Breaking Down Jahvid Best's 88-Yard Touchdown Run Against Bears

It was a badass sight to behold, especally in person. I was expecting Grew, Burleson, Megatron, Scheff (before he unfortunately got concussed.) etc to do serious damage to the Bears, but it was Best’s night. Made me smile too. And yell.

not only did we get the convincing win, , we kept 9 clean and Peppers to no impact, we got their RT benched in game and now both of their Ss. Awesomeness to the nth degree!

Great breakdown. There were a few comments that were discussing whether this run was on the right side or left side, but after seeing this series of pictures, this run was due to great blocking by both sides and an effective fake by Stafford.

I’ll also give credit to Best for choosing the right hole. When you look at the video I could understand that many RBs might head for that large lane leading to the sidelines first.

Great play design here. Maybe we will see it again, with hopefully the same results.

So know were making short jokes? lol

Seriously good stuff though

I watched it 4 times just to hear the crowd roar when he breaks it through the second level

Here’s the burning question, If a team needs the “threat” of a running game to succeed and that has been the subject of many a discussion on pod, do we now have a legitamate “run game”?

Before the play I was like “Touchdown right here! 88 yards to CJ in the endzone!”
I was joking of course, but wow, was I surprised.

When Jahvid hit that hole and made it to the second level, I was jumping up and down screaming “He’s faster than everybody! He’s faster than everybody!” over and over. I love it when the Lions make me act like an 6 year old girl.

Man! I love this team! Go Lions!

That’s what we need Best for, if he sees some decent daylight, he’s going a long way.

look at the 3rd and 4th frames above, you’ll notice that Best is looking his way. Also, I think Best was patient. You’ll see that Harris has run 5 yds., while Best has only gone 3. He is a better rb than most avg. NFL fans will give him credit for, imo.

Love the breakdown from a defensive analysis but I think it’s also important to note what the Lions were doing on this play.

This is a great example of how they should be using Best, who might be the most spread-perfect RB in the NFL right now. It is perfect Rich Rodriguez-style running from the shotgun, where good execution gets your running back one on one with a safety in space. Wolverines fans will instantly recognize this as part of the zone read game. The question is, did Stafford read the unblocked DE, or was this play designed to take advantage of Lovie Smith aggression?

The zone read looks exactly like this in terms of blocking and alignment. Note how the backside DE wasn’t blocked. He is erased from the play because he hightails after the QB and puts himself out of position. The moment he saw he wasn’t being blocked, he needed to turn for the RB.

This is where I’m trying to see if there was a read on. Had the DE gone after Best instead of Stafford, it’s possible Stafford would pulled the ball out of Best’s hands. At this point Stafford would probably have to throw the TE out into the flat for about 3-4 yards. I don’t know if Stafford had this read. He was watching the backside end when he made the handoff though.

With 92 accounted for by Stafford, this means the offensive line is now hat for hat with the rest of the attackers in the box = big win for the offense.

It is possible there was no read and that this was playing a Lovie Smith tendency all day to shoot ends toward Stafford and let the linebackers clean up runs. It’s possible the Lions saw that tendency and guessed the Bears would do it again. But I’d like to think there is a read here and that the Lions will show this again in the future as Detroit tries different things to get a running game out of lightning while thunder’s out for the season.