Detroit Lions Preview Part 3: The Offense

Unlike the Lions defense, I feel pretty good about the offense this year. We know they’ll be able to move the ball thanks to Matthew Stafford and some pretty damn good receivers – getting Kenny Golladay for a full season should be huge – and now that the Lions have decided that running the ball effectively is actually, you know, a good idea, the potential is there for this to be a truly elite offense, one capable of carrying the entire team and propping up the defense.

Potential. That is the scary word here. Just like “should”, it is a seductive liar. You trust it at your own peril. But I’m gonna trust it this time, I think. This is because I am a goddamn fool, but in order to have Joy and Hope in your heart, you must be a fool from time to time, and be willing to risk the pain of Despair, the brutal chest-ripping of Betrayal.

Really, it comes down to two things: did the Lions really fix the running game this time? And can Stafford be what they truly need him to be? We can’t really answer the first until we see it happen, and as for the second? Well, that’s where people start to turn on each other and our hearts get ugly again. There is so much contention about just who Stafford is that it’s almost impossible to discuss anything without devoting a few thousand words to him alone. And so that’s what I’m gonna do – on Friday. Sound the Price’s Right Failure Horn.

Yeah, sorry. I need an entire post to talk about Stafford and Stafford alone. Unfortunately, that means that I have to find a way to preview the offense here without really analyzing Stafford. Does this make me a goddamn idiot? Almost certainly, but I’m gonna try anyway.

Let’s assume for now that Stafford is what the Lions need him to be – what they really need is for him to be a top five quarterback, which I think he can be, but for now . . . okay, fuck it, let’s talk about Stafford a little here. I’m still gonna write about him on Friday, but I have to at least talk about him a little bit here, right?

Okay. So, the Lions need Stafford to be a top five quarterback for their Grand Vision to truly work. They need him to be Brady or Rodgers or at least someone in that class. That is kind of insane, but that also shows how much faith they have in him.

The reality, at least right now, is that Stafford is closer to a top ten quarterback in the NFL. That’s fine. That’s great. But it isn’t top five. Then again, maybe he is? I don’t know. Brady, Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Drew Brees. I’d call them a pretty solid top four. But who’s number five? Matt Ryan? Probably. But who else would you take over Stafford right now? For this season and this season alone? I’m not even sure I’d take Ryan. Who else is there? Rapist Roethlisberger? Maybe Carson Wentz?

So, if Stafford isn’t top five, he’s at least close, right? But “close” might not be enough. That is the agony of it, and the agony of Stafford, which is what I’ll get into more on Friday. He’s not Brady. He’s not Rodgers. You know who else has been close for years? Who’s been riding that top ten for almost his entire career and yet it’s never been enough? Philip Rivers. That’s who Stafford reminds me of.

But I’m threatening to turn this into the Stafford piece and I’ll move on. That’s just a taste of Friday’s post.

The point is this: Stafford is close, but he’s not a given. The Lions need him to be a given for this to work. And by “given”, I mean he needs to be a definite, no questions asked, top five quarterback, not just a top ten quarterback. There needs to be no debate.

Really, it’s that simple. The Lions success, or lack thereof, hinges on this. It is The Story, just as it has been The Story for years now.

But at least some part of the Lions realize that he’s not Brady, and that’s good. It means they’re not totally deluding themselves here. They’ve tried to get by with the premise that he is Brady for too long now. This offseason, their far and away number one priority has been to finally rebuild a running game which has been a sea of despair since Barry Sanders had his inner Spirit Warrior fatally stricken with Lions Disease.

How bad was the running game last season? It was dead last, both in yardage, and in yards per carry. That’s, uh, that’s not good. That’s why Stafford needed to be Superman. The tragedy is that he’s Batman.

But Batman can win too with enough toys, and that’s what the Lions have tried to give Stafford this season. I’m having a really hard time not talking about keeping young boys named Robin in a cave, so let’s quickly abandon this Batman thing and move on.

I keep coming back to Stafford even though I said I’d put him off until Friday, but that just highlights how important he is. Actually, “highlights how important he is” doesn’t even cover it. It reveals that Stafford is the offense, or at least he’s what we know the offense to be, and maybe that’s part of the problem.

His success, and his image, is inextricably tied to the success and image of the Lions offense, and the Lions team as a whole. That is a dark place for anyone to be in. It’s also true of all quarterbacks, but it’s more true of Stafford thanks to the Lions completely non-existent running game, right?

