Preview: Detroit
this is the most recent photo of us playing the Lions in the playoffs
Opponent: vs. Detroit Lions
Where: Levi’s Stadium (Santa Clara, CA)
When: Sunday, January 28th , 3:30 PM PT
Weather: Better not be goddamn rain, sheeeeeit
In September of 2021, Dan Campbell opened his first season as head coach of the Detroit Lions against the 49ers. I was in Nashville at the time—sweating alcohol and hungover out of my mind—and I’d wandered into what ended up being a Lions bar. With the Niners up huge in the second half, a man—a regular based on his reception—entered the bar in a custom-made authentic Lions jersey. His jersey number and name? #69, Bukkake. The very next play Jason Verrett blew out his knee to be lost for the season, Shanahan pulled all the starters, and the Lions staged a massive comeback that included fumbles, muffed onside kicks, and nearly the worst blown lead in franchise history. All through this comeback, the Lions faithful gave credit to one thing and one thing only: the jersey and the man who wore it. As the chants of “Bukkake! Bukkake!” rang through the bar and the vacant space where my brain once resided, I contemplated hell and thought it was probably more pleasant (and less hot) than the nightmare I was currently living.
The Niners were able to hold on for an ugly win that day. Now—three years later—we play the fully actualized version of those Detroit Lions. No longer a scrappy underdog but a bonafide contender, they’re competing for their first-ever Super Bowl appearance, while we’re in our third straight NFC championship game and fourth in the past five years.
Health Check
Lions: WR Kalif Raymond seems like a game-time decision, but since he’s yet to practice this week I would say he’s doubtful at best. C Frank Ragnow hasn’t practiced either, but given how banged up he is, I’m going to guess these are more veteran rest days than anything else. I’d be shocked if he doesn’t play. The one player it seems the Lions will definitely be without is starting LG Jonah Jackson, who had a minor knee procedure this week.
Niners: The big question is WR Deebo Samuel, and right now his status is very much in the air. He practiced in limited fashion on Thursday—which is the Niners’ heaviest practice of the week—so he feels like a game-time decision.
OFFENSE
All due credit to Dan Campbell. My undeniable biases led me to believe that Michigan native Robert Saleh should have been hired by the Lions back in 2020, but after Campbell’s amazing intro press conference about biting off kneecaps and hearing his psychopathic coffee order, I quickly came to believe this guy would either be the best or the worst coach ever. As far as instilling a culture and an identity, he’s been much closer to the former, but he’s also had the intelligence to step back, hire well, and let his coordinators handle the X’s and O’s. On offense, that coordinator is Ben Johnson—a mathematics and computer science double major—who has quickly become the league’s most highly sought-after head coaching candidate after building one of the league’s most potent and versatile attacks.
This Lions offense is legit. They’re a top-five unit in the passing game and the running game, are excellent along the line of scrimmage and do as good a job as anyone of shaping their offensive scheme to the strengths of their personnel. That starts up front.
S-Tier Fatties. Dan Campbell’s dictate when he took over in Detroit was installing a culture of physicality and their offense shows that best in their dominance up front. According to both PFF and adjusted line yards, this is the best offensive line in football, and their play in the trenches allows them to run a style of offense that relies on a power running game and longer developing passing plays.
Frank Ragnow has a legitimate claim to being the best center in football while Penei Sewell is probably the closest thing to a young Trent Williams in the NFL. Both are ranked 1st at their positions by PFF. While they’re the headliners, this line has four of their five starting linemen ranked in the top 10(!) or better at their respective positions, so there are no real weaknesses upfront. That is, until this week.
Starting left guard Jonah Jackson—who was already the team’s “weak” spot—got hurt midway through the Buccaneers game. They replaced him with Kayode Awosiki, who—on 28 pass protection snaps—allowed a team-high seven pressures. That is decidedly NOT elite, and while it’s hard to target a single lineman in a unit that is so strong as a whole, we’re certain to try just that—particularly in the passing game.
