Three Cups Deep: Lions at Saints, Playoff Edition

The Lions are not there yet.

In one of his final radio segments, Tom Kowalski projected the Lions would go 8-8. He said that they’d taken big steps, but in terms of matching up with the NFL’s elite, like the Packers, they’re “not there yet.” We saw that dramatically illustrated Saturday night. We also saw how close they are.

I talk a lot about the “story of the game,” a high-level narrative that explains the forces that forged the final score—or, in some cases, why the final score is a lie. This morning, the only story anyone wants to tell is that the Lions’ cornerbacks are terrible. The problem is, that story isn’t true.

Yes, the Lions safeties surrendered two touchdowns by leaving receivers completely uncovered; there’s nothing the cornerbacks can do about that. Lions defensive backs got their hands on potential interceptions that they didn’t bring in—but the Lions picked off 21 passes this season, fifth-most in the NFL.  The Lions struggled to bring pressure with their front four, exacerbating the problem—but the Saints have All-Pro interior linemen and the tackles were holding the DEs like crazy. Ultimately, none of those details matter.

The Lions were a very good young team playing very well. The Saints were a great team playing great. The Lions did everything they could to hold back New Orleans, but in an uncomfortably apropos metaphor, the levee was going to break.

Drew Brees is playing the quarterback position as well as he ever has, which is to say as well as anyone ever has. Nate from Holy Schwartz! compared Brees and the Saints to Ivan Drago from Rocky IV. The physical disparity between Brees and Dolph Lundgren is hilarious (while we’re at it, so is the similarity between Ludmilla Drago and Brittany Brees). But in terms of performance, Nate is right: the Saints are a machine right now, and at this point I’m not sure even the Packers can defeat them.

I wrote in the Watchtower for this game that “’A performance + B player = A+B performance’ never works cleanly in the NFL,” and that’s true over the offseason. There’s no draft-eligible kid working out in Florida right now that would have made the difference in that game. There’s no free agent-to-be waiting for his phone to ring who would have made the difference in that game. There’s no A + B = C formula that makes the Lions better than the Saints.

As I’ve written before, every season’s team is its own alchemy, its own witches’ brew. You can take the exact same roster from one year to another and get wildly different results. Players grow and decline, roles change, synergy appears and disappears, schedules fluctuate, and variance—that devilish factor that bounces the ball all over the field—aids and injures as it will.

For the first time in a long time, it’s truly possible for the Lions to regress. Building blocks of the offense and defense may need to be replaced. Jeff Backus, Cliff Avril, and Stephen Tulloch are all major contributors who may or may not be back, and they only start the list. For the first time since Schwartz was hired, this offseason will not be unidirectional.

Still, what’s important here is that the core, the fundamental truth, the identity of this team will not change. Jim Schwartz is the head coach, Matthew Stafford is the quarterback, Calvin Johnson leads a legion of viable targets, and the defensive line is stacked. That, along with all the other factors, is good enough to get the Lions to the playoffs—and that will be true in 2012 as well.

Can Schwartz, Mayhew, Lewand and company brew a more potent batch of Lions in 2012? Can they add just the right ingredients, and hold back what might spoil the brew? Can they put it over just the right amount of heat so, as the Saints are doing now, it peaks in strength at the perfect time? We’ll see.

It’s an incredible time to be a Lions fan. This year’s Lions were an amazing, exciting, thrilling team. They fulfilled every expectation, and had a lot of fun doing it. With minimal changes, they should at least be good enough to make the playoffs in an exciting fashion next year, too. But win a championship? Well . . . they’re not there yet. Yet.

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The Watchtower: NFC Playoff Wild Card Round

The Detroit Lions made the playoffs exactly twenty years, after their last playoff win, and their first foe is familiar: the New Orleans Saints. The Saints were the first opponent of the Schwartz era, and they’re also the first opponent this blog Watchtowered. The methods have been refined, the predictions made more specific, and the tables prettier, but the idea is the same: use data to tell the story of the game before the game happens.

