Detroit Lions news: Youth is serving well, a familiar face comes in for a visit, trench data
The Lions offensive line is still doing fine, while the defensive line is a mixed bag
The struggles of the Lions' offensive line to protect Jared Goff against the Packers were real. But overall, one of the best offensive lines in the NFL is in that class for the season as a whole.
On the defensive side, as expected, the Lions' pass rush has been pretty mediocre thus far. The discrepancy between Pro Football Focus' grade and ESPN's Win-Rate as a run defense is interesting.
Further feeding into my skepticism of ESPN's win-rate stats:
— Jeremy Reisman (@DetroitOnLion) November 29, 2023
Per PFF, the Lions have one of the best run defenses in the league.
Per ESPN's RDWR, they're one of the worst.
Those correlation lines (particularly in the run game) are fairly dubious. https://t.co/uYtsbAw5lq
Good teams have adversity during a season, and this year's Lions are no different
For some Lions' fans, the sky is falling (or it will fall) based on the loss to the Packers and certainly scars from the past. But as Justin Rogers of the Detroit News dove into, honing in on the 34 10-win teams in the NFL since 2020, what the Lions have experienced is not new among good teams. Almost all of those 10-win teams had a blowout loss or a losing streak, and many had both.
Per Rogers' research, one of those 34 10-win teams, the 2020 Kansas City Chiefs, avoided that kind of downturn.
So Dan Campbell's assertion about every good team experiencing adversity has proof behind it, if you needed it.
"Every team reaches adversity," Campbell said on Monday. "That’s what I do know. Every good team I’ve every been a part of. You don’t know when it’s going to hit, sometimes it’s September, sometimes it’s October, sometimes it is December. ...This may just be the beginning of it, and we may have to get through a couple of games before we find our footing again. I don’t think so, but it wouldn’t surprise me either. That’s the nature of this league. So, man, you hit adversity, you reach it, and it either makes you a little bit better of a team or you just crack under it."