So i think we all knew that the Lions played Man Heavy all year. Fine enough. HOWEVER!
NFL LOWEST! 34% substitution rate?
44% LOWER than what the playoff teams are doing? 30% lower than NFL Average?
8% LOWER THAN THE NEXT LOWEST TEAM!?!? (Raider btw, great company to be in)
And nearly 1/2 the rate the 29th team.
So that means.
The lions DONT change personnel. They stick to man a lot. So opposing offenses know EXACTLY how to beat you. Because there will be no surprises the entire drive.
And don’t anyone blame injuries. Last i checked the SFF are on their 5th string players.
Maybe the Lions couldn’t sub anyone is because there was no one to sub with. Their players were hurt. The defensive starters for most of the season didn’t play. So, they were already playing with their depth. They can’t change personnel.
Some of the same scheme all of the time is due to once again, GUYS GETTING HURT. They couldn’t practice anything else. You never knew who was gonna be playing week to week.
Didn’t you watch the games? Or did you look up spreadsheets to fit a narrative of someone who doesn’t watch games. Or, maybe you don’t know what you’re looking at when watching the game. I’m no really sure. But, this is a “not very good” take: In my opinion.
Don’t tell Hutch that! Hutch said it was injuries, and that all they need is the get healthy.
No. This Lions group, ESPECIALLY with regards to the defense, has become undeniably complacent. Even the infamous “we’re good” was about the defense. I think the Lions coaches have fallen in love with their players, and they don’t see where they can do any wrong.
@frm710 posted this thread DetNews: Lions final grades: Defense substandard at multiple levels in 2025
When specifically talking about the defensive line, the Detroit News cited that 15 of the 49 team sacks came from linebackers. The defensive line had the 3rd lowest time to pressure and that Detroit Stat Padford’ed 32 of their sacks against poor OL teams.
Here is my thing. I am glad the Detroit News posted this info, however I will ask it again. WHY is this question NOT asked in the Brad Holmes press conference? They ask about sacks, Holmes replies with his typical “we had 2 guys with 10 sacks, what else do you want?” and there is NO followup on the time that opposing QB’s have, which is the most alarming stat. I’d happily accept 10 less sacks if it meant we were getting legitimate pressure and forcing immediate throw aways.
As far as the scheme, that’s exactly why many of us have said we would not be crushed if Kelvin Shepperd gets the Miami HC job. Truthfully, I think the Lions need to look outside of the building for both OC and DC (if it happens) because they need some new voices in leadership. Continuity is great, but it also can breed complacency. Think of how many times managers dismiss clearly bad behavior or effort with the answer “well, they’ve been here a long time, what do you want me to do?” Simple, I want you to do the job you are paid to do.
Yeah, that’s why I’m on the DE2 train in this draft, not that it will fix everything but adding a stud on the other side from Hutch has the potential to hide some flaws on the back end until we can get everyone back healthy. Even if the rook has growing pains to start, it will surely help.
Disagree. You know what leads to guys getting hurt? Playing them when they are hurt. Sucks Brian Branch hurt his achilles right? How about if I tell you, when you are playing a guy who has been on a bum ankle for weeks, that you contributed to it. Rolling Joseph out over and over when he was clearly hurt, it made his knee worse. Laporta had a back injury, kept playing, how has a herniated disc.
It’s not just the Lions either. Look at the Colts with Daniel Jones. He was playing with a fractured leg, because Indy had nothing else at QB. What happens next? He tears his achilles, on his OTHER leg. That’s called a compensation injury, and it’s what happens when you try to play hurt. You take stress off of the hurt side, and apply even more force to the healthy side. Then the healthy side cannot handle the stress, and something breaks. It’s extremely common, happens all the time in real world or sports world.
Exactly. Remember, during the season Hutch was playing 99-100% of the snaps every game. Towards the end of the year, the Lions FINALLY started spelling him and sitting him for snaps. No one can play football at a high level while gassed, this isn’t a video game. What were Hutch’s own words later? He said he found he could be more effective and played better when he had some time to rest. They finally figured out a simple damn formula. No one can play 100% every single snap. You have to be able to get a rest, and a fresh player can get the better of a gassed player, even if the gassed player is more talented. When we fatigue, mistakes happen.
