Monday Overreaction: The Detroit Lions may have finally fixed their biggest defensive problem, and the numbers back it up
Detroit’s defense has dramatically reduced the explosive plays it allows over the last four games. The improvement is hard to ignore, but a challenging three-game stretch will determine just how real it is.
After the Detroit Lions’ win over the Miami Dolphins, it’s time for another Monday overreaction. This one might not be much of an overreaction after four weeks of evidence. The Lions might not have an explosive play problem on defense anymore.
The funniest way to get into this is that the longest pass Miami completed on Sunday came from its punter. Bradley Pinion hit Kaytron Allen for 46 yards on a fake punt. That goes in the passing column, and it should. But if we’re talking about what defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard’s unit gave up, that play belongs in a different bucket.
Malik Willis’ longest completion that counted went for 20 yards. The Dolphins had two runs of 10 yards or more. That’s three explosive plays against the defense all day.
The one play worth a second look
I say “counted” for a reason. Miami had a 51-yard catch from Kevin Coleman Jr. wiped out by a Will Kacmarek holding call, and the Dolphins wound up punting on that drive.
It doesn’t count in the numbers, but I still want to go back and look at it. What did Miami see there, and how did Coleman get loose? That’s the play I’d want to understand before saying Detroit has this thing completely figured out.
Here’s why I’m willing to entertain it anyway. I went back through the first four games and the last four games with the same rules for both: a pass of 20 yards or more or a run of 10 yards or more.
The first four games, the Lions gave up 36 explosives. The last four games, they gave up 20. That’s a drop from nine a game to five.
The run defense jumped out the most. The Lions went from allowing 16 explosive runs to just seven. The big passes came down too, from 20 to 13.
Green Bay still hit six explosives. Minnesota got a 51-yarder to Jordan Addison. I’m not hanging a banner over this. But when a defense gets better against the run and the pass over four games, it’s fair to ask whether the unit we watched in September is still the unit we’re watching now.
Patriots, Bucs, and Bears will tell the story
We’re about to find out, because the next two games ask very different questions.
First, Detroit gets Drake Maye in Germany. The Patriots averaged more than six explosives a game through Week 8, almost evenly split between runs and passes. A week before the Lions played Miami, Maye threw a 43-yard touchdown pass to Kyle Williams and a 48-yard touchdown pass to DeMario Douglas against those same Dolphins. What happens when Maye gets out of the pocket and the coverage has to hold up for another two seconds?
Then the Lions come home to face Tampa Bay. The Bucs had 35 runs of 10 yards or more through Week 8 and only 13 passes of 20 yards or more. Bucky Irving just ran for 170 yards against Atlanta. That’s the game where I want to see whether Detroit can keep an ordinary handoff from turning into a 40-yard problem.
After that comes Chicago, and we’ve seen the Bears put a hurting on some teams.
If the Lions can keep Maye from hitting those big shots and keep Irving from breaking loose the following week, I don’t know that we have to call it an overreaction anymore.
Maybe September was the real overreaction
We’ve already talked a lot about how the Lions’ defense has gotten better overall. I think the biggest difference was simply moving to more man coverage. It’s what they’re good at. Detroit tried to play zone and mix in some other things early in the season, and it just didn’t work.
So I keep going back to this idea. Maybe the real overreaction was what we all did in those first four games, assuming this was the worst defense in the NFL. We have to stop calling it that, because it’s just not.
Maybe the overreaction this week isn’t that the Lions no longer have an explosive play problem. Maybe it’s that the Lions aren’t the worst defense in the league anymore, and they’re actually pretty good on that side of the ball all of a sudden. That changes things.
Even without Jack Campbell, they went out and had a good game. Yes, it was Miami, and that offense isn’t what’s coming next. New England is better. Tampa Bay can do some damage.
I’m not saying this is the best defense in the league, because it’s not. A lot of things still need fixing, and you can still see some of the same mistakes popping up. But things are starting to look a lot different for this team, and a lot better.
Three games in 12 days is going to answer a lot of questions. We’ll see what this defense really is.
Detroit Lions News