The Lions are so O-line friendly that they even play Dan Skipper—a sixth offensive lineman—with decent regularity when they want extra heft in short-yardage and goal-line situations. He was the subject of the declaring eligible snafu at the end of the Cowboys game, so he does go out for the occasional route out of unbalanced sets.
[Trope about a hard hat or something]. On the back of their talented offensive line, the Lions have what is probably the most diverse running game in football. While we have a ton of different ways to get into a relatively small number of actual run game concepts, the Lions could have double-digit rushing concepts that they use to deploy their running back duo of David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs.
Committe RBs are almost always called thunder and lightning, even if they often feature two backs whose skill sets have more overlap than that nickname would imply. But Detroit’s duo lives up to that moniker. Montgomery is their bigger power back and Gibbs is their speedier outside threat and space player. Yes, both guys can run inside or out, but if you want to see how they typically deploy them, look no further than the run charts of Gibbs vs Montgomery in weeks 16 and 17, respectively.
The Lions are an aggressive team—both in play-calling and in 4th down decisions—but the run game is their comfort food. When things are going awry or they start to believe they’re drifting too far from their identity, they’ll lean heavily on the run game to get their offense right and reassert their personality.
Leverage and Long-developers. When Ben Johnson took over as OC, one of the first things he did was sit down with Jared Goff, determine which throws he was the most comfortable making, and shape the playbook around those concepts. This led to an offense that loves crossers, vertical stems, and bending routes inside or out underneath deep coverage—i.e. long-developing routes that attack the second level.
To get their wideouts vertical and horizontal without impediment, the Lions love stacked and bunch formations, switch releases to confuse coverage responsibilities, and pre-snap motion to further stress man responsibilities and to get their smaller-framed wideouts away from press coverage. These motions also lead to a ton of extra blockers in the run game, as tight ends and wideouts will quite often be tasked with kicking out edge players or leading up to the second level off of pre-snap motion.
The result is a bunch of pass concepts that use built-in leverage and long swooping routes to stress coverages horizontally and vertically, which opens up big spaces in the middle of the field and on the second level. Despite the constant vertical stems, this is a team that lives in the intermediate zones. They love shallows, crossers, digs, and options (a Cooper Kupp holdover). They can throw the quick game but prefer to get bigger chunks out of their pass attempts. But not TOO big. They throw deep balls at a lower rate than any other team in the NFL.
The Goffaissance. Turns out a guy plays a lot better when the fans are supporting him and chanting his name instead of blaming him for every single loss while giving his head coach all the credit for his successes. Who knew?
Once considered a salary dump who the Rams basically paid the Lions in draft picks to include in the Matt Stafford trade like some sort of Brock Osweiler-level cap burden, Goff has thrived in the system that Ben Johnson built around him and the culture that Dan Campbell fostered in this locker room.
Goff has always been one of the better pure throwers in football. When in rhythm, he throws as nice a ball as anyone. It’s when shit gets hectic—when defenders get into his body or he has to move off his spot—when the valleys would come. In Los Angeles, those valleys were low enough and regular enough that they shipped him out of town. In Detroit, they’ve raised his floor tremendously by helping him reach a new level of comfort and confidence—thus heightening his ceiling.
Inside Out. It’s at least worth noting the difference in the Lions’ offensive output when they play outside vs. inside because the drop-off is—as much as anything can be with such a small sample size—statistically notable. Over the past two years—including their two post-season games this season—here are the Lions’ inside and outside scoring and yardage splits, including where those figures would rank nationwide:
There’s some obvious statistical noise in these figures due to scheduling variance, because the Lions were bad for the first half of 2022, and since they play their home games in a dome and usually teams score more points at home. Plus, the average NFL game played inside scores four more points than one played outside so you can basically spot all teams ~2 points when they’re inside. But even if we give the Lions an additional two-point bonus when indoors, they’re still putting up about a touchdown less when playing in the elements.
To be clear, their yardage numbers when playing outside this year are still quite potent, and I’m not saying this is an offense we should expect to whither in the oppressive 70-degree weather of Santa Clara, but the scoring figures had enough of a difference that it was worth mentioning. In both 2022 and 2023, four of the Lions’ six lowest-scoring games were played outside.
