On the surface, the Detroit Lions’ win over the Green Bay Packers on Sunday looked like one of their better performances of the season. You don’t jump out to a 24-0 lead without some really solid play—I don’t care how many field goals the other team missed.
But with so much happening on a single play, sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s actually happening and who’s playing well. So every week, we turn to Pro Football Focus, who grades every individual on every single play, to see which Lions players performed well. Thankfully, each week they provide us with the top performers on both offense and defense. Let’s take a look for Week 5.
Offense
The highest graded players from the Lions offense in their win over the Packers yesterday. pic.twitter.com/LlDOV9p5HN
— Pro Football Focus (@PFF) October 8, 2018
There aren’t too many surprises among the top five, and it’s no shock at all that Kenny Golladay tops the list with an outstanding 89.6 rating. In fact, that rating was good enough for Golladay to land on this week’s PFF Team of the Week, falling just short of Adam Thielen (90.1) and Odell Beckham Jr. (90.7).
But Golladay’s play wasn’t just limited to Sunday’s game, he’s been a big-play threat all year. Per PFF, Golladay has 14” explosive plays” and six contested catches on the season, both of which rank in the top five among receivers this year.
It was a relatively modest day for the rest of the offense, however. Only one offensive lineman made the top five, and Taylor Decker’s 66.3 grade is nothing to write home about. It’s also pretty surprising to see Kerryon Johnson graded so low considering he eclipsed 5.0 yards per carry for the fourth straight week.
Defense
Another big performance from the Lions rookie out of Alabama! pic.twitter.com/viCkf64Hku
— Pro Football Focus (@PFF) October 8, 2018
If I weren’t so excited by Da’Shawn Hand’s future, I may be sick of talking about how good he is. Hand has now landed in the top five in three of the past four games, and he continues to be one of the highest rated rookie interior defensive linemen. This past Sunday, he was credited with three run stops, three pressures, one sack, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery. And check out this set of numbers from our own MathBomb:
He sits currently at 2.0 sacks, only 1.0 away from matching a career high through college.
— Kent Lee Platte (@MathBomb) October 8, 2018
His 19 tackles are only 8 tackles shy of a career high dating back through college.
There are 11 games left to play.
It may come as a bit of a surprise to see linebacker Christian Jones on the list, especially since he only had two tackles on the day—although one was for a loss. However, Jones did only play in 24 snaps against the Packers, as Detroit relied more heavily on coverage linebackers like Jalen Reeves-Maybin.
In the secondary, Glover Quin cracked the top five after a pretty slow and quiet start to the season, and Nevin Lawson had an obviously solid game with his tight coverage. However, you don’t want to know how the rest of the defensive backs graded out, and lucky for you, I don’t have publishing rights to share them with you.