Closing It Out

This serves me right. As soon as I talk up Stafford, he turns in a Bad Stafford performance (yep, that's him at #22 in QBR for the week). Bad Stafford, for the uninitiated, takes bad sacks, throws hard and inaccurate passes, fumbles from time to time, and gets intercepted because he throws hard and inaccurate passes. Calvin Johnson can boost a Bad Stafford performance into the Mediocre Stafford range, but unfortunately CJ had a bad wheel and was ineffective all day. He probably shouldn't have dressed, to tell the truth.

With a Bad Stafford suiting up, basically no CJ (and no Joique, and later no Reggie Bush), the offense was BAD. Buffalo's defense is actually pretty good, but Detroit's so-called "high-powered offense" should have been able to muster more that 1 touchdown. Seriously, the offense was shut out after the 1st quarter. Setting aside the kicking issue for one second, that is HUGELY problematic. Here is a summary of the Lions' drives from the 2nd quarter onward:

I'd like to point out that the Lions had 2 drives that started in Buffalo territory. The first was a 3 & out, the 2nd was Stafford's interception. The kicking failures overshadowed the failure of the offense to get into the red zone, excepting the one TD drive. No drive lasted longer than 57 yards.

The Lions as a whole played good enough to win (barely), but for the kicking game. 9 points were taken off the board by missing 3 long-ish FGs. The average conversion rate on FGs that long is about 80%. What happened is like Chauncey Billups getting fouled on a 3-pt attempt at the buzzer and then missing all 3 free throws. About halfway down in this Bill Barnwell piece, he breaks down how unlikely (and unlucky) Detroit has been. If Lions kickers had hit all their FGs, they would likely be undefeated right now.

Suggestions have been made on who the kicker du jour should be, since the new guy is clearly out the door. My recommendation for the next kicker tryout is to have guys kick against a rush. Line up the FG unit like you would in a game, pump in crowd noise, and have 11 guys try to block the kick. That should simulate the gametime pressure enough to weed out the weak-kneed kickers.

***

The Tigers got swept in the first round of the MLB playoffs, exhibiting similar weaknesses as the Lions had on Sunday. A dearth of offense, and catastrophic failure from one position group. Kicking in the NFL is a lot like late-inning relief pitching in baseball. It's a specialized position, you typically see the kicker/reliever in action for a small portion of the game, but their contributions are often critical to winning the game.

In game 1 & 2 the Tigers' bullpen blew up in the 8th inning. Both times. Then on Sunday, the offense left their good bats at home. Oh, and they pitched to Nelson Cruz.

Cruz killed them in 2011, and he followed up with equally impressive numbers this post-season. With Texas he hit .364 with 6 HR and 13 RBI in 6 games, accounting for 14 of Texas' runs (about 36% of the offense). In this series he accounted for exactly 1/3 of Baltimore's scoring, including both runs in the 2-1 clincher on Sunday. For his career he's hit .297 in the playoffs with 16 Hr in 37 games. That prorates to 70 HR over a season which is INSANE, given the fact that the competition is so much better. Here's an idea: WALK HIM.

Really the story of this post-season was the bullpen wetting the bed. In the game 1 debacle, Cabrera had just brought the Tigers to within a run of tying the game at the top of the 8th. Unfortunately Final score: 12-3, Baltimore. Then in game 2, Detroit carried a 6-3 lead into the 8th. It didn't stick. Some of this had to do with Ausmus's insistence on sticking with Joba Chamberlain as his 8th inning guy, despite him carrying in a 5.82 ERA from his last 24 appearances of the regular season (ERA for the Division Series? 108.00). Still, the bullpen as a whole (depite Joe Nathan, oddly enough) killed this Tigers team.