POTENTIAL DEFENSIVE KEYS
Yes, we looked far from elite against the Packers, but I flip back and forth between how much that game was indicative of our defense’s ability versus a specifically bad outing. The run defense is certainly a concern—and one that was lingering all season—and there was always a baseline level of anxiety about Ambry Thomas’ deep ball ability and a pass rush that sometimes struggles to convert pressures into sacks. Those are all things that stick out due to the overall strength of our defense, but also problems that we’ve seen enough that we can call them repeatable issues.
But at the same time, pass interference calls and defensive players slipping led to at least four of the Packers’ seven successful third down conversions and one of their three offensive touchdowns. Our defense gave up a ton of yards but also stiffened up and allowed just six points in three tries inside our own 15-yard line, picked off Jordan Love twice as many times as he’d been intercepted in the eleven games before, and held the Packers scoreless on their last four offensive possessions.
Are there concerns? Absolutely. There have to be after any performance that was as dicey as last weekend’s. But there are also reasons for optimism. And a date with one of the best offenses (and running games) in the NFL will be a tremendous proving ground for a unit that hasn’t been questioned much over the past few years.
Once More, With Feeling. Stopping the run was a priority last week, and our inability to do so was one of the many reasons why that game was as close as it was. This weekend, stopping the run is even more important. While the Packers were adamant they stay balanced to establish the run and open up the passing game, the Lions are fine with just pounding the rock if we can’t slow it down. This is a team that’s rushed for 200+ yards three times this season and has only been held under 100 four times all year. You’d better believe that after our performance last weekend Dan Campbell is gonna have his guys fired up to play bully on the ground while Ben Johnson is finding all sorts of ways to gash us inside with Montgomery and pin in our defensive ends with wideouts and tight ends to get the edge with Gibbs.
Teams run the ball best against us when their scheme is made to attack our aggressive upfield nature, and the Lions are probably the single best team at attacking defenses in different ways on the ground. Given that, I’d be wary of the many types of traps the Lions employ. And after the success the Packers had crack blocking our defensive ends and how our non-Bosa edges have struggled to set in the run game all year, I would expect to see plenty crack tosses and pin-and-pulls until we prove we can stop it. All that seems to point to this being more of a Gibbs game than a Montgomery game, which means setting the edge, taking better pursuit angles, and tackling in space will be at a premium.
While our 51-game streak of holding an opposing rusher under 100 yards was snapped last week, on a per-play basis, we haven’t done a great job of stopping the run all year. That needs to be more of a focus on Sunday, both to get them out of the run but also to force them into more quick game concepts—an area where they’re certainly capable but less comfortable throwing the ball.
Muddy the Middle. Stacks and bunches are a great way to create issues in man coverage and—when deployed tight enough to the formation—advantageous angles for crack blocks in the run game. However, receivers who are close to one another tighten up spaces pre-snap and allow the defense to play a wider variety of coverages as a result. In short, a defensive back or linebacker can better hide their coverage intentions when they aren’t forced out of the box by wide and spread-out receiver alignments. Given the Lions’ use of these formations and the strengths and weaknesses of Goff and this passing game, hiding and deploying edge blitzes, rotating safeties unexpectedly, and—in general—changing the picture pre- and post-snap will be key.
When kept clean, given time to see the field clearly, and able to operate on script, Goff is as good as any quarterback in the league. But while he’s made strides in the department, he’s never been an elite quick-trigger processor, and if you can speed up his process while muddying the picture pre-snap, his efficiency drops off. The Lions want to throw long-developing intermediate passes because they’re the hardest to guard when they can protect it. The first step to slowing down their passing attack is knowing that and forcing them to do anything but. That means deep linebacker drops, a variety of looks and techniques to wall crossers, and late safety rotations to try and passes attacking the middle of the field.
The Lions throw to the middle of the field more than any other team in football, and they’re damn good at it. However, our middle-of-the-field pass defense is the best in the NFL by a very large margin. That’s what happens when you have the best coverage linebacker duo in the history of football. Something’s gotta give.
