Pride of Detroit
The Detroit Lions eked out a victory last week to help them keep pace in a competitive NFC playoff picture. It wasn’t pretty—at times it was outright ugly—but there are no style points attached to wins in the NFL, and there is no rest this week for the Lions. They turn things around on a short week, as is the franchise’s tradition, with their annual Thanksgiving Day game, and we’re here to give you a preview of the main course this Thursday.
This week, we had the pleasure of connecting with Justis Mosqueda, Acme Packing Company’s Editor-In-Chief, to give us some insight into the NFC North rival. We got the lowdown on the Packers’ recent offensive struggles, how losing a key player on that side of the ball has changed their personnel groupings, and how defensive stability and key adjustments have kept them firmly in a crowded playoff race heading into Detroit.
Jordan Love was getting some early-season MVP buzz, but that has since seemed to die down a bit as the Packers’ offense stalled out against the Carolina Panthers and Philadelphia Eagles in back-to-back weeks. What’s to explain his lack of production over the last four weeks?
So it really started in Week 3 against the Cleveland Browns. Head coach Matt LaFleur does not want the team testing deep coverages (he’s very conservative in that way). So when Browns DC Jim Schwartz (ever heard of him?) called the second-highest rate of split-safety coverages in his NFL career, the Packers’ offense just checked the ball down and ran the ball.
The offense that had been taking shots deep in Week 1 and Week 2 just threw one ball over like 7 yards in the entire game. You can see it in this spray chart.
That strategy was replicated a lot recently. The Steelers tried to do it, but Tucker Kraft put up a historical amount of YAC yards only to go down with an ACL tear the week later. Then the Carolina Panthers and Philadelphia Eagles executed the game plan to perfection. Without being able to run the ball, this is just the way that LaFleur has chosen to play offense.
Things have opened up a little over the last two weeks, as Love has been allowed to test the intermediate sidelines, an area of the field that LaFleur doesn’t usually like targeting or even running routes into (he likes in-breakers much more). They’ve also made some changes to the run game (Anthony Belton at RG, Sean Rhyan coming in at C for the injured Elgton Jenkins and OL Darian Kinnard playing TE) to help improve the blocking up front. So it’s getting better, but they had to take in on the chin over and over for LaFleur to realize that his running game and the YAC ability on the team post-Kraft wasn’t good enough to just accept a check down on every pass play.
*Love has played well, even in the Panthers/Eagles games (you have to trust me, I...
