Pride of Detroit
It’s do or die time for the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys. While this isn’t a mathematical “must-win” game for either team, their playoff odds become extreme longshots with a loss on Thursday night.
What team has the statistical edge? Why are the Lions three-point favorites with the current trajectory? And who wins?
I’ll break it all down in this week’s Lions vs. Cowboys On Paper preview and prediction.
It’s been a mostly solid season for the Detroit Lions’ passing attack and no statistical performance may have been better than last week’s game against the Packers. Down two tight ends, their starting center and left guard, plus no Amon-Ra St. Brown after the first quarter, the Lions still managed to move the ball surprisingly efficiently against a good Packers defense—and without much help from the run game, too. That should provide at least a little optimism going into this week, where they’re likely to be without St. Brown again and at least one starting offensive lineman.
For the season, Detroit ranks:
In just about every metric you can find, this is a top-10 passing attack. Yeah, it’s a step down from last year’s top-five ranked unit, but it’s still a force to be reckoned with.
The biggest fault in this unit is pass protection. It’s not a massive problem—the Lions have the 15th-lowest sack rate and 21st pressure rate—but it certainly isn’t a strength, either. That said, the Lions have given up the shortest time-to-pressure in the NFL. So while they’re not giving up pressure at a ridiculous rate, it is coming in fast.
We’re going to have some trouble this week really getting a full grasp on the Cowboys’ defense. Because in order to be fair to them, we can’t look only at their season-long stats. They’ve been a much better defense over the past three weeks, which coincides with getting some players back from injury and the addition of Quinnen Williams. However, we can’t over-rely on recent data, either, because that involves small samples sizes against struggling offenses (Cardinals, Raiders, Eagles, and to a lesser extent Chiefs). So I’ll present splits for the season and the last three weeks (with Williams), and take both into account.
For the full season, this has been a pretty terrible pass defense. They rank:
For the last three weeks, they rank:
It’s clearly been an improvement, but they still rank at or below league average in most statistical categories.
Where they...
