By: Jeremy T. Ballreich
This game after coming off an embarrassing loss to the Baltimore Ravens almost feels more of a trap game to me. The Raiders are currently 2nd in the AFC West. And they are not close to 1st place at all. Held by the Kansas City Chiefs (6-1).
That being said, statistically this should be a get right game on both sides of the ball. The Lions are 7th in scoring offense, 5th in passing offense and 10th in rushing offense.
The Raiders are 23rd in scoring, 32nd in Rushing, and 18th in passing. Considering they have the rushing leader Josh Jacobs at RB. That is an abysmal 68.4 yards on the ground per game.
Defensively, Raiders have a losing record due to their -28 scoring differential. They are just not looking good on offense. Which allows teams to hang in and then pull away in the later parts of games.
The Lions on the other hand are still a top 10 defense in scoring and rushing against. Still mediocre at defending the pass.
Injury Front:
Josh Paschal, Jerry Jacobs, and Brian Branch are completely removed from the Injury report. Jonah Jackson, Frank Ragnow, and David Montgomery, while not practicing was still at the facility with training staff. Good signs if you ask me!
Still more than I like on the limited practice. But this team has performed well overall knicked up all season.
Keys To The Game:
Ben Johnson cannot have another vanilla run run pass performance! It looked like the called the exact sequence of plays at the exact moments versus Baltimore that they ran vs. Tampa Bay the week before. Which might be why it looked like the Ravens knew what was coming. The completely shit the Lions down offensively that game. So I would like to see that gameplan scratched, and let the most brilliant offensive playcalling mind get to work.
Lions need to run the ball more to set up the pass. Not the other way around. Don’t get it twisted. The Lions play way better if Goff doesn’t have to throw the ball more than 40 times. There are plenty of stats to back that up!
Defensively:
If the offense does their job, the Defenses job gets way easier. Because they’ll actually rest between drives they take the field.
AG needs to scrap that 99% base defense scheme right out the window. The bend don’t break soft zone coverage isn’t working. Lamar Jackson looked like he had 4 Randy Moss type WRs and he was Joe Montana throwing it to them. 21/27 passing for 356 yards. Over 200 in the first half alone!
We need to see the team that was leading the league in pressures to not just get hurries. We need to get QB hits and sacks. Jerry Jacobs returning to play CB2, and Brian Branch at the nickel should make the passing defense significantly better. Because I still don’t understand why Will Harris has a job on this team! He gets burnt so bad he makes burnt toast look like Wonder Bread!
If everything goes right:
OAK 10
DET 31
If it falls apart:
OAK 17
DET 13
Thanks for Reading!!!!!
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