Three Cups Deep: Week 7, Lions at Chicago Bears

It was all but a must-win, and the Lions didn’t win.

This loss hurt. It hurt to see Calvin Johnson stone cold drop a sure long gainer. It hurt to see Matthew Stafford again struggle to make good reads quickly, struggle to stand tall in the pocket, and struggle to execute the offense efficiently. It hurt to see Mikel Leshoure and Joique Bell pound the vaunted Bears defense for five yards a carry and each lose a scoring-drive-killing fumble.

It hurt to see the Lions excel on special teams: block a field goal, allowing only 1 return of 4 to exceed five yards—and then have Stefan Logan lose yet another fumble.

It hurt to see the Lions defense kick the Bears' ass and lose.

The Lions are 2-4, two games below .500 and functionally three-and-a-half games behind the Bears. The sputtering offense is scoring just 22.2 points per game—and despite the defense allowing just 18 points per game, the six non-offensive touchdowns scored on the Lions are mean they have a –2.8 point per game scoring differential. They’re –5 in turnovers, ranked 25th in the NFL. That’s down from +11 last season, which was fourth-best.

So far, it’s been all but a Murphy’s Law season for the Lions: they have two semi-miracle comeback wins and three that fell just a bit short. They’re seemingly inches from being 4-3 or 5-2, yet they’re no further from 0-6. The offense seems like it’s this close to putting everything together, and yet if they haven’t by now when will they? The defense is playing out of its mind and getting better every week—but how long can that last?

Fortunately, it’s a short wait to this weekend, and a game against a team much like the Bears. The Lions will face a Seahawks team with just as vicious of a defense, just as strong of a running game, and with a quarterback even harder to pin down.

But it will be during the day, in the welcoming den of Ford Field, instead of at night in the Windy City. It won’t be in front of a primetime national audience. It won’t have any of the historic, bitter import. It won’t have any of the divisional implications. It’ll just be another football game—one the Lions, again, will have the talent to win.

But this time, it will be a must-win. There will be no “margin for error,” as Jim Schwartz said. The Lions, as ever in the Schwartz era, are victims of playing in the best division in football. Had they won this game they’d still be in the cellar, even at .500. This Sunday, the Lions offense has to execute. The Lions defense cannot take their foot off the gas. The Lions special teams cannot blow it again.

The Lions must win.

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Monday Night Vengance: the Bears-Lions Rivalry Renewed

"They don't like us. We don't like them. That's how it is.”

--Dominic Raiola, Detroit Lions center, on the Chicago Bears

They don’t like us. We don’t like them. The Chicago Screwjob. Last season’s Monday Night triumph. The return blowout at Solider Field. Glorious wins, stinging defeats, bitter complaints, searing pain, delicious triumph.

Actual rivalry.

A “rivalry” can be any recurring matchup. Any two teams with history, any two teams in the same division, any two teams that have played each other before can be called “rivals.” But this rivalry is something different; this rivalry means more. This isn’t about Alex Karras or Dick Butkus or Gayle Sayers or Lem Barney or George Halas or Dutch Clark. This is, but isn’t just about soliders bearing the livery of Honolulu Blue and Silver and a Leaping Lion meeting soliders clad in Light Black and Grody Orange bearing the standard of that tweezers-C.

This is about two groups of men who hate each other.

This is something rare in professional sports. With its mercenary nature, massive salaries, players rarely have time to inspire true loyalty, or true contempt. With the genteel manner in which we demand the modern player behave, we rarely see two pro sports teams who truly want to kick each other’s ass.

Tonight, on Monday Night Football, the nation will see exactly that.

Of course, this means  something extra to the fans, too: we won a game ball for our support on the last Monday Night Football matchup between these two teams, and restored pride to our beleaguered franchise’s national reputation. Then, the Bears returned the favor, putting a serious wobble in the Lions’ playoff trajectory and dulling the roar of the “Lions Nation Army” for most of the rest of the season.

Here in Week 7, the season’s already at stake for the Lions: win, and they pull up to .500: within a half-game of the Packers, a game of the Bears, and a game-and-a-half of the Vikings. Lose and they’re down three full games to the 5-2 Bears, with the tiebreaker unlikely.

The situation's similar for the Bears: win and they're sitting atop the division, lose and they're a mortal 4-3 with a murderous second-half schedule lurking around the corner.

This will come down, as always with these two teams, to two factors: the quarterbacks, and the defensive lines. Whichever quarterback makes more plays and avoids the other’s defensive line wins.

The hour is late; the Lions are at the gate. The Bears stand ready to defend their fortress. The rivalry is about to be renewed.

We cannot tilt the battlefield in favor of our team. We cannot intimidate their players or bully the refs or short-circuit their communications or make them commit penalties in their terrified confusion; all we can do is watch.

Watch, and hope.

Watch, hope, and hate.

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Bo Knows Low-Variance Football. So Does Jim.

Jim Schwartz, on why the Lions have scored more points in the fourth quarter than the first three in all of their games so far:

"We've had to in the fourth. We've been behind and that's put the pressure on us to have to do it. We're trying just as hard in the first quarter. Certainly no design or scheme or anything like that. We have to be efficient all four quarters and it can make a difference for us if we can get a lead and we can hold a lead. But we've got to battle for 60 minutes. You're judged just like a 16 game season, you're judged on all 16 games, you're judged on all 60 minutes. So no matter where you're scoring them they all count."