When the Lions last went down to New Orleans for an 8:00 pm showcase game, the data told me this story:

The Saints are like the mini-Packers, and the Lions are like the mini-Saints. These two teams hold up a mirror to one another, and the Saints are a little bit better in every phase of the game—except the Lions play much, much better pass defense. I could see this going either way, and the Saints have a huge advantage in the Superdome (they’re 5-0 at home).

However . . . last week I was rooting for a huge Monday Night Football win for the Saints over the Giants. Why? Because we’ve seen all too well what can happen to a team that pulls out all the stops for a huge home MNF win, and face a tough follow-up test the following Sunday. The Saints are due to come out flat, and the Lions are coming off a long week of rest and preparation.

I could sit here and flip thought-experiment coins all day, but that wouldn’t help much. I’ll just follow the numbers: The most likely outcome of the game is a 30-28 Lions win.

The final score was 31-17, but the winner of that game was not the Lions. There were two big reasons for that. First, the Lions without Ndamukong Suh, Chris Houston, and Louis Delmas—so the key phrase “the Lions play much better pass defense” in the above quote didn’t bear out (see my Lions vs. Brees pass defense film breakdown for details). Second, the Lions killed themselves with a few stupid mistakes.

Finally, there was the little matter of the referees:

My personal belief is that the league and/or officials are trying to send a message to the Lions. Now that they’re a “dirty team,” the Lions not only have to play as clean as everyone else, they have to play cleaner. They’re going to get flagged for things no other team gets flagged for. Rough stuff from the other side is going to go unpunished. The league is sending a message to the Lions, and it’s up to them to listen.

Now, the Lions are completely healthy. On Thursday, the Lions had full roster participation in practice: per John Kreger of CBS Rapid Reports, 21 of the 22 Week 1 starters will be expected to start on Saturday night, with Jahvid Best the only casualty. We can presume, then, that the Lions will do a much better job of playing to their season averages on Saturday night. Ah, yes—season  averages.

One of the many, many benefits of making the playoffs is that the 2011 season-average data is actually an entire season; all the highs and lows of this year are as ironed out by sample size as they’ll ever be. With a full roster, and a full season, we can look at these numbers with as much confidence as possible.

Sean Payton vs. Gunther Cunningham

SP	Ornk	PgG	YpA	YpC	Gun	Drnk	PpG	DYpA	DYpC	PTS	PTSΔ	YpA	YpAΔ	YpC	YpCΔ
NYG	21st	20.0	7.20	3.80	TEN	29th	27.2	8.05	4.62	29	45%	7.86	9%	2.48	-35%
DAL	15th	20.3	6.68	3.57	KCC	16th	20.3	6.58	4.10	27	33%	9.59	44%	5.83	63%
NOS	1st	31.9	8.01	4.50	DET	32nd	30.9	7.79	4.51	45	41%	10.53	31%	4.49	0%
NOS	2nd	34.2	8.08	4.94	DET	23rd	24.2	6.34	5.00	31	-9%	9.50	18%	4.35	-12%

In the last Watchtower, I had a difficult time identifying any consistent trend with the three games Sean Payton had called against Gunther Cunningham. In the first contest, Payton’s Giant’s were the 21st-ranked offense in the NFL, and faced off against Cunningham’s 29th-ranked Titans. The Giants scored way above expectations, 45% better than their season average, despite Tennessee holding them to within 10% of their usual YpA and completely shutting down their run game.

In the next meeting, Payton’s 15th-ranked Cowboys met Gunther’s 16th-ranked Chiefs; a very even matchup of talent. Again, the Cowboys outperformed expectations, scoring a touchdown more than their season average—only this time, the rushing and passing effectiveness were both well above average, too, up 44% and 63% respectively.

Then came 2009's slaughter: the No. 1 Saints scoring offense faced a Lions unit ranked butt-naked last. What happened was predictable: a 41% boost in scoring output, accompanied by a 31% gain in passing effectiveness. Rushing effectiveness, interestingly, stayed flat.