Ambry Anxiety. Ambry Thomas probably had his worst game of the year last weekend, but—as a whole—he’s been playing the best ball of his career this season. I’m fascinated to see whether Ben Johnson sticks to what got the Lions here (and what Goff is best at) and goes strength-on-strength targeting the middle of the field against our linebackers or whether he tries to attack us outside. Given one of our cornerbacks is a second-team All-Pro who leads the league in pass deflections and the other is coming off a bad coverage and tackling game last week, you can bet who they’ll be attacking if throwing deep outside the hashes becomes a big part of their gameplan. If that’s the case, Thomas has gotta trust his technique, stay in phase, and not panic when the ball is in the air.
Amon-Ra is a genuine alpha and not a guy who is easily shadowed because he motions a lot and plays many snaps out of the slot. If attacking outside is a big part of their gameplan, I’m sure they will try and do so in ways that force Thomas to guard Amon-Ra. Sam LaPorta is a great underneath safety blanket but will be the problem of the linebackers and safeties. Their supporting receivers are more specialty guys. Some have speed, some have size. All are dangerous when deployed in this system but none are a genuine matchup problem against Ambry as long as he plays clean and controlled.
Earn The Big Bucks. In both draft capital and money spent, we have the most expensive defensive line in football. This is the exact type of matchup where they need to earn that money. We don’t need to have a dominant performance (although it would be a lot cooler if we did), but we need our defensive line to at least fight to a standstill. Given how much this Lions offense relies on their offensive line, that would go a long way to slowing down this attack.
Once again, if there’s a weakness along this offensive line it would be at guard, where injury replacement Kayode Awosika has had major problems in pass protection and Graham Glasgow—while a dominant run blocker—is not as strong in the passing game. Both players have an elite center and a good-to-elite tackle helping them on either side, but everyone can’t have double team help forever, and we have to win those matchups when their guards are unprotected.
While Goff is a much more mature, confident, and better player than he was in Los Angeles, he isn’t without warts. He’s improved when under pressure, but getting defenders into his body and moving him off his spot is still the best way to cause his efficiency to plummet. Among players with at least 100 dropbacks, PFF has Goff graded as the 11th-best quarterback in football this season. When pressured, his ranking drops to 24th, sandwiched between Mason Rudolph and Joshua Dobbs. Coming out of their bye week, the Lions had a five-game stretch where Goff’s QBR under pressure was 0.6(!) out of 100. That was, unsurprisingly, the worst mark in the league. He’s rebounded since then—and I do think he’s better versus pressure than he’s ever been in his career—but if you are looking for random stats to show Goff’s drop-off under pressure, well… they’re not too hard to find.
Making Goff move off his spot and messing up his timing is the best way to force Goff into turnovers, and when those turnovers come, they can come in bunches. Goff has four multiple-turnover games this season.
DEFENSE
The second of the Lions’ impressive coordinators is Aaron Glenn, who was just voted by players as the NFL’s top defensive coordinator by a weird NFLPA poll that only let players who were playing for a specific coordinator vote for them. Basically, this just means Glenn’s approval rating on his team is through the roof. That’s not nothing, but it also doesn’t equate to him being the “best” defensive coordinator. Meaningless polls aside, Glenn has done a good job instilling a grittiness and aggressiveness in a unit that has some holes in terms of personnel, which is why he’s getting so many head coaching looks this off-season despite the Lions having more of a middle-of-the-pack defense.
Once Again, The Run Game. Just as on offense, the Lions prioritize stopping the run game over everything else, and they’ve done an excellent job of doing just that throughout the season. This unit is well-coached, excellent in their run fits, and they fill aggressively all over the field. But what puts this unit over the top is that they rarely allow big plays. You may be able to move them and grind out tough yardage, but they’ve only allowed 11 runs of 15+ yards all season. All this adds up to DVOA’s #1-ranked rushing defense.
Solving Problems With Aggression. The Lions have basically dominated every imaginable pass rush stat this season, leading the league in pressure % and hurry % and finishing second in knockdown %. The one stat they haven’t done well at is—oddly enough—sacks, where their mark of 41 is the 10th-worst in the league.
