Lions notes: Dan Orlovsky calls Matthew Stafford’s play vs. Bears ‘very good’

Dan Orlovsky has never been shy in his support of his former teammate Matthew Stafford. The two made up the Detroit Lions’ quarterback depth chart for three straight years from 2014 to 2016. There may not be a player that knows Stafford better than Orlovsky.

So it’s little surprise that Orlovsky came running to support Stafford after the Lions quarterback has come under fire for Detroit’s lackluster offensive performance over the past three games. In Stafford’s most recent game against the Bears, he threw two interceptions, completed just 59.5 percent of passes, and averaged a mere 6.5 yards per passing attempt.

Still, Orlovsky categorized Stafford’s play as “very good.”

First of all, as much as Orlovsky wants to claim he’s being “100% unbiased” that is simply impossible. No one comes without bias, and hanging around Stafford for years has certainly made him vulnerable of showing favoritism towards his buddy.

That being said, Orlovsky’s viewpoint still carries value. Indeed, there aren’t a lot of people who know the offense better than Dan-O and he certainly knows the reads a quarterback needs to go through. And as for his conclusion that receivers aren’t winning man-to-man matchups, there’s some objective evidence to support those claims:

Of course, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary, as well. Stafford was 18th in DYAR according to Football Outsiders this week, and his PFF grade over the past three weeks has been bad.

The truth, as always, probably lies somewhere in the middle. Stafford is far from the Lions’ biggest problems right now, but he certainly shoulders some of the blame.

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• Did you miss not having Chris Spielman on the broadcast last week? Here he is breaking down three key plays from the Bears game:

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