Finally, we have December’s matchup. The Saints’ 34.2 PpG offense was the second-best this season—and it’s been extremely balanced, averaging 8.08 yards per attempt and 4.94 yards per carry. The Lions’ defense is ranked 23rd, allowing 24.2 points per game, 6.34 YpA, and exactly 5.00 YpC.

As discussed above, the Lions pass defense couldn’t meet their typical 2011 performance standards—not with their top interior pass rusher, top cover corner, and playmaking/coverage-quarterbacking safety all out of commission. They allowed 9.50 YpA to Brees and the Saints, 18% better than the Saints’ average gained and 33% more  than the Lions’ average allowed. I’d expect that figure to be between 7.00 and 7.50 on Saturday.

Though the Lions had been allowing a healthy 5.00 YpC all season, and the Saints had been gaining rushing yards at an almost identical rate (4.94), New Orleans only ground out 4.35 YpC last month. That’s a very surprising result; I’ll project the Saints to more closely match their average: between 4.75 and 5.00.

Despite the lack of Suh, Houston, and Delmas—and despite the first-half loss of Nick Fairley, who was having an incredible game—and despite allowing 10.35 yards per attempt and despite allowing 21 points in the second quarter, the Lions still held Brees and New Orleans to 31 total points. That’s right: the 2nd-best offense met the 23rd-ranked defense and scored 9% fewer points than their season average.

Were the systemic wrinkles I caught on film enough to explain the Saints’ underperformance? If so, it’s tempting to project that same advantage on the Lions again. But the Saints have access to way more Lions tape than I do; Gunther and company will have to come up with an all new set of surprises if they want to get the drop on Payton again.

By skill against skill, I'd expect the Saints to score about 40 points. By average against average, it should be 30. By “take what happened last time and add in Suh, Fairley, Houston and Delmas,” it should be 20. But what’s the one thing The Watchtower has taught us, above and beyond anything else? The story of two teams playing against each other twice in one season is never the same.

Throughout this season, I’ve realized that “points per game” is far from an ideal metric. When the offense throws a pick six, that counts against the defense. When the defense gets a pick six, that counts for the offense. Watching the second Minnesota game, the offense played poorly and the defense very well—yet the 34-28 final score suggests a shootout. It’s for these reasons I discount “the Saints hang 40+” storyline that “2nd-best offense versus 23rd-best defense” suggests. Similarly, “A performance + B player = A+B performance” never works cleanly in the NFL.

With full season averages and a fully healthy roster, I give the two teams’ average performance levels the most weight. Therefore, taking into account the projected pass and run figures, I project the Saints to score 27-30 points, passing for 7.00-to-7.50 YpA and rushing for 4.75-to-5.00 YpC. Despite the lack of a strong, consistent historical systemic advantage, I have medium-to-high-confidence in this projection.

Aggravating/Mitigating Factors

As I said above, I don’t see the Saints racking up 40-plus unless the Lions do, too in a Week 17-style track meet. There is the potential for a surprisingly low-scoring game, if Suh, Fairley, Houston, and Delmas all make as big an impact as possible. However, the Lions defense still played very, very well in that game; I’m not sure how many plays those players would have made that their replacements didn’t.

The huge factor in the last game was penalties—stupid ones the Lions made, and terrible ones the referees called. If that factor is removed from the previous meeting, the outcome of that game is likely different.

As potentially huge as each of those two factors could be, they could also potentially be non-factors. I remain confident in the projection.

Scott Linehan vs. Gregg Williams

Lin	Ornk	PgG	YpA	YpC	GW	Drnk	PpG	DYpA	DYpC	PTS	PTSΔ	YpA	YpAΔ	YpC	YpCΔ
MIN	8th	24.4	6.60	5.30	HOU	27th	24.8	6.20	4.49	39	60%	6.24	-5%	5.46	3%
MIN	6th	25.3	7.16	4.71	HOU	21st	19.3	6.89	3.92	34	34%	7.92	11%	4.69	0%
STL	10th	22.9	6.69	4.26	WAS	20th	19.2	7.18	4.47	37	62%	10.21	53%	5.05	19%
DET	27th	16.4	5.12	4.42	NOS	20th	21.3	6.57	4.49	20	22%	4.95	-3%	3.17	-28%
DET	4th	28.7	6.72	4.48	NOS	19th	22.9	6.52	5.03	17	-41%	9.27	38%	3.95	-12%

Throughout the history of the Watchtower, one of the most consistent effects I’ve identified is Scott Linehan offenses against 3-4 defenses, and 4-3 defenses that feature a lot of aggressive blitzing. Gregg Williams and his aggressive 4-3 defense are no different; he has struggled mightily against Scott Linehan offenses.

