Lions News

[chemiclord]

He actually twitched first, which they almost always call, and then got such an early jump he was about equal with Mahomes depth in the pocket by the time the ball was actually snapped. It was definitely egregious.

I looked at it again... and I'm sorry, I disagree to an extent. Taylor had been doing that "twitch" frequently. He set up so far in the backfield on multiple plays that he was at Mahomes depth by the snap frequently. I guess it was marginally more excessive at the very end, but if that crossed the line in the refs eyes, then the refs had no business even having a line to begin with. I just simply disagree that Taylor did anything on the play he was (finally) flagged that he shouldn't have been flagged for multiple times by that point.

Simply put, if what Taylor did on that play deserved a flag, he should have already had ten flags by the time that play happened. It wasn't that egregious compared to anything he had done up to that point.

The refs had an inconsistent application of the rules, and again applied that inconsistency in crunch time, like they frequently do.

What makes it different is that the Lions are finally at a point talent and execution wise that they can overcome shitty officiating. And thank God for that.

[Mainevent]

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[chemiclord]

Someone rather helpfully put together a short compilation of Taylor's worst jumps on Thursday.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JaQeZrTZ7_M

If there's anything significantly different on the very last example, it's that Taylor wasn't as smooth falling back on the very last example, he jerks backward rather than the slide he had been doing, and if that is what the refs noticed, then they are looking at the absolute wrong things at the line of scrimmage.

[Cody_Russell]

I just hope the NFL referees correct this going forward. It’s not football to allow this specific advantage for the offense. Mike Florio floated the idea that the NFL might be OK with it because they’re continuing to try to protect QBs in anyway possible ($$$$$$). It’s well noted how the depth of OTs across the NFL is lacking when compared to edge talent.

We’ll see what happens in the near future. Eagles at Patriots with Lane Johnson under a microscope.

I’m in a thread with a Jaguars fan and he mentioned that Jawaan Taylor has history of kinda doing this. Which explains his great pass protection grade.
This game being on national TV and Taylor taking it to the next level made this obvious.

[mason reese]

It didn't seem particularly more egregious than the "go on one on a three-count" that he had been doing all game to me.

I think slow reaction of the guard and TE on either side of him helped “sell” it. When he’s out on the edge by himself refs let the early movement go

[Nick Pappageorgio]

I don't know that they want to correct it...they'll talk about variance from officiating crew to crew but that's BS. The good QBs are going be better protected than the mediocre ones. And it's the same with holding...Everyone is focused on Taylor's behavior but look at how much holding was going on in the interior line (especially as the game wore on)...you can see our DTs getting really frustrated with it.

IDK who Geno's RT is....but he's not going to get to do that next week.

[edindetroit]

Lions last two opponents.jpg

[chemiclord]

I just hope the NFL referees correct this going forward. It’s not football to allow this specific advantage for the offense. Mike Florio floated the idea that the NFL might be OK with it because they’re continuing to try to protect QBs in anyway possible ($$$$$$). It’s well noted how the depth of OTs across the NFL is lacking when compared to edge talent.

We’ll see what happens in the near future. Eagles at Patriots with Lane Johnson under a microscope.

I’m in a thread with a Jaguars fan and he mentioned that Jawaan Taylor has history of kinda doing this. Which explains his great pass protection grade.
This game being on national TV and Taylor taking it to the next level made this obvious.

Well, it's simple. They won't.

Or, at absolute best, the league abruptly makes this of "special emphasis" at some point, which really only means that the officials are going to be horrifically inconsistent in different ways.

Part of the problem is that the rule book is a kludgey mess of rationalizations, knee-jerk reactions, and archaic nonsense all to avoid ever having to say, "Yeah, we fucked up." Another part is that the league has decided (sometimes arbitrarily) that some rules no longer really apply (but never actually removing those rules, because again, the league can never be allowed to be wrong) usually to try and increase scoring.

What Taylor did last night was really just a particularly bad example of what officials have been allowing tackles to do for a fairly long time. Lane Johnson was rather famous, for example, of pushing just what he could get away with to the point of incredulity. Again... I'd rather officials call things by the rules, rather than make their own house rules from week to week. But they aren't going to do that. I don't think it's unfair or unreasonable to expect officials to at least be consistent with their house rules if that's going to be the case, and on many a week across the NFL (not just when the Lions are playing, mind you), they aren't.

[Cody_Russell]

Need to get Decker and Sewell to work on this technique then. They would be unstoppable with the advantage. No edge pressure on Goff!

[chemiclord]

I don't know that they want to correct it...they'll talk about variance from officiating crew to crew but that's BS. The good QBs are going be better protected than the mediocre ones. And it's the same with holding...Everyone is focused on Taylor's behavior but look at how much holding was going on in the interior line (especially as the game wore on)...you can see our DTs getting really frustrated with it.

