We have a game day thread opening at 7pm but I’d like to get the pregame talk started a tad early tonight. There’s lots to talk about in this matchup and I’ll touch base on a few.
Opening night in a new stadium for Buff. While they have the home field advantage it’s still a new field for them. So they’re lacking the familiarity a home team gets. The new stadium is the biggest and most expensive in the NFL. The organization and city are getting fan pushback on it for cost, looks and many other issues. So the city and organization want a win and they want it badly. They will want to get started on the right foot with a win.
Meanwhile you have Jared Goff and the Lions coming. Goff is the #1 Rated QB in QBR rating when he has a clean pocket. You give him time and he will eat you alive. Goff would like nothing better than to walk into Buff and put his name on the stadium with a signature win. Detroits defense created 3 turnovers last week and if they keep that up and Goff has time….. well let’s just say Goff will be writing his signature on the walls of the new stadium.
Goff is #29 in QBR when he doesn’t have a clean pocket. Goff under pressure is a recipe for failure for Detroit. On top of that Detroit could be down 3 starters on the their OL tonight. If this line fails to give him time then this game could get ugly quickly.
The tale of two defenses. Buff has a new look defense and they had plenty of struggles week one vs Hou. Det fell apart the second Half vs NO giving up a 21 point lead. Both defenses had struggles and this game could be a shootout. The team with the most turnovers could win.
Buffalo’s OL had the highest rated pass defense in week one. They pulled this off against a Hou team that put up 8 sacks on them last year. Houston’s pass rush is definitely better than the Lions but the Lions have a lot of depth there and staying fresh, wearing that OL down could be a factor late in this game.
Over the course of the last 50 regular-season games, the Bills and Lions are tied for the most wins, with 36 apiece. Both teams have a lot to prove though. It starts here for both.
The Lions being up by 21 and causing 3 turnovers should have resulted in a blow out. But it didn’t and that doesn’t sit well with me. They should have put NO away but rust and mental mistakes cost them.
I’m expecting the Lions to show a lot of two deep safety looks tonight but use that to mix up coverages and I expect to see cover 3 and cover 4 type shifts that force Allen into underneath throws and long drive. My gut tells me we will try to force longer drives in hopes a mistake will stall the drive or force a turnover.
Everyone expects this to be a high scoring game and it should be. The Lions are the under dogs but Buff fans are worried ….. which they should be. A hot Goff and a Gibbs rushing attack is scary to face.
Jamo is about to show us why we will likely always have a Love/Hate relationship with him. He will be catching passes tonight and that will mean this offense is going to explode.
I see a 45-42 type game with last team with the ball winning it. Allen will either kill the Lions through the air or with his legs but until the Lions D plays 4 quarters I do not see them stopping a player like Allen.
Conversely, the Lions Offense is only going to get better and better as the season progresses. Most felt the Lions did a poor job on offense week 1 and yet they still scored 31 points. That says a ton about where this offense could go. And for the record I agree that the offense was not clean or efficient week 1.
I’m really hoping the OL injuries will be a non factor.
Borom is probably an upgrade over Miller in the passing game. He brings a veteran presence and experience.
Bartch definitely isn’t a drop of from Mahogany either.
Honestly we have good depth on the OL and these two should be solid depth pieces for us. I’m expecting good play from both. Enough to keep us in the game.
There is also the long-standing tradition of teams looking like poo on Thursday night football. They are often sloppy/bad games. Which team is more geared to win a ‘slop’ game?
I hope it is us, as we have been through a lot of them, and our coach has the right mindset. Buffalo also has a new head coach in his second game. Yes, he was the OC for years. But, perhaps that could be a factor?
I’m kind of reaching for positive rays of sunshine after a rough second half on Sunday…
Our 3 OL replacements have experience and are near their peak NFL lives. I think it’s still better than we had for much of last year. We’ll see. With B-la-ke out, the run game suffers and I think we need to steadily win there to manufacture a win. Gotta win the turnover battle or be even, at minimum. Gotta sub for Alim early and often after so many snaps on Sunday. If we can stay close, we’ll need him reasonably fresh at the end of the game.
Our eye of the needle is small tonight and the result is out of my hands, if my voodoo spells miss their Buffalo targets, that is…
I think we can win this game with a ball control offense that keeps our D-Line fresh. If our guys are fresh I think we can force some turnovers. if our D-Line is gassed Josh will kill us with his arm and legs. I think Alim and Tyleik can have big games .
This is one of those games where I suspect the narratives will be way off. There’s just so much about week one that fools everyone. I don’t know what that means for this game specifically - low-scoring slugfest? Lions rout? High-pick Allen game? - but something wonky will happen. I know the whole world is picking Buffalo, and we always tend to play well when that’s the case. No one plays the disrespect card like Dan Campbell.
Dan Campbell framed it as an opportunity to embrace the challenge of dragging the Buffalo Chips to the deep end…and drown them. Lions are better swimmers than Buffalos , you know.
he Bills mostlikely put a lot of time in preparing for their opener against Houston. Especially giving up 8 sacks to them last year. They won’t have that same time to prepare for the Lions and our Dline is not the same as last year’s. Short week, maybe a little letdown by their oline? Maybe. Hopefully we can have Allen running for his life and rough him up a bit. Our O needs to get in sinc better tonight and maybe we have a chance.
The biggest concern I have for tonight is that our defense is only 3 full days rest removed from a game that had them on the field for 90 snaps. That’s an insane amount for any point of the year, but this happened in game 1 when no one is fully conditioned for NFL football yet. That’s why week 1 is always so wild. Buffalo probably had the more physically tough game in terms of punishment, but we had guys who had to be past spent. We will see what happens.
The Lions can win this game if:
Control the time of possession on offense with the run game. Get a lead, and hold on for dear life.
Get Allen to make a mistake trying to be Superman.
Whichever offense gets the lead is going to be able to dictate terms of the game. Also, at no point will any lead be safe until 60 minutes (and 1 second). Just ask the Ravens from game 1 of last year. It really is an interesting matchup. I think the Bills offense vs the Lions defense is a better matchup for the Bills than the Lions offense is vs Bills defense. However, I think the Lions can control the Bills offense by using their offense to chew clock. If the Bills get loose, the game will get ugly. It will be really interesting to see how two short week teams play and which one can dictate tempo.
On the Thursday night note, there were a lot of really crazy mismatch games of a good team vs a bad team, and the bad teams often came away with very close loses, or wins.
