What a crappy showing. Detroit came out with swagger, the Packers responded by wasting almost every opportunity with self-inflicted, dumb mistakes. Detroit KNOWS it's the better team, GB hopes it's the better team.
My keys to the season:
Kicking game: McManus did not have a clean game but considering the conditions, he gets a half-pass from me on that one.
Run defense: Again, sort of "meh". They didn't let the Lions run wild like some other teams did, but giving up nearly 5ypc to Montgomery and Gibbs isn't great run defense.
Inexperience at QB: I'm a little hard on QBs including Love for INTs due to poor decisions and bad throws, when sometimes it's just bad luck or the other guy makes a great play, and that pick-6 yesterday had a little of all of that mixed in, but a big chunk of the blame for that one falls on Love. You aren't the league leader in INT's, despite missing over one quarter of the snaps due to injury, just because of bad luck or a defender making an outstanding play. Like someone else pointed out above, this is now part of the Jordan Love narrative nationally and he needs to find a way to kill that narrative.
Other observations:
Wicks needs to be held accountable for the coninuing drops. They claim to be deep at WR so maybe it's time for Melton and Heath to get a few of those snaps until Wicks can show that he can be more reliable. I don't know who to blame for the litany of stupid mistakes. It seemed better for a few games, but came back with a veangence yesterday. It's not just young guys making them. Double digit penalties again. Drops from everyone not wearing a Lions jersey. Bad snaps. Missed kicks. They pretty much found every way they could to make mistakes. The Lions didn't. Is it coaching, talent, locker room culture, youth, ??? Maybe it's all of that along with a team where too many guys were already making vacation plans for the bye week.
My keys to the season:
Kicking game: McManus did not have a clean game but considering the conditions, he gets a half-pass from me on that one.
Run defense: Again, sort of "meh". They didn't let the Lions run wild like some other teams did, but giving up nearly 5ypc to Montgomery and Gibbs isn't great run defense.
Inexperience at QB: I'm a little hard on QBs including Love for INTs due to poor decisions and bad throws, when sometimes it's just bad luck or the other guy makes a great play, and that pick-6 yesterday had a little of all of that mixed in, but a big chunk of the blame for that one falls on Love. You aren't the league leader in INT's, despite missing over one quarter of the snaps due to injury, just because of bad luck or a defender making an outstanding play. Like someone else pointed out above, this is now part of the Jordan Love narrative nationally and he needs to find a way to kill that narrative.
Other observations:
Wicks needs to be held accountable for the coninuing drops. They claim to be deep at WR so maybe it's time for Melton and Heath to get a few of those snaps until Wicks can show that he can be more reliable. I don't know who to blame for the litany of stupid mistakes. It seemed better for a few games, but came back with a veangence yesterday. It's not just young guys making them. Double digit penalties again. Drops from everyone not wearing a Lions jersey. Bad snaps. Missed kicks. They pretty much found every way they could to make mistakes. The Lions didn't. Is it coaching, talent, locker room culture, youth, ??? Maybe it's all of that along with a team where too many guys were already making vacation plans for the bye week.