“We’ve had to in the fourth.”

Schwartz says it’s “no design or scheme or anything like that,” but the Lions’ close games are the result of obvious changes in approach on offense.

The biggest change from last season to this season is the way defenses are playing the Lions—and all of last season’s 5,000-yard passing offenses. The Saints, Patriots and Lions went 36-10 last season; through Week 6 of this season they’re 6-10. NFL defensive coordinators are paid way too much to let teams beat them with the same thing over and over—so they’re taking away the bombs-away offense and forcing these teams to adjust.

The Lions have adjusted by re-emphasizing the run game, drastically cutting back on hopeful shots downfield, and trying to emphasize intermediate routes. Linehan has also been doing a lot of “setting up” defenses with repetitive/predictable playcalls early in games, to subvert them later—or in the case of this play broken down by TuffLynx at Pride of Detroit, use repetitive/predictable playcalls in early games, to subvert them in later games.

By taking fewer risks and being less aggressive on offense, the Lions are pursuing a low-variance strategy.

This concept has been discussed all over the Internet, but it was synthesized best for me by Brian Cook at MGoBlog, in a piece called “Keep it Close and Lose in the Fourth Quarter," and its follow-up, "Mathy Mailbag." Read them both, plus all the links in both if you really want to grok this.

To summarize: low-variance strategies result in fewer possible outcomes. Two equally-matched teams both running more often than they pass and always punting on fourth down regardless of field position and never blitzing on defense won’t produce a 48-0 blowout in either direction.

This is, as discussed by Cook, Chris Brown, and Malcom Gladwell a “Goliath strategy.” When you’ve got a massive talent and skill advantage—as Goliath did over David—you want to eliminate the chance of anything crazy happening. Since the expected outcome is “you win,” you want to maximize the probability of getting the expected outcome.

As Cook notes, this is the strategy used by Bo Schembechler at Michigan: grind it out, play suffocating defense, take few risks, minimize mistakes, and use your massive size and talent advantage to consistently beat opponents with execution. Cook cited a passage from a book called Bo’s Lasting Lessons, wherein Bo, at a coaching clinic, veered dangerously close to schematic enlightenment before reaffirming his fevered belief in fundamentals and “playing Michigan football.” Cook:

This may have been brilliant in 1985, and brilliant against the poor, huddled masses that comprised Michigan's opponents at the time, but it's fundamentally a variance-hating strategy that presumes better talent. In it are the seeds of Michigan's time-honored failure against Rose Bowl foes, and its recent struggles to put away inferior competition.

It’s that old chestnut, attributed to darn near every midwestern football coach of historical note: “Only three things can happen when you pass the ball and two of them are bad.” Passing is a high-risk, high-variance strategy.

No NFL team passed more, or more often, than the Lions did in 2011.

This is why the Lions aren’t  doing it again in 2012: the Lions can assume a talent advantage over most NFL teams. They just beat the Eagles, one of the most talented teams in football, and Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote you could “see” the Lions were “physically dominant.” This is why the Lions passing twice as often as they run would be dumb, and playing things close to the vest is smart.

But.

One of the side effects of playing for low variance by running the ball a lot, making ultra-conservative fourth-down calls and, I don’t know, refusing to try an onside kick when you’re kicking from the opponent’s forty-yard line is that you shorten the game. With more time running off the clock, there are fewer plays and possessions—fewer chances to press your advantage.

If you flip a coin that’s weighted to land on “heads” 60% of the time 10,000 times, it will land on heads 60% of those 10,000 flips. If you flip that same coin ten times, it’s much more likely to land on heads for some other percentage.

If you reduce the number of ‘trials’, you increase the chance for an unexpected outcome. That is to say, if the Lions have an advantage over their opponent, attempting to control the clock gives them fewer chances to leverage that advantage. Re-stated again: by playing to reduce risk, the Lions can’t blow people out like they used to. They’re also not going to get blown out, but that’s cold comfort when you’re starting 2-3 instead of 5-0.

As a consequence, the Lions are running into the same problem Lloyd Carr did: if you’re going to keep it close for four quarters, you actually have to execute significantly better than the other team. Bo's reliance superior talent and execution left him unarmed against opponents with equal talent. Carr's similar approach with less-superior talent against less-hapless Big Ten opponents guaranteed him at least one embarrassing upset a season.

The Lions let the Rams hang around when Stafford throwing three first-half interceptions, and it almost cost them. The Lions were on track to beat the Titans 27-20 and the Vikings 13-6 except, you know, two punt return touchdowns, two kickoff return touchdowns, and a fumble return touchdown. By playing it close to the vest, the Lions couldn't build up the kind of lead that can withstand these freak occurrences/horrible mistakes. They have to get touchdowns from their early scoring opportunities and not settle for field goals.

Still, throughout these games, the Lions’ advantage has become apparent in the final stanza: Mikel Leshoure and Joique Bell punishing bruised defenses, Matthew Stafford and Shaun Hill carving up beleaguered secondaries downfield, shellshocked quarterbacks running for their lives and throwing picks.

Over the course of the season, the weird bounces and fluky breaks will even out. Stafford quickly eliminated the terrible picks of the Rams game, and the coverage teams managed to go a whole game without allowing a single return touchdown. The Lions are taking the correct approach—but they’re going to have to improve their offensive execution, or continue dropping games to inferior opponents.

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