Can The Detroit Lions Outrun The Chicago Bears?

As the old joke goes, “You don’t have to outrun the bear, just the guy next to you.” But on Monday night, the Chicago Bears gained a step on the Detroit Lions. With their 30-24 defeat of the Philadelphia Eagles, the Bears drew within one game in the NFC North division race—or honestly, with the Packers running away with it, the NFC Wild Card race.

This Sunday the Lions will take on the Bears in an afternoon showcase, and nothing less than their entire season rests on it.

I called the Kansas City game a “must-win.” If the Lions were to make the playoffs, they had to win every winnable game in the front half of the schedule. Now, the Lions’ contest in Chicago is a “must-win” for a different reason: the difference between victory and defeat is enormous.

If the Lions win in Soldier Field, they’ll be two games ahead of the Bears in overall record, and own all the tiebreakers over the Bears. Effectively, they’ll be three games ahead of the Bears with seven left to play—an almost-insurmountable lead. If they lose, they’ll be tied with the Bears, tied head-to-head, tied on division record . . . tied. Huge lead, or tied. That’s the difference between winning and losing this game.

Going forward, both teams host the Chargers. Both will travel to Oakland. Chicago hosts the Seahawks, Detroit hosts the Panthers. Both teams will play the Vikings once more—Detroit at home, Chicago in Minnesota. Both will travel to Lambeau.

So, five out of the seven remaining games are essentially a wash, in terms of strength of schedule. In the two remaining games, the Bears host the Chiefs and play at Denver—but the Lions host the Packers and travel to New Orleans.

You see where I'm going with this: the Lions have two much more difficult games than the Bears. According to SRS, the Lions are the second-strongest team in football (+11.9)—but they play the #1 team twice, projecting a 5-2 stretch run. The Bears (+6.3) “should” go 6-1, by the same metric.

Again: if the Lions beat the Bears, they “should” go 12-4 and possess all the tiebreakers, leaving Chicago effectively two games back at 11-5. If the Lions lose to the Bears, the records are reversed; the Lions will have failed to outrun the Bears.

Here's the good news: the Lions don't need to outrun the Bears to make the playoffs. They just need to outrun the Cowboys (4-4), the Eagles (4-4), the Falcons (5-3) and the Bucs (4-4).

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Detroit Lions 2011 Regular Season: Halfway There

Everyone is furiously trying to prove that this 6-2 start capped by a blowout of the Broncos is not the same as 2007’s 6-2 start capped by a blowout of the Broncos. I have something different in mind.

In the Old Mother Hubbard series, I attempt to contextualize individual Lions performances. We watch these guys all season long year after year after year, and we lose perspective on their strengths and weaknesses. I use Pro Football Focus data and radar charts to give you an at-a-glance impression of how Lions are performing against the high, low, and average NFL performances at the same position.

So, if we’re taking the temperature of the Lions at the bye/halfway point . . . why not do the same thing?

Here are the offensive team grades through Week 8. The dark red line is the New England Patriots, #1-graded offense in the NFL. The bright green line is the Seattle Seahawks, #32-graded offense in the NFL. The thick black line is, as always, the NFL average, and the Honolulu Blue line is the Lions.

This is going to surprise some folks, because we perceive the Lions offense to be one of the best in the NFL—and indeed it is the 4th-best, scoring 29.9 points per game. Keep in mind PFF’s “consistency bias,” as I call it: PFF’s system prefers consistently above-average play to streaky home-run hitters. It’s true for individual players like Ndamukong Suh and Jahvid Best, and it’s true for the Lions as a whole.

No surprise, the Lions’ pass offense was graded 8th-best, at +33.2. Also unsurprisingly, the Lions’ rushing game was well below average; the third-worst in fact. But look: the difference between the best running grades and the worst running grades is miniscule.  Having a very poor running game doesn’t grade out much worse than having an average running game. This is a recurring theme this season.

As far as the offensive line goes, it's no surprise to anyone who’s listened to me or PFF over the years: the Lions do an above-average job of pass blocking. They graded –3.7 (average –6.18) over the course of the season. Also no surprise: they can’t run block for crap. The Lions have the fourth-worst run-blocking line in the NFL to this point, at -40.8 (average –18.15).

