Lions vs. Bears Week 16 preview, score prediction: On Paper

The Detroit Lions look to get back on track after dropping just their second game of the season last week against the Buffalo Bills. The Lions have not lost two games in a row since their 1-6 start to the 2022 season, and this week they face off against the Chicago Bears team that is on an eight-game losing streak. Should be easy, right?

Not so fast, my friend. Divisional road games are always tough, and there are some statistics that suggest this could be closer than expected.

Let’s get into it in our Week 16 On Paper preview and prediction: Lions vs. Bears.

Lions pass offense (8th in DVOA) vs. Bears pass defense (14th)

The Lions’ passing attack has been their most consistent unit all season. Jared Goff is in the middle of his best career season—yes, even better than his Super Bowl run with the Rams. The following statistics are career highs for Goff right now:

• Completion percentage: 71.4% (prev. high: 67.3)
• Yards per attempt: 8.5 (8.4)
• Success rate: 53.6 (50.9)
• Passer rating: 110.4 (101.1)
• QBR: 65.6 (63.6)
• TD percentage: 6.8 (5.7)

As an entire unit, the Lions look better than their DVOA ranking may suggest. They’re top-three in yards per attempt, passer rating, dropback EPA, and success rate.

The only thing that is slightly trailing behind is pass protection. Despite a highly-praised unit, the team ranks just 12th in pass block win rate, 17th in PFF pass blocking grade, and 17th in pressure rate. Goff gets the ball out relatively quickly (15th in time to throw), so the sack rate is still 10th best in the NFL.

That said, we’ll see how healthy the Lions offensive line is this week. Frank Ragnow (back) and Graham Glasgow (knee) have missed the first two practices this week, and while Glasgow has struggled anyways (33 pressures allowed is fourth among all guards), missing Ragnow would be critically bad.

[Editor’s note: Prior to the game against the Seattle Seahawks in Week 4, the last game Frank Ragnow missed was that Week 14 game against the Bears in Chicago. You’ve blocked it out of your brain for a reason.]

The Bears pass defense is typically the strength of this team, but you can see they haven’t quite been themselves over the past month or two. Just three weeks ago, this unit was ranked 10th in DVOA, and they’ve already dropped to 14th just based on the Lions, 49ers, and Vikings games.

This has all been a larger trend of the Bears defense falling off a cliff since firing defensive-minded head coach Matt Eberflus. Check out these stats, via Courtney Cronin of ESPN:

Since Week 7:

• 32nd in total QBR allowed (68)
• 32nd in yards after the catch allowed per reception (6.5)
• 32nd in yards per completion allowed (13.6)
• 31st in QB’s time to throw from the pocket per pass (2.71 seconds)
• 31st in first downs allowed per pass attempt (39.6%)
• 31st in yards per drive (37.9)
• 31st in drives that result in points (49%)
• 30th in pass rush win rate (27%)

To be fair, that includes some games against strong passing offense (Vikings x2, Packers, 49ers), but it also includes the Cardinals and Patriots.

They have some talent in the secondary, including Jaylon Johnson and nickel corner Kyler Gordon, but the front seven has been a problem—particularly their pass rush, as you can see from the stats above.

Player to watch: Kyler Gordon vs. Amon-Ra St. Brown. Love these kind of strength-on-strength matchups. On Thanksgiving, Gordon got a pass breakup on the only time St. Brown was targeted against him. That didn’t stop the Lions WR from eating, though, as he finished with five catches for 73 yards on the day.

Advantage: Lions +3. The only thing that gives me pause is that the Bears have notoriously been strong defensively against the Lions, and the offensive line injuries. Still, I don’t think the Bears have the talent nor the will to stop the Lions’ top-five passing attack. This is where the game should be won.

Lions run offense (2nd) vs. Bears run defense (31st)

It’s time to have a hard conversation about the Lions’ rushing attack. Coaches have identified it as a problem the last two weeks, but the issues really push a little farther back. In the first seven games, the Lions rushed for over 5.0 yards per carry five times. They’ve only done it once since—and they’ve been held under 4.0 yards per carry four times in the last seven.