Look at the first four rows of this table. Linehan’s units were ranked anywhere from 6th-best in the NFL to 6th-worst, and the “PTSΔ” (change in points scored from season average) is massively positive every time. The running and passing effectiveness has been all over the map, with a lot of games near average—so against Gregg Williams defenses, Linehan offenses tend to get better point production from typical between-the-20s performance.

This season the Lions’ 4th-ranked offense, racking up 28.7 points per game, faced the Saints’ just-below-median 22.9 PpG defense—and only scored 17 points. This, despite completing 31 of 44 passes for 408 yards! Stafford’s 9.27 YpA performance was one of his best of the year, and it came with a below-typical-but-not-terrible 3.95 YpC effort from the running game. How could a high-flying offense spend a whole game gaining nearly one first down per pass attempt’s worth of yardage, but only muster 17 points?

Does the phrase "offensive pass interference" mean anything to you?

The Lions had 25 first downs to the Saints’ 21, and outgained them 466 to 438. But that one interception and those critical penalties swung the game around in a big, big way. The other problem was a missed field goal and a blocked field goal, wiping a usually-guaranteed six points off the board.

What are those expectations? I’m glad you asked. Last time, I projected this:

I project the Lions to score 30-33 points, pass for 6.75-7.25 YpA, and rush for 5.00-5.25 YpC. I have medium-high confidence in this prediction.

Mitigating/Aggravating Factors:

Actually, there aren’t too many. Unless Stafford completely melts down—or ditching the gloves unleashes a truly magnificent performance—I don’t see much wiggle room here. I expect the Lions to be able to take advantage of the Saints pass defense . . . whether that’s early on in an upset win, or in garbage time of a blowout loss, like last time.

Well, the Lions certainly were able to “take advantage of the Saints pass defense,” two-and-a-half yards per attempt better than I thought they would! Yet Lions’ inability to drive it all the way to the red zone and score killed them. This is the opposite of the effect we usually see when Linehan offenses meet Williams defenses.

The numbers have barely changed since I last looked at them. Even without the advantage, I’d expect the Lions to keep pace with the Saints here—and referees aside, that advantage was in evidence throughout the previous game. I’m going to bump the projected passing effectiveness to account for Stafford’s hot streak, and aim high on the rushing effectiveness because of a healthy Kevin Smith. Hanson won’t miss two field goals again.

Ultimately, I’m going to stay with the data, and project the exact same point total as I did a month ago: 30-33 points, coming from 8.00-8.50 YpA and 4.50-4.75 YpC.

Aggravating/Mitigating Factors

Did I mention the penalties?

Conclusion

It’s the same two teams, nearly the same set of numbers, in the same place at nearly the same time for even higher stakes. Last time Lions performed even better than I expected, but mistakes, injuries, and the officials held them back. I expect the Saints to take their game to the next level, too, though, so I can’t project a complete turning of the tables.

The data, and my instincts, compel me to project an even closer, 31-30, Lions win.

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Slowing Down Drew Brees & the Saints With the 3-3-5

With the suspension of Ndamukong Suh, the Detroit Lions are down one starting interior lineman. With injuries to Louis Delmas, Chris Houston and Brandon McDonald, the Lions may be down two starters and one contributor in the secondary. Now, they face the No. 1 passing offense in the NFL: Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints.

How can the Lions hope to slow down the lightning-fast Saints without their best interior pass rusher and a banged-up secondary? The answer may lie in a package the Lions deployed on Thanksgiving: the 3-3-5 nickel.