This colors everything. It always has. And so, if the Lions have truly fixed the running game – drafting Frank Ragnow to block for LeGarrette Blount and fellow rookie Kerryon Johnson should work, it fucking better work – then we’ll finally be able to truly find out who Stafford is on his own merits. And that, in turn, should tell us exactly where we are, and where we need to go.

Start with the offensive line. Drafting Ragnow was huge. He should be the centerpiece of this whole thing for a decade. That is a comforting thought. Then again, there’s that word “should” again. Hopefully, he can bring together an offensive line which has plenty of individual talent but has struggled to find a cohesive identity. Part of that is probably chemistry, but part of that is because Taylor Decker was injured for half the season and it’s impossible to develop chemistry if you never actually play together. And the thing about offensive lines is that chemistry is probably the most important thing. It is a unit that has to think and then play as one mind.

Hopefully, Ragnow can tie all that together like Jeff Lebowski’s rug. My big concern is this: the Lions are sticking him at guard, where I’m sure he’ll be fine, but that means that Graham Glasgow will have to be play center. Glasgow is a better guard than center, so it seemed obvious, to me at least, that Ragnow, an All-American center in college, would play there while Glasgow remained at guard. But what the fuck do I know? I’m just a degenerate dope fiend.

But if Ragnow can be the final piece of the puzzle, and if Blount and Kerryon Johnson can form a thunder and lightning inside/outside combo, then shit baby, we gotta a stew goin’!

If. If. If. Too many ifs. These terrify me. They should terrify you too. How could they not? Even when we’ve had transcendent perfect angels like Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson we’ve had our hearts broken. If we couldn’t win with them . . .

I’ll leave that unsaid, both because it’s obvious and too painful. The point is this: we can never truly believe until we’ve seen it, until we’ve lived it. Until then, all we have is “If”, scary as it is. It’s especially ominous given that we’ve been promised answers before, but they’ve always just turned into more questions as we scrambled naked in the dark before laughing Failure Demons.

Kerryon Johnson is the new answer, the new Jahvid Best, the new Ameer Abdullah. What’s different about him that we should believe? Don’t know. Can’t tell you. That’s the Fear talking, but it’s also Reality. But that’s also the nature of Hope. Hope is the yang to Fear’s yin. Hope doesn’t exist without Fear. It’s what allows us to cope with The Fear, because it’s what keeps us going, keeps us moving towards a future that may not even exist, that doesn’t exist, because there is no future. It is not a real thing. It is only an idea born of the mind in order to cope with The Fear, to make the Now a bearable thing. Kerryon Johnson is Hope because Hope makes the future Real to us, and that’s what everyone has to have. There is no point is dismissing it, because it is a necessity, like water, like air. Even if it wasn’t there, people would have to invent something in its place, something to believe in. And so, yes, right now, Kerryon Johnson is nothing more than Hope. But that is a necessary thing, a good thing.

I could shit all over Hope right now, but what’s the point? I could tell you that Kerryon Johnson could just be another Jahvid Best, another Ameer Abdullah, but how would that be satisfying? What would any of us get out of that? The satisfaction of being right when it comes to pass? Congrats, you’re now miserable right away instead of being miserable later. Who cares?

I let myself destroy Hope for the last few seasons, and it sucked. I got nothing out of it, just a sense of frustrated alienation. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to go all Pie in the Sky defensive bullshit Hope, though. Balance is important. I want to Hope because I need to Hope. I need to Hope because what else is there?

This is getting weirdly grim and I didn’t really mean it to, but these are the things that happen here at Armchair Linebacker. You start out trying to analyze a running game and end up gibbering about the natures of Hope and Fear instead. But at least Hope is there again. For me, anyway. I want to believe in Kerryon Johnson. I want to believe in Frank Ragnow. And really, isn’t that the point? That is the essence of fandom right there. It is not Belief in itself, but wanting to Believe. It is that willingness to give yourself over to the seductive presence of Hope.

So . . . uh, anyway, let’s work with the assumption that Stafford is at least close to being a top five quarterback, at the very least a top ten quarterback, and that the running game and offensive line are at least finally heading in the right direction. What else is there? The Lions have the dudes at receiver. We know that. I’m not sure if either Golden Tate or Marvin Jones is The Man, but together they maybe constitute The Men. Does that work? Sure, let’s go with that. The X-Factor, the Hope I guess you could call it, is that Kenny Golladay has potential to be The Man. If he progresses like we want him to, then Jesus Christ, this could be wildly explosive.

Again, what else is there? I guess I could complain about tight end. There’s no one proven there, but is it really that hard to replace Eric Ebron dropping every important pass thrown to him? I mean, I could do that too. Hopefully, someone steps up here. I’m not necessarily counting on it, but the Lions have enough receiving threats without it being a critical necessity.