The coaches coached that Achilles injury on Branch. Achilles happen often to players that have existing issues in that area or are old and getting brittle.
The scheme needs to be modified/changed/improved because it is bad. Just look at the 3rd and long issues.
Stroud looked like he had PTSD last night. That Pitt pash rush was legit.
Typically, we are VERY conservative from this standpoint. More conservative than most teams. I suspect though that since we focus so much on guys who love football, our guys might be under-reporting their pain levels so they can play. I know I used to do that so I wouldn’t miss any time. One time I was seeing triple after an especially hard hit, “nah coach, I’m good.”
Yeah, injuries also happen when players are fatigued. You have less body control, and that means awkward steps and falls and less ability to avoid collisions.
Totally understandable, and admirable on your part. Players want to play. However, coaches carry the responsibility of knowing when a guy is truly good or not.
Look at Daboll. He got fired because he kept throwing Dart to the wolves. I was watching the Chicago game where Dart clearly got knocked unconscious when he fumbled, but Daboll threw him back out there. We all saw the medical tent game. That was coaching malpractice. You always want to win, but you also have a responsibility to protect your players.
I do think the Lions have been conservative with injuries, but I also think this year that some desperation did creep in and guys were thrown back out there. Branch was CLEARLY hobbled by the end of the year. Every snap he was slow to get up, he was burned in coverage because he clearly couldn’t run as fast, the Lions were basically counting on his extreme football awareness to at least keep him in the vicinity. However, he now went from a bad ankle that would have cost him the rest of this season, to losing him for all of next season and impacting his career. The Lions and Branch both own some of that. I think this ultimately shows up in the chart in the OP. The fact the Lions were substituting guys way less than most teams, is what has contributed to the crazy amounts of injuries.
As far as the scheme itself, I think Kelvin Shepperd is more concerned about who he gets on the field, than playing what the offense is doing. My chief example for this is the Kansas City game. Shepperd continually rolled out a base 4-3 defense, despite the fact the Chiefs were going with multiple receivers. Kansas City killed them over and over again because we asked LB’s to cover WR’s, which is coaching malpractice. It’s a mismatch you try to take advantage of and scheme up on offense, but you hardly expect the opposing team to just give you the mismatch up front. Shepperd wanted to roll with our normal front 7, come hell or high water. The real reason I think Shepperd did it is because he knows our secondary is weak, and he didn’t want to take Barnes or Anzalone off of the field. However, asking those guys to cover WR’s was a terrible idea, and as the Chiefs exploited it over and again, he refused to change. That’s one game (of a few) that we lost on coaching. The Chiefs offense this year was piss poor, and we gave up 30 to them.
Here’s some facts. Chiefs offense this year scored 30 points, 3 times. The teams they did it to? Ravens (when their entire defense was hurt), Lions, Raiders. That’s it.
I hear you. Chicken and egg argument. No team will be productive with their 3rd or 4th string guys. Even if they themselves are healthy. If the best player is healthy enough to play, they will play. There is no sitting out because your ankle is hurt. That’s why they get paid hundreds of thousands, and even millions to play this game. That’s what makes these guys modern day Gladiators. Football is a 100% injury sport. EVERY PLAYER is playing with an ailment of some kind. Goff even hits his hands on a helmet and gets dinged up. It’s just a way of life for these guys. I played through college and I can still feel the effects. It’s the culture. Guys’ contracts have built-in incentives based on playing a percentage of plays. Blame the owners. Not the coaches or players. That’s why a player has kinda gotta have a screw or two loose to play this game.
If we dug in deeper I think we would see that a pretty good percentage of the substitutions on defense were Davenport out and AQM in, and Reader out with Lopez in. I mean not many other guys played any level of significant snaps on the front seven, really.
I don’t know what that means. It could mean that they love their guys it could mean that they didn’t feel confident in the backups in the front seven. Could mean they were feeling like they were getting the results they wanted from the front seven. That I can believe up until about halfway ish through the year and then the Run D collapsed, and then that’s the ball game. You can have your defensive tackles not create pressure if they are stuffing the Run game while your ends are getting good pressure, which seem to be the recipe for our success. Along with that obviously are all pro middle linebacker who led the league in run stuffs was doing his job.
