Game 1: Lions @ Bucs

[Todd3]

I never wanna see that conservative BS again. On defense, and offense.

The Lions win their first meaningful road game in years, and your complaining they didn't run up the score? smh

You can complain about the boneheaded penalities, but not about running the ball when your up 14 in the 4th qtr. Thats what you are SUPPOSED to do. Especially when they were having success running it all 3rd qtr. It didn;t result in as many 1st downs in the 4th, but it still took valuable time off the clock. Would you rather they had incompletions and saved Tampa an extra 2-3 minutes at the end to come back and win? These ppl complaining are delusional. They won. Clean up the penalities and missed tackles and move on.

[Blkbrd671]

Did our the front line look like it was pressuring Freeman?

Sort of, but it wasn't any kind of dominating performance by the pass rush like the Pats game. It was more of a total defensive effort. But, I attribute that to them double-triple teaming Suh and the hot weather was tough on those big guys. The defense only gave up 10 pts though, realistically. 7 came from the offense on a pick-6, and 3 came from an 80 yd kick return that gave the Bucs the ball on the 20. But the defense immediately came in and forced a 3 and out, holding them to a FG. So that was more the special teams that gave up the 3, not the defense. The D-Line did dominate on run defense too. They got nothing on the ground. Until the end of the game when we went prevent, Tampa's offense was pretty much discombulated the whole game, but I'd it was the defense as a whole not just the D-Line that caused it.

I think we'll see the d-line dominate the QB more the next few games indoors w/o the heat bogging them down

ya i read they didn't have one first down through 3 quarters. It sounds like we just need to polish it up.

We picked up that running back williams. Any one have any news on him, is he a big back that can run between the tackles?

[TSE]

Well our running game will always have dangerous options when Best is healthy, so the bigger question is how long will he hold up, or will he be healed by the time the playoffs start if he does get hurt.

[ajaX82]

I never wanna see that conservative BS again. On defense, and offense.

I also did not like the way we stopped throwing in the second half. TB clearly had no interest in trying to stop our pass attack, but we just ran it. Now granted it was to eat time and wear TB out but Stafford and CJ were having their way.

As far as the D-line question, they did not dominate, no. As someone else said, the heat and occasional triple teaming of Suh did not help. They did make some nice plays though. I know we don't know what Fairley will bring, but I having him rotating in will make the unit better, possibly a lot so.

[Blkbrd671]

i want to see what we look like when smith and fairley get back. any news on fairley and what he's doing, hope he's not sitting around getting fat

[Icness]

Just charted the game after an uninterrupted viewing:
--Suh was triple teamed 9 times, and two other throws they left a back in to help if needed. He still "beat" the triple team three times.
--Nate Burleson was almost uncoverable coming out of the slot. He gets into that hole in the zone between the inside corner and the safety so darn quick. He also blocked very well.
--Raiola was awesome in pass protection
--KVDB looked very good
--Eric Wright played well in coverage except when the team went into a softer shell down the stretch. He is an aggressive guy and the passivity did not suit him.
--Chris Houston has great recovery speed...and he needs every bit of it.
--I like how the coverage funneled everything inside to the help. It gives up completions but stops the big plays and lets Delmas and Speivey get some licks in.
--Impressed with Ryan Donahue, 3 kicks inside the 18 and allowed just one return that went negative.

[Piston Pete]

Love the info there Ice, thanks!

I thought the key to us not getting sacks on Freeman was the Bucs throwing a lot of shorter, quicker routes. I am, however, a little concerned we couldn't get more pressure on Freeman considering Suh was triple-teamed 9 times....someone on the line has to take advantage of Suh getting that kind of attention.

Overall, the defense played very well. We limited both their running and passing games and tackled much better than we maybe ever have. The new LBers really change the entire D.

And I was pleased with the offense as well, although you'd like to see us average more than 3.4 yards per carry......albeit a somewhat minor complaint. Watching Stafford organize the offense seemed similar to watching a young Peyton Manning in Indy. Anyone else get that vision?

[TSE]

And Stovall who got lucky on 2 lousy plays in the PS on ST was a liability on that big kick return they had. DW has better talent for ST and perhaps he could have pinned that guy down deep like he did on that one awesome play he made in the PS. We made our choices and we cut our best ST WR player and we paid the price of that mistake. I think we should have taken that opportunity to evaluate the pros/cons of the overall situation and that we should have made different choices. And is this team totally happy with their roster at every position, cause their lack of making any changes seems to suggest they are content and ready to rock and roll and need nothing extra anywhere else?

[Piston Pete]

Stovall >> DW in both his recieving and ST abilities.

[Bartender]

I never wanna see that conservative BS again. On defense, and offense.

The Lions win their first meaningful road game in years, and your complaining they didn't run up the score? smh

You can complain about the boneheaded penalities, but not about running the ball when your up 14 in the 4th qtr. Thats what you are SUPPOSED to do. Especially when they were having success running it all 3rd qtr. It didn;t result in as many 1st downs in the 4th, but it still took valuable time off the clock. Would you rather they had incompletions and saved Tampa an extra 2-3 minutes at the end to come back and win? These ppl complaining are delusional. They won. Clean up the penalities and missed tackles and move on.

We went into conservative mode the entire second half and it almost let them come back. I have the right to not be happy with a win since that win almost slipped away. 14 points is NOT a big lead by any means. We ran more than we passed. That should never happen again. We were in prevent defense the entire 3rd and 4th quarter and that's when they gained all their yards and made all of there plays on offense. It was sickening. Why did we give up on what was working? I understand doing this in the 4th quarter, but not the entire half.

[Bartender]

Stovall >> DW in both his recieving and ST abilities.

For real. Seeing someone stick up for DW is making me puke.

[TSE]

Stovall >> DW in both his recieving and ST abilities.