Hope. That’s what this whole thing comes down to, doesn’t it? This entire preview is built on it. I can see it working, I believe that it can work. It all has to go right, though, and when has that ever happened for us? And yet, here I am, here we all are, waiting and watching with Hope in our idiot hearts, because that is what it means to be a fan. That is what it means, what it has always meant, to be a fan of the Detroit Lions.

Detroit Lions Preview Part 2: The Defense

I know everyone is in HELL YEAH 16-0 BABY preseason idiot mode, but I’ll be right up front with you: I think the defense is gonna be a big ol’ pile of shit this season.

People don’t want to hear that shit, and I get it. I really do. Hope is the only thing keeping most of us going and anyone who comes along right now and shits all over that is an enormous asshole.

*bends over like goatse*

Hi.

The wild swings between Hope and Fear are especially magnified this season though thanks to a new coaching staff, specifically one brought in to fix the Lions wretched defense. This also means that it’s tough to really predict how things are gonna go with any real certainty because no one really knows what the defense is even gonna look like. Preseason games don’t really tell us that much because, well, because the preseason is dumb and meaningless. Never forget the Lions went 4-0 in the 2008 preseason before 0-16 took all of our idiot souls.

So how does anyone figure this out? More specifically, how did I, a rapscallion and a nincompoop, arrive at ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER so soon? Is it just baseless fear-mongering? Maybe a little. It’s almost impossible to be a Lions fan and not have those Failure Demons nipping at your heels like jackals, cackling your biggest fears to the dark places of your heart. But there’s more to it than that, I think. I try to be objective (calm down) and . . . I just don’t see it, bros and lady bros.

That’s because no matter how I look at it, I arrive at the same conclusion: Doom. Women rending their garments in the streets, beating their naked breasts and dashing their babies’ heads against the rocks while the men hoot like animals and sodomize each other through bitter tears.

Start with the personnel, which is basically the same personnel as last year’s defense which wasn’t nearly good enough, especially against the run. One thing I’ve mentioned multiple times throughout this preview odyssey, especially when talking about the Patriots, Packers and Seahawks, is that the NFL, for all its wealth, is a league of finite resources. This is because of the salary cap. It means that teams are constantly having to cut corners and having to make hard choices about which parts of the team to leave as relative weaknesses. The Patriots, Packers and Seahawks, who have the best quarterbacks in the league, have still won, mostly, even though they’ve been forced to essentially strip their teams of anything other than their quarterback.

So, I get it. NFL team have to constantly make choices. The Lions seem, to me anyway, to be choosing that Patriots/Packers/Seahawks strategy of loading everything on Stafford, of doing whatever they can to let him carry the team, and hope for the best everywhere else. You could see this in their offseason priorities, which basically consisted of them doing everything they could to fix the running game and offensive line. This was done for two reasons: to give Stafford more protection and resources, and to give the Lions offense more options so that they can keep drives going longer.

Keep Drives Going Longer.

That is a key phrase we’ll encounter again. But basically, the Lions have made the choice to try to control the game offensively while forcing the defense to just Hang On. I get it. I mean, it’s a strategy, one employed by the Patriots to great success over the years. All of this depends on Matthew Stafford being Tom Brady, however, which is scary as hell. But this isn’t the offensive preview, so I’ll try to move on and get this to finally make sense and come together for you, okay?

This is all a roundabout way of saying that the Lions needed a lot of help on defense, especially along the defensive line, and they didn’t do a goddamn thing to address it. Not really, anyway. They signed Sylvester Williams, but he’s basically just a marginal starter who isn’t gonna change the game or anything. That’s all they did to bolster the middle. And then there’s the Edge, not the wrestler or the U2 guitarist, but the dude responsible for getting to the quarterback. Everyone took it as a matter of certainty that the Lions would draft one, maybe even two, and early. Instead, they basically said fuck the edge and took no one. Well, okay then.

The Lions did draft Da’Shawn Hand in the fourth round, but he’s a dude who comes with a reputation as someone who does nothing really all that well, certainly nothing to inspire excitement in fans or fear in opponents, but his selection revealed the way the Lions plan to play on defense: a passive, bend-but-don’t-break style that is built on the idea of gap responsibility and not fucking up. The thought is that someone like Hand can handle being responsible for multiple gaps, and while he’ll never excite you, he shouldn’t horrify and disgust you either.

I mean . . . it’s a strategy. It’s nowhere near what I think the best or most effective defensive strategies are. I hate passivity on defense. I like the idea of responsibility, but the passivity allows more opportunities for fuckups. I mean, you’re far more likely to make a mistake during a 9-play drive than a 4 play one.

