Detroit Lions Weblog

Monday Night Football, More Red Zone etc.

Tonight is a huge football game for the Detroit Lions organization. It is an opportunity to post a good showing in front of a national television audience. It is an opportunity to establish the team’s ability to compete against a middle to upper-tier quality NFL team in the St. Louis Rams. It is also a great opportunity to gain a measure of revenge against a team who smoked the Lions in their last nationally televised appearance for Monday Night Football. The “Greatest Show on Turf” Rams beat the Lions around as if they were a division 1-AA school facing a Top 5 ranked powerhouse. I was at the game, which had to be one of the all-time low points of this organization (who have unfortunately experienced many).

This is also an opportunity for the first-string offense to live up to it’s much-hyped billing. Many analysts believe that this offense has the weapons to be a real threat to beat anyone they face. That potential has yet to translate towards any successful on-field performance. The Rams, who will field a decent front seven for their defense, have a average-to-less than average secondary. It would sure be nice to see the Lions light this secondary up with some big plays and utilize some of the mismatches that may come about with the Rams relative lack of secondary depth.

One of the major topics of concern this pre-season has been the Lions continued inability to score when entering the opponent’s red zone. The Lions have casually shrugged this lack of scoring off. They chalk up their inability to score to not fully implementing their red zone package of plays, fearing that they would tip their hand to opposing defensive coordinators. Anyone who is willing to accept this ready-made excuse must also own a great deal of lush swamp land in Florida. It is patently ridiculous that this team not place on impetus upon scoring points in the pre-season, especially when considering last season’s red zone performance. The Lions were the third worst red zone offense in the NFL last season. Jacksonville, who scored the same number of TD’s and FG’s as the Lions in more red zone possessions, and the awful Chicago Bears offense were the only two teams who performed worse in the red zone last season. Here is what the Lions performance looked like

LIONs
Poss.—-TD—-FG—-Scor%—-TD%—-PT/Poss(RZ)
43——-19—–18—-.860——.442—–3.91

LG AVG
48.7—-26.2

The Pro Football Prospectus, written by the editors of Football Outsiders , features a season preview for each team. In it’s Lions feature(pgs.174-177,Aaron Schatz) , the authors discuss the Lions inability to convert short-yardage downs. They believe that the team’s inability to convert in short-yardage situations is predicated on the offensive coaching staff’s apparent philosophy to throw more than it runs in short-yardage situations. What I find most intriguing about this analysis, is the fact that the Lions featured one of the more undependable cadre’s of receivers in all of football in recent seasons. Although it took 8 weeks to establish, the Lions had a very potent ground game last season with Kevin Jones’ emergence. Still, the Lions coaching staff clung stubbornly to throwing in these situations.

Schatz states “…the passes were emblematic of how the Lions kick away offensive chances with bad play calls on short-yardage downs. Every single year Detroit is one of the teams that most often calls a pass in short-yardage situations, and every single year, runs are far more likely to gain the necessary yardage than passes are.”

The Lions also utilized this questionable philosophy in the red zone. They average 1.02 rushes per red zone drive (players other the QB) and this seems to be a case of a philosophical stubborness that has hurt the Lions more than it has helped them. Obviously, any offense should try to be balanced and mix up their plays so that they are unpredictable. It is interesting to note, that the Lions in their attempts to out scheme their opponents, have utilized poor judgement and have hampered their on-field success at least as much as a general lack of execution by their skill players in recent seasons. Hopefully, in tonight’s game the team will seize the opportunities it is given and establish that it is capable of performing at a higher level during the regular season.