IDK who Geno's RT is....but he's not going to get to do that next week.

I don't think I've seen consistent rulings on what holding is or isn't for decades. Thursday it seemed to be, "anything short of a choke hold goes" but who knows what its going to be this Sunday, or even on any given play.

It's actually an example of if the NFL wants to give O-Linemen an advantage, then they should actually change the rule as to what holding is. But they won't, and I think that's because they like being able to lean on the ambiguity to get the results they would prefer.

[whatever_gong82]

Notice to the Forum: I've just signed up for a 6-month subscription to the Detroit News, so I'll be adding some Detroit News sports articles on here for the duration of the NFL season. Over the weekend, I'll also add their articles on the Lions' opening night win vs. KC, since we won't see the Lions again until a week from tomorrow vs. Seattle at home.


Detroit Lions exploiting their one big advantage on defense: 'Fear'


Dave Birkett

Detroit Free Press


The best Detroit Lions team this town has seen in the past three decades is the 2014 edition, which won 11 games with one of the NFL’s most dominant defenses.

Ndamukong Suh, playing for a contract that would make him the highest-paid defensive player in the NFL, had 8½ sacks that season, plus a suspension that was overturned on appeal.

Ziggy Ansah was a young burgeoning pass rusher with no injury history to speak of. DeAndre Levy was a tackling machine at the top of his game. And the Lions had a formidable secondary with Glover Quin at safety and a young Darius Slay in his first season starting at cornerback.

The Lions won games defensively that year, both because they needed to and because they could. They held four straight opponents to 17 points or less late in the season and tied for third in the league with 20 interceptions.



It’s far too early to put this year’s Lions defense on that unit’s level. They’ve played one game, against a team that was missing its MVP quarterback’s favorite (and perhaps only) receiver.

But if Thursday’s 21-20 win over the Kansas City Chiefs is any indication, this year’s Lions have a chance to be at least the franchise’s best defensive unit since 2014 — and maybe more.




“I like where our defense is at,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said Friday. “And yet, when we get it where we really want it, I think we’re looking at something, I think, defensively that we haven’t had in a long time.”

This year’s Lions don’t have a defensive player as formidable as Suh on their roster. Suh was on a Hall-of-Fame trajectory back in 2014, and he played with a disdain for opposing quarterbacks that no Lion since has matched.



But this year’s Lions have two things those of 2014 did not: Some of the best defensive depth in the NFL, and an abundance of youth that has the unit still ascending up a potentially special track.


“I feel like it’s kind of, we’ve been missing the pieces and I feel like we finally have it defensively,” veteran linebacker Alex Anzalone said. “That doesn’t mean we’re perfect or we’re the most dominant players ever at some positions, but at the same time we have players that are really, really solid players and make plays in crunch time.”

The Lions made plays throughout Thursday’s game, holding Patrick Mahomes, the best quarterback on the planet, to 21-for-39 passing for 226 yards with two touchdowns and one interception.


Mahomes made too many plays with his feet in the first half, and his stats would have been significantly better if not for his receivers’ eight drops. But the Lions at least contributed to some of those woes with their physical style of play and relentless pass rush.



“I am a believer in when you play a certain style of football and you do it repetitively over and over again, that things can go your way,” Campbell said after the game. “They had some drops. They were a little out of sorts. There is going to be an element of, they are going to want to have better timing and clean things up. I like to believe that we had a hand in the way (they) played, too. Our aggressiveness, our hustle. I thought we were physical, and I thought that really played in our favor.”

When I sat down with third-year Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn this spring, just before the team broke for the offseason, he explained what he was looking for on defense and how he was going about trying to create it.


“We know what the NFL is trying to do with all defense,” Glenn told me in June. “Everything you can imagine favors the offense. Everything. And the only advantage that we have is fear. That’s the only advantage that we have. And I’m an old-school coach, I know that, and I like playing old-school football and I like beating people up, I like hitting people. And that’s what our defense tried to do for the most part.”




Kadarius Toney seemed especially rattled by the Lions’ fast, physical play Thursday.

Toney dropped one pass, then another, then a third, and seemed out of rhythm all day. When a pass sailed through his hands, glanced off his body and into the waiting arms of Brian Branch, who returned it 50 yards for a touchdown, early in the third quarter, it seemed like Toney felt Branch’s presence behind him bearing down for a big hit.

Branch, in many ways, is the epitome of what this Lions defense can be. He’s one of two rookies (along with linebacker Jack Campbell) playing key roles on the unit, part of a defensive backfield whose talent seemed to multiply overnight and a key face in the youth movement that defines the unit.




The Lions have three capable starting cornerbacks in Jerry Jacobs, Cam Sutton and Emmanuel Moseley; four safeties (Branch, Kerby Joseph, C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Tracy Walker) at a spot that requires three starters, thanks to the nickel back position; just as many starting-caliber linebackers, with Campbell for now coming off the bench; and two platoons worth of pass rushers.