If advanced metrics are more your style, here’s the midseason split:

Weeks 1-7:

• 3rd in rush EPA (0.050)
• 4th in success rate (46.4%)

Week 8-15

• 6th in rush EPA (-0.021)
• 9th in success rate (43.0%)

Obviously, they’re still ranked in the top-10 down the stretch here, but it’s also trending even worse than that. In the last three weeks, Detroit ranks 21st in rush EPA (-0.136) and 23rd in success rate (39.0%).

Again, the offensive line seems to be the biggest culprit here. Graham Glasgow’s best PFF run blocking grade since the bye week is 64.1. Ragnow has posted a run blocking grade below 64 in three of the team’s last four games.

It’s strange, it’s uncharacteristic, and it’s potentially why the Lions have given that pair of players the first two days off of practice—although the injury report suggests they’re dealing with something now, too. Hopefully, the rest gets both of them back on track.

Oh, right, and David Montgomery is out. Montgomery hasn’t been very effective as of late, but his short-yardage usage will be missed. Montgomery has the highest success rate (49.2%) of any running back this year.

Well, here’s the good news. The Bears are absolutely atrocious at stopping the run. They’ve been mildly better as of late, but for the season, they’ve allowed at least 100 rushing yards in every game but two, and they’re allowing 4.7 yards per carry on the season (24th).

Chicago also ranks 27th in rush EPA, 19th in success rate, 30th in adjusted line yards, 31st in power success rate, and 27th in stuffed rate.

They don’t do anything particularly well, and they got absolutely torched by the Lions run game last time around—allowing their second highest rushing total of the season (194) and third highest yards per carry (5.9).

Player to watch: Jahmyr Gibbs. A layup of a pick, but the Lions are going to certainly rely on him more moving forward. He won’t be a complete workhorse back, but don’t be surprised if the offense revolves around him. Against the Bears last time, Gibbs only had nine carries, but he turned them into 87 rushing yards, while adding 17 through the air.

Advantage: Lions +2. Despite the Lions’ downward trend and offensive line injuries, this is still a pretty big mismatch. It would’ve been the biggest one of the game, but Detroit’s current trajectory is certainly concerning, and the alarms will certainly sound if they can’t succeed this week.

Bears pass offense (24th) vs. Lions pass defense (3rd)

On the surface, this looks like a very promising chart for Caleb Williams. The team has posted passer ratings above 90 in eight of 14 contest, including four of their last five. Much of that, though, is due to one statistic alone: interceptions. Williams hasn’t thrown one in eight games, which is impressive, but it really masks how bad the passing offense has been over that exact same time period.

Over that eight game span, Williams ranks (out of 32):

• 30th in yards per attempt (6.2)
• 30th in success rate (38.2)
• 30th in completion percentage (59.4)
• 32nd in sacks (38 — next closest is 28)
• 31st in dropback EPA (-0.107)

In other words, passer rating isn’t everything. And in this particular case, it means next to nothing—other than Williams has done a good job avoiding interceptions.

When fans are saying they’re worried the injury situation has hit critical mass, this is what they’re talking about. The pass defense has taken a pretty big hit recently, and it’s hard to ignore. In fact, the problem isn’t just localized to the pass defense either (we’ll get to that more later), but just look at this chart from the past three weeks:

That is the 30th ranked pass defense by EPA/play and 32nd ranked run defense. Yeeeeeeesh.

Now, they’ve played some seriously strong offenses in the Packers and Bills over that time, but the issues started in the second half against the Bears and they haven’t stopped yet.

This week, they could see some reinforcements to help. Trevor Nowaske is back to help a decimated linebacking corps, while it’s possible Jalen Reeves-Maybin and/or safety Ifeatu Melifonwu returns to give Detroit more versatility in what they want to do.

However, they’re now without No. 1 cornerback Carlton Davis and top interior defender Alim McNeill. That ain’t great.

Player to watch: Keenan Allen. Allen is a Lion killer, and he almost single-handed got the Bears back in the game last time. In the second half alone, he produced five catches, 73 yards and two touchdowns.

