Five Good Questions with Pride of Detroit

After a couple weeks on hiatus, our Five Good Questions series is back for what, to this point, is the biggest game of the 2024 season for our Minnesota Vikings.

Yes, this Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium the purple will play host to the Detroit Lions in a battle for first place in the NFL’s best division. This week, I got a chance to exchange some questions with Ryan Mathews from Pride of Detroit, SB Nation’s home for everything relating to Lions football.

You can see the questions that I had to the questions that Ryan asked me at this link here. . .and I can see some of you have already found it. Here are the questions that I sent to him along with his responses.

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1) The big story for the Lions this week has been the loss of superstar defensive end Aidan Hutchinson to a pretty nasty leg injury. While you obviously don’t replace a player of Hutchinson’s caliber, what do you think the Lions will do in an effort to at least mitigate the loss a little bit?

Losing Hutchinson to that injury is devastating to this defense and this football team. His relentless playstyle is something this coaching staff champions when it comes to effort, and when you pair that with Hutchinson’s skill, you get a pretty special football player. He was leading the league in both sacks and pressures this year after showing great signs of growth and development over his first two seasons, but the tear he was on before his injury, at least some of that bump had something to do with how the rest of Detroit’s defense has improved, too.

The backend of the Lions defense has looked much improved after general manager Brad Holmes devoted a ton of resources toward revamping the unit. Moving up to draft Terrion Arnold, trading for Carlton Davis (who is finally practicing this week after missing the first two of the week with a quad injury), and signing Amik Robertson have helped the Lions turn into a group that disrupts at the catch point. Last year, Detroit finished with 79 passes defended (t-11th), a 2.7% interception rate (t-12th), but t-25th in adjusted yards gained per pass attempt (7.5). So far through five games, the Lions are outperforming those numbers from a year ago: 34 passes defended (t-3rd), 3.5% interception rate (6th), and just 5.4 AY/A (4th).

That was a bit of a long-winded way to come around to the point that the secondary has looked much improved, but there’s always the “chicken and the egg” conundrum with secondary play and pass rush. Will Hutchinson’s absence create less push up front and thus, less pressure and situations where quarterbacks are rushing progressions and decisions? There is no one-to-one replacement for what Hutchinson brought to the table, so the Lions will use a variety of players in his absence–Levi Onwuzurike, Josh Paschal, maybe even the newly acquired Isaiah Thomas at some point, but not this week–but it’s really going to be up defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn to manufacture pressure through creative blitzes as he’s had to rely on in the past when the secondary wasn’t as impressive as it’s been this season.

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2) Dan Campbell is frequently mentioned among the best head coaches in the league, but he does have a bit of a reputation for making questionable decisions on fourth downs. Have there been any examples of those sorts of decisions this season and do you think this is an accurate criticism of Campbell’s coaching abilities?

Campbell’s decision-making on fourth down is part of what makes him one of the best head coaches in the league, and sometimes when you live by the sword, you die by it too. It’s the price of admission, but I don’t think it’s something to overtly criticize Campbell for having hard-wired into his coaching DNA. Early on in his tenure as head coach, Campbell didn’t have the kind of offense that himself, Holmes, and offensive coordinator Ben Johnson have built over time. He earned a bit of that “reckless” reputation in 2021 and 2022 because even though the offense didn’t quite have the horses they have today, the defense was even more of a liability. His decision-making was informed by throwing his best punch to keep his team standing, and that was almost always done with trying to keep the offense on the field.

Right now, the Lions are going for it on fourth down 1.8 times per game (9th in the NFL), and last year it was 2.35 times per game (2nd). The year before that, Detroit was averaging 2.18 fourth-down attempts per game (3rd). It’s too early to tell if this is just a limited sample size or a result of the Lions being a better football team and not needing to be so reliant on their offense to save the day. But to answer another part of your question, don’t think for a second that Campbell isn’t willing to catch a coach with their pants around their ankles–against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 2, Campbell and special teams coach Dave Fipp dialed up a fake punt on fourth-and-12 from their own 20-yard line in the first half, down 13-6.