We all saw how s***** the Run game was when Branch got hurt. That was a huge loss and none of those replacwment guys played well especially in run defense. And we’re not going to have Branch for maybe half the season? I like both Maddox and Rock, and I hope that both are retained but neither is going to play box safety.
Trying to tie it all together is difficult but while acknowledging injuries, the issues were early down defensive end 2, both defensive tackle spots not creating middle pressure, box safety disappearing and to be honest I don’t know what the hell Barnes does well in this scheme.
I think we were all expecting some kind of use for him more as a flamethrower and running quarterback shadow, but to me he looks a little bigger and slower because they’re trying to make him into a Swiss Army knife, which is apparently what this scheme calls for. So I’m not going to blame him as much as I am the scheme.
If your scheme needs more than two Pro Bowl level players and perfect health to work then it’s a s*** scheme. We have five Pro Bowl level guys on that defense and really only two were healthy all year and one of those was coming back from a gruesome leg injury. If we have five Pro Bowl level guys on defense next year, (but probably only three or 4) to start the season and we are in the same scheme? I’m going to be pissed
Yes, but an ankle injury can be played through generally. Hundreds of guys play through those every year. I used to play basketball with essentially permanently sprained ankles. It’s generally fine, the risk for reinjury is to the ankle and then you just play through it some more. The high ankle sprain sucks, but that’s not what he had. You genuinely can’t play through a high ankle sprain, the pain is too great.
Now the “calf strain” is the one that become the precursor to the achilles tear, and if that’s what he had then yes, we should have sat him. But I really think we would have, our doctor’s aren’t dummies and like I said, we’re generally very conservative when it comes to injury. In that sense I think the achilles tear was like everything else that’s befallen us the past couple of years - really bad luck.
I don’t think it was anything like the Dart stuff. That was simply irresponsible, and we’re not like that at all.
100% agree. I played some sports as well, not for a school, but yeah when you love something you want to keep doing it. However, there does come a point where you can overdo it. Some injuries just require rest. Some injuries you can play through and not make worse, others you can. It’s a tough line to nagivate for sure, but thats where coaches, doctors and trainers also get paid hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars. They know the difference between dinged up and this guy can play, versus no, this is high risk. If the player wants to override it, you have to look at the long term.
I know this is a hindsight argument. If the Lions believed Branch was going to tear his achilles, I don’t believe they have played him. My point is more focused around if you substitute players less, it’s because you aren’t using your whole roster. We all know each snap is wear and tear on a player. The more you can keep them rested, the more you spread out the pain. Standard RB career is 3 years, right? Well if you platoon them, you can stretch it to 5. That’s the idea anyways, reality can always be different. So if you sub less, players have a higher chance of getting hurt, and now the starter caliber players are out and the subs you were trying to avoid playing, become full time players whether you like it or not.
Roster management is a huge part of coaching. We are now in year 2 of massive injuries on defense, and once our starters are out, there is a huge dropoff. San Fran has dealt with massive injuries but still find ways to keep playing. I think a big part of it is, their depth guys are seasoned from having to play so much. Well, that’s roster building. I think the Lions get a little too caught up with playing Hutch every snap because he physically can, and not looking at process of “If we give him a rest, he can play better and we keep him playing at a higher level for longer.” This is the biggest reason I want another DE. I don’t want to replace Hutch. I want him to have help, and I want a rotation to keep the whole DE room fresher. I don’t just want this for DE either. It should be the goal up and down the roster.
It’s funny the narrative was we play man too much and now that the data shows other good teams play a comparable amount of man we’ve moved to a new metric that’s the cause of all our problems
The regression with the front 7 and run defense is/was a big problem. That unit was healthy by in large.
I think the Lions would be wise to consider doing something completely different with the defense. 5 years in now and the unit still struggles with being average.
“But Jack Campbell!!!” I know I’ll take a lot of crap for saying this but as much as Jack Campbell is a “dawg” or the “green dot” his impact is minimal because he’s a LB from a gone era. He works perfect in this system. A ton of tackles. In on most plays. Problem is… The scheme is outdated and his tackles are coking 8-12 yards down field. They cannot extend such a limited player.