On offense, the Lions have taken more penalties than most; they’re ranked 24th with a –5.5 penalty grade. However, since the NFL average is –3.11, that’s not crippling. On the whole, the grades show the Lions have a very good passing offense, a decent pass-blocking offensive line, a terrible running game and a terrible run-blocking offensive line. Add it all up and it’s surprisingly mediocre for a team scoring 30 points per game. Once again, we see: the running game doesn’t matter.

The 49ers have a ridiculous defense. I mean, geez. Just look at that. Also: Indy NOOOOOO!

But check out the Lions: 8th-best graded defense overall, graded +33.7. This jibes with their 6th-lowest scoring defense (18.4 PpG). The run defense is ranked 24th, just –2.2 overall—and the average is +14.8, meaning that’s truly not good. The pass rush, again, is what you’d think: 5th-best in the NFL, graded +21.7 (avg. +8.06).

The jawdropper, though: The Detroit Lions have the best pass coverage grade in the NFL. Not pass defense, not pass rush, not statistical derivation: the play of their corners and safeties grades out better than any other team in the NFL. At +22.1, they’re well ahead of the 49ers’ second-place unit (+14.4), and have lapped the rest of the field (avg. –7.74).

The Lions defense is, as it was last season, heavily penalized. Their -7.9 grade is ranked 27th, well below the –3.4 league average—but not as horrific as it’s been. Special teams-wise, the Lions grade out at +7.4—but that’s not all that, because the average is +12.65.

On the whole, we’re left with a promising, but mixed bag. The Lions offense is struggling to move the ball consistently, but is generating points through the air with home run plays. The run blocking is awful, as is the running game as a whole. The defense is a top ten unit, despite poor run-stopping and penalty grades, because they rush the passer better than most—and cover the pass better than anyone.

At the moment, the Lions are in fantastic shape for the playoffs. My favorite predictive football model, the Simple Rating System, LOVES what the Lions have done this year. It’s a combination of strength of schedule and points differential, and at the halfway point the Lions are the second-highest-rated team in the NFL. Given the teams they’ve played and the results of those games, SRS expects the Lions to be the second-hardest out in football (after the Packers) going forward.

Of course, the Lions play the Packers twice throughout the rest of the season, so SRS would project a final finish of 12-4. Could that really happen? Bizarrely, yes. The road games against Chicago and New Orleans are possible (if not likely) losses—but the Lions should be able to split with the Pack, considering they did so last season without Matthew Stafford. The games at Oakland and against San Diego are worlds less scary than they were a few weeks ago, too.

Let’s be clear: I’m not projecting, or claiming, or promising a 12-4 season. I AM promising, projecting, and claiming that the Lions are going to make the playoffs, as I have since May, and have never wavered from. The Lions are only halfway there, but right now that Lions Kool-Aid tastes sweeter than ever.

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The Lions Are Going To Make the Playoffs

Yesterday, ESPN NFC North blogger Kevin Seifert assessed the merits of “Lions Fever,” outlining what the Lions must do to fulfill the suddenly rampant talk of the Lions becoming a playoff contender. He spoke of the Lions needing to learn how to finish, another NFC North team needing to slip (or stay down), Matthew Stafford staying healthy, Nick Fairley making an immediate impact, filling the holes in the back seven, and the offensive line holding it together for another year without an influx of new talent.

Yes, it’s true—folks seem to be hesitantly, guardedly, tentatively getting bold enough to suggest that the Lions could possibly maybe approach .500 this season, you know, if everything goes just right. Unfortunately, now that our little blue fire is flickering high enough to be seen from a distance, the naysayers have arrived to turn the hoses on it.