Advantage: Draw. I know the DVOA rankings suggest this is heavily in the Lions’ favor, but when you consider how both of these teams are playing right now, this is a weakness vs. weakness matchup, and Detroit’s injury situation is very concerning. That said, we’re dealing with small sample sizes of Detroit’s decline, so a bounce back this week could reset expectations—with the caveat that it’s the Bears terrible offense.

Bears run offense (24th) vs. Lions run defense (11th)

D’Andre Swift has had a very up-and-down season in Chicago. After a terrible start, he rebounded in a big way in the middle of the season, but it’s been a precipitous fall over the past two months. In the last seven games, he has just 103 carries for 367 yards (3.56 YPC) and a single rushing touchdown.

For the season, the Bears rank 22nd in yards per carry (4.1), 21st in EPA, and 22nd in success rate.

It appears they’ll get Roschon Johnson back this week, which should help Chicago’s short-yardage rushing. His 47.9% success rate is much higher than that of Swift (33.0%), so don’t be surprised if he gets a significant workload this week—even though he doesn’t have more than 10 carries in a game this season.

Just as it seemed like the Lions were turning things around with their run defense, the injury bug hit. Now, last week against the Bills should still be considered a relative outlier. In the previous five games, the Lions ranked sixth in rush EPA and second in success rate. Just throwing in the Bills game into those five games drops Detroit to 18th in EPA and fifth in success rate. That’s how big of an impact that game has.

So before we go throwing in the towel here, let’s see how the rest of the season plays out. Josh Allen’s usage certainly had a big impact on Detroit’s struggles, but it would be foolish to say the injuries didn’t play a factor. Detroit’s reserve edge defenders failed to hold the edge, and the Lions’ linebacking crew struggled to stay disciplined to their lanes.

Williams doesn’t rush nearly as much (only two games over 50 yards), so that may not be an issues this week.

Player to watch: All the Lions linebackers. Here were the linebackers’ PFF grades last week:

• Kwon Alexander: 27.1
• Jack Campbell: 30.5
• Ezekiel Turner: 46.1
• Jamal Adams (LB/DB): 48.4
• Ben Niemann: 56.5
• David Long: 70.4

Please be better.

Advantage: Lions +1. I’m not willing to overreact to one game. I’m not overly confident in Detroit’s run defense right now, but I know for certain that has been a point of emphasis this week in practice. If there’s someone who can put that performance behind them, it’s the Lions.

Last week’s prediction:

I obviously got a lot of things wrong last week. The biggest mistake was surrounding the Lions running game, which got completely shut down. As I mentioned earlier, this has quietly been a trend for a month now, and adjustments have been made accordingly. And even though I gave the Bills the edge in both offensive matchups, I certainly underestimated Josh Allen and company. I’m not going to overcorrect when it comes to the Lions defense, but this week is certainly a huge datapoint to find out where the status of Detroit’s beat-up defense truly stands.

For the season, On Paper is 12-2 overall and 9-5 against the spread.

In the comment section, MI Brew came the closest with their 38-31 prediction. Here’s your prize.

Enjoy the riches of the present while also remembering where you came from with his filet sandwich on molded bread!

This week’s prediction:

Okay, maybe it’s not as close as I teased. The Lions, despite their current struggles, still come out with a +6 advantage. That said, there’s so much uncertainty with the Lions defense right now that I just don’t feel overly confident this week—and it starts with that second half against the Bears on Thanksgiving. As a reminder, the Bears offensive drives went like this in the final two quarters:

• 9 plays, 74 yards, TD
• 8 plays, 65 yards, TD
• 3 plays, -8 yards, punt
• 8 plays, 65 yards, TD
• 12 plays, 52 yards, Matt Eberflus brain aneurysm

The Lions offense should move the ball with relative ease, assuming the weather and elements aren’t an issue. But I do think the Bears can—and will—keep this uncomfortably close for too long. Lions 34, Bears 27.

Note: For bookkeeping purposes, the line of this game is currently Lions -6.5, so I’m Detroit against the spread, technically.