Notes: Lions drop a TON of behind-the-scenes Pro Bowl videos

Judging by the amount of footage released in the past few days by the Detroit Lions’ media team, they followed the four Pro Bowl representatives from the Lions (Jared Goff, Penei Sewell, Frank Ragnow, and Amon-Ra St. Brown) pretty extensively last week in Las Vegas.

We mentioned the Penei Sewell mic’d up video in Wednesday’s Notes, and the full version of a Frank Ragnow/Amon-Ra St. Brown mic’d up video the Lions’ Twitter account mentioned on Tuesday went live on their YouTube channel. Since then, quite a bit more has appeared on the team’s official YouTube channel.

First up, there is a long video of nearly nine minutes of Jared Goff mic’d up on game day during the Pro Bowl flag football games. Goff and Ragnow played in the second Pro Bowl flag football game, which the league posted highlights of on its YouTube channel. In it, there are some pretty fun moments when contextualized by what happened during the game.

The Lions quarterback has a back-and-forth with San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey, who tells Goff not to throw to him on the first play (Goff threw it to him and McCaffrey dropped the pass). There’s also some ribbing from 49ers TE George Kittle, former Lion T.J. Hockenson, and Penei Sewell after Goff got spun to the ground for a sack on a blitz by Jets defensive back Justin Hardee. We also get to see how Frank Ragnow absolutely called it when he said his quarterback was going to steal his post of an end zone celebration photo.

The best part of the video, though, is a sideline conversation Goff has with Green Bay cornerback Jaire Alexander. It really is incredible how much players remember about specific plays. After recalling that he’d thrown his last interception to Alexander in Week 9, Alexander told him “I was waiting for you to maybe try me on the last game we played” in Week 18. The Lions quarterback remembered feeling baited on a corner route but ended up checking it down instead.

Second, Dannie Rogers interviewed St. Brown, Goff, and Ragnow from within the Las Vegas High Roller Observation Wheel. One of the first questions from Rogers to the trio is about their favorite play calls from the 2022 season, and again, the amount of detail the players remember about what went down in the heat of the moment is impressive. When you go back to the video, the jab step that St. Brown mentions is there! It’s a small thing that most casual fans wouldn’t notice, but hearing how both Goff and St. Brown keyed in on the press coverage and how it would affect the timing of the hook and ladder play against the Packers is really cool. Also big fun in this video: a wild story about Dan Campbell’s dental work.

Third, Dannie Rogers was in the stands during the Pro Bowl flag football games with Amon-Ra St. Brown’s parents. You know the Mr. Universe dad who named his sons Equanimeous, Osiris, and Amon-Ra had some awesome tales, but also mom had some fun stuff about Amon-Ra St. Brown’s childhood. In the video, we hear about how some folks in Germany wanted to keep Amon-Ra over there as a five-year-old kid to train for the national team, that he and his brothers took the college SAT exam in three languages, and that even as a young boy Amon-Ra was extremely responsible and conscientious.

All three of the videos can be seen on the team’s official YouTube channel: “Watching the Pro Bowl Games with Amon-Ra St. Brown’s parents,” “Off the Record with Dannie Rogers Episode 17,” and “Jared Goff mic’d up at the Pro Bowl Games.” Lots and lots to love in all of these, so check them out.

Now, on to the rest of your weekend Notes:

• This chart is amazing but may take a minute to figure out (it did for me). The important thing to realize is that the offensive x-axis (left-right) starts high on the left side and ends low on the right side. So far right (our offense did not face good coverage) is better. The y-axis is the reverse with low values at the bottom and high values on the top, but from a defensive standpoint high (our team covered everything well) is better. Upper right means both offense and defense did well, while lower right means the offense was able to confuse opposing defenses but our defense was out of position too often. That sounds about right for the Lions (at least the first half of the season), unfortunately.

• Aidan Hutchinson is a man in demand and was a featured guest on the latest episode of the Dungeon of Doom podcast with MLive’s Kyle Meinke and Ben Raven. You can listen to the audio recording on Spotify. (Hutchinson also joined Jeremy and Chris on the PODcast on Friday, in case you missed it).

• Our fearless leader may be a hater, but the rest of our staff loves special teams. The Lions media team put together an amazing video of the top 10 plays in the kicking game from the 2022 season, and it’s now live on the Lions’ official YouTube channel:

• Rushing touchdown machine and hardcore anime fan Jamaal Williams was a guest on Super Bowl Live earlier in the week. The video is archived on the official team site and can be viewed in an embedded player there.

Also Mr. Williams:

• NFL Historian Kevin Gallagher is posting fun Super Bowl clips on Twitter, and here’s one featuring Lions wide receivers coach Antwaan Randle-El:

• Not Lions related, but here’s something really interesting from a general football standpoint. NextGenStats analyst Conor McQuiston also has an article to go with this chart. Two fascinating tidbits from his analysis: “between 45-50% of NFL games have ended within one score since the 80s” and “the 2022 season had the most parity in terms of relative team strength since 1988, and the past 5 seasons constitute the consistently highest parity seen in NFL history.”