Lots of talk about the defense, it’s terrible one week and quite good the next, so here are the stats from the last 13 games.
The pick 6 Goff threw against the Seahawks hasn’t been counted. Rankings are in brackets and are based on league stats for 2022 and projected for a full 17 games.
Points - 258 - 19.8 per game (5th)
TDs - 30 - 2.3 per game (12th)
Yards - 4,613 - 355 per game (25th)
Turnovers - 18 - 1.4 per game (14th)
Pass Yards - 2,990 - 230 per game (23rd)
Pass TDs - 18 (15th)
Interceptions - 11 (13th)
Completion % - 59.7% (2nd)
Yards per attempt - 7.3 (30th)
Yards per completion - 12.2 (32nd)
Passer rating - 85.5 (12th)
Sacks - 36 - 2.8 per game (7th)
Rush Yards - 1,623 - 125 per game (21st)
Rush TDs - 11 (14th)
Yards per carry - 4.9 (27th)
Forced fumbles - 11
Fumble recoveries - 7
3rd down makes - 40% (21st)
4th down makes - 50% (16th)
It’s a real mixed bag. 2nd in completion % but 30th in pass yards per attempt is pretty crazy, but explained by the yards per completion, which is 0.7 yards worse than the next worst team.
All the yardage rankings are bad, but most of the rest are quite good, which adds up to being 5th in points, which is the most important stat at the end of the day.
Honestly, in today’s football, short passes are a big part of every NFL teams game plan…I think our WR’s just aren’t the kind of players to get yards after the catch. The one deep pass to Khaliff was there, JG just over threw him.
Im gonna be not so popular here, but ARSB is not a big play guy. They have a big need for that kind of guy.
They can get sustained drives with big plays in large part to Ben and Jared, but if we are being reeallly honest, until Jamo turns into something, the WR group is very very meh.
I don’t think that’s controversial at all. Doesn’t mean he’s not very good. But he’s not going to catch too many balls 20+ yds downfield and he’s not gonna add a ton of RAC. That 40+ yarder he fumbled last game - it took a PERFECT pass from Goff to land that one cause ARSB ain’t running away from anyone downfield. Honestly, you look at his obvious physical attributes - neither big/powerful nor fast - and it’s amazing he’s as good as he is.
Wut? We lost three shootouts but what’s the logic that says we can’t win one? Any offense potent enough to have non-fluky 40+ can win a high-scoring game, especially now that the D is improved from a year ago.
Plus, once Jamo returns, and if Ben and Jared can figure out how to give them chances to do damage, that’ll be two big-play guys we basically didn’t have last year.
I was just responding to what the others said. Sorry, @Slay.
As for the defensive stats - yeah, they’re all over the place. #5 in pts scored is obviously excellent, but in light of the others I think it suggests the Lions have been lucky.
More to the point, I dunno that going 13 games back tells us much about the current defense. W/CJGJ injured we might never get to see the full starting defense Holmes tried to assemble, but that defense featured (at least) six new starters compared to the end of 2022: CJGJ, Sutton, Moseley, Barnes, Harris, Branch. Even without CJGJ and Moseley seeing the field at the same time, that’s half our starters turning over - and Alim and Hutch should be BETTER this year.
My take is the obvious one: we just don’t know what we have yet, except that on the basis of personnel improvements alone the ceiling on this D is much higher than last year’s D.
We are right in-between where SOL would absolutely tell us what would happen with those 3 data points and where BNL could mayyybe flex it’s 2nd round power and shut that noise down…