Lions News

[Mainevent]

Now that’s a better commercial.

[whatever_gong82]

To an extent, yes. One tip of acting is that "you kinda gotta feel like you're overdoing it at first," because you need to exaggerate your normal manner for it to convey properly. People who do that naturally find that hurdle to be fairly easy to clear.

That's what is always surprising to me when either man wants to act, is that when they put their minds to it, they're quite pretty good at it. Cage has won an Oscar, I believe, and Shatner has 2 Emmys and has been nominated a few other times as well.

[whatever_gong82]

Through OC Johnson's hard coaching, Lions' rookie Williams learned 'the standard' that led to roster spot

Justin Rogers
Sep 4



Allen Park — For Detroit Lions rookie receiver Isaiah Williams, his “Welcome to the NFL” moment happened his first weekend in the building.

A converted quarterback who paced the Big Ten with 164 catches across the past two seasons, Williams arrived in Detroit eager to prove his abilities played at the next level. But seemingly every snap during rookie minicamp in early May, Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson laid into Williams, hammering the player on a steady stream of alignment and assignment miscues.


It was a rude awakening for a two-time captain for the University of Illinois, who was coming off a first-team all-conference season.


“Damn, when I first got here, man, I was getting snapped at like every single play,” Williams recalled. “I was like, 'Man, I just learned these plays.'“

To make matters worse, the Lions lost a receiver to injury during that three-day minicamp. Williams had spent the week preparing to play the slot, but suddenly found himself thrust into outside alignments — both the Z and X — just so the team could get through the practices. As you might imagine, the unanticipated shift in responsibilities only compounded the mistakes.


For a fleeting moment, Williams wasn’t sure if he belonged. To dig himself out of that mindset, he did what he’s always done; put his head down and worked. Even in those first few days, he could be seen going through a post-practice routine on the JUGS machine reminiscent of veteran teammates Amon-Ra St. Brown and Kalif Raymond. And Williams clung to a motto that some variation has proliferated into nearly every NFL and college locker room: Get 1% better every day.

That approach spurred a relatively quick turnaround. He started executing more of the routes and plays as Johnson desired, and subsequently began racking up some catches during OTAs.


Williams set off for the team’s summer break with his confidence restored, ready to make a push for a roster spot come training camp, only to find out the hard way that the depth chart resets once the pads come on.

As an undrafted and unproven rookie, Williams found himself firmly entrenched near the bottom of the rotations, typically running with the third-team offense. And the thing about being a third-stringer during camp is there are days when you only see a handful of reps. In fact, there were practices he got zero snaps in a team setting.


“Some of those practices where I'd come in knowing I might not get many reps, where you might have one or two team reps, it's tough when you want to make plays and show what you can do,” Williams said. “But you have to control what you can control and make the most of those limited opportunities.”

He turned his focus to the preseason games. He understood the team wasn’t going to play many of the established veterans. That opened a path to playing time in those contests, even if it wouldn’t come until the second half, against the opponent’s bottom-of-the-roster fodder. Regardless, if this was going to be his only chance to shine, he wasn’t going to let it slip through his fingers.


“When I got to the game, I felt like I had nothing to lose,” Williams said. “I'm like, 'I'm about to go out here and play free. I'm going to play with all the swagger in the world. I'm going to have fun.'

“Another part of me, when I got into the first game, I truthfully thought I never know when it might be my last,” Williams continued. “…Coming in during the second half, in my head, I'm like, 'Man, this might be it, so I'm going to go out with the a bang.' I went out there thinking, 'I'm going to have fun. I'm going to play football like I did as a kid.'“


In that exhibition opener against the Giants, Williams paced the Lions with four catches and 35 yards on a rainy night where the team’s offense struggled to do anything of consequence. It might not have seemed like much, but it caught coach Dan Campbell’s eye, earning Williams a shoutout in the postgame press conference.

It also earned Williams opportunities higher up the depth chart the following week. That included playing time in the first half of the team’s second preseason game, against the Kansas City Chiefs, a team that utilized most of its starters in the early stages of the matchup.


“I saw it as a challenge,” Williams said. “It was like, 'OK, let's see if he can do it against ones and twos.' The Chiefs played many of their starters, so they wanted to see if I could do it against them. They wanted to see if the first game was a fluke. That's how I felt.”

If it was a test, Williams passed with flying colors. He saw eight targets and caught six for 71 yards, once again leading the Lions.


He didn’t play nearly as much in the preseason finale, but still managed to haul in a slick, 17-yard crossing pattern, flashing his ability to create quick separation. By that point, it felt like he had secured a job.

Not that anyone told him. Williams had to sweat it with the rest of the roster’s bubble players. Coach Dan Campbell told the team during a weekend meeting they’d know their fate in 48 hours. But when that timeframe expired and Williams hadn’t heard anything, he couldn’t accept no news was good news.


He still didn’t believe it when he showed up for an optional weight lifting session at 7 a.m. on cut day and his locker wasn’t among the many that had already been cleaned out. It wasn’t until Campbell confirmed the roster in a meeting later that day.