The NFL fan/media hivemind seems to think no team can be significantly better or significantly worse from year to year. In our year-to-year projections, personnel additions and subtractions nudge teams a win or two one way or the other. In reality, teams can “catch fire” quite quickly, and flame out just as fast. Just look at the records of the 90s Lions for proof: 6-10, 12-4, 5-11, 10-6, 9-7, 10-6, 5-11, 9-7, 5-11, 8-8. Those Lions were notoriously inconsistent, yes—but a surprisingly large core of players led that team throughout that era. Most of the wild swings can be attributed entirely to quarterback play and natural random variance.

The 2010 Lions were the victim of some of the most unfortunate variance we’ve seen. I wrote a piece at the very worst part of it called “The Detroit Lions, the NFL, and Luck:”

If 42% of the Lions’ 2-9 record can be accounted for by randomness, that’s 4.62 games’ worth out of the eleven. Assuming that the Lions have had nothing but bad luck to this point—they’re at the very nadir of randomness—then we flip it to nothing but good luck, we can see the theoretical maximum given this talent. So, if Lions had gotten all the bounces [Ed.: list of bounces SNIP’d] the Lions could be as good as 6-5 right now.

Before you freak out: that assumes both a 16-game season, and that the Lions are currently having the rottenest luck possible. An 11-game sample isn’t the same as a 16-game sample; there may yet be some regression to the mean—that is, if the Lions really aren’t what their record says they are, their luck will turn before we get to the end of the season. Well, either that, or next season will be a 16-game dip in the strawberry river.

Of course, the Lions’ luck DID turn; they won their last four games to claw their way back to 6-10. Even so, the Simple Ranking System predictive model I used shows the Lions’ final record was two games below what their scoring margin would predict. So, the 2011 Lions should still have some juicy regression to the mean coming their way.

Second, the talk of the Lions’ expectations for the 2010 season was 4-6 wins. If we were to make a Kevin Seifert-style “must” list for 2010, it probably would have included Stafford staying healthy, Nate Burleson and Kyle Vanden Bosch being impact starters, Zack Follett stepping up, Ndamukong Suh being as advertised, Amari Spievey solidifying a corner spot, DeAndre Levy and Louis Delmas building off of their rookie years, the Lions “filling the hole” at safety, Rob Sims being the answer at left guard, and Stephen Peterman continuing his great form of 2009 . . .

Not all of those things happened--and in fact, most of them anti-happened. Stafford only played in three games. Spievey didn’t even play corner, and only contributed to “filling the hole” at safety—which didn’t really happen. Follett was shaky-but-not-awful at OLB, then got hurt and replaced by a parade of special-teamers. That was exacerbated by Julian Peterson taking a major step back from 2009. Levy and Delmas were both limited by preseason injuries, and both fell short of expectations—and well short of hopes. Kyle Vanden Bosch’s impact was great in terms of leadership, but he was outshined on-field by Cliff Avril and Lawrence Jackson. Burleson was a solid contributor, but a slot ninja miscast as an outside WR. Peterman was limited by a host of injuries, and struggled mightily throughout the season.

Yet, the Lions met the top end of their expectations: six wins (seven, if you count the Chicago Robbery). Can you imagine if Stafford had been healthy for 16 games? Can you imagine if Amari Spievey had stepped in and been a solid #2 corner from the get-go? What if JP hadn’t fallen off, and The Pain Train had played like a solid NFL starter all season? What if Levy and Delmas were healthy all offseason, and each took big steps forward from their rookie seasons? What if Peterman had played as well in 2010 as he did in 2009?

The Lions would have made the playoffs, that's what if.

I only see one real prerequisite for the Lions making the postseason this year, and it’s Stafford’s health. I watched the Lions punch the Jets in the mouth up close and personal, and there’s no doubt in my mind that if Stafford had finished that game they’d have won. They split with the Super Bowl winning Packers (and outscored them on the aggregate). They were tied with the Patriots in the fourth quarter of the Thanksgiving game.  They had the ball at midfield, needed a field goal to force overtime, against the Eagles in Week 2. All told, the Lions played seven games against playoff teams in 2010, all without (or partially without) their franchise quarterback. Stafford’s health, and the Pats’ fourth-quarter explosion, was the only thing keeping every single one of those games from coming down to the last possession.