That’s the depth they need to survive the season, and if Branch and Campbell develop, and Joseph, Aidan Hutchinson and Josh Paschal continue their growth in their second seasons, the Lions could look up this winter and find themselves with one of the best young defenses in the NFL.



“Everybody know the focal point of this team is defense,” Gardner-Johnson said. “It looked good, don’t it? Real good.”

Calling the defense the focal point of this year’s team remains premature for now. The nucleus of an offense that ranked near the top of the league in most categories last year, has one of the NFL’s best offensive lines, a ball-secure quarterback and a creative coordinator, remains intact.


But unlike most of the past two years, when the defense was a liability clawing to keep up, this year’s group is a decided strength that’s only getting better.

“Look, I think (Thursday’s defensive performance) really shows what we’re going to be capable of this year,” Campbell said. “And I just bring it up again, we played some good football defensively last night, and yet there’s so much room to improve. I mean, we’ve got a lot of little things we’ve got to clean up that are going to make us so much better. So I think, man, I thought we played really well.”



Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

[jaadam4]

There’s been so many stories about the Lions I can’t remember where i watched a clip but one NFL player basically said when it came to certain OL lining up they’d get confirmation at the start of the game.

They’d basically ask the ref if lining up like “this” is what they were ok with. If they said no they’d adjust to exactly how they wanted and just do that for the rest of the game.

The false start thing is a different story. That shit is crazy

[chemiclord]

Need to get Decker and Sewell to work on this technique then. They would be unstoppable with the advantage. No edge pressure on Goff!

Well, now we get into official bias. The Lions probably wouldn't get away with that, being a perennial joke of the NFL. The defending champions, at home, absolutely would. Winners tend to get the calls. Losers don't. We're probably going to start seeing the Lions getting calls they wouldn't have just a couple years ago... ironically because they finally have the talent to win despite the officiating. It can be a vicious Catch-22 to overcome, but pretty much every team currently at the top had to at some point.

[whatever_gong82]

I'm moving on from the Tirico 'Asterisk comment,' because this article provides some context in what he said Thursday night.


‘This has an asterisk’: Mike Tirico’s comment rankles fans after Lions upset Chiefs


BY CHUCK SCHILKEN
STAFF WRITER

SEPT. 8, 2023 11:11 AM PT


Mike Tirico was singing the praises of the Detroit Lions.

The NBC broadcaster proclaimed Thursday that they’re “not the same old Lions” after Detroit’s 21-20 road win over the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs to kick off the 2023 NFL season.



He compared the Lions favorably to a Chiefs team that years ago started its current run of dominance in similar fashion on opening night.

“The blue and silver’s for real,” Tirico said as the team celebrated an upset win over the Super Bowl favorite Chiefs on the field and its long-suffering fans no doubt did the same while watching the national telecast at home.




But Tirico also put an asterisk next to the Lions’ win that colleague Cris Collinsworth had just described as “a milestone moment” for a team that hasn’t won a playoff game since 1991 but finally has some hype and seemingly momentum after a strong finish last season.

More context will be provided below, but here is the quote from Tirico that has Lions fans fuming:

“This has an asterisk because of no Chris Jones and no Travis Kelce ... .”



The reference to two Kansas City stars who did not play — defensive tackle Jones because of a contract dispute and tight end Kelce because of an injured knee — wasn’t the end of Tirico’s sentence. Here’s the rest:

“But after what you saw at the end of last year and what you saw tonight, the blue and silver’s for real.”




No matter though — pretty sure most Lions fans stopped listening after the asterisk part. Tirico’s name was trending on X (formerly Twitter) Friday morning, with words like “ridiculous” and “weak” being used to describe a take some felt was an example of a perceived media bias toward the Chiefs and star quarterback Patrick Mahomes.



Here’s the commentary from the broadcast that started as the final seconds ticked away:

Collinsworth: “Watch the reaction now of this football team. This is a milestone moment for them to come in here and get this win.”

Tirico: “Not the same old Lions — the 1-0 Lions. They come into Kansas City on opening night and beat the champs. We saw Buffalo do it last year in L.A. to the Rams, we saw the Chiefs go into Foxborough in 2016 and win on opening night. That announced to everyone that the Kansas City Chiefs were going to be a factor. This has an asterisk because of no Chris Jones and no Travis Kelce, but after what you saw at the end of last year and what you saw tonight, the blue and silver’s for real.”



In that context, it doesn’t seem like Tirico was necessarily trying to downplay the Lions’ achievement with the “asterisk” comment. More likely, he was just stating facts in an attempt to be as objective as possible. But was it necessary to do so at that moment?

Fans who are all too familiar with “the same old Lions” certainly didn’t think so.

[jaadam4]

I’ll take an asterisk win all f’ing day long. Keep’em coming