The main reason the Lions lost to the Packers was OL breakdowns, mistakes, blown assignments etc.
I knew following that game that the seasons hopes fell largely on how well that OL would play and improve.
Vs GB our OL really had some struggles. When I went back and watched the game on film I noticed Ratledge really struggled, GG made multiple mistakes and Mahogany was the best of the 3 but he wasn’t really dominant either.
Then when I broke the CHI film down I saw significant improvements with GG and Ratledge. Mahogany also showed improvement but not as big of a jump.
What really stood out to me vs CHI was how the IOL just seemed to be settling down.
Also vs CHI I felt Ratledge was our best IOL in that game. I could really see why the Lions liked him so much. He’s powerful, aggressiveness and the nastiness really stood out on film breakdown.
Regardless, the OL was still having plenty of struggles. Mistakes were frequent and we weren’t opening holes up like we were the year before. I expected growing pains. But the IOL unit had a slow start to say the least but they had a massive improvement from week one.
I chalked that improvement up partially to the level of play we were facing. So I was expecting plenty of struggles today. I can’t wait to go back and break this film down but my preliminary belief is the unit improved significantly again.
Today we had 224 yrds rushing and zero sacks. That’s a dominating performance against a very good Ravens team.
I can’t wait to look at this game under a microscope.
I’ll be honest, I did not think after Week 1, that the IOL issues were fixable in a timely enough manner. I was thinking mid-to-late season before the young guys could click and the OL would gel.
Amazing job by the coaches and Fraley in general to do a complete 180 is absolutely amazing.
We were quite clearly fantastic, but it was also a script that lined up really well for us. You saw what they did to us at the end of the half when we “had” to pass, it wasn’t nearly as pretty. There will be situations when our run game isn’t working nearly as well and they will have to work against a lot more aggressive, complex pass-rush plan from the interior of the DL. Something like the GB plan.
Perhaps as soon as this week against Cleveland, who has been one of the league’s best against the run.
But that’s OK. Just knowing we have this level of dominance in us in this script is comforting. While there will be more games where we struggle to run and have to find different answers, there will also be more games like this one. In fact probably more of the latter.
So I think you are both right, @Davicus and @Air2theThrown, there are aspects of playing OL that I believe will still take more reps to sort out, but on the flip side, when the script is like this, we’ll be more than good. We’ll be great.
I don’t blame Saturday for being excited. I was to watching Sewell crush an entire side of the defensive line on the goal line over and over again. Beast!
