The NFL regular season, week 1 is in the books and the Lions performed about as well as they are capable of on Monday night. Naturally, Drew Sharp wasted no time in posting his annual "turd in the punchbowl" column following the 35-14 win over the Giants (roughly 2.5 hrs after the game ended). Anyway, breezing by the guy that likes to sneeze on the birthday cake (for the record, Mitch Albom is Drew Sharp's polar opposite), let's get to the action.
Sorry about the quality, but the NFL (No Fun League) is doing a great job of keeping recent game footage off YouTube and no longer provides the embed code for videos, so this was the best I could do. For better res, try this link out, or full highlights here.
Anyway, this play sort of encapsulated a lot of the things the offense did well. The offensive line did a pretty good job in pass protection (the rush came from a guy that dragged the RT Waddle down by his facemask), Stafford used his newfound mobility to slide step the rusher and buy time, and Calvin Johnson used that time to get absurdly open.
I'd read a couple of articles on how Stafford now has a QB coach for the first time in his NFL career (imagine!), and they were working on his footwork and that sort of thing. This piqued my interest, since Stafford's footwork has always been the main thing holding him back. If he could figure his feet out...
Let me take a moment here and extrapolate. Going back to last season's collapse, fair or foul, I've always believed that Stafford was primarily responsible. His QB rating went from 96.2 in September, to 93.5 in October, to 78.9 in November, and finally 63.8 in December. He essentially went from Romo/Roethlisberger territory to Kellen Clemens to sub-Geno Smith. With solid footwork, the Romo/Roethlisberger scenario would be Stafford on a BAD day. So, fix the feet to fix Stafford, fix Stafford to fix the Lions, and the sky is the limit.
...Ok, sorry about that. Not that I want to go all crazy-giddy-psycho-fan on you (LIONS, SUPER BOWL 2015!!!), but if this version of Matt Stafford is legit, you can start buying Lions playoff stock. Other things I liked - the new offense seemed to be well run (for the most part), the defense put decent pressure on the QB (Ansah and Levy were all over the place), I LOVED the turnover differential (although Levy probably dropped his INT), and I liked how the Lions closed the game. After the first quarter, they seemed content to sit back and kick field goals, leaving the door open for a Giants comeback. Then they slammed that door shut with Stafford's scramble TD, then the soul-crushing 12-play TD drive with the Fauria 2-pt conversion to cap it off.
What I didn't like:
- The penalties! Detroit gift-wrapped the Giants' first TD with the roughing the kicker and pass interference in the end zone penalties, and Raiola had a 15-yd facemask that negated a 25-yd CJ catch and killed a drive, to name a few. Still, the silver lining is that after chalking up 8 penalties for 85 yards in the 1st half, the Lions cleaned it up in the 2nd half
- The Lions run game, apart from the last TD drive which featured 8 rushing plays for 37 yards, was pretty anemic. New York seemed to stack a little against the run, oddly enough, but I expected the line to be more effective in the run game than they were
- The defense held Eli Manning's offense to 14 points, but a lot of that is due to how crappy that offense is right now. I liked the pass rush and linebacker play, but that secondary... I don't remember much good or bad about Mathis' performance, but Slay had plenty of both. When the nickle corner, Bentley, went down, followed by the remaining starting safety, this team's primary weakness was on full display. Fortunately the Giants weren't capable of exploiting it. I'm hoping Champ Bailey isn't as washed up as Denver and New Orleans think he is
Most likely it'll be somewhere in between, but get ready. Cam Newton & his busted ribs are up next.
No comments:
Post a Comment