But it is a change, it’s just not the change we all wanted. Gone are the wild-haired attack the QB defenses, which were the legacy of Jim Schwartz and the defense he tried to build. In is the Patriots Way, which as we’ll see in a little bit, is kind of a fraud, at least defensively.

The linebackers aren’t exactly inspiring either. Jarrad Davis should be a player, but it’s hard to truly build something with other teams’ castoffs, which is all that Christian Jones and Devon Kennard basically are. I think the thought is that Kennard can be the big linebacker who holds the edge and keeps big plays from breaking out there, but you can dress a hobo up like a millionaire all you want, at heart he’s still a hobo and will cut you while you sleep just to steal a can of baked beans. I’m just saying, he’s no Dont’a Hightower no matter how badly the Lions want him to be.

I like Darius Slay. How could I not? He was an All Pro last season, but you have to wonder whether he can do it again. After all, consistency has not always been his strong suit, and if he starts giving up big plays instead of making them, then the Lions are straight fucked. That’s all there is to it. He’s the key for this entire defense. If he plays like he did last season, then maybe, just maybe, the Lions can keep teams out of the endzone. If not, then the Lions simply don’t have a coherent defensive identity and they’re dead. It’s that simple.

Glover Quin is still decent, but he’s not gonna make the difference like Slay, and everyone else back there are pretty much just guys. I’m serious. In terms of the defensive personnel, it’s pretty much just hope that Slay plays like Superman and that maybe Ezekiel Ansah can get to the quarterback enough times to throw opposing offenses out of rhythm. There’s really no other reason for hope.

But the defensive personnel is tough to really analyze without knowing how that personnel will be used by Matt Patricia and Uncle Paulie Pasqualoni. And here’s where I think the tale gets told.

Pasqualoni was last a defensive coordinator about a decade ago in Miami. That alone is enough to start making one eye the drain cleaner longingly. He lasted two seasons. The first was a surprise 11-5 season which saw Pasqualoni’s defense finish 9^th in scoring and 15^th in yardage. Not bad, right? The next season, Uncle Paulie’s last, they finished 25^th in scoring and 22^nd in yardage. Let’s have a moment of silence for Uncle Paulie’s career.

Why the big discrepancy? It’s simple: turnovers. His first season, the Dolphins finished 5^th in the league in turnovers forced. His second season, they finished 27^th. That huge swing alone probably accounts for a lot of the decline on defense. It also probably shows that the first season was something of a mirage. There’s a school of thought that turnovers are essentially random, and that relying on them is something only done by a great fool. I think that’s basically true, but I also think you can do things to force turnovers more frequently. Specifically, I think an aggressive defense that puts a ton of pressure on the quarterback can reliably force turnovers more than a team that just sits back on its heels. You see where I’m going with this, right? The Lions defensive philosophy isn’t exactly aligned with forcing turnovers. To me, that makes Uncle Paulie’s second shitty season more likely than the first.

But really, fuck Uncle Paulie. He’s a thousand years old and was basically brought in because Matt Patricia knows him, is comfortable with him, and because Uncle Paulie will take orders from the head of the family.

And that’s where the power really lies here, with Matt Patricia. You know, the guy last seen leading a defense to utter collapse and a loss in a Super Bowl despite Tom Brady throwing for over 500 yards. Yeah, that guy.

Oh Lord, why??? How long, Lord??? How long???

Sorry. I just needed a moment to wail and hurl recriminations at the almighty. That’s because I think that Matt Patricia’s reputation is entirely fraudulent. At least as a defensive coordinator.

The thing is, is that this seems kind of insane given that in Patricia’s six years as defensive coordinator for the Patriots, their defenses finished in the top 10 in scoring defense every season. So why the fuck am I complaining? Well, in three of those six seasons, they finished 25^th, 26^th and 29^th in yards allowed. That’s, uh, that’s not good. Especially that 29^th place finish, which was last season, which translated into Doom in the Super Bowl.

Then again, the whole point is to keep the other team out of the endzone. Who cares how many yards you give up as long as the other team doesn’t score? This is the very essence of the bend-but-don’t-break philosophy. But here’s why I think that Patricia – and the Patriots Way on defense – is kind of a fraud: Tom Brady.

It’s not just that Brady carries the team offensively, he also carries the team defensively. What do I mean by that? Remember that phrase I mentioned you should remember earlier? Keep Drives Going Longer.

