It may be time for the Lions to at least start thinking about major contingency plans on offense
Something is just missing right now
Who are the Detroit Lions right now? It’s hard to tell because one week they’re unstoppable and the next week you wonder what happened.
The Lions had that big 52-point explosion against the Bears in Week 2 and then dropped 30-plus in three consecutive games. Since then, they seem like a team that has been figured out. Two 24-point games and a 17-point game. Two losses.
I try pretty hard not to overreact, and sometimes I do a bad job at it. Maybe this is one of those times. But here it goes.
The Lions should at least consider having Dan Campbell call the plays. This might not be John Morton’s thing.
All the imagination this offense had is gone. Some of that left with Ben Johnson, but there’s still a lot of it in Campbell’s head. Morton is a good coach, and there are things he adds to this team that are huge, but maybe he’s not a play-caller. It’s not for everyone.
By the way, when I say imagination, I’m not talking about a bunch of trick plays. I’m talking about knowing that no matter how hard you try, screens are just not working today. Come up with something different.
The best play of the game shouldn’t be on your final drive. Not long ago, I compared his play-calling to Matt Patricia’s, and that stands a little because the problem is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
The Lions haven’t enacted anything they’ve wanted to enact this year. The run game isn’t as sharp as it was last year. They talked all summer about the deep ball, and it’s been nonexistent for weeks. On top of that, they haven’t converted a third-and-10 all year long, and they’re flat out near the bottom of the league in third-down conversions. This group is just too good to be mailing it in with some of their play calls.
The Lions have done this before. Around this time of the season, too. Campbell took over offensive play-calling from Anthony Lynn in 2021, and you saw a pretty big change from that moment. Could they do that again? We’ll have to wait and see about that.
Again, I’m entirely open to the idea that I’m overreacting here. It would not be the first time. I just don’t know what more you need to see. Is there a problem with the players? Yes, of course there is.
The offensive line is not as good as it was last year, David Montgomery has taken a bit of a step back, St. Brown is missing on catches that he has never missed, and Jared Goff isn’t as sharp as he was last year. How do you fix all of that? Do you just put your head down and hope for the best? We will see how they respond against the Commanders next weekend, but these problems just can’t persist.
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