I wouldn't agree with that. DW is better at ST than Stovall, and he is very similar on WR potential value, I would say they are indistinguishably equal at this point. But DW is greater at WR and ST than Rashied Davis. Any way you slice it, he should have been on the field for that kick return TD. And then Stovall could have been used to inherit Rashied's WR reps, which is an extra bonus for you since you think Stovall is the better WR than DW, whereas they are neutral for me, and the ST edge to DW is the reason to give him the ST reps and Stovall the extra WR time.

How many more games are we going to surrender 1 TD just on account of Stovall not being a great ST player? How many games might we lose by not having an elite potential WR take up that spot that Rashied Davis occupies? DW could give us a WR advantage over 1 man and a ST advantage over both, and we are losing value there on a miniscule issue of the 5th WR spot. 1 TD per game is way too much to lose over a small issue discrepancy at a minor roster spot of significance.

[TSE]

Stovall >> DW in both his recieving and ST abilities.

For real. Seeing someone stick up for DW is making me puke.

I'm not sticking up for DW, I don't even like him, I'm sticking up for the team. DW isn't worth sticking up for because he seemed to lack hustle and have a suspect attitude. I have no idea what it is but some issue was going on there. There was one play in the last game where he was coming back from a really long incompletion and he was walking so slow and smug that I think 10 guys were all in the huddle and all knew the play ready to go for like 5 seconds before DW even got to the huddle. It was bizarre, something interesting was going on behind the scenes or in his mind that would explain that curious sense of indifference.

So yeah, it's not about him, it's about the football decision, and we didn't make a good football decision here. We made a politics decision. And those 7 pts that we might have saved with him that we for sure didn't save with Stovall is part of the price of selling out the best strategic decision in effort to try to establish some kind of point. And I don't like that kind of business, to me it's better to have the more valuable strategy asset, but even better it's too continue piling up those assets and growing them so that you don't have anything to complain about in the first place to even then have an existence of this premise to even discuss!

[ajaX82]

Stovall >> DW in both his recieving and ST abilities.

I wouldn't agree with that. DW is better at ST than Stovall, and he is very similar on WR potential value, I would say they are indistinguishably equal at this point. But DW is greater at WR and ST than Rashied Davis. Any way you slice it, he should have been on the field for that kick return TD. And then Stovall could have been used to inherit Rashied's WR reps, which is an extra bonus for you since you think Stovall is the better WR than DW, whereas they are neutral for me, and the ST edge to DW is the reason to give him the ST reps and Stovall the extra WR time.

How many more games are we going to surrender 1 TD just on account of Stovall not being a great ST player? How many games might we lose by not having an elite potential WR take up that spot that Rashied Davis occupies? DW could give us a WR advantage over 1 man and a ST advantage over both, and we are losing value there on a miniscule issue of the 5th WR spot. 1 TD per game is way too much to lose over a small issue discrepancy at a minor roster spot of significance.

Just...no. I'm surprised we are even having this talk

[Piston Pete]

LOL, am I missing something here?

WHAT RETURN TD?!?

ps - what lucky team picked up DW?

[motorcity15]

Yea i dnt recall a return TD

[ajaX82]

There wasn't a return TD

I am/was actually a DW fan. I swear. I wanted him to succeed so badly. But he was not a good ST player (not sure where this is coming from) and couldn't catch a ball or crack the WR rotation, even with a-holes like Bryant Johnson and Dennis effing Northcutt getting time. Stovall outplayed him all preseason and Davis is actually a good ST player.

It was time for both sides to move on. I had high hopes for DW and loved what he did at Penn St., but alas, he wasn't what we thought he was

[TSE]

My bad I misspoke, I mangled the long return into essentially a score, woopsie!!

Well i wasn't opposed to moving on from DW, but only if we found somebody better than him off the wire, not a guy who did less to earn a job that doesn't much of a credible upside. And you saw me before asking if we could specifically trade DW for Taylor Mays. This is why I thought it was a good deal at the time cause I figured we might cut DW because of his attitude and to make an example out of him, and so why not take a free peek at Mays for the heck of it, plus before the Lions cut him to sabotage his apparent value perhaps SF would see the higher previous round of DW as something better than a multi year late for a 7th rounder.

[Bartender]

My bad I misspoke, I mangled the long return into essentially a score, woopsie!!

Well i wasn't opposed to moving on from DW, but only if we found somebody better than him off the wire, not a guy who did less to earn a job that doesn't much of a credible upside. And you saw me before asking if we could specifically trade DW for Taylor Mays. This is why I thought it was a good deal at the time cause I figured we might cut DW because of his attitude and to make an example out of him, and so why not take a free peek at Mays for the heck of it, plus before the Lions cut him to sabotage his apparent value perhaps SF would see the higher previous round of DW as something better than a multi year late for a 7th rounder.

DW deserved to get cut. I think everyone can agree with that. Stovall deserved to make the team. He made plays in preseason games and practices on a number of occasions and didn't make mistakes. That's why we play preseason. It's training camp battles and Stovall won the battle. He was making plays on special teams and even more plays as a WR.

And with this new KO rule, kickoff coverage is the least of my worries.

Stovall brings more to the table as a WR than DW does, and he deserves the roster spot more than DW does after the stellar preseason he had.

[TSE]

I never said Stovall shouldn't be on the team, he should be, but in that game he should have been slated for WR in lieu ST snaps. He is still a young WR with lots of upside and he was a better overall keeper than DW.

i.e.
DW should have had the roster spot over RD
DW should have had the ST snaps instead of MS
MS should have had the WR reps instead of RD - (this is the only reason why Stovall is part of this conversation, and DW doesn't take anything from MS by being on the roster, he merely helps MS convert to the better types of reps that we would want anyhow)