Pride of Detroit
The Detroit Lions had more highs than lows in the follow-up to their lackluster preseason debut.
As we’ll do every week throughout the season for this Lions team, we have some data we can comb through courtesy of various outlets that better help us understand the football the Lions have played thus far—and what to look forward to in the coming weeks. Let’s take a closer look at the Lions by the numbers after their preseason win over the Atlanta Falcons.
PFF’s premium statistics are an invaluable data point for football fans to better understand the game. Consider subscribing to PFF to have full access to a plethora of stats and grades to keep you informed about the NFL—and college football, too. Also, NFL Pro is supplying some innovative and illustrative advanced statistics of their own that are worth checking out for the price of admission.
Foundational to everything the Lions want to do on defense is stopping the run. It’s a prerequisite to earning the right to rush the passer on passing downs. Detroit allowed the Los Angeles Chargers to rush for 121 yards on 35 attempts, a steady dose of their own medicine from Jim Harbaugh’s group.
The Lions managed to turn things around in their second bit of preseason action, holding the Falcons to just 22 yards of rushing on 11 carries.
Tyleik Williams’ first bit of NFL (preseason) action showed why the Lions so coveted the defensive tackle. His ability to two-gap, eat space, and free up linebackers to fit the run was on display in an albeit limited number of opportunities (six run defense snaps). Veteran Zach Cunningham is well on his way to earning not only a roster spot, but also providing peace of mind when it comes to depth at the linebacker position—he led the team with two run stops and a 0.5 yards average depth of tackle in his six snaps of run defense. The Lions defense as a whole racked up seven run stops—tackles that constitute a “failure” for the offense, per PFF—on Atlanta’s 11 carries.
The Lions finally started to generate some good movement on offense via the run game against the Falcons, particularly in their final possession of the shortened game—an 11-play, 57-yard drive that included 30 rushing yards (4.3 YPA) and resulted in a touchdown.
“No block, no rock” has become a well-known motto that the skill position players live by in Detroit, and the wide receivers led the way for the Lions’ ground game in this one. Detroit’s top-four run blockers versus Atlanta, according to PFF, were Jackson Meeks (91.3), Isaac TeSlaa (82.1), Ronnie Bell (79.9), and Tom Kennedy (76.0). Not so coincidentally, those four receivers combined to get 12 of the 18 targets in Detroit’s passing attack against the Falcons.
The camp battle for the backup quarterback job is officially underway after this last preseason game. Despite making...
