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The Texans game revealed the Lions’ true strength—and weakness
Pride of Detroit Direct
By Ty Schalter, exclusively for Pride of Detroit Direct
The Lions’ tremendous comeback win against the Houston Texans exposed their greatest weakness, the one thing that could prevent them from turning a season where they were the best team in the NFL into a season where they win the Super Bowl.
No, not Jared Goff. He threw five picks, and they won anyway. Not the lack of edge defenders; Detroit’s defense balled out against one of the most dangerous quarterbacks in the league while the acquisition meant to help them get back to that, Za’Darius Smith, chilled on the sidelines.
No, the Lions’ greatest advantage—and, therefore, the thing they miss the most when they don’t have it—is their offensive line.
As I wrote here two weeks ago, the Lions’ outstanding run game, almost perfectly balanced run/pass playcalling (currently 51.1 percent run/48.9 percent pass) and NFL-highest play-action rate (36.9 percent, 5.4 percent ahead of No. 2) have been the foundation of their success throwing the ball. Besides the adjustments defenses have to make for the presence of a strong run game, the Lions’ EPA per pass has been +0.00 (10th) on snaps with no play action, and +0.32 (fourth) with a play fake.
The Lions finished 2023 as No. 1 in FTN Fantasy’s Adjusted Line Yards; ALY is a metric that assumes short runs are mostly the line’s fault, long runs are the running backs’ fault, and medium runs somewhere in between. So far this year, Detroit is No. 1 again. NFL Pro gives us more granular data on that, though, and it backs ALY up: Detroit’s got the fourth-lowest stuffed-run rate, and eighth-highest success rate, along with their running backs averaging the fifth-most yards before contact per carry (1.96). PFF grades them fourth in run blocking, and ESPN has them sixth in run-blocking win rate.
Consistently winning up front, and backs David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs consistently taking advantage of it, means the Lions’ offense has a consistently high floor. Even with Goff literally throwing multiple possessions away, the Lions were still able to get to 26 points. The final two drives, setting up the game-tying and game-winning field goals, consisted of 11 runs and just three pass attempts.
However.
The surprise loss of Taylor Decker to a late-week practice injury hurt them badly against a Texans defense that excels at doing everything Jared Goff struggles to deal with. PFF gave poor pass-block grades to Penei Sewell (53.6), Graham Glasgow (48.1), and backup tackle Dan Skipper (39.5), and PFF charted the line as allowing four hits and four hurries on 33 pass-block reps.
As a result, per NFL Pro, Goff was pressured on 38.7 percent of his throws—and though he avoided taking a sack, on those pressured snaps he went 3-for-12 for just 37 yards, no touchdowns, and two picks. His pressured completion percentage over expected was a shocking -26.8 percent, lowest in the NFL for Week 10. So basically, even given the situations on those 12 plays, you’d expect an average NFL starter in Goff’s shoes to have completed six or seven of those.
That jibes with the eye test: Goff looked shaken, especially after the strip-sack, and didn’t seem to trust his protection or his receivers. He turfed passes so frequently it was hard to figure out when, or if, it was intentional. These are classic signs of the ‘Bad Goff’ taking over, and exactly what you don’t want to see if you’re a Lions fan.
That said, Detroit’s offensive line hasn’t been quite as good as expected (or advertised) at protecting Goff this year. Their team pass-block win rate is 64 percent, ninth in the league. PFF ranks them 15th–and, as Ben Baldwin pointed out on X, their “true pass set” grade is a 16th-best 58/100 (PFF’s “true pass set” mark excludes plays with less than 4 rushers, play action, screens, short dropbacks and time-to-throws under 2 seconds). Baldwin added a little mock-whispered aside that he thinks the Lions’ line has been a little overrated.
But drill down into those true-pass-set numbers, and you’ll see the Lions tackles are averaging a 65 grade, the centers 62, and then guards…45. Drill down even further, and you’ll see it’s not the new guy’s fault.
Kevin Zeitler’s got a 71.3 overall pass-blocking grade, and 67.2 in true pass sets. Those marks are a respectable 25th and 21st in the league; when you add the run blocking back in Zeitler’s the sixth-highest graded guard in the business.
Graham Glasgow’s pass-blocking grade, though, is at 60.0 overall and a miserable 28.2 in true pass sets. Kayode Awoskia’s numbers are just as rough, 57.8 and 34.5. And on Sunday night, putting Skipper next to Glasgow made Goff’s blindside a turnstile. Glasgow and Skipper’s true-pass-set grades were an eye-watering 21.2 and 26.9, respectively. All three of the pressures allowed on true pass sets were credited to Glasgow or Skipper.
