The Honolulu Blueprint: 4 keys to a Lions victory over the Rams

The 2024 NFL regular season is upon us and that means it’s time to bring back our weekly look at the Detroit Lions keys to victory in their upcoming game. In Week 1, the Lions are hosting the Los Angeles Rams on “Sunday Night Football” in a rematch from last year’s Wild Card playoff matchup.

“I would say for them, this to me is a better team than what we faced last year,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said earlier this week. “Just looking at their personnel coming in. I feel like this is a better offensive line, I feel like this is a better D-line. I understand they lost [Aaron] Donald, but what I think they gain is youth and collectively, that front is—I’ve said it before, they’re young, they’re hungry, they’re high motor. They’re going to push us.”

If the Lions want to start the season off on the right foot, they’ll need to follow the keys to victory laid out in this week’s Honolulu Blueprint.

Rams base schemes

With this being the first game of the season, teams have to look back at what their opponent has had success with in their recent past, as well as make assumptions based on changes.

“As far as the schematics of it, you’re not really going to get anything (from the preseason), so all you have is what you had in the past,” Campbell noted. “And then you piecemeal some things together by, ‘Alright, I think projection-wise this guy’s playing here or I think this’ — so that’s what you really have to go back to.”

The Rams have kept their offensive coaching staff in place, and with Sean McVay running the offensive system, we have a pretty good idea what they will do. But on defense, the Rams have had a full makeover—following Donald’s retirement—and things are a bit harder to project.

Offense

Sean McVay’s modified West Coast offense:

The Rams have held over offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur (brother of Packers coach Matt) but make no mistake, this is McVay’s offense. McVay ideology stems from the Mike Shanahan coaching tree and is rooted in a West Coast scheme, leaning on 11 personnel upwards of 90% of the time.

The Rams heavily lean on multiple receiver sets, pre-snap motion, play-action, end-arounds, screens, outside-zone runs, and a lot of condensed formations.

Defense

New coordinator, new look scheme

Rams’ 2023 defensive coordinator Raheem Morris took the head coaching job with the Atlanta Falcons this season and LA replaced him with Chris Shula, the grandson of Hall-of-Fame coach Don Shula.

Shula has been with the Rams since 2019, working with the linebackers from 2019-21, then shifting to defensive backs in 2022-23, and was promoted to defensive coordinator this offseason. While he learned under Morris the past three seasons, he has converted the defense from a 4-3, Cover-2 scheme to a 3-3-5 base with varying zone coverage concepts mixed in. The shift in scheme was necessary following Donald’s retirement and as a way of adapting to the Rams’ new personnel.

The Rams added veteran corners in the offseason and lean on three-safety sets the majority of the time, hoping to create strong coverage units that can buy time for a young pass rush that is still finding its legs.

On paper, the Rams defensive weaknesses appear to be over the middle of the field, where the Rams traded away their captain and starting MIKE linebacker Ernest Jones, as well as along the defensive line where they have opted for athleticism over size.

And that leads us to our first key to victory.

Key 1: Test the Rams undersized defensive front with the run

The Rams are replacing Donald with a volume of players and the primary traits most of these players possess are pass rushing skills that are still being developed. A side effect of the athleticism is that they lack bulk upfront.

For instance, when the Rams deploy a seven-man front, nose tackle Bobby Brown checks in at 328 pounds. But when he’s not on the field, their top four defenders on the line of scrimmage, all check in under 300 pounds. Lining up opposite them is the Lions starting offensive lineman whom the team website lists: Frank Ragnow at 310 pounds, followed by Grahams Glasgow (315), Taylor Decker (318), Kevin Zeitler (332), and Penei Sewell (335).

Look for the Lions to try and bully the Rams defensive line early and wear them down. If the offensive line can get the upper hand early, it’ll slow down the pass rush and force the Rams to drop defenders into the box, which will leave them vulnerable over the middle.

Key 2: Attack the middle of the defense, then adapt and counter

Last season Ernest Jones was a team captain and led the Rams in tackles, while also offering them pass rushing productivity from the MIKE linebacker position. The Rams made it clear he probably wasn’t in their plans beyond 2024—as they were shifting to younger options—but trading him away seemed premature.

“Honestly, I have zero clue how the Rams weather that storm as the depth at linebacker leaves plenty to be desired with Jones out of the picture,” Evan Craig from TurfShowTimes.com told our Ryan Mathews in this week’s 5 questions. “Christian Rozeboom and Troy Reeder were named the starting linebackers after Jones was traded. They at least have starting experience, but just weren’t super successful outside of their stints in LA. Linebacker has been severely undervalued under McVay so the whole Ernest Jones situation shouldn’t have come as a surprise.”

Look for offensive coordinator Ben Johnson to run a load of play-action, motion, and crossing routes, while also getting his running backs involved in the passing game.

