For a certain crowd, nothing will ever be good enough when it comes to the Detroit Lions' pass rush. Beat writers get berated on social media for not focusing on sacks alone, dismissing the impact of pressures along the way.
In Week 1 against the Rams, the Lions posted 27 pressures and nine hits of Matthew Stafford (according to Pro Football Focus). Three players (Aidan Hutchinson-11, Marcus Davenport-6, Levi Onwuzurike-5) had more than five pressures, so Hutchinson was not a one-man show.
But that aforementioned crowd will see just two sacks in the game, one by Hutchinson and one split by Davenport and Onwuzurike, and lament that, while ignoring plays like this one.
To the "pressures don't matter crowd."
— Jeremy Reisman (@DetroitOnLion) September 10, 2024
I give to you: the most important defensive snap of the game. Third-and-10. A first down clinches it for the Rams.
Both Davenport and Hutchinson force Stafford up and to his right for an off-balance throw that misses an open Kupp. pic.twitter.com/jXcnlQoFRE
Stafford was notably getting the ball out of his hands quickly on Sunday night, knowing he would not have much time to throw behind an injury-decimated offensive line. And he had a fair amount of success, on his way to over 300 yards through the air. But he also had just one touchdown, with one interception.
Dan Campbell had perfect dismissal of Lions' lack of sacks in Week 1
Head coach Dan Campbell made his weekly appearance on 97.1 The Ticket Tuesday morning. He addressed the lack of sacks the Lions had against the Rams.
"You could put two high school tackles out there and we weren’t going to get to the quarterback, as fast as he was throwing the ball, I mean, that ball came out in a hurry. If you look at any time he held the ball significantly, we were beating these tackles consistently, so it wasn’t about that."
The Lions held the Rams to just 3.6 yards per carry on the ground, eventually rendering them one-dimensional.
"The sacks and everything else, I give Stafford credit, man," Campbell said. "He played fast, he played efficient. They adjusted pretty quickly to what type of game it was. And the good news was, we made them one-dimensional for the most part. They knew they couldn’t hold it and they had to get the ball out and man, they did a good job over there."
According to PFF, Stafford had 24 pass attempts in 2.5 seconds or less in Week 1, the second-most such attempts in the league for the week. That made it very hard to sack him, which was by design of the game plan the Rams clearly had knowing how depleted their offensive line was.
We are able to see more than just sacks to determine how a pass rush impacts a quarterback, and the residual adjustments an offense has to make. The Rams were intent on getting the ball out of Stafford's hands quickly, especially in the first half, but he was still pressured a lot and hit a fair amount on Sunday night. Sacks not being plentiful did not equate to the Lions' pass rush not being impactful. It was quite the opposite, actually.