Coming into the week, 38.4 percent of the Lions’ pass plays had been charted as true pass sets. That ratio didn’t change on Sunday; 12 of the Lions’ 33 pass plays were counted as true pass sets. But offensive coordinator Ben Johnson did make other adjustments: He got Goff rolling to his right, away from the pressure, and he called 20 runs against 13 passes in the second half—more than reversing the first half’s 12/20 run/pass ratio.
The good news is that Glasgow and Skipper did fine in the run game, posting 57.9 and 65.1 run-blocking grades. They weren’t up there with Zeitler, Ragnow, and Sewell, who were all 90-plus, but they did enough to keep Detroit doing what they do against a really tough defense. That’s the floor, the foundation, the rock this offense is built on—and the reason the Lions are going to be favored in nearly every (if not every) game they play the rest of the season.
And ‘Bad Goff’ is not coming back. The Texans’ league-high pressure rate, moderate blitz rate and heavy use of zone coverage made them lab-built to make Goff struggle, and losing Decker with almost no practice reps left in the week made it very difficult to adjust for. Further, Goff’s horrible under-pressure stats on Sunday don’t look anything like what they do for the rest of the season.
In fact, Goff is No. 1 in yards per attempt, No. 2 in completion rate, fifth in CPOE, and ninth in EPA per dropback when pressured this year—Texans game included.
So another week or two of Skipper in the soft part of the Lions’ schedule won’t cause a long-term problem, and it doesn’t say anything bad about Goff (who tried very hard not to say out loud after the game that at least a couple of those picks were on his receivers, not him).
But the surprise loss of Decker in a critical moment does underscore just how crucial the line has been so far this year, and remind Lions-watchers how inconsistent the offense could be last season, when injuries all over the line forced them to shuffle through nine different starting-five combinations.
If Ragnow, Zeitler, or Sewell went down for any significant length of time—or even just missed one must-win game—it would to what it did on Sunday: put a lot more pressure on Goff, the defense, and the special teams to play at an elite level.
And as the Lions continue to secure their future by locking up their best young players to long-term deals, figuring out what the future of the interior line looks like should be very, very high on their to-do list.
Pride of Detroit Direct
By Ty Schalter, exclusively for Pride of Detroit Direct
The Lions’ tremendous comeback win against the Houston Texans exposed their greatest weakness, the one thing that could prevent them from turning a season where they were the best team in the NFL into a season where they win the Super Bowl.
No, not Jared Goff. He threw five picks, and they won anyway. Not the lack of edge defenders; Detroit’s defense balled out against one of the most dangerous quarterbacks in the league while the acquisition meant to help them get back to that, Za’Darius Smith, chilled on the sidelines.
No, the Lions’ greatest advantage—and, therefore, the thing they miss the most when they don’t have it—is their offensive line.
As I wrote here two weeks ago, the Lions’ outstanding run game, almost perfectly balanced run/pass playcalling (currently 51.1 percent run/48.9 percent pass) and NFL-highest play-action rate (36.9 percent, 5.4 percent ahead of No. 2) have been the foundation of their success throwing the ball. Besides the adjustments defenses have to make for the presence of a strong run game, the Lions’ EPA per pass has been +0.00 (10th) on snaps with no play action, and +0.32 (fourth) with a play fake.
The Lions finished 2023 as No. 1 in FTN Fantasy’s Adjusted Line Yards; ALY is a metric that assumes short runs are mostly the line’s fault, long runs are the running backs’ fault, and medium runs somewhere in between. So far this year, Detroit is No. 1 again. NFL Pro gives us more granular data on that, though, and it backs ALY up: Detroit’s got the fourth-lowest stuffed-run rate, and eighth-highest success rate, along with their running backs averaging the fifth-most yards before contact per carry (1.96). PFF grades them fourth in run blocking, and ESPN has them sixth in run-blocking win rate.
Consistently winning up front, and backs David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs consistently taking advantage of it, means the Lions’ offense has a consistently high floor. Even with Goff literally throwing multiple possessions away, the Lions were still able to get to 26 points. The final two drives, setting up the game-tying and game-winning field goals, consisted of 11 runs and just three pass attempts.
However.
The surprise loss of Taylor Decker to a late-week practice injury hurt them badly against a Texans defense that excels at doing everything Jared Goff struggles to deal with. PFF gave poor pass-block grades to Penei Sewell (53.6), Graham Glasgow (48.1), and backup tackle Dan Skipper (39.5), and PFF charted the line as allowing four hits and four hurries on 33 pass-block reps.
