games 1-4 15% man coverage.
Vs arizona 32%! They played well all be it against a bad offense.
Vs green bay? ~22%
Shepp is playing scared. He doesn’t want to give up the home run play. So he plays a soft zone. When this team is designed to play man coverage down hill! If they wanted to play more zone coverage maybe they should have gotten some more help in the backfield.
And miss me with the draft picks.
Rolder 7 snaps.
Moore 92 snaps
Abney 118 snaps.
Just stop. You only post when you think you have an armchair gm gem to share. It’s cringe.
HE 
ISN’T PLAYING SCARED
You move to zone when your two elite safeties that allow you to play more exotic man coverages are out with injuries. The secondary depth you complained about week 1 week 2 are beginning to gel and play well. Should have gotten more secondary help? WHYYYYYYYY? Branch is back? With all the holes, how is it smart for a GM to go get higher end safety help when your elite safety, maybe joseph too, are coming back?
how am i wrong?
This defense is the healthiest in the NFL. Only missing 1 safety. That we knew would be out till Thanksgiving.
This team sucks with zone coverage. Something that definitely should have been identified early in the offseason.
Campbell is playing poorly because of coaching and lack of talent around him. Barns is not good in coverage i dont care what PFF says. When the slot wr or TE is leaving Barnes zone and entering Jacks. Its on both of them. But again they are man cover LBs. They arnt supposed to playing soft middle zone. Thats the exact opposite of what they should be playing.
so tell me what do you think is wrong? All these guys just magically got worse. No. Or maybe they went bargain bin on a corners and lbs. and have a completely inexperienced DC.
So what? You can only play over 25% man if you have 2 probowl safeties? Please.
Im not asking for 40% or even 35%
Give me close to 30% man (again what the rest of the team is built for)
Chuck Clark is rated as a top 20 Safety right now. Sorry not sorry. Play to the teams strengths!
All the time.
So that’s the angle NOW? Now we are a healthy defense ONLY missing 1 pro bowl safety? Talk about moving goalposts on a moments notice. Branch has played one game, and how big of an impact did he have in that one game?
The staff said over and over they were switching to zone to cover up some of the holes due to losing Branch and Joseph. They did not struggle as mightily in zone towards the end of the season in 2025.
Yes, you only care about the statistics you can manipulate and use to support your narrative. Don’t like Barnes in coverage so screw PFF. It’s weird that chuck clark was by your own words a “marginal signing” but suddenly he is ranked a top 20 safety and the numbers say play more man.
You complain about Barnes in coverage and he has his warts, but on sunday he played very well and saved a td ini coverage.
No one who knows more ball then either of us is saying this. It’s to the point where too much at one time…he is overloaded.
sigh…you do you bro. You go quiet when they are winning and you can’t bitch…you start acting like a Gm when things are starting to struggle. You sit here an 3-4 weeks in and begin complaining about all the marginal players Brad brought in. And these marginal players are stepping up all over the place,. Wonnum…McCreary…Abney…Jake Bates…apparently Chuck Clark…but hey bargain bin shopping.
What are you talking about.
They played heavy zone vs Dallas and Rams and Steelers. Gave up almost 1200 yards total.
They finished the season in heavy man again? And they played better,
Again. The stats dont lie. The more zone they play the worse they do!
Week 13-16 heavy zone,
0.120 EPA.P 47.5% success rate
Week 17&18 heavy man
-.157 epa/p 37.5% success rate
There’s a constant trend.
They still ran zone 72% of the time in those two end of season matchups. They were doing match tweaking.
Yes but on “known passing downs” they played 33% man coverage against the pass.
They were smart. Now they are playing soft zone against 5 receiver sets.
There is 0 point to communicate with you except if your someone who likes calling you out…
Keep moving the goalposts bc you know best. It’s okay, you should be the gm. I’ll reach out to my guys and maybe it will get to Brad and you can audition to advise Brad on how to run the Lions.
You have yet to provide your answer on why the defense is so bad.
No DBs? We knew this was our group back in April. So thats on Brad.
Campbell went from all pro to mid? Why? Coaching and scheme.
No help because they went barging basement. Brad.
Draft picks not playing, again brad.
Out side of “just because they arnt playing well” whats the reason?
Every other SB caliber team in the NFC has a proven DC. With 10+ years experience.
We have a guy thats lost in the woods. He doesn’t have the experience (not even HIGHSCHOOL) to know how to adjust. And brad did nothing to help him out
He has no business in Man. That was AA. They have no man-worthy LB that is anywhere close to AA. Nowhere close.
He is a green dot Mike Linebacker that should be near exclusively in zone.
Trying to play him in man like AA is absurd.
I LOVED the draft pick, and I still stand by that.
