I keep hearing lions had worst defence in league argument all off season…while they were awful for the first 8 to 9 games they were a much better defense in the last 8 to 9 games…
Why jerry jacobs and james huston…lions were a much better defense with these two… Our defense minus injuries at the end of last yr would imho be a too 20 defence this year…now add all the pieces from fa and draft i look for the lions defence top 10-12 this year
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Your thinking is directly in line with my own.
Factor in the experience the backups got.
Factor in how young the team is, and how much more experience they got.
Factor I the coaching changes that seemed to work.
Factor in the shift form 4 man from to 3 man front.
They are improving on what took the field at the end of the season.
I will be surprised every time they lose this year, even though I expect them to lose a few.
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Lions d line is bad and if hutch goes down they are in major trouble still think it’s below average in the league
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Please try to write with some punctuation. Run on sentences are tough to read.
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Wouldn’t that be something? I’d love to see it.
I’d take 15-20 range, and be pretty darn happy about it. If we can beat that level, we may be on to some real post season success. I think the offense can be quite good (hopefully we avoid injuries), but top 10-12 with both units equals a very formidable team…
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It’s : defense…not defence , but small beans man.
I’ve said it often, but, always in reference to the first 7 games.
It’s true, though. The first 7 games they were historically bad. Not just bad.
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Part of the issue is that when we were bad to start the season, we were SO bad that those stats had an impact on the end of the year stats in a major way. Most people don’t take the time to parse out seasons into blocks. They just scroll to the bottom line number and apply it over 17 games. Done.
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2023 is a new year, what happened last year doesn’t mean much. Last year Okudah, Hughes, and AO were at corner, they are all gone. Walker missed almost the entire season. Will Harris played like 90% of the snaps @Mr.Peabody had to spend thousands on therapy dealing with that. haha hopefully Harris is special teams only this year.
We probably have 4 or 5 new starters on defense in Captain Jack, Garder-Johnson, Moseley, Sutton, Walker returning. Even Branch could end up starting before too long. Plus several new coaches.
Year 2 for Hutch, Houston, Kerby, Rodrigo, Paschal. - They should all be better. I actually have high expectations for this defense. No reason they can’t be a top 12-15 unit, now they gotta prove it though. Alim is finally in great shape. The Commish was quite good last year. Romeo and Harris are back. Lots of depth.
We have some real ball hawks in the secondary now.
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It’s coming from people who don’t watch the Lions or just look at the totality of numbers and focus solely on that.
If you see that the Lions were 28th in defense in isolation, you’re missing the point that the defense was quite a bit better in the 2nd half (outside of the Carolina game) and had an absurd amount of injuries in the first half. Every team does but the Lions were particularly ravaged with their best vets missing most of the season and leaving the young pups to fend for themselves. Not to mention that the numbers were so historically bad in the first half that it was impossible to bring the numbers to respectable levels so the 28th ranking is a bit deceiving.
Granted, the Lions faced mostly popgun offenses in the 2nd half as opposed to the Eagles, Seahawks, Dolphins etc. in the first half and the pass defense was pretty shit for good chunks of the 2nd half as well but it was no doubt a different defense that closed the year compared to early in the year. I think James Houston’s emergence along with Cominsky returning and Buggs becoming more of a regular made a big difference.
Now, they’ve upgraded the secondary massively, added Campbell who should be NFL ready and have some healthy bodies returning along with another year of experience for the young guys so expectations should be a jump to a middle of the road defense if not better tbh. I think we could quite likely see big progression from the defense and perhaps some regression from the offense because there’s no way Goff keeps up that level of efficiency he had in the 2nd half again and I do think Chark’s presence will be missed unless Marvin taps into the fountain of youth, not to mention Jamo being out for 6.
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They EARNED their “bad rap”. I would remind them each and every day how they were ranked last season.
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It’s not a completely undeserved rap, but it’s also mostly irrelevant. We’ve added enough pieces to make this year’s D essentially unrecognizable from last year’s. Any talking head attempting to extrapolate from last year’s D is missing the point.
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Lol - at least they are not, nor am I, William Faulkner
I’m with you: I’d be happy w/a league-average defense. The Lions were 3-5 in games decided by 4 pts or less last year and scored 24+ in all of them (45 against the Hawks!) A league-average defense last year would have yielded at least a couple more wins. I suspect the same will be true this year.
Top 10-12? Possible, but unlikely. I count at least SIX likely new starters on defense compared to opening day last year - Buggs, Cominsky, Campbell, Kerby, Sutton, Gardner-Johnson. The last four are new to the team. That’s a lot of gelling that needs to happen quickly. But if they can get to average, the hopefully offense can take them deep into the playoffs.
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I can’t be the only one that has concerns still. Am I?
Yes, we were bad. Yes, we got better. We signed some nice FA’s and added pieces during draft.
But, I keep reading that the problem with the D last year was communication. So why would we expect that to be better after turning over half of secondary?
Pass rush was non-existent at times.
Will hutch be better? Yes?
How about the rest of them? Unknown
To me the biggest question is what we get from Paschal and some other younger players.
I expect some communication gaps early in season and such but I don’t expect this to be a top ten unit in week 1. If this D could be top 15 we would be in a real good place!
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Once we fired Pleasant, we did see some big improvements in that area. Bringing in vets with a lot of experience like Sutton, Moseley and Gardner-Johnson should really help with communication. Losing Walker early in the season really hurt because he was a captain and making the calls for the secondary. He will be back as well. I’m actually quite fired up about the secondary. Massive improvements over Okudah, AO, and Hughes.
To me it all starts with stopping the run. In games we stopped it last year, we usually won.
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There is a old saying its not how you start it is how you finish.the defense that started last year, was not the same defense that ended the year. After getting rid of pleasant and jerry and houston starting , the defense was greatly improved…now you add 3 more starting cb and the rookies drafted, there is no way people should hold the first 7 or 8 games of last year ( as horrible as that defense was) in analyzing what this years defense will be…imho
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There’s another old saying, you are what your ranking says you are.
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We have better NFL players than we did last year.
Our CB’s were Okudah, Amani, Jacobs and Will Harris . . . Now our top 4 are Sutton, Mosely, CJGJ and Jacobs drops from 3 to four . . . making Harris a true backup.
Same with our Safeties, the bulk of the snaps were Deshon Elliott and Kerby (a rookie), now we’ll have Walker and Kerby (2nd year player) with Branch/Iffy being primary backup. More experience in the system and a 2nd year player.
LB’s, Rodrigo will probably take less snaps and probably same with AA. Starters will probably be AA and Campbell with Rodrigo seeing significant snaps as primary backup (instead of Rodrigo at 2nd LB and Barnes as primary backup).
Houston will have be 2nd year as SAM/OLB and Harris healthy.
DL - Hutch, Pascal, Alim, Buggs, Cominsky will all have another year in this system . . . Hopefully a healthy Romeo.
With more experience, you can expect better communication.
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