Lions @ Packers - Game 4

[ajaX82]

Lambeau field isnt exactly kind to us. The question here is probably how many we lose by

[TSE]

I just want to see Drew Stanton play.

[kellmellus50]

I just want to see Drew Stanton play.

You should get your wish the lions will be blown out by the 4th quarter.

[Icness]

The early line is 14.5 and that seems about right. The fact GB cannot run the ball will help, and our DL should annihilate their OL. Lions are 2nd in the league in sacks (GB is 1st) and lead the NFL in percentage of QB hits/hurries per attempt--by a pretty wide margin (58.8%, TEN is next at 44%, league average is a hair under 34%). Some of that harkens back to the PHI game where the Lions recorded a QB pressure on 13 straight passes, but this is right there with CHI as the worst OL they'll see all year.

It will be interesting to see how much and how effectively Best & Co. can run on them, and if Linehan can dial up some play action and take advantage of their vulnerable safeties. I don't see any way DET wins a shootout here but if the defense can get a couple of fortuitous turnovers and the offense controls the ball, the Lions should at least cover. Hard to see our secondary making that happen though.

[TSE]

I just want to see Drew Stanton play.

You should get your wish the lions will be blown out by the 4th quarter.

Oops, yeah what I meant though was....

I want to see Drew Stanton play, in the first quarter when it's a real game, before we are out of it and our season is completely scrapped, and while Calvin Johnson is still relevant and motivated in the game.

I would have typed all that but I figured it was implied and i didnt want to say too much on the subject cause then I would just get lots more people whining about how crazy and stupid I am so I just tried to keep it short.

[kellmellus50]

I would like to see Cowher as our new coach too.
Bill Cowher and Bill Parcells, with Cowher rumored to be rubbing his hands at thoughts of returning to the NFL.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100929 ... z111HZoR9k

[TSE]

It really doesn't matter what flavor you call it, the Lions lose in the mental aspects of game preparation in a multitude of ways long before our players even take the field.

I have thought about this a lot and I have settled in at a ratio of blame to be passed out as 8% for the players and 92% blame belonging to coaches/managers. A professional sports team should have closer to a flipflop of those numbers. I try to analyze the question with extra benefit of the doubt towards the coaching personnel and I can't sell myself on a justification of less than 90% blame for them, and when I try to give benefit of the doubt to the players I can sell myself on as little as 5% blame for them, and so I lean towards 8% just because it's so ridiculous to have that much going towards the coaches, but I see no way around giving them that much blame.

[ajaX82]

It really doesn't matter what flavor you call it, the Lions lose in the mental aspects of game preparation in a multitude of ways long before our players even take the field.

I have thought about this a lot and I have settled in at a ratio of blame to be passed out as 8% for the players and 92% blame belonging to coaches/managers. A professional sports team should have closer to a flipflop of those numbers. I try to analyze the question with extra benefit of the doubt towards the coaching personnel and I can't sell myself on a justification of less than 90% blame for them, and when I try to give benefit of the doubt to the players I can sell myself on as little as 5% blame for them, and so I lean towards 8% just because it's so ridiculous to have that much going towards the coaches, but I see no way around giving them that much blame.

May i ask how you came up with said numbers? Or is it just a ballpark thing?

[TSE]

Well it's a ballpark thing obviously, because for it to be an exact scientific number I would have to analyze every single play for every single player and the resulting activity would be ridiculously time consuming even if I had the video materials I would need to do that, which I don't.

So for example, I place blame on a player if he makes an obvious mistake that is not something the coaches can be expected to be accountable for. Like take Stefan Logan's fumble. You can't put that on the coaches when he can't even line up to the ball correctly and then he clumsily kicks it when trying to recover, that's clearly a player mistake and something that I expect better from Logan or any pro return man.

But I also don't hold players to accountable beyond their expectations. So for example, i don't place a lot of blame on Shaun Hill because he hasn't been great, because he isn't a great player, I don't expect him to be Peyton Manning. So for what I expect out of him, he produces right around what he is worth as a player. If his name was Peyton Manning and he played the exact same way, then i would say that's his fault for playing well below his ability and expectation level for him. You could put me in at LT for the team, but then you can't blame me for not blocking Julius Peppers unless I dog it for myself on any given play. But as long as I do my personal best, then I am exempt from being at fault, as I'm doing the best I can to my ability if I'm technically doing it theoretically the right way. It's then the blame of Mayhew for having chosen to have me on the team despite I'm playing at par for myself and my skill/talent level.

So it's a totality of determining how often the players are complete numskulls and just make what would be the equivalent of an "error" as it is recorded in baseball. But if a player has say a 6.0 40 yard dash and cant' even reach a groundball that makes it into the outfield, well that's not his fault, he coudn't possibly have made it, and then it's the fault of the manager for having a super slow person playing on his team.

