Preseason Games Thread

[TSE]

Your comment on the LB/2ndry is something that resonates with me the most although I agree with all of your comments. To me that is the "negative Gunther effect", that affects the back 7 and exposes our weaknesses.

I believe we should be running a base-5 man front to make use of our 10 worthy DL keepers and incorporating a different strategy of teaching the back 6 to react in simpler and less complicated packages that have less variables and less opportunities for them to fail. The key is the time cycles, as time gets longer, more time is present for the weaker back 6 players to find themselves in bad positions or to process mistakes (also only 6 guys that are subpar instead of 7 for an immediate 1/7th reduction in undesirable human components on the field which helps juice the advantage to an overall improvement). It's also not to be confused with youth football and simplistic or standard 5 man defenses, as my version is my own creation and doesn't necessarily represent what textbooks may say about that kind of system. It's more of an adaptive and hybrid system as opposed to a static and simple or rigid outline. My system would be much easier for them to advance their play to efficient logical methods and in my mind my scheme is tailor made and a custom fit for our personnel with the way it's designed and how that could be taught and translated to the players.

[kellmellus50]

Lions safeties victimized for three first-half TD passes


Cleveland— There was one common denominator on all three of Browns quarterback Colt McCoy's first-half touchdown passes in the Lions' 30-28 exhibition victory Friday night.

All three targeted Lions safeties


From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110820/SPO ... z1VfVQ4Wj7

[TSE]

Yeah our safeties have trouble covering all that range on those long plays where everything isn't going perfectly.

[kellmellus50]

fullback Matt Clapp......... TSE do you know anything about this guy ? all i know is he just started practicing and maybe can help the lions , but we already have felton ?

[TSE]

I know nothing about him. Extra roster spots are going to be hard to come by with our suspect running game and our who's who of personnel there. Felton looks good so going to be tough for him to make it.

[kellmellus50]

Schwartz said. “Honestly, Logan’s really not competing for any spot, it’s just a matter of getting him ready and getting him going.’’

http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles ... =fullstory

here's some info on matt clapp he will not make the team, he was cut by the lions last year
around this time.

http://hsarizona.scout.com/a.z?s=222&p= ... id=1173968


http://www.soonersports.com/sports/m-fo ... att00.html

[Blkbrd671]

Stafford look great!

Our running game sucks B*lls , harrison had a couple bright moments

WR's look great

Our defense is horrible however i think they just need time to mold

Did i mention our running game sucks B*lls

[kellmellus50]

Even though the final roster cuts aren’t until Sept. 3, it’s looking good for Davis and Stovall.

“Those are two guys who I think are going to be really good additions for our team, assuming things continue to go the way they are," Linehan said.

Stovall, who spent the last five seasons with the Tampa Bay Bucs, said he signed with Detroit knowing there would be competition at wide receiver.

http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles ... =fullstory

[ajaX82]

Pats game tonight should be fun!

[ajaX82]

Really enjoyed the first half. The offense, missing Best and Bell and MoMo, still looked great. Stafford was unbelievable. Not too many guys I would trade him for right now, and probably not a single QB

Defense got tons of pressure. Berry got burned bad on the TD. Lots of swagger from these guys, which should only increase with Fairley joining. I love it

We totally outplayed NE. I am so pumped for the season

[ajaX82]

Awesome all around game. Even being preseason, it is always fun to whip the Pats. Stanton looked really good in his time, probably secured the QB3 role. I thought Aaron Brown ran well too.

[TSE]

I just hope our players grow up a bit and stop acting like immature little kids every time they score a TD. Scheffler was the biggest embarrassment of all the TD celebrations. He's a guy I'm really hoping gets traded before the season so that we have some ammo to put towards obtaining one more "professional" type of guy on the team to set an example for the rest.

The Pats are lucky they didn't lose Tom Brady to the season by throwing him to the Lions. Aaron Brown always runs well, he's a fast athletic dude and running well is the best thing he does in life.

Stanton already had the QB3 locked, I don't think that was ever in question, the dude was a 2nd round pick and deserves every opportunity since we never gave him a fair shot in the past when the time was more logical to try and parlay him into a consistent player or a trade asset. But he did throw about 2 balls yesterday that could have been INTs if the Pats players weren't asleep by then.

[Blkbrd671]

Stafford looked great, 2 to hits and no injury *knock on wood

Brown looked good, i like him as our third back, but we still need a between the tackle RB. i wish we had signed ronnie B.

Stoval looked really good, if we have Williams, nate, young and Stoval, Stafford should have a beast of a season.

i hope the defense continues that attitude the whole season. i want teams not looking forward to facing the lions

What do you guys think about silva? he has 2 int and caused 1 fumble in the preseason.