The best player along their defensive line is Aidan Hutchinson, aka Maxx Crosby 2.0. He’s a relentless motor, insane endurance type who never comes off the field, and he’s registered at least a sack and three QB hits in each of his past four games. His 11.5 sacks are more than double that of the second-best on their team, but the guy who holds that mark (Alim McNeil) has had an excellent all-around season in his own right at defensive tackle. Everyone along their DL is solid or better against the run, but the rest of their dudes—save for maybe reserve DE Romeo Okwara—are better run-stoppers than pass rushers.
So how do the Lions get so many pressures with only two defensive linemen who are plus pass rushers? Blitzing. While the Lions aren’t at Brian Flores/Wink Martindale levels when it comes to sending extra bodies, they blitz on 35.4% of downs, which is the 4th-highest mark in the league.
All of their safeties and slot corners are excellent blitzers, but safety Ifeatu Melifonwu is their best overall player in the secondary, and he—alongside rookie nickel Brian Branch—gives Glenn a pair of movable pieces on the back end. Melifonwu basically plays everything from deep safety to slot corner to a rolled-up linebacker and edge blitzer while Branch is their full-time nickel and their best coverage man down the field.
The aggressiveness aligns with Campbell’s very public persona, and my hunch is that the Lions’ blitz-lean is in part because they’d rather be charging forward and ensuring that they stop the run rather than risk hesitation and reactive play defensively. But I also think that aggression and blitz rate are in part because they know their secondary can’t hold up long in coverage.
Dat Forward Pass Doe. After watching some of their film, I came away feeling their pass defense was better than their numbers. I think that’s because their aggressiveness makes them a high-variance pass defense. They’re either forcing incompletions and mistakes with their pressure or they’re kind of getting diced. That said, the numbers aren’t great. The Lions have the 5th-worst play-action defense in the league, are second-worst in yards gained per pass attempt, and third-worst in expected points added per pass attempt. Per DVOA, their pass defense is ranked right in the middle at 16th, but that’s mostly because of the negative plays their pass rush can generate.
To be fair, they’ve gotten a key reinforcement back from injury in safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, a big play guy and an absolutely notorious shit talker and secondary pest who went out of his way to pick a fight with Deebo on IG Live while he was healing up on the IR earlier this year. Deebo may not play this game but few people in the world play better when they’re pissed than our lovable open-field bowling ball of death. Nevertheless, Gardner-Johnson is a boost to their secondary. It’s just worth wondering how much that offsets their absolute lack of talent at outside cornerback.
Starting outside corners Cameron Sutton and Kindle Vildor have been liabilities all season. Over the past four games alone (vs. Dallas, Minnesota, LA Rams, and Bucs) Sutton is credited by PFF as allowing 26 grabs on 32 targets (81.3%) for 467 yards (17.9 ypc) and three touchdowns while Vildor has allowed 13 catches on 21 targets (61.9%) for 342 yards (26.3 ypc) and three touchdowns. Per PFF, they are the 100th and 105th ranked cornerbacks out of 129 qualifiers. And Vildor replaced the now-injured Jerry Jacobs in the starting lineup after he was pulled due to play. For reference, over the 14 games he’s played this season, our much-critiqued corner Ambry Thomas has allowed 44 grabs on 61 targets (72.1%) for 421 yards (9.6 ypc) and three scores. That’s right, Ambry has allowed fewer yards and just as many touchdowns all season as the Lions’ top cornerback has allowed in just the past four games.
Despite their problems outside, the Lions run the 10th-most man coverage in the league, which makes me think that if Glenn had better outside corners (like if Emmanuel Moseley wasn’t hurt) their rate of man coverage would be in the top 5. Regardless, there are matchups to be had outside.
Play-action passes have also been an issue for the Lions—in large part because their linebackers are so aggressive fitting the run. Alex Anzalone has long been an underappreciated player, and he’s their best linebacker vs the pass, but I’m not sure the Lions are particularly confident in any of their other LBs in coverage. First-rounder Jack Campbell has slotted in nicely as a solid tackler and run stuffer, but he’s a part-time player—their third linebacker—and is one of the single worst coverage linebackers in the entire league.