The Rams will likely use a ton of three safety looks—with Quentin Lake in the 2023 Brian Branch role—because of the flexibility it gives them. But it can also be a pick-your-poison situation. With Amon-Ra St. Brown and Sam LaPorta operating in the seams and across the middle, and backs leaking out into passing route, the Rams will likely counter with a lot of zone looks.

To counter-balance those defensive zone looks, the Lions should lean on Jameson Williams to run off the deep zone coverage—especially with starting corner Darious Williams now on IR—which will further stress the middle of the Rams defense by forcing the linebackers to cover more ground.

While there is a lot that is still unknown, the Rams’ defensive weaknesses seem to align with the Lions’ offensive strengths. And with a full healthy group of offensive players, the Lions won’t have to veer too far away from their bread-and-butter plays to win a shoot-out.

Key 3: Pressure the Rams offensive tackles

The Rams invested heavily in their interior offensive line over the past two seasons. They added guard Kevin Dotson in 2023, drafted guard Steve Avila in the second round of the 2023 NFL draft, and signed Jonah Jackson away from the Lions and appear set to play him at center. Jackson missed a month of training camp with a shoulder injury, but he’s been back practicing and should help solidify the Rams’ interior—even if he is rusty.

At tackle, it’s about investments paying off, as Alaric Jackson (left) and Rob Havenstein (right) were both Rams second-round picks, in 2021 and 2015 respectively. Unfortunately for the Rams, Jackson has been suspended for this week’s game, and Havenstein is slowly returning back to practice after missing a month of training camp. Havenstein has a chance to play but there is no guarantee he will be available, and if he is, how game-ready will he be? Joe Noteboom is expected to replace Jackson at left tackle, while Warren McClendon could be called upon if Havenstein isn’t available, and both are significant downgrades from the starters.

The Lions’ defensive line as a whole could arguably be Detroit’s most improved unit this offseason. They remain a top-notch run-defending team—and stopping the run is still their priority—but their improvements on the interior should open up more opportunities for their pass rushers on the edge.

Aidan Hutchinson is coming off a terrific season that saw him firmly cement himself as one of the most complete edge rushers in the NFL, but defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn believes this season will provide him an even bigger platform to raise his game to.

“Hutch has had a tremendous offseason,” Glenn told the media on Thursday. “He had a tremendous training camp, and now he’s at that point that he needs to set his sights at being […] the best player, defensively, in this league.”

The Lions won’t try too hard to get Hutchinson head-to-head with a specific offensive tackle for two reasons. First, they believe he can be impactful no matter who is across from him. And second, they believe they have finally found a complementary piece to pass rush opposite him in Marcus Davenport.

“Listen, this man fits exactly who we want to be on defense, especially playing outside of Hutch,” Glenn said of Davenport. “He’s a violent, he’s a physical, he’s an athletic big man that play the game the right way. So you’re absolutely right – if you’ve got a guy like that that can bull rush and that can condense the pocket, that allows Hutch and other guys to go to work, and we expect that.”

With the Rams leaning on 11 personnel so frequently, the Lions will likely counter with a lot of subpackage defensive looks—last playoffs, they were in subpackages 100% of defensive snaps. When the Lions shift into those subpackage looks, expect to see a lot of Hutchinson and Davenport pinning their ears back and attacking the Rams’ offensive tackles.

Key 4: Lions’ revamped secondary needs to be ready from the jump

Why do the Rams use so much 11 personnel? Because they have the talent to create mismatches and target multiple reliable pass catchers, none better than Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for both of those guys first of all,” Campbell said earlier in the week. “They’re both tough players. They really do everything. There’s things about them that remind me of our guys. They do the dirty work, they’re very much a part of the run game with the way that they block and insert and take on backers and safeties and everything, but then they play tough. They play tough in the pass game. They play fast. I think they’re physical, I think they attack the football, I think they’re hard to get down, run after catch, so the element of their game, it translates to this league. Competitive, strong, so to have two guys that are pretty smart, pretty versatile.”

In last year’s matchup, the Lions struggled to defend Nacua, but after spending a ton of resources overhauling the secondary—adding corners Carlton Davis, Terrion Arnold, Amik Robertson, and Ennis Rakestraw—Detroit feels they are in a much better spot.

With all four of their new additions missing portions of training camp, the Lions will need them to rapidly mesh their ability to communicate in the secondary. Fortunately, the Lions return two veteran safeties, Kerby Joseph and Brian Branch, which should help facilitate communication on the back end.

“The communication part is the part they’ve got to get down,” Glenn said of the Lions’ secondary. “Listen, we have great vets as far as—when I say vets you’re talking about Kerby and Branch, he’s a vet now, so he has to understand that he has to be a leader in that backend also. And then with [Carlton Davis] CD coming from a Super Bowl team in Tampa, I expect these guys to communicate at a high level. Listen, are there going to be some ups and downs? Absolutely, but that’s the NFL. But the thing is, those guys have been working their ass off to be the best communicators they can be.”

If the Lions can show an ability to communicate at a high level, they should show better against the Rams receivers than they did in their last meeting.