*note Patriots were missing a number of there defensive starters, i'm sure stafford would had a little more pressure if they were playing. i wnat to see how he does against the steelers and ravens

[TSE]

Silva seems to have a "nose for the ball". He had decent INT stats in college too, 4 in his last year which isn't too shabby for a safety in an 11 game season, and he's already advanced that ratio which is a good early sign. That's a huge part of the safety's responsibility is to know how and when to snipe out opportunities to get your hands on the ball. I call it the "Ed Reed impersonation", and to me that's one of the best safeties who ever played the game, as he is excellent at figuring that out.

That takes instincts though, as well as a planned vision to do that, and Gunther's style of teaching within his system is combative to those kind of instincts and goals in my opinion, and Silva hasn't had time to learn bad habits from him yet, so right now he's just doing what he knows and that's to have an appetite and vision for where the opportunities are going to be in order to get himself in position to touch the ball while it's in the air.

My advice to Silva is to keep doing what he's doing and ignore everything (not literally but to filter w/common sense) that Gunther tells him, otherwise he will get programmed into being less than the best that he can be. We just saw Berry and Coleman blow coverage on that TD, those guys have been around Gunther longer than Silva, and that's why Silva was wondering why the 2 guys with more experience than he didn't seem to have a clue what to do. Gunther doesn't teach these guys how to operate correctly and how to think logically about the situation and the options of which way to go and when.

[Lionlifer]

Maybe I just watch the wrong station (ESPN) but I got the feeling a lot of the reporters were saying that "the Patriots didn't care about the game," instead of "holy crap, the Lions looked good, granted its the preseason."

What gets me about the whole "didn't care" argument are a few things:

1) It was the third game of the preseason, generally when the starters go the longest. Hell Brady started the second half, and was ineffective

2) The Pats had put up over 70 points in their first 2 games, now they decided they don't care? I don't buy it

3) Its Belichick, the man always wants to win. Period.

Is it just me, or is the Kool Aid really really sweet this year?

[chrbal]

I think the media isn't ready to accept the Lions as possibly being good. The lions win 8+ games this year, Jay Leno loses 10% of his jokes.

[TSE]

Well the odds that have recently come out with the Lions having a conservative over/under number for wins is really fascinating to me. We have Suh now on defense and a stellar DL that could potentially be really dangerous if Fairley pans out. We have Stafford looking incredible, and obviously the amazing CJ and the best potential RB we have had since Barry Sanders, to go along with a good up and coming TE etc. On paper we have the talent that should qualify us for a much higher projected win total, but the media and the oddsmakers are also considering a key and consistent trend, and that's the ownership and mngmt being suspect.

Every year of my life we have always had lots of good players, but we always come up short and that's because regardless of how good our team and players are, this franchise has a knack and a program of not getting the "most out of" our potential. That's my biggest gripe basically every year.

Every single year I have seen draft picks or FAs or trades or other transactions that I don't agree with and I think are not as good as other alternative choices, but even in the Millen years, I don't think any of our transactions are earth shatteringly ridiculous. Like Charles Rogers and Joey Harrington and Mike Williams, well all of those guys were still projected to be quality first rounders, it's not like we went way off the grid and did anything uber-bizarre like say if we were to draft Charlie Ward in the 1st round because he was a Heisman winner, that would be ultra destruction for sure compared to the guys we chose who COULD have panned out for us with a much greater likelihood than what we actually saw.

So for me it all comes down to the "big picture" and the "vision" and the "piecing it all together" and the "execution" etc. We have always failed our players and fans by having administrative chains where we shoot ourselves in the foot behind the scenes in the non-football elements that are OFF THE FIELD. And when you have a franchise that has weak support, you inevitably are always going to have that cancerous penalty to deal with, and some days it hurts you more than others, but nevertheless, even on your good days if you are a marathon runner, would you rather be a healthy person that is disease free, or somebody that still has cancer or a disease in their blood? You can have all the will power and talent and athleticism in the world, but in the long-run you are going to be handicapped from achieving the max of your true potential when you are running races with totally healthy people.

The media and oddsmakers still see our diagnosis as suspect in that "off the field" stuff, and it's going to take a long time to prove that we've changed, but we really haven't at our basic core and foundation in that regard. What is the weight of our chains today and how many bullets will be shoot into ourselves this year? It remains to be seen but the risk is there, and we haven't proven that we have the know-how and the sense of responsibility to stamp that out, and that's hurt us in EVERY single previous season, and it's tough to think that all of a sudden we aren't going to be burdened with those kinds of administrative mistakes. We have shown no evidence that we have solved those issues, so that scare factor is still present.

[Lionlifer]

I think the media isn't ready to accept the Lions as possibly being good. The lions win 8+ games this year, Jay Leno loses 10% of his jokes.

Thats why I was rollin with Coco

[TSE]

Jimmy Fallon is the best there ever was, already. His show quality and personal talent are much better than every other late night talk show host. It's just a matter of time before he's widely accepted as the best until somebody better shows up, but that could take a long time. It's Emmy-time for Fallon this year, you just watch!