Williams’ first call, predictably, was to his mother. Whether she had learned something ahead of time through social media, or was exhibiting a classic case of motherly intuition, she picked up her son’s FaceTime call without saying a word. Her smile revealed she already knew what Williams was about to share.


From initially doubting whether he belonged, to being pleased with his progress during OTAs, to training camp practices with zero reps, to leading the team in receptions during the preseason, Williams rode the ups and downs of the offseason to a spot on Detroit’s 53-man roster.

But the end of that quest is the beginning of a longer one. He now has to prove he belongs to stay. Williams is planning to take on that challenge with the same mindset that's worked for him so far — leaning into the work and striving to get a little bit better each day.


“I've got to learn the whole playbook now,” Williams said. “I'm not going to be able to play just (the slot). That's Saint's job. I've got to be able to go in if something happens to the X, play the X. If something happens to the Z — I've got to get over that curve of learning every position, learning the whole playbook and how it all fits together.

“…That's my biggest thing,” Williams said. I want to stay ready and keep getting better every day. My opportunity might come Week 1, might come at the end of the season, might come next year. You never know when it's going to come, so I have to stay ready.”


As for that hard coaching from Johnson those early days, Williams isn't sure he'd still be here without it.

"It instilled the standard," Williams said. "You understand what I'm saying? He was saying, 'This is not how we do it.' There's a certain way it's supposed to be done. They don't care how many plays you make, it's, 'No, this is how we do it.' That set the standard and it's why it's so much easier to be on top of the details, because he did snap at me like that."


Email: jrogers@detroitfootball.net

X: Justin_Rogers

[whatever_gong82]

Pride of Detroit Direct
by Jeremy Reisman


[We welcome Ty Schalter to Pride of Detroit Direct! Read Ty's debut below and expect to see him each week this season. -Jeremy]

Last year, NFL fans around the world learned half of what it means to be “cursed” when they saw viral clips of Lions fans weeping in joy and relief over a single playoff victory.


“Is it really like that?” I was asked on every podcast and radio show I went on afterwards. “Does one playoff win really mean that much to you all?”

Yes: it did, and it does. But all those shocked NFL-watchers still don’t know the other half of the curse–and it’s so painful, many Lions fans can’t bear to think about it.


Thirty-one years ago, the Lions followed up that last playoff win—which followed their last 12-win regular season, and preceded their last NFC Championship Game appearance—by going 5-11.

The roar, it turned out, had not quite been restored.


In fact, the Lions haven’t ever posted back-to-back double-digit-win seasons; a nugget that’s gained some traction recently. But it’s worse than that: Since the 1960 introduction of a standard 14-game schedule, they’ve won just seven or fewer games in every follow-up year but one.

And the more games they won in each good season, the fewer they tended to win the year after:





This is the other edge of Bobby Layne’s (apocryphal) sword: Not only have the Lions still not won a championship 16 years after the 50-year curse expired, and not only have they alternated decades of mediocrity and putridity along the way, every single time they’ve given their fans a taste of truly good football they’ve given them a swig of bad medicine. On average, the modern Lions’ win percentage has dropped by 0.287 immediately following every good season.


The final score doesn’t always tell the story of an NFL game, but Detroit’s scoring margins tell the same story. The average per-game points differential between the Lions and their opponents drops from +5.35 in 10-plus-win seasons to -0.75 in follow-up years–a touchdown per game worse.

And again, the better the Lions do in the up years, the worse they do the year after. The correlation between winning percentage in Year 1 and Year N+1 is -0.455, and for points differential it’s -0.475.


continued..

[whatever_gong82]

Now, some of this is just the way the NFL works; regression to the mean is a fact of football life. Opponents adjust to breakout players and innovative schemes, key players get old or injured, and underappreciated role players and assistant coaches move on. But it also just…happens.

The Houston Texans had just established themselves as a perennial Super Bowl contender in 2011 and 2012, before suffering a vibes-based implosion and losing 14 straight games. Doug Marrone and Blake Bortles took the Jacksonville Jaguars to within four minutes of the Super Bowl in 2017; they went 5-11 the next year. Jim Schwartz led Matthew Stafford, Calvin Johnson, and Ndamukong Suh to…oh. Wait.
Yeah.


So if we assume the Lions really are uniquely cursed, and the patterns above hold for 2023 and 2024, the Lions would go from 12-5 to 7-10, and from a +3.9 points differential to -2.2.

But points differential is actually one of several different ways NFL analysts track, model, and predict regression from season to season. The classic method, Pro-Football-Reference’s Pythagorean Wins, expected the Lions to win 10.0 games based on how they outscored their opponents. That they actually went 12-5 is a signal that they're ‘due’ to regress this season.


However, Detroit finished sixth in the NFL in relative strength, per the NFLEloApp model, and PFF’s performance-based expected-wins model actually expected the Lions to win more games (13.0) than they did. They also went 14-6 against the spread in 2023, No. 1 among all NFL teams. That suggests their performance was consistently stronger than their win-loss results, not the other way around.

continued..