The Lions have used this formation a few times before, most extensively in their first win under Jim Schwartz. Gunther Cunningham’s talk about it during his first minicamp as Lions DC helped fuel speculation the Lions would run a base 3-4. Here's how it looks:

The four square boxes are the three nickel cornerbacks, along with safety Amari Spievey. They're playing tight man-to-man coverage on the three Packers wideouts, as well as tight end Jermichael Finley. Louis Delmas is playing one-high zone, lined up deep off camera.

Kyle Vanden Bosch stays put at right defensive end, but 330-pound Sammie Hill is in at the zero-technique nose tackle. Suh is playing LDE. Behind them are the Lions' base linebackers: MLB Stephen Tulloch, and OLBs DeAndre Levy and Justin Durant.

The down and distance here is 3rd-and-3, so the Lions are trying to force a quick incompletion. Let's watch what happens:

The Lions blitz all three linebackers, bringing a total of six rushers. The Packers send Finley out but keep RB John Kuhn in to block, for a total of six blockers. The Packers do establish a pocket, but QB Aaron Rodgers knows he doesn't have all day. He throws the short out to Greg Jennings, and the tight coverage forces him to lead Jennings to the sideline rather than downfield. Even if Jennings had been able to keep his feet, Eric Wright was there to help prevent the first down.

This is a very aggressive play call, but it's perfect for the situation, and would be effective against the Saints' many multi-WR sets.

In different situations, the Lions could blitz two, one or none; this would allow for a variety of zone and man-coverage packages. Defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham could also do some clever stuff with safety and zone blitzes. By platooning Durant (an outstanding run stopper) with Bobby Carpenter (much better in coverage), the Lions could further tailor this package to suit non-nickel situations.

The onus would be on the defensive line to continue to bring pressure and maintain outside run containment, but the Lions' depth will help them there. Sammie Hill and Corey Williams could platoon at the two-gap nose tackle spot, with DTs Nick Fairley and Andre Fluellen at left end. Vanden Bosch and Cliff Avril could platoon at RDE, though asking Avril to fill two run lanes might be asking too much.

Running the 3-3-5 for 40 or 50 snaps would give Brees time to figure out the looks and attack the deep coverage, especially if the Lions need to blitz two or more players to get pressure.

But, if the Lions are to have a chance, they'll need to avoid what happened the last time they went to the Superdome at all costs: two Saints touchdowns in the first few minutes, leading to a 47-25 blowout. Running a lot of 3-3-5 early, with a lot of blitzing and confusion, could keep the Saints off-balance enough to give Matthew Stafford—and the Lions—a chance.

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Winning “Like the Saints”

In 2008, the Miami Dolphins were in trouble.  They’d “cleaned house” in the offseason: added a new quarterback, broomed and replaced the coaching staff, sacked the entire front office, and even sold the team!  Yet, they’d lost their first two games, and their offense looked completely impotent.

The Dolphins needed an answer.  They couldn’t improve the personnel in the middle of the season, so they had maximize what they had: two great tailbacks, a WR corps long on speed but short on playmaking ability, and a QB with a quick trigger, but packing only a BB gun.

QB coach David Lee and OC Dan Henning came up with an answer: the “Wildcat”.  It's an offense with an unbalanced line, a jet motion on every play, plenty of deception, and a backfield where just about everyone is a threat to run or throw.  Lee ran it during his time as the OC at Arkansas, and the veteran Henning had seen plenty of the Wildcat's precursor, the single wing, when he played college ball in the Sixties.

The Wildcat would allow both tailbacks to be on the field at the same time, receiver Ted Ginn to touch the ball without actually having to catch it, and Chad Pennington to worry about leadership and decision-making instead of converting on third-and-long.

It was an immediate success, fueling a 38-13 win at New England that week, and ten more wins in one of the most remarkable turnarounds in recent memory.  Of course, many teams immediately tried to replicate that success . . . by installing the Wildcat.   

All summer long, every team was scouring the roster for a reserve runningback or wideout who’d played quarterback in high school.  Every beat reporter was floating rumors about who’d been spotted taking snaps behind center.  Every team’s fan base was rooting for their team to take a college option quarterback, who could bring this lightning in a bottle to their town.