And since I can't be there to know what our coaches are telling the players, it becomes a judgment call when a DB blows a play. Is it because the DB is terrible and doesn't know what to do or isn't good enough to do it, or is he doing what he is instructed to do and getting exploited? You can't possibly know all of that stuff with certainty so I have to guess at it and determine is that the player making a bad choice, or is he following bad programming. And from how our players appear to me, I see the vast majority of the time it looks like a programming error and not a player decision or ability error. And when I watch this next game, I might adjust that attitude. If our entire defensive scheming or programming is completely different, and then the player somehow still gets out of position, well then I can chalk that up to saying that our coaches are on the right track but the player missed the play or the execution, and thus the shift of blame goes from coaches to players.

Or here's another example, late in that last game AP had a running play and failed to get out of bounds for some stupid reason when the yards had no value to the team, only extracting timeouts was the goal, so that play the great Adrian Peterson was responsible and the clock mngmt error there would have been his fault and not a coaching fault. Or like how LJ missed Vick on that wide open sack opportunity, a coach has to teach a guy to make that hit right, but on that play I can't excuse the player at all and have to assume that's his error and not a coaching error as that is the intuitive guess. Or if Pettigrew drops a ball he should have caught, that's one strike to him, not the coaches. Just trying to give you other examples for some other positions.

And then I also account for severity. Like if our DB coaches are clearly not instructing players correctly and we get gashed bigtime in the passing game due to obvious exploits, well one bad play could have multiple players being coached wrong on that play and the coaches could get say 3 errors on one play despite 0 errors for the players on one play, and those errors are bigtime value errors and I adjust for that. And then you have ST errors like how to strategize for a bouncing ball that is approaching the endzone, they always screw that up and sometimes its clear that the player could simply wait and pick it up last second, but sometimes its clear that our guys are not programmed to go to the 1 yard line and play a side straddle defense to wait for the ball to come to them, that's a coaching error in that case.

So based upon quantity and severity of coaching errors verse player errors, I see the absurdity and damage of the coaching neglect to be worth about 92% of the team's global problems and responsibility for those problems. If I was the owner or GM of a team, I would feel the maximum tolerance I would allow for the coaches screwing up the team to be about 5%, because nobody is perfect and to be perfect without errors in a tough complex game like football is extremely difficult to do even with the greatest of football minds working together, so I anticipate how many mistakes I would make if I was doing the job, and I can see where and how I would go wrong and I would be upset with myself if I scored myself and my coaching staff selected to be worth more than 5% of the problem. I believe you should never ever let your team suffer on account of the behind the scenes stuff, that part is easy and there's no excuse for screwing up, but when you have the right players in place and they are instructed and supported logically the best you possibly can do, then if they get beat it will be because you just came up short on the field with playing talent and skill. It's just an unconscionable thing to me to have the sideline and booth people screwing up the game, but since nobody is perfect I can tolerate like I said maybe 5% of mental error, but even that is a stretch and should be and could be improved upon over time, but that takes on the job experience which there is no substitute for.

[Bartender]

What I got out of that is Jim Schwartz it the reason for global warming.

[kellmellus50]

Bartender i see you have been hitting Jack Daniel's wiskey again you have to lay off that stuff.

[TSE]

What I got out of that is Jim Schwartz it the reason for global warming.

Well Schwartz is being severely handicapped by Martin Mayhew, who is the ultimate SOURCE of the problem, and that's not fair to Jim. If we had a good GM who could make logical choices of players and coaches and other booth strategists and support people, then I think Jim would have potential to do a very good job, cause then Jim could just do ONE thing in being the conductor of that orchestra. He's qualified in my mind to waive the baton around, but he's not qualified to write the music and play all the instruments. And since he doesn't have what he needs, it's his job to go out and get what he needs or call out the GM for failing at doing his job to support him. Since Schwartz isn't speaking up and making things happen for us, he accepts responsibility and blame for our results.

Now global warming is a much more globally encompassing problem, and therefore your logic is flawed in thinking somebody at the bottom would have responsibility for that. If we are simplifying this to just a U.S. perspective, then Obama is closest to the top of the food chain, so it's his fault if he doesn't do anything about it, to some extent. Because the SOURCE of the problem that is having Obama in the White House is the "system" of govt we have today that is responsible for making that selection, so it is the "system" that ultimately is responsible for global warming in my opinion. And that's a really big problem, because there is no person to take the blame or to accept responsibility and so nobody ever will. The "system" is flawed and not capable of calling itself out to identify and solve the problem.

[Manocad]

This Lions secondary is utterly disgusting.

[ajaX82]

This Lions secondary is utterly disgusting.

Yes, yes it is


And Calvin Johnson is really, really good. We should probably throw him jump balls in the end zone every time we get in the red zone

[kellmellus50]

this i one of the reasons lions lost,schwartz once again deceiding not to go fot it.the lions also had 1st and goal from the 6th yard line and did not call the right play.settled for FG.

Lions head coach Jim Schwartz decided against having Jason Hanson attempt a 54- or 55-yard field goal and punted. Earlier in the game, Hanson missed from 55 yards, but hit from 52 and 49 yards.

The Packers took possession at the 13-yard line and drove downfield, eating up the entire clock -- the Lions never got the ball back.

the coach does not know how to win it may take him all year to learn.

http://www.mlive.com/lions/index.ssf/20 ... ckers.html