As a result, per NFL Pro, Goff was pressured on 38.7 percent of his throws—and though he avoided taking a sack, on those pressured snaps he went 3-for-12 for just 37 yards, no touchdowns, and two picks. His pressured completion percentage over expected was a shocking -26.8 percent, lowest in the NFL for Week 10. So basically, even given the situations on those 12 plays, you’d expect an average NFL starter in Goff’s shoes to have completed six or seven of those.
That jibes with the eye test: Goff looked shaken, especially after the strip-sack, and didn’t seem to trust his protection or his receivers. He turfed passes so frequently it was hard to figure out when, or if, it was intentional. These are classic signs of the ‘Bad Goff’ taking over, and exactly what you don’t want to see if you’re a Lions fan.
That said, Detroit’s offensive line hasn’t been quite as good as expected (or advertised) at protecting Goff this year. Their team pass-block win rate is 64 percent, ninth in the league. PFF ranks them 15th–and, as Ben Baldwin pointed out on X, their “true pass set” grade is a 16th-best 58/100 (PFF’s “true pass set” mark excludes plays with less than 4 rushers, play action, screens, short dropbacks and time-to-throws under 2 seconds). Baldwin added a little mock-whispered aside that he thinks the Lions’ line has been a little overrated.
But drill down into those true-pass-set numbers, and you’ll see the Lions tackles are averaging a 65 grade, the centers 62, and then guards…45. Drill down even further, and you’ll see it’s not the new guy’s fault.
Kevin Zeitler’s got a 71.3 overall pass-blocking grade, and 67.2 in true pass sets. Those marks are a respectable 25th and 21st in the league; when you add the run blocking back in Zeitler’s the sixth-highest graded guard in the business.
Graham Glasgow’s pass-blocking grade, though, is at 60.0 overall and a miserable 28.2 in true pass sets. Kayode Awoskia’s numbers are just as rough, 57.8 and 34.5. And on Sunday night, putting Skipper next to Glasgow made Goff’s blindside a turnstile. Glasgow and Skipper’s true-pass-set grades were an eye-watering 21.2 and 26.9, respectively. All three of the pressures allowed on true pass sets were credited to Glasgow or Skipper.
Coming into the week, 38.4 percent of the Lions’ pass plays had been charted as true pass sets. That ratio didn’t change on Sunday; 12 of the Lions’ 33 pass plays were counted as true pass sets. But offensive coordinator Ben Johnson did make other adjustments: He got Goff rolling to his right, away from the pressure, and he called 20 runs against 13 passes in the second half—more than reversing the first half’s 12/20 run/pass ratio.
The good news is that Glasgow and Skipper did fine in the run game, posting 57.9 and 65.1 run-blocking grades. They weren’t up there with Zeitler, Ragnow, and Sewell, who were all 90-plus, but they did enough to keep Detroit doing what they do against a really tough defense. That’s the floor, the foundation, the rock this offense is built on—and the reason the Lions are going to be favored in nearly every (if not every) game they play the rest of the season.
And ‘Bad Goff’ is not coming back. The Texans’ league-high pressure rate, moderate blitz rate and heavy use of zone coverage made them lab-built to make Goff struggle, and losing Decker with almost no practice reps left in the week made it very difficult to adjust for. Further, Goff’s horrible under-pressure stats on Sunday don’t look anything like what they do for the rest of the season.
In fact, Goff is No. 1 in yards per attempt, No. 2 in completion rate, fifth in CPOE, and ninth in EPA per dropback when pressured this year—Texans game included.
So another week or two of Skipper in the soft part of the Lions’ schedule won’t cause a long-term problem, and it doesn’t say anything bad about Goff (who tried very hard not to say out loud after the game that at least a couple of those picks were on his receivers, not him).
But the surprise loss of Decker in a critical moment does underscore just how crucial the line has been so far this year, and remind Lions-watchers how inconsistent the offense could be last season, when injuries all over the line forced them to shuffle through nine different starting-five combinations.
If Ragnow, Zeitler, or Sewell went down for any significant length of time—or even just missed one must-win game—it would to what it did on Sunday: put a lot more pressure on Goff, the defense, and the special teams to play at an elite level.
And as the Lions continue to secure their future by locking up their best young players to long-term deals, figuring out what the future of the interior line looks like should be very, very high on their to-do list.
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