Did every team have two outstanding, complementary tailbacks? No. Did every team have a tough, gutsy quarterback who was better at the intangibles than the tangibles?  No.  Yet, we’d get breathless reports that, say, Denver was trying out their own version of the Wildcat, with Knowshon Moreno taking direct snaps, and Kyle Orton split wide.

If I ever meet Josh McDaniels in person, I’m going to make him explain to me what in red Hell a defense is supposed to respect about Kyle Orton split out wide.  What’s he going to do, run a route?  Block for a sweep?  Run a reverse, and take the handoff?  Kyle Orton is completely useless on a football field, unless the ball in his hands. 

So, what do we take from this?  The way to replicate Miami’s success is not to install the Wildcat, or some other useless facsimile thereof.  The way to replicate Miami’s success is to have smart coaches who can think outside of the box, and maximize talent.

So, to every Lions fan, I tell you this:

The way to win a Super Bowl "like the Saints" is not to have Drew Brees, a committee of four almost-good running backs, a committee of four kind-of-good wide receivers, a terrible left tackle, a drunken tight end, a pass-first offense, or an offense-first team.  The way to win a Super Bowl “like the Saints” is to have talent, and smart coaches who can think outside of the box to maximize that talent.

Think about it. What did Drew Brees do so well at Purdue?  Pick defenses apart with short-range passes out of multi-WR sets.  As a conventional quarterback in San Diego, he was at best inconsistent and at worst a failure.   In New Orleans, Sean Payton asks him to do only what he’s excellent at; people think Brees is now “better” than Peyton Manning, which flatly isn’t true.

Sean Payton figured out that Reggie Bush is Kevin Faulk, not Marshall Faulk, and employs him in only in that role—to great success.  Payton figured out that Robert Meacham is a short-yardage monster, and employs him in that role—to great success.  Payton knew that with his fast-scoring, high-powered offense, he needed an aggressive, blitzing defense that could protect a lead.  He hired hyperaggressive DC Gregg Williams to install such a defense, even though he had to give up $250,000 of his own money to do so!

So, if Jim Schwartz wants to replicate Sean Payton’s success, he’ll need to let his quarterback do what he does best: throw it downfield.  He’ll need to give OC Scott Linehan the tools to run his system: a strong-armed quarterback, two great wideouts, a three-down feature back, a useful tight end, and a powerful offensive line.

He’ll need to match that run-first, play-action, air it out offense with a stop-the-run-first, smothering defense that prevents points and gets the ball back.  For that, he’s got the right DC, but he’ll need defensive linemen that can contain, linebackers that can blitz, and a secondary that can cover without a lot of linebacker help.

Finally, Schwartz’ll need to be smart.  He’ll need to be flexible.  He’ll need to be aggressive.  He’ll need to be able to think outside the box, make decisions based on real probabilities instead of old coaches’ tales, and balance new-school analysis with a hit-‘em-in-the-mouth mentality.  Fortunately for us, that’s exactly Schwartz approach.

I've played a little chess in my life. If you have a queen sacrifice, and get checkmate three moves later -- in a world championship matchup or whatever -- it's written about in chess manuals and people play the game and they talk about it. It can be the Schwartz Gambit, that it was an incredible move to sacrifice his queen and three plays later to force checkmate . . . Sports writers would write about that match and say, "Yeah, Schwartz won -- but he certainly didn't have to sacrifice his queen."

There's a reason I call the man The Grandmaster.

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three cups deep: at new orleans

In between church and my 10-year high school reunion, I swung the family truckster back home.  My intent was to trim and/or shave the steel wool that sprouts, unbidden, from my face and neck—but the timing was such that with the volume cranked, I could catch the first couple of drives.  By the time I’d finished trimming, shaving, and getting back in the car, the Lions were already down by 14.

I felt a sickening chill in my belly, and a fell curse haunted my thoughts: “Just like last year.”  The only thing I couldn't bear was already transpiring: on the road against an NFC South team, two breathtakingly quick scores out of their explosive passing offense, and the Lions had an L on their record before the first half of the first quarter.  Just like last year . . . only, not quite.

