lions post game thread

[Marrdro]

Review of the game from ProFootball Focus
ReFo: Vikings @ Lions, Week 4

They only really bagged on Brinkley (-1.8) on their short review (Ponder was given a negative grade of -0.8), mostly due to his pass coverage:




Very high on Harrison:

Do you have access to the stats on that page anymore? Since they changed the format I don't have access because you have to pay for it now.

Anyway, PFF referenced some of their stats on the Vikes that were pretty amazing. Just couldn't validate them on the site.

[Minniman]

Ponder was.....ummmmm......well.....Ponder was on the field and didn't throw any picks.

I spent years bagging on Jackson for riding the Defense and Peterson to victory...that's what Ponder did today.

111 yards passing. 3-12 third down efficiency. The vast majority of his completions were dink-n-dunk chip shots.

The Ponder-lead Offense was responsible for only 6 points. Special Teams and the Defense did all the heavy lifting.

While I agree that the third down efficiency was not great and must improve, I have to disagree somewhat about Ponder in this game because of four factors.

First, it is difficult to put up big numbers when the team does not have the ball. The Vikings special teams basically took two drives away from the offense, and that is fine with me.

Second, the playcalling on offense was inconsistent, and the Harvin tricky play sidetracked a drive once again. On another play, Ponder cannot personally add YAC to a two yard flat pass that needs eight yards for a first down.

Third, the Lions defense gave the Vikings yardage on two deep plays that Ponder will not get credit for in his stats. The Vikings went deep more times against the Lions than they had in any game this season, and it paid off, but it neither shows up in Ponder's stats nor is reflected in his QB rating.

Fourth, sometimes Ponder just had to take what the Detroit defense would give him or not give him on the plays called. If the situation was third and long and the defense had coverage and provided pressure, Ponder threw the ball away. That is heads up football. It was what Ponder did NOT do against Detroit last season.

There is room for improvement, to be sure, but I would not fault Ponder for the offensive woes on paper against the Lions.

[tastywaves]

While I agree that the third down efficiency was not great and must improve, I have to disagree somewhat about Ponder in this game because of four factors.

First, it is difficult to put up big numbers when the team does not have the ball. The Vikings special teams basically took two drives away from the offense, and that is fine with me.

Second, the playcalling on offense was inconsistent, and the Harvin tricky play sidetracked a drive once again. On another play, Ponder cannot personally add YAC to a two yard flat pass that needs eight yards for a first down.

Third, the Lions defense gave the Vikings yardage on two deep plays that Ponder will not get credit for in his stats. The Vikings went deep more times against the Lions than they had in any game this season, and it paid off, but it neither shows up in Ponder's stats nor is reflected in his QB rating.

Fourth, sometimes Ponder just had to take what the Detroit defense would give him or not give him on the plays called. If the situation was third and long and the defense had coverage and provided pressure, Ponder threw the ball away. That is heads