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3) The Lions are the best rushing team in the league thanks to Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery, but the Vikings have been stellar against the run this season. If the Vikings can slow down the Detroit running game, do you think Jared Goff has the ability to put the team on his shoulders and win this one through the air?

Speaking of that Buccaneers game, there’s been one game this year where the Lions asked Goff to put the game squarely on his shoulders, even though it didn’t seem necessary to do so. That game was never more than a one-score contest for the entirety of the game, but Detroit’s offensive gameplan centered on Goff throwing the ball. He threw the ball 55 times, the second-most pass attempts in his Lions career–he had 57 pass attempts in his first game in Detroit back in 2021. Dan Campbell said the Lions were trying to establish the pass to get to the run, but they’ve ditched that approach since, but it’s very Bill Parcells of him to try and find a mismatch and spam it like a 12-year-old playing Madden.

Goff is a really good quarterback, one who is more than capable of getting the job done, but he’s going to go as far as his weapons take him. The run game is incredibly important to Goff and this offense’s ability to establish tempo, rhythm, and tone–and the Lions utilize play-action passes more than any other team in the NFL. Goff is really successful when operating under those conditions, but if it’s all on him to get it done, that’s a tough ask, and I think that’s a tough ask for most quarterbacks in the NFL.

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4) Give us one player on each side of the ball for the Lions that might be a bit “under the radar” but you feel will play a significant role in Detroit’s success on Sunday.

On defense, the previously mentioned Levi Onwuzurike is a name that’s certainly flown under the radar. Onwuzurike’s football career was seemingly on track to come to an unfortunate end due to back injuries and surgeries that really limited his ability to stay on the field his first few seasons, but he’s put together quite the productive season to start his fourth year.

During training camp, he emerged as the breakout player of the summer. Absolutely no one saw it coming. And in his fourth year, Onwuzurike is second in pressures (17) and quarterback hits (5), all of which are either season-highs or tied with his output in 2021 or 2023. He’s a very versatile player for Detroit’s defensive line, lining up anywhere from the 2i to a 5-technique. Onwuzurike has pushed the pocket and made life uncomfortable for quarterbacks now that he’s healthy.

On offense, the Lions were in desperate need of a wide receiver to fill the role left vacant by Josh Reynolds. Reynolds was often lined up as the team’s X-receiver, and the chemistry he had with Goff was critical. Outside of Amon-Ra St. Brown, there wasn’t anything more reliable than Reynolds running a dig route for a first down. Detroit had no one show out during training camp or the preseason, but when Tim Patrick was cut by the Denver Broncos, the Lions were quick to add him to the team. After a quick ramp-up period, Patrick was active for Week 2 and has played in four games this season, and with each game, you can see him getting more and more comfortable in the offense, and you see the trust developing between him and Goff. Much like Reynolds, a high percentage of his catches have been for first downs: of his eight catches this season, five of them have been for first downs, and he’s got the second-highest average depth of target (12.7) of anyone with at least ten targets.

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5) The Vikings and the Lions come into this one with a combined mark of 9-1 and the winner of this one will not only be the top team in the division but will have the inside track to the #1 seed in the NFC playoffs. When was the last matchup between these two teams that you can remember with this much on the line? Is this the biggest Vikings/Lions matchup of either of our lifetimes?

It certainly feels that way! We could come back to this game in Week 18 when the teams wrap up their respective seasons against one another and think back to this one being the most pivotal game in either team’s season. The only other game I can think back to that had this much hype and stuff on the line is the 2016 Thanksgiving Day matchup between these two teams. Both teams were 6-4 headed into that game and playing for the top spot in the NFC North, but much like most other seasons, neither of them won the division and it was the Green Bay Packers who won it in the final week of the season.

The good news is that this won’t be happening this year: either the Lions or Vikings are going to win this division.

Thanks again to Ryan for taking the time to answer our questions for this week!