Football is a team game, and in more ways than you probably realize. It isn’t just about who’s on the field together. It’s about how your different units complement one another to create a unified and coherent philosophy. It’s why you see so many quick-strike, spread offenses with such “shitty” defenses. It isn’t even that their defenses are shitty so much as they’re often left hanging out to dry by their offenses, who don’t give a shit how often the defense is on the field or whether they give up 10 points or 40 so long as the offense can score 50.

On the other hand, some “good” defenses aren’t actually very good at all. But they still work because the offense plays a style built to protect the defense. Long drives and field position are maximized in order to 1. Keep the defense off the field, and 2. Put them in a position where they can bend a bit when they are on the field.

This has long been the Patriots strategy under Belichick, and especially under Patricia. And it works – mostly – because of Brady. He engineers long drives – the Patriots led the league last season in time of possession, which kept the defense off the field – and because of this, when the defense is forced to come onto the field, they do so with the other team in shitty field position. When the Patriots do have to punt, they usually do so from an advantageous position, which is why the Patriots also were number one in the league in opponents starting field position.

It’s a coherent strategy, one that’s served the Patriots well. At least until it became just too goddamn much and fell apart in the Super Bowl. After all, for all those advantages won by Brady for the defense, that defense allowed 6.1 plays per drive, which was 30^th in the league, and let the other team keep the ball for 2:44 per drive, which was 22^nd. That explains the vast discrepancy between the Patriots rankings in scoring defense and yardage allowed. They weren’t actually doing much to prevent the other team from scoring. It was Tom Brady. He was the Patriots defensive MVP.

All of this is my way of pointing out that Matt Patricia really doesn’t have anything going for him as a master defensive strategist. He’s not gonna come up with a defense capable of stopping the other team cold. His best strategy, his only strategy, is to hope that Matthew Stafford can be the team’s offensive and defensive MVP.

But it’s more complicated than that, I think. Remember back to when I talked about the Lions making choices. Recall that I said the choice they made was to bolster the offensive line and the running game. Here’s where it gets interesting: those choices were made as much with the defense in mind as the offense. They were made precisely because they are the sorts of things a team needs in order to keep their damn offense on the field and the defense off of it. It’s a coherent strategy, at least.

It also means that they probably aren’t expecting Stafford to go Full Brady. That would be insane. The Patriots basically gutted their entire team other than Brady and still won because Brady could take the entire team, offense and defense, on his back. And it worked. At least until the Super Bowl, but that brings up an important point: with this strategy, there comes a point when even Tom fucking Brady isn’t enough. That’s an insane way to try to win.

But again, I think at least some part of Bob Quinn knows this, which is why he’s attempting not to modify the strategy, but to spread its responsibility around a bit. Not to the defense, but to the rest of the offense. A strong running game and a powerful offensive line are there to help Stafford, certainly, but they’re there to help him protect the defense as much as anything else by working long drives and setting up the defense with good field position.

So where does all of this leave the Lions defense this season? Like I said, I think it will be shit. But that might not even be relevant. The truth will likely be told by how effective the offense is at protecting the defense. That is the Patriots Way. Patricia’s value is similar to Pasqualoni’s: he’s there because he understands the overall concept, not because he’s gonna be a forceful agent of chaos and change. I said this before, a while back: this is Bob Quinn’s team. He understands the Patriots Way. He helped build it. He hired a coach who’s gonna do what he’s told and who’s gonna keep things coherent.

Still, this is a defense that will drive us all insane. It’s not gonna get in there and destroy other teams. It’s not gonna force a lot of three and outs. It’s gonna be frustrating and it’s gonna be maddening. There will be wailing and drain cleaner smoothies and drunks wanting to fight Matt Patricia and Uncle Paulie. The key is to understand that, insane or not, this is the Lions plan. They want to control the game offensively in order to make the defense largely irrelevant. Will it work? I mean, maybe. It’s worked for the Patriots, and Stafford is good enough I think to at least go ¾ Brady and let the hopefully fixed run game handle the other ¼. But that is a lot of Hope in a place where we have none, and it’s hard to forget the image of Patricia standing helpless on the sideline while his defense was destroyed by the Eagles in the Super Bowl.

But Hope is all we’ve really got, which is the usual song we’re left singing this time of year. I think I can see a coherent plan, even if it’s one I don’t necessarily like, and I guess maybe that’s enough for now. At least it’s not deranged anarchy. At least no one is up there mumbling about pad level or bible study or getting confused by the glare of the fucking sun. We know what that’s like, and it sucks. So, it’s Hope again, old friends. And if we can’t have Belief, I guess that will have to do. Again. And again. And again. And again . . .