[whatever_gong82]

Other classic markers for luck-based regression are in the Lions’ favor, as well. They were second-worst in the league last year in fumble-recovery rate, per TeamRankings.com. Fumble luck not only swings single-game results in a big way, but tends to swing wildly from year to year (and note which team was No. 1!).


Beyond that, the Lions’ opponents committed just 5.2 penalties per game, tied for 27th-lowest in the league–and their own worst penalty categories, per Sharp Football, were offensive false starts and defensive holding on third downs. Those are both, hopefully, fixable for 2024.

Unsustainable quarterback play is another big source of regression–but Jared Goff outperformed his Completion Percentage Over Expected, the Lions needed only three game-winning drives from him to get to 12 wins, and his PFF Turnover-Worthy Play rate (2.4 percent) was a career low. If he turns back into Bad Jared Goff, it’ll be truly out of nowhere.


These factors, along with a strong personnel cycle directly addressing team needs, are partly why even sites with their own projected-wins models for 2024 (like FTN Fantasy and their DVOA), have analysts projecting Detroit’s real-world wins to again outpace projections. The Athletic’s Colton Pouncy also says 12, despite The New York Times model projecting 10.5.

Even going by straight numbers, no projections sees a Schwartz-like implosion: DVOA forecasts 10.5 wins, and PFF’s market-based model also says 10.5. My longtime colleague at FiveThirtyEight, Neil Paine, has an Elo model that puts the Lions’ win mark at 9.5. Oh, and these numbers also come with anticipated strength-of-schedule adjustments, penalizing the Lions for playing in what will surely be a competitive NFC North.

continued..

[whatever_gong82]

Of course, we can’t talk about statistical predictions without talking about prediction markets–and Vegas is as bullish on Detroit as any analyst. They’re the consensus No. 4 favorite to win the Super Bowl, and every major sportsbook has got their Over/Under set at 10.5, as well. If the Lions are about to repeat their sad history, then everyone betting against them is about to win the shirt off their bookies’ backs.

[whatever_gong82]

But casino buildings wouldn’t be so tall if oddsmakers weren’t pretty good at this, and NFL analysts who’ve been doing this for a very long time–like me–don’t see any rational reason why Detroit won’t take a step forward, let alone two (or three, or eight) steps back.

[whatever_gong82]

Being a sports fan isn’t rational, though, especially a diehard fan of the Detroit Lions for the last two (or three, or eight) decades. No number I can cite can soothe the fear that Jared Goff will turn back into a pumpkin, and Dan Campbell will go into the Lions-fan Hall of Pain alongside Schwartz, Jim Caldwell and Wayne Fontes.

But the fact remains that nothing that happened in 1932, 1935, 1954, 1963, 1971, 1991, 1994, 1996, 2012 or 2015 has anything to do with the players wearing Honolulu Blue today. Bobby Layne can’t ruin Campbell’s soup. The Lions have turned over multiple owners, presidents, general managers and coaching staff since the last time Lions’ fans joy turned to ashes in their mouth, and hope that this year is The Year is more grounded than it’s ever been in any of our lives.


All that’s left to do is cheer for it to happen.

[whatever_gong82]

Sorry about the above posting. Some weird glitch didn't allow me to post it properly, so I pasted it like this. -- whatever_gong82

[chemiclord]

There were also some scheduling quirks that contributed to the Lions see-sawing records through the 80s and 90s. Back then, having the 5th place schedule in your division tended to be considerably easier than the division champion's. As a result, quite a few teams (including the Lions), feasted on the easy swing, and predictably faltered the following year when they found themselves with the 1st or 2nd place schedule.

[edindetroit]

Attention ya'll, if you are participating in the pickem games you need to get your picks in and tie breakers answered by game time tomorrow.

[El Axe]

There were also some scheduling quirks that contributed to the Lions see-sawing records through the 80s and 90s. Back then, having the 5th place schedule in your division tended to be considerably easier than the division champion's. As a result, quite a few teams (including the Lions), feasted on the easy swing, and predictably faltered the following year when they found themselves with the 1st or 2nd place schedule.

Exactly. It surprises me to hear analysts talk about the seesaw seasons and fail to notice the significant scheduling difference.

[El Axe]

That Franchise Guy is a Packers fan youtuber who does national NFL analysis. (not Tom Grossi, another Packers youtuber).

Last year, he was pretty negative towards the Lions and was one of many who thought the draft was a mistake. This year, he's turned around and now ranks them #2 behind the Chiefs. It's impressive how deep he goes on this analysis. It's really long, 1:40, but pretty good if you want to hear the perspective of someone who isn't a Lions homer. I had some extra time today and watched it all.

edit: Oh, and he did point out that the Lions are 12-1 to win the Super Bowl and he put money on those odds. Honestly, if I were a betting man, that would be one I would take.

[froot loops]

When the Lions went to the NFC Championship in 1991 they had a lot of breaks to finish 12-4. They had a few games where a blocked kick, kick return or some weird fumble won them games. They had that crazy comeback against the Vikings and the Bills sat all of their starters in game 16 where the Lions needed to win.