I’m a big fan of Kevin Seifert; he did a great job of breaking down the weaknesses on the Lions’ roster, and the obstacles that stand between them and the promised land—but I disagree on the size of those obstacles. Nick Fairley doesn’t need to be a stud. The Lions don’t need to sign Nnamdi Asomugha, or add more backup tackles. The Bears don’t need to implode (though they will), and the Vikings won’t need to keep backsliding (though they will). The Lions don’t need to “learn how to finish,” they just need Matthew Stafford healthy for 16 games. If they get that, the Lions will win ten of those games, at least—and they’ll make the playoffs.

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,nfl playoffs,matthew stafford,kevin seifert

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Three Cups Deep: Go Pack Go

he put da team on his back

The Lions aren’t in the playoffs.  This is hardly a surprise; usually the start of the playoffs means the end of me being emotionally invested in NFL football.  Oh, sure, I watch the playoffs, like the playoffs, love them even—but I rarely have a rooting interest.  The playoffs have become like this whole other thing, this separate world the Lions don’t belong in . . . it’s almost like a different league.  The standings, division races, wild card races?  The Lions just aren’t ever a part of them.  The Lions logo never appears on my TV under the heading “Playoff Picture,” not even in the crappy column on the right.

But now, the Lions—on the heels of a four-game winning streak—have rejoined the league as a whole.  They will enter next season as legitimate playoff contenders—admittedly, a low bar to jump over in today’s NFL.  But no matter: for the first time since 2007, and the first time besides that in a decade, the playoffs are relevant to the Lions, and the Lions are relevant to the playoffs.

Between the Bears, Eagles, Packers, Jets, and Patriots, the Lions played five of the eight playoff teams.  Against all of them, the Lions were within a score in the fourth quarter.  Against some of them, they had a lead.  Against the Bears, they won but had the W taken away from them.  Against the Packers, they actually really officially won.

Yes, the Lions beat the Packers, a team which is moving on to the second round of the playoffs—and who I, along with many others, thought had the inside track on the NFC Super Bowl berth coming into the season.  The last time the Lions beat the eventual Super Bowl winner?  1999, when the Lions beat the Rams, 31-27.  In collapsing the big top for the Greatest Show on Turf, the 6-2 Lions beat the 6-2 Rams.  Starting QB Charlie Batch got hurt, but Gus Frerotte picked up the slack.  The Lions couldn’t run for beans—leading rusher Sedrick Irvin had 4 carries for 10 yards—but sacked Kurt Warner four times, and intercepted him twice.  Doesn’t it seem like a century, not a decade, has passed since then?

As cool as it would be for the Lions to break yet another not-since-Millen streak this year, I have to admit I have other reasons for rooting for the Packers.  For starters, the Packer blogosphere is one of the best around, both in terms of content and friendliness.  Holly over at Cheesehead TV has long been one of this blog’s kindest supporters—and considering the work she does scouring Packer opponents’ sites and blogs, that’s high praise indeed.  Larry from Packer Chatters once let me post a Watchtower as an article on their site, which I appreciated greatly (but their commenters didn’t, so much).  Aaron Nagler’s Aforementioned Cheesehead TV also gives away the “Titletown Awards” to other Packers blogs and websites, which is a wonderful idea.  There’s also C.D. Angeli's Tundra Vision, whose “Am I Still a Fan?” post put on the table some feelings that had been stewing in me for quite some time.  The crazy thing is, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of the awesomeness of the Packer Blogosphere.

For these fine folks, for some friends and family who count themselves part of the Cheesehead Nation, and for the reflected glory in which the Lions would then bathe, I’m rooting for Lombardi’s team to add another Lombardi trophy to the case.  Further, I’m calling for Lions fans who don’t already have an affiliation with a playoff team to join me.  Please, let’s let Packers like Aaron Rodgers and Greg Jennings feel the glory of the mountaintop once—because Ndamukong Suh and the Lions will be king of that mountain for years to come.

Forgive me, I’m terrible at this, what is it the kids say these days, “running smack?”  As a Lions fan my default mode is demure submission.  Anyway, Go Pack, Go.

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,green bay packers,nfl playoffs

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