It’s not as easy as looking at PFF numbers in a vacuum and deciphering exactly where you want to target a defense, but—in the Lions’ case—it kind of is.
POTENTIAL OFFENSIVE KEYS
Misdirection and Play Action. Given the Lions’ offensive ability and the clear strengths and weaknesses of their defense, we are going to need to throw the ball well in this game. That doesn’t mean abandoning the run (I can’t imagine when I could ever pitch doing that given our offense and personnel), but success on the ground may look more like four- and five-yard gains rather than the big gains we’ve come to expect. We’re much more likely to find chunk plays through the air, particularly off of play action.
This is a Lions defense that is aggressive and well-coached and is always flying downhill, but I think they’re at their best when their keys are clear and they can simply sprint and effort their way to the ball. They’ve held strong against teams like the Cowboys—who have less motion and more static looks—but have allowed 400+ yards in three straight games against teams who employ some amount of the misdirection and complex looks that have become a staple of our offense.
There are personnel wins to be had in this game, but if we can pepper the defense with misdirection and confusion early then we have a better chance of slowing down their front seven, which would in turn let us matchup hunt in the passing game. Against a defense as aggressive as the Lions, slowing up their read-and-react is incredibly important.
Prepare to Pivot. The worst possible scenario is that we game plan with the assumption Deebo can play and we learn in pregame or early in the first quarter that he can’t. While the splits of our offense with and without Deebo are a testament to his ability, we struggle the most when he’s knocked out of a game early. For all the benefits of Shanahan’s scheme and his horde of Swiss-army knife players, relying so heavily on guys like CMC and Deebo—who are equally important to the rushing and passing game—means when one of them goes down… we lose a big chunk of both our rushing and passing game.
Since Deebo seems like a true game-time decision we need to enter with a gameplan that both utilizes his abilities if he can play and doesn’t hamstring us if he doesn’t. That’s certainly easier said than done, but I’d expect packages with both Elijah Mitchell and CMC to be on the play sheet in case Deebo can’t go, more creative uses for Kittle as a motion guy, and potentially an influx of the two-way versatility of Ray-Ray McCloud on sweep looks and space plays (if Shanahan has forgiven him for messing up that deep route against the Packers). Perhaps we’ll even see a run game that’s a bit of a Shanahan throwback, with deeper under center play actions sprinkled in to really open those spaces behind the linebackers. Whatever the solution may be, Shanahan has to be prepared for a world where Deebo plays and another where he doesn’t. While that may mean our game plan isn’t as meticulously detailed as usual, we can’t risk having as many issues as we did last weekend when he went down.
Always Open. If Deebo doesn’t play it will be harder to force-feed Aiyuk in the passing game, but my god is this a juicy matchup outside. The Lions guard tight ends well—having a strong nickel corner and a good crop of safeties will often do that—but are highly susceptible to outside wideouts and running backs.
If Deebo is out I would assume the Lions shift coverage and safety help toward Aiyuk whenever they can, but there are still ways to get him into solo coverage based on formations and motions and run action away. Due in no small part to the weather and Purdy’s play because of it, Aiyuk had a much quieter game last weekend than he should have. Unless the Lions shift over so much coverage to Aiyuk that everyone else becomes wide open, we can’t have that happen again.
Efficiency > Flashy. The Lions’ blitz-heavy nature has helped them pressure QBs better than anyone else in the league, but—despite the assumption of Purdy haters—the Niners are actually the best blitz-beating offense in the league. Unless you can send extras AND confuse Purdy with underneath coverages, our slants and quick-ins are built to punish extra rushers with YAC yards.
I expect we’ll have some screens and CMC swing pass equivalents ready when they blitz, but—extra rushers or not—our offensive line needs to do a better job in pass pro this week than last. This Lions’ defense lives off of limiting yardage on the ground and creating negatives via their pass rush so that they have a better chance of getting off the field or taking away the ball on long downs and distances. We can have success against a scheme like that when we stay efficient in the passing game, but if the Lions can get home with four and don’t NEED to send extras, we start making things more difficult than they need to be.
