Pride of Detroit
Welp, the season is over. Although there is still a game next week against the Chicago Bears, the Detroit Lions have nothing to play for but a winning record. Heading into the Christmas Day showdown against the Minnesota Vikings, the Lions still had the possibility of making the playoffs. What they needed was to win their next two games and have the Green Bay Packers lose their next two.
Detroit couldn’t even defeat Minnesota.
The offense chose to have its worst game of the season at the worst possible time, and the Vikings’ defense took advantage of it.
Here are my seven takeaways from the Lions’ Week 17 loss.
Stop me if you heard this before, but the offensive line was the biggest reason for the loss this week. Things appeared to be headed in a good direction with center Graham Glasgow practicing. Christmas morning, though, it took a turn. Left tackle Taylor Decker popped up on the injury report with an illness and missed the game. Glasgow, despite practicing, didn’t play either, and suddenly the Lions had Dan Skipper at left tackle and Kingsley Eguakun at center.
As you might expect, the Lions’ offense struggled to move the ball no matter what they tried on Thursday afternoon. Quarterback Jared Goff was sacked five times, fumbled the ball three times due to a bad snap by Eguakun or an immense amount of pressure from the Vikings’ pass rush that couldn’t be stopped. During the game, right tackle Penei Sewell got injured and missed some time, replaced by Kayode Awosika, and eventually returned.
Overall, it was a makeshift offensive line with no chemistry and little experience to try to stop the Vikings’ defense. The injury bug struck the Lions heavily this season again, and their depth was tested along the offensive line. Boy, did we learn that the depth behind the starters is not what we thought it was. This offense was built needing extremely clean trench play, and when they fail, the whole operation gets shut down.
Not only does this team rely on a good offensive line to help out its offense, it also needs a running game to move the chains. Running back Jahmyr Gibbs had another disappointing performance, finishing with 41 yards on 17 carries, averaging 2.4 yards per carry. He was constantly getting stopped at the line of scrimmage or caught from behind by an unblocked defender.
David Montgomery got more chances with the rock, and he didn’t have many bright spots, finishing with 25 yards on 10 carries, averaging 2.5 yards a carry. It didn’t matter who had the football in the end. Either back was getting gang tackled as soon as they had the ball, they were caught from behind on outside runs, or they missed the hole that was there and ran into a pile of bodies instead.
The Vikings’ defense overwhelmed the Lions’ offensive line for all...