Last season Jack was damn amazing and it was fun to watch. This season I was excited to see players not go his way at all. Like, what the heck happened? In the Jets game i seen him run to tackle Sadiq who didn’t even notice him, but Jack fell sideways when he touched him. I thought this would pass and people are exaggerating, but he’s not been good.
Right. It’s weird.
I will say the defense being terrible isn’t on him and Shepp is terrible. A couple of not so terrible games doesn’t change that. It’s like when people would throw a party for Ebron any time he caught a ball. That didn’t mean he was suddenly good.
Is 19th in the league for blitz-rate “playing scared”?
We’ve had Branch for 1 game and somehow we’re healthy and we have a defense only missing 1 Safety? Did you forget we had a guy who was supposed to be our #1 CB get in legal trouble?
I think you’re getting “playing scared” confused with “we don’t have 3/4 of our starting Secondary” so we’re doing whatever we can to not put backup players in bad situations “- like playing man all the time.
Wait you drafted an Iowa LB and then complain about him being asked to be a zone read cover guy…is this a joke. The knock on DeJean or concern was he played mostly zone and he would be sked to be a man cover guy and maybe that was not his strength.
So was Jack playing Man in college or Zone because I would say he had 90% of his snaps as a drop back in zone LBer.
I am completely MEH on JC. LB is an extremely difficult position to play in he NFL. And I want guys to be faster. He for me lacks the speed needed to be special. I was shocked he was an All Pro to be honest. He does not make enough great plays to excite me so there is that.
I’m not “meh”, I’m disappointed to the point of irritated. Not with Jack, but for the roster construction.
Shep is a 4-3 guy. He wants to roll with 3 LBs out there. You need a SAM that can rush, a Will that can cover and a Mike that covers the middle of the field and QBs the defense.
We Barnes, which could play the Mike position, and who was supposed to be a productive Sam. As a Sam he he’s proven he’s not the rusher he was hoped to become.
So if you revert to 2LB off the ball, one’s going to be in coverage situations, sometimes man. Who do you want that to be? I suppose if I was going to picture one of our LBs following a RB who’s flexed out wide, I’d want it to be Rodrigo. I darn-sure don’t want to see Jack or Derrick floating out there.
Ive been spending the afternoon watching All22.
The zone is so soft and open you could park a mack truck in the middle.
The players dont know the scheme. Multiple plays where its like half the defense thinks zone the other man.
Or even just straight alignment and schemes just on paper make it easier for the offense,
I cant blame Jack completely for zone breaking downs. When it appears to be more coaching and scheme. Especially when you have 5 Defenders all 8 yards away from an x wr crossing over the middle. These guys arnt coached properly.
And we arnt missing half the DBs. We have know since APRIL that this was the personnel on the field,
So its on Brad for not getting players to help. And its on Shepp for not coaching with what he has
Kurt Warner and a couple others have highlighted how we keep opening the middle of the field up, making it too easy on the offense. There’s no 1 player problem, there’s a roster/scheme problem. Chicken/Egg thing, I reckon. They’re not married at this point (personnel to scheme).
I am not sure you have the luxury in todays NFL to roll with 3 real LBs. I think the 2 corner and 2 safety is a must and then you need that slot corner/LB type. I just don’t think you can roll with 3 true LBs anymore with the speed and vibe of these offenses.
And the problem I see with having job specific guys is that good OCs will manipulate the defense into bad matchups occasionally and that is when big plays happen.
Barnes and JC are bigger LBs and IMO are not great at anything. They are good at it all but not great. The next time I see JC or Barnes tackle a RB for a loss will be the first time it feels. SO to say that are best at stopping the run, well sure I guess they are experts after the 2-3 yard gain tackling.
Anyway, the defense feels like it has hope which is way more than I thought after the first few games. The Dline is playing great. Not good but Great IMO. The back 8 need to do something which BB did just that last game.
We need a thread talking about BBs return because I watched the game last night and that dude made so many clutch plays and tackles. I feel like his snap count to key play was 5:1…LOL
Barnes did have a nice touchdown saving deflection on Green Bay’s last drive. Without it, we might lose that game.
It’s redemption, sure, but if he hadn’t lost the rep so bad in the first place, such a heroic recovery wouldn’t have been required at all.
It’s why I had him ranked as a 3rd round LB. I thought 18 in the first round was entirely too high and we could have gotten him easily in the late 2nd round. That being said, if we would have gone Gibbs/Branch/LaPorta/Campbell I wouldn’t have been that upset. Same players. Different order and I think most fans would have been fine with it.
We are solid against the run. Not great but teams won’t make a living trying to run on us. We don’t have any weak spots on the D-line and Campbell is a strong downhill player.
Jack is a 2 down LB IMO.