As for Purdy? Last week the Packers were dropping deep into the dig areas in an attempt to stop our second-level throws, but in doing so they left the checkdowns wide open. If the Lions do something similar and vacate their linebackers against dropback passing, then Purdy needs to just be smart and take the underneath throw. Staying on schedule and avoiding negatives is how you put up points on this defense, and a checkdown to CMC or Kittle with room to run can easily lead to sizeable gains.
Starting a Change.org Campaign to Reinstate the Drought. How a four-year starter playing out of Ames, Iowa could have so many problems with a wet ball is beyond me, but it’s impossible to argue how a soaked football affects Purdy’s throwing ability. Last week, against Cleveland earlier this year, and in the first half against the Seahawks last post-season were the rainiest games Purdy has played in, and it’s not a coincidence that he was at his most inaccurate in those two-and-a-half contests. As of this writing, there was a 25% chance for rain on Saturday but a 0% chance of rain on Sunday. If there’s a god, the sun will be shining bright.
SPECIAL TEAMS + OTHER SHIT
1-31. If you thought the stat that “Kyle Shanahan is 0-30 in games when his team is down 5+ points entering the fourth quarter” screamed sampling bias, well then… you were right.
If we exclude games not started or finished (due to injury) by Jimmy G or Brock (aka games piloted by an NFL backup) and take out games where we’re down 14+ entering the fourth because no one wins those games (I’m not scrubbing the data to make this point into a neat statistic but the Cowboys were 195-0 as a franchise with a 14-point lead entering the fourth quarter until last year), the stat is much more reasonable and representative of what it implies.
So… in games where we have an actual starting quarterback and are down 5-13 points entering the fourth quarter, our Shanahan-era record is:
Brock Purdy: 1-2
Jimmy G: 0-3
To Jimmy’s credit, one of those losses includes an 11-point comeback against Seattle where our backup kicker missed a would-be game-winner in overtime back in 2019.
Just like teams who live and die by the three-ball in the NBA, teams built off explosive dropback passing are more likely to come back when down in the fourth quarter. But those teams are—on average—also more likely to be in those positions to begin with because of a lack of defense or complementary football. It’s fun to see a gunslinger take a team back from down big in the fourth quarter, but it’s even more fun to just not be down big in the fourth quarter.
Your everyday key to special teams: (1) kick the ball between the uprights instead of outside of them; (2) just put that shit in the endzone on kickoffs.
TLDR
Coaching is about more than X’s and O’s. Dan Campbell understood that and focused his energy on instilling a culture and an identity in a franchise that had been sorely lacking both for decades. But coaching is also about X’s and O’s, so while Campbell built the team’s identity, he brought in top-tier coordinators to run the show on offense and defense. The only stipulation? They had to be physical and—whether on offense or defense—they had to win in the run game.
If we can slow down the Lions’ run game on Sunday, we win this game. While their passing attack is built to accent the strengths of their personnel and their quarterback, those strengths just so happen to butt up against where our defense is at its best: defending the middle of the field. Those passes get Goff in a rhythm, unlock Sam LaPorta as an underneath safety blanket, and get the supporting receivers involved with easy completions. I just don’t think they can find the success they want through the air against our linebackers if they don’t kill it on the ground, and if that’s the case, they’ll be hard-pressed to keep up with our offense in what I expect to be a strong rebound from a subpar performance last weekend.
This Lions team is dangerous and hungry. The last time they were in this position was 1991, and—as one of four teams (the other three expansion squads) who have never had a Super Bowl appearance—they’re one win away from truly unprecedented territory. They may have left the rowdy confines of Ford Field, but they’ll be plenty prepared and motivated come Sunday. However, I don’t believe that both our offense and our defense will struggle in back-to-back games. We’ve seemed like the class of the NFC all season long, and—rather than jump to conclusions based on recency bias—I expect us to look the part on Sunday.
Go Niners 🏈👍