Lions notes: Matthew Stafford ranked as the No. 2 QB by Sports Illustrated

• Matthew Stafford has not played his best football this year. Not by a long shot. But Andy Benoit over at Sports Illustrated still believes in the guy. Benoit ranked all NFL quarterbacks for the rest of the 2017 season. As he puts it, this is a list based on the question: “If you had to choose a QB to play with for the rest of the 2017 season-only, who would you want?” That means, for example, Aaron Rodgers is ineligible.

Benoit put Stafford at No. 2 on his list, only behind Tom Brady.

• This week in NFC North Football Outsiders DVOA rankings. Things don’t look all that bad for the Detroit Lions:

• Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press watched the game film from Lions-Saints and looked at why Matthew Stafford had so many passes batted at the line.

• This t-shirt of Golden Tate and his heart stoppin’, elbow droppin’, People’s Tate is everything:

• Chris Spielman used the all-22 film to break down three of the biggest plays from the Lions’ game against the Saints.

• A’Shawn Robinson is slowly coming along nicely. He had one of the best games of all defensive tackles in Week 6:

• The NFL is holding the 2018 draft in Dallas because they’re boring:

• This isn’t Lions related, but Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Chris Long is an amazing guy. He is donating every single game check from his 2017 season to charity.