Week 6 Preview: Lions at Vikings
October 11, 2008 on 10:06 pm | In Uncategorized |The Lions face an incredily difficult test on the road against the Vikings this week. With the assailable combination of a porous defense, and the inceasing likelihood of Sunday’s game being the first career start for the “Polish Pop Gun”, Dan Orlovsky, it could be a long game for the Lions.
Apparently, the Lions are going to go back to the impotent, more conservative brand of offense that they had previously planned to use all season, not counting last week’s brief sojourn in which they utilized multi-receiver sets, “no-huddle”, etc. In this particular case, with an unproven QB, facing a relatively, less explosive Vikings offense, this method may actually aid the Lions and allow them to hang close for a while.
Even more likely, in my opinion, given the Lions inability to stop the run, pressure opposing QB’s and generate takeaways defensively, the Lions will get pounded thoroughly by the combination of Adrian Peterson and Chester Taylor, and subsequently get burned by “play action” deep balls from Gus Frerotte to WR’s Bernard Berrian and Sidney Rice. Finally, to fully highlight the Lions defense’s severe liabilities, TE Visanthe Shiancoe will convert several third and longs and exploit the soft middle of the Lions zone coverage inside of the read zone.
If the Lions can utilize some ball control, their current best hope to keep games close, they will keep their ineffective defense off of the field. The Vikings are quite stout against the run, which will likely create a lot of third and longs situations, where the Lions will need to pass. That is where things become dangerous for Orlovsky. Vikings DE Jared Allen, who has been ineffective for the Vikings thus far, will absolutely maul, devastate, and embarrass Jeff “Sackus”.
Vikings 37 Lions 7
By the way, if the Lions fail to garner a victory on the road in week 6 against the Houston Texans, their last, best chance to find a victory this season might be a home shootout with New Orleans Saints, in week 16, the next to last game of the season…
With this less than optimistic season prognosis, the Detroit News Jerry Green’s opinion article, in regards to Lions coaches on the hot seat, is particularly prescient. It is a matter of when, not if Rod Marinelli will be fired. Rod Marinelli’s week-to-week, grueling battle with the media, given Marinelli’s already testy relations with the fifth estate, will likely continue to be a weekly highlight, if the Lions season continues it’s downward trajectory.
Last, but not least, here’s something for all us to grind upon, in the 240 minutes that the Lions have played in four games this year, they have held a lead for the WHOPPING total of 2:24. Just a little perspective…
4 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^
Where has THAT defense been all year? Our OLine is so bad, I don’t think Brett Favre could win too many games with it.
Comment by Mike — October 12, 2008 #
Mike–
It was a nice defensive performance, much more aggressive and hard-hitting than the rest of it’s body of work, so far. That being said, the Vikings aren’t necessarily a prolific offense and there is no logical excuse for the number of coverage breakdowns they have from week-to-week. It’s amazing to see receivers run 10-15 yards from the nearest Lion, when they don’t even play man coverage, where blowing a coverage, by getting beat, is more common.
At least the Lions addressed the O-line, it wouldn’t have been easy to keep Man-Ram and Gos in, but they clearly didn’t cut it in the first half. Now if there was a ready replacement for “Sackus”, then the Lions might be in business.
Comment by Steve — October 13, 2008 #
This was starting out to be the perfect football weekend. It starts off with the Mighty Rockets of Toledo winning a tight game against Michigan. Next the Spartans win. Then the Lions seem to be winning . . . they have Minnesota backed down with time running out in the 4th and then the referee insightfully noticed that Bodden could not have made such a play without the assistance of contact (which I did not see) and threw a flag.
The Defense was excellent. I was very impressed with the way that they came to play. For long stretches throughout the game they were actually in the backfield putting pressure and even (dare I say it?) sacking Frerotte.
Blogman–”Polish Pop Gun” may be quite descriptive. He did throw for 450 feet. On the bright side–no interceptions.
I actually enjoyed watching the game–which is something that I have not said yet this season.
Comment by Yukon Dan — October 13, 2008 #
If anything can be taken from Sunday’s performance, the Lions haven’t quit, and as poorly as they have played all season, they have some ability to play physical and not just lie on their backs and watch teams walk over them.
The brand of the football that they played was much more palatable, even if they will struggle to win even one game this year.
Comment by Steve — October 13, 2008 #