We’re all pretty excited about a new OC. And who knows if Shepp stays on. In all my years of being a psycho Lions fan bleeding Detroit this is the closest thing to how I always wanted them to play. Being a physcial, OL being priority, establishing the run/run first, play action, and on defense heavy blitzing, man-to-man with the most important thing being stopping the run. No vanilla bend don’t break nonsense. I know theres a mix around here on peoples opinion of AG who i thought was amazing for so many reasons, but he had this team tops at run defense. No one talks enough about how massive that was, and that alone has won them games. Especially in 2023.
I don’t want a coordinator to come in and have them do whatever they want. The offense and defense still needs to be Dan Campbell.
I will just state that it is my opinion that MCDC knows exactly what he wants on offense and how he wants it to look. There is ZERO doubt in my mind that he has a clear vision and if he is not seeing it he has zero patience in working with an OC that is not hitting the right notes.
Conversely, he seems to let the defensive side float around “finding their way”. This can not possibly be the defensive performance that he wants or expects. So why on earth is he not pulling the rip cord?
I can not get over the 4 out of 5 seasons bottom 8 in the NFL for points allowed to the league. And yet the Offense finishes top 5 and he is changing that side immediately. But on defense we would still have AG if he had not left…and Shep was clearly in over his head. The second half was BRUTAL
Shep looked far better than AG did his first two years.
Sheps defense was playing well until he lost both his safeties and CB’s. At that time he changed his LBers from gap responsible to read and react guys who dropped into coverage. This opened up the run game and our defense spiraled downhill. He was in a bad situation to be honest.
Dan gave AG some veteran help and AG started to get better. He needs to do the same thing for Shep.
I think Shep will be a fine coach if we get him some help.
And why do the Lions have to endure the development of an DC?
This is my issue and why are we as fans OK with this?
The defense is bad. And it seems like a bad thing if your DC needs experienced players to “lead him”.
The offense is top 5 and yet no one is willing to settle for someone who is new…everyone seems to want someone experienced…but let’s be the training ground for our sub standard defense’s DC
I’m with you. I don’t want another wasted season of a bottom 10 defense holding this team back because Dan wants to do his buddy a solid. I’m sorry but losing your starter secondary shouldn’t derail the entire defense. This team is ready to compete now for a championship. More than any other time in my Lions fandom. The last thing I want to see is this roster and opportunity wasted because Dan can’t get over his ego.
yep. super bowl windows can be very VERY small, as we have just witnessed. if this isn’t dealt with appropriately this offseason next year is going to be very similar to this one. chicago is better. Green bay is better. Minnesota still has a QB issue but they swept us with all of 3 yards passing one game.
At this point I’m not super confident for next season. Probably one of the biggest offseasons we’ve had in recent memory with so many key positions that have to be filled.
This seems to have been forgotten by many on this site. That loss to Minny was IMO the worse of MCDC time so far at the Lions. A 1 dimensional offense in the NFL and you can not smash that team says tons about our DC.
Imagine what Houston would have done to that team. Or LAC or LAR or Seatle…and I get it Goff went nuclear is the most worse way. But that Minny team should have been murdered on offense.
a good pass rush makes an average secondary much MUCH better.
while the replacements weren’t branch or kirby, they were at least average, but expected to cover much longer than necessary. Matter of fact I would say the majority of our sacks were coverage sacks.
That was the most baffling and alarming part to me (though to our credit we set it right by Chicago, who was easily the best running team we played over the last month of the season). Much more so than the pressure stuff. @Blizer believes Branch had a huge role in our run defense and the way it played out, he might be right. Maybe it took some time to adjust to losing him?
I agree with @Blizer and think losing the safeties impacted all levels as the replacements weren’t top10 in the league level
First, the duties of the LB’s were impacted
which impacted run support behind the line.
Which a first time DC struggled to adapt too.
I think the injury timings to DB/S shows up in when the defense took a nosedive weeks 12-16 First 11 were very different.