PFF Week 9 recap: Golden Tate, Marvin Jones were the NFL’s top 2 WRs of the week

Here’s a recap of what Pro Football Focus thought about performances of some Detroit Lions players against the Green Bay Packers. Be sure to check out PFF for some advanced statistics. Even their free “Refocused” articles are quite insightful.

Dueling receivers

That’s right, as the title suggests, Golden Tate and Marvin Jones Jr. reigned supreme in Week 9, garnering the two highest grades of all receivers. When targeting these two receivers, Matthew Stafford finished with a passer rating of 139.6.

According to PFF, Golden Tate remains a top five receiver in the league with a season-long grade of 85.1.

Matthew’s masterpiece

Matthew Stafford came into this game as just the 20th ranked quarterback according to PFF. His season grade was just 75.9.

But on Monday, Stafford had his best game of the season and was absolutely electric on national television. Along with former NFC North quarterback Jay Cutler, Stafford graded out as the best quarterback of the week:

Perhaps most impressive was Stafford’s 131.5 passer rating while under pressure from the Packers defense. He was also 22-of-26 for 290 yards and a touchdown when he had a clean pocket. He made them pay whether they brought the heat or not.

Offensive line ups and downs

Expectations were just about as low as can be for Brian Mihalik, who made his first two career NFL starts in the past two weeks as Detroit’s left tackle. Against the Packers, he earned the second-highest grade along the Lions’ offensive line with a respectable 71.4

When it came to run blocking, however, the entire offensive line failed miserably. Graham Glasgow posted a 72.2 grade in the run blocking department, but the next best grade along the entire offensive line was 45.1 As a result, Ameer Abdullah only received a 32.6 grade, averaging just 0.71 yards before contact on each carry.

Secondary? More like firstary

The Lions secondary was the star of the show, once again, for the Lions’ defense. DJ Hayden (80.3), Darius Slay (79.6), Glover Quin (76.8) Quandre Diggs (76.5) led the way in grades for the entire defense.

Darius Slay’s recent performance has pushed him to the 12th best cornerback in the league, with a season grade of 85.8. Quin ranks third among all safeties with a 91.2 grade.

Push it

Once again, the Detroit Lions failed to get any sort of push from their defensive line. Detroit’s edge defenders created just six pressures on 77 combined pass rushing attempts. The Lions’ newest addition to the line, Jacquies Smith, graded out poorly with just an overall grade of 43.1. Ezekiel Ansah (47.0) and Anthony Zettel (46.6) weren’t much better.

Detroit’s excellent secondary is doing a good job masking the issues up front, but it’s only a matter of time before the lack of pressure swallows this defense whole. We’ve already seen it happen on a few occasions this year.