FanPost

The View of Lions-Ravens from section 329

Start at the beginning, this is the second home game, and the second time the Lions and Tigers are playing at the same time. This should never happen. If ever both teams are good, this would create a parking nightmare. But very few went to the Tiger game, and there were lots of empty seats at Ford Field.

The best part of this game was the ring ceremony for Calvin. I loved that they had some interviews and congratulations from his former teammates, especially Stafford. We Sheila spoke, I could not hear a single word, booing was too loud. What is being forgotten in this debate, is that the Lions were just booed off the field at halftime, they were awful in the first half.

Pregame involved one thing that I found really interesting to watch. Maybe an hour before kickoff, or even more, the only players on the field are the kickers, plus a few returners catching kicks. Field is wide open, like every game, Lions on one end, Ravens on the other. The kickers will usually switch sides, practice kicking both ways . The 2 Lions kicker are kicking from about their 35, kickoffs and punts, and Tucker walks up,and puts he tee down right in between then and starts kicking. This clearly pissed off the Lions kickers, it seemed rude. So they stayed in his way, and he just kicked like in between them, narrowly missing the punter a couple times. This was an attempt at some sort of gamesmanship, seemed pretty unnecessary. But when Tucker practiced field goals, again near our FG kicker, Tucker was booming them. He only went from 52, but they were crashing the bar at the top of the goal posts, the kind of kicks you say,"He could’ve made that one from 70". Obviously, he might someday. He making a 66 yarder was not surprising to me, after that warmup. About our new FG kicker, he has a much stronger leg than the one we had for the first game. Not close, I expect he will be our longer term guy. Also, in warmups, the main group of Lions only practiced for 14 minutes, way shorter than I’ve ever seen any team do. I will have to notice if this is just Campbell’s way, or if something else was up.

The Lions are making games close, and should be commended, but this game shouldn’t have been. Ravens receivers dropped numerous wide open passes, at least 3 TDs and a couple more long passes. Stunning drops. People are commenting some that Price has looked good, I disagree. He gets torched every time someone tries. When we play zone, they is too big a gap between LBs and safeties, that the Ravens were killing us with. AJ Parker doesn’t even get thrown at. I wonder, is it because he is good, or just that there are other matchups that are so easy to exploit they pick those. But Price and Analzone can’t cover anyone.

A lot is being made of our killing the clock and going for 3 at the end rather than pushing for a TD. To me, and I thought this at the time, the coaches are telling us and the team that they trust the kicker who has been on the team for 2 days over our starting QB. Very telling to me. A lot of fans point to stats of some sort to say Goff is ok. He isn’t. In person, you can see how he misses things, pretty much everything, panics when things go a little wrong, and doesn’t see the field at all. I really dislike watching him play QB, he is not worth paying to see play.

A few positives, Barnes was really bringing it his first few plays. He then made a tackle where he seemed to tweak his shoulder, and he was less aggressive after that. Did anyone else notice that? Barnes shouldn’t just be playing, he is the best defender we have. Lions did a real good job of stopping the Jackson run, Parker was a spy on him a few plays. Parker seems like a good tackler.

The Lions are not stretching the field vertically at all, and teams are starting to crowd the line on us. You must throw some deep passes, even if your QB can’t.

I did not enjoy this game, I didn’t feel good. I did wear a mask for the whole game. Not many do though.

‘This was the game I thought we could win, Baltimore was having a lot of internal distractions. We just blew it at the end. The Bears are almost a must win. We could go on a really long losing streak if we fail next week. Nagy is the worst play caller in the NFL, he will keep us in the game all by himself.

There was a pass to Raymond that he miraculously caught later in the game, I thought this was one of the worst -asses of the season. Actually open, way behind him, somehow caught it.

Our offensive play calling has been really good except for the lack of deep throws. Our defense this game played zone pretty much every play, but this is how you stop,Jackson from running. Good passers are going to kill our pass defense, our guys leave holes in zone and can’t play man. Tough choices there. 1-9 or 0-10 are possible if we don’t beat the Bears

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pride Of Detroit or its writers.