Don’t forget, last season the Lions were coming off of a 7-9 season (after a 6-2 start), and thinking playoffs, while the Falcons were coming off a worse-than-the-record-indicates 4-12 season, where the wheels completely fell off of the bus.  The Lions being down so far so fast was a complete stunner, a shock to the system.

This, however, was exactly what many predicted: Drew Brees exposing a questionable secondary.  While it all seemed painfully familiar, this was anything but a surprise—the Lions are an experiment in slash-and-burn football team agriculture, and the Saints are likely Super Bowl contenders.  In hindsight, what’s most painful to me is how despite Drew Brees threw six touchdown passes, and Matt Stafford threw three picks, for most of the game, the Lions were still in it.

Yes, thanks to a INT by a Lions cornerback (!), two forced and recovered fumbles, one returned for a TD (!!), and a kick and punt return that each went deep into the red zone (!!!), the Lions kept this one within two scores for most of the game.  And that, folks, is really the crucial difference between this year’s opener and last: 0-14 wasn’t the end of it.

Instead of going into full-on meltdown mode, the Lions’ D stiffened up, forcing two straight punts.  The O finally got on board with a field goal and a TD. Stafford threw a pick, but Dewayne White blocked the Saints' ensuing FG attempt. Stafford then hit Megatron for an apparent 67-yard TD--and after about 30 minutes of the refs playing Keystone Cops, Stafford punched it in himself. It went on like this, with the Lions (mostly) keeping the bleeding to a minimum, often failing to maximize their ensuing opportunities, but never totally collapsing. All the way up until the very end, the Lions were fighting tooth and nail, making plays to stay in it.

There were some things I saw that I didn't expect to see, though: after talking for months about how he was going to get after the QB, Gun actually went back into a shell after the first two bombs. I've noticed some grumbling about how he didn't bring the heat like he said he would, but let's face it: that's smart coaching. If the other team's quarterback is gashing your man coverage for 20-to-30 yards every time he drops back to pass, blitzing 40% of the time simply isn't an option.

Also, after being pretty damn accurate with his downfield passes all preseason, Stafford looked quite jittery; after throwing a lot of passes short in the first half, they all started sailing on him in the second half. He also threw one of his picks when he pump-faked and the ball slipped in his hand, producing a knuckleball that wasn't anywhere near where he intended.  Yes, Matt Stafford looked like a rookie--and while it's possible that Culpepper's veteran presence might have saved a turnover or two, I don't think the offense would have been much more effective--and it wouldn't have mattered anyway; the Saints were just too good.

This has been the crux of the "Start Stafford" argument all along: even if Culpepper is marginally better, him playing over Stafford wouldn't make much difference in terms of wins and losses--and even it would, one or two more wins on a 4-12 team won't matter anyway. According to the broadcasters, Stafford watched every game of Greg Williams' defenses for the last five years on film to prepare for this week; tying that to 60 minutes of live game experience is invaluable experience to a rookie. I still think that Schwartz made the right decision.

In the end, Drew Brees was just too much for guys like Eric King, who was starting in place of Philip Buchanon. Drew Brees was too much for Marquand Manuel. Drew Brees was too much for Avril and White, despite being without his blindside protector, Jammal Brown, and losing Brown's backup in the middle of the game. The Saints were the best offense in football last year, and show no signs of slowing down. Moroever, their defense appears to be dramatically improved, too; they're legitimate Super Bowl contenders.

Whereas last year's Week 1 loss had us stunned, reeling, and searching for answers, this game showed us exactly what we, or at least I, expected to see: a shootout that the Lions lose. Believe it or not, the Lions never mustered this many points in any game last season! Now next week's task will be swing the every needle 180 degrees except the one for "Degree of Difficulty": the Vikings have an astounding running game, a lackluster passing game, and a suffocating defense that you can't run on; pressuring QBs and covering WRs without blitzing. I'll be there in person to see how the Lions adjust.

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