also have a failed coordinator last year and a new one this year. So it’s not just about injuries.
Well, sure, because in football it’s not the odds of success, it’s win probability. That 50/50 call on 4th down wasn’t the odds of us getting it, it’s the final win probability after factoring in every single domino effect. So it DOES try to take other factors into account, but no metric is perfect.
Now you can argue for sure that in poker - tourney or cash game - the win probability is what’s influencing whether you take the 60-40 chance, but my stance is it doesn’t land appreciably against it except in niche scenarios listed above.
In this situation – halfway through the 4th quarter, down by 14, and you’ve just scored a touchdown – ff you’re going by game flow, on your sense of how you and your opponents are playing at the time, then you should go for it some times and not go for it other times. I’d lean towards going for it, given you’ve just scored and have momentum on your side, but it depends.
If you’re honoring game flow, what would be incorrect would be to say, “Always go for it” or “Never go for it.” In which case, you probably don’t have a leg to stand on for criticizing Dan’s decision tree. Notice he doesn’t say, “The analytics said I should go for it,” he’s going by a much more numinous process (the only process that can incorporate game flow) that’s expressed by, “I thought we’d make it, and if we didn’t, I thought we’d still get the ball back.”
In '24, both sides had the same coordinators for 3+ years. There was consistency in that aspect. Also, remember that it took the vaunted '24 team four weeks to find themselves on offense. They scored 26, 16, and 20 points the first three games, with 6 of those points coming in overtime. New pieces to the OL, took a minute to gel.
In '25, you’ve got new coordinators, it’s like being back in 101-level college classes. And by midseason the entire starting secondary was out – unlike the '24 campaign, where it wasn’t an entire room.
This year we’ve got a very new OL. Miller’s a rookie, Tate’s a sophomore, Mahogany is essentially a sophomore, the center is brand new, and Sewell on the left side. And now we’ve got a new center again. And a new coordinator. It’s gonna take another minute for them to find themselves. And yet the offense is still scoring a ton of points. They should be inconsistent now, and they should be a lot more polished in about another month.
You’ve also got a defense that tried to implement a new system, with several new pieces throughout the defense, with a sophomore coordinator, and it sucked. Now they’ve adjusted schematically, they’ve got BB back, and they just put up their best performance to date – which still has much room for improvement.
Like you say, let’s see what they do in the coming weeks.
I say, we have reason to be optimistic; we have reason to set certain expectations (hitting on all cylinders by the time we return from Germany), as long as we’re not completely devastated by injury again.
And this is now obviously the issue. Analytical models have to have some Touchstone to the reality of your own team and their performance in the moment as well as the opponent as well as the down and distance situations. This is why strict percentages are absolutely irrelevant and as false of a number as a average is for any measurement of anything in the world.
Problem is what’s going on in our head coach’s head as he synthesizing the art part of the Danalytics Revolution is this;
4TH AND GOAL FROM THE 20 AFTER WE JUST HAD 2 PRE SNAP PENALTIES???!!!
I was going to make this point in a similar post, when you talked about Dan’s experiences, Dan’s experiences are skewed. His experiences are based on having a team with an elite performing OL as was the case in 2023-2024. However, we no longer have that OL. So to make decisions based on information that’s now 2-3 years old and what worked then, it’s not relevant to 2026.
Now, we could argue that Dan is wanting to get the OL up to speed as quickly as possible and believes in trial by fire is the best teaching tool. If that’s the case, then it is what it is, I think it’s asking too much of the OL and putting WAY too much stress on the defense if the offense falters, but I am not the coach.
The best part of life is there is no one way to do things. There are multiple right ways and multiple wrong ways, and millions of variables in between. I still think this offense has it’s best football ahead of them, but I don’t want our record to be so far back that when we do hit our stride, we’ve already been eliminated. Divisional play cost us the playoffs last year, so if I see decisions being made that can lose us divisional games, yeah, I’m going to comment on it. It’s better than dealing with work issues.
Those numbers are incredibly deceiving with some big context needed. Don’t you remember how decrepit those rosters they took over were after the Fatty Patty era? They went from the outhouse to almost the penthouse in 3 years.
Year 1 - 3-13 but lots of close losses
Year 2 - 9-8 and one of the hottest teams in the league to end the season
Year 3 - 12-5 and within a whisker of making the Super Bowl. One of the quickest and impressive turnarounds in league history
Year 4 - 15-2 and one of the best teams in history by many metrics undone by a historical amount of injuries
Year 5 - 9-8 in a step back season due to many factors beyond their control from coaching turnover to untimely retirements to, again, a rash of injuries or key players just returning from serious injuries
Year 6 - 4-2. Tbd but they’re in the thick of the playoff race.
As I said before, they haven’t been perfect but Holmes and Campbell have done things for this franchise that nobody ever has and this still a young team with plenty of good years left in it. If you can find some better available replacements for these two then I’m all ears because I’m not seeing it
I’ve already said it’s clear they’re going to have this year and next year. But bottom line is that they’ve won Playoff games in one season so far.
One.
I am 98.3% sure that that will change this year, but as you say they have raised the bar. This is a good thing but it’s also something that comes with an expiration date if it’s clear that the investment in Talent level isn’t matching the results in the win-loss column in the playoffs.
Buffalo finally figured that out probably a year too late this past off season
But again there’s context needed. The first two seasons don’t count in terms of playoff expectations because it was a massive rebuild project so we basically have Years 3, 4 and 5. Year 3 they won two playoff games, Year 4 they had a tremendous year completely detailed by an incredible amount of injuries then Year 5 which was another set of unfortunate circumstances so they aren’t really that far removed from when they were Super Bowl contenders.
I agree that this is a key year after missing the playoffs last year because as you said the bar has been raised partially because Brad and Dan were so damn good and turned this around so damn fast to a level that none of us could have ever imagined especially that quickly so lets see where this goes. If they miss the playoffs this year I think the seats might get a little warm but we’ll cross that bridge if it, unfortunately, comes.
I don’t think that’ll be the case this stretch after the bye is five out of six games at home, with the only Road game being in Miami. Now one of the home games is in Germany, but I think that may end up feeling like a home game given Saint Brown’s heritage.
I think the worst they come out of the six game Run is 4 and 2 and it surely could be five and one. Four and two gets them to seven and four and I think it’ll be difficult to miss the playoffs at that point, given they have Tennessee at home and then 5 games they should be in til the end.
So if your in a tournament and your dealt Q’s, you raise say on the button 4BB’s, the big blind comes over the top with a 3 bet to put you all in. You say you are folding?
Odds are still 55%.
personally I am not if it is early and my stack is such that the player has put me all in. It means I am most likely under the average stack so I need to take that risk to double up. Now if I am already in the money I may look at where the payouts are and decide that a pay jump is worth more than those 55% odds of doubling up. So game situation matters
Anyways, back to the game situation, the Packers had 9 drives (excluding the half ending one play), they got into FG range on 6 of them. So odds say if Dan punts on the 4th down the packers again get into FG range and game is over. This is taking into consideration the game flow and what has transpired on this particular Sunday. Much like you are describing about the poker analogy, you must read the game as it flows. The football game much like Poker has it’s ebbs and flows and you have to adjust your game as it changes
I’m talking about his years of experience as a player, and in particular the feeling of helplessness as the other team controls the ball until the clock strikes zero.
Of course even this is skewed.
I think he would rather, at the fourth quarter two-minute warning, be down seven but have the ball, than to be up seven but not have the ball. He would theoretically have more control of the former situation.
The poker analogies to me are very fair and valid. There are percentages assigned to every starting hand to give you the best chance to win. It will never guarantee a result, because even the best possible starting hand loses over 10% of the time.
I think the real intruguing part becomes, is your goal to stay in the tournament as long as possible? Or is to win the tournament? I guarantee you, every single player who has ever won a tournament won it by playing hands that they had no business winning with. Hence, the gamble. Some of the elite poker players, have hands they’ve won with that their own personal experience had positive results so they keep playing it, while other elite players would never think of playing it and will play another hand they have previously had improbable success with.
I think playing hands strictly by the odds will carry you deeper into tournaments, but not ultimately win you the final prizes. I think people who take big risks will bust out more, but also have a slightly higher percentage to win a full tournament because they are unpredictable.
This is why sports are so interesting. You can do everything right and get the wrong result, you can screw something up and the gods can still smile upon you and lift you up.
Leaving starters in, in blowouts - Living on the edge
I don’t really have an issue with his aggression. Most of the time it’s justified. But when he ran the ball with a minute left in the NFC Championship. That was just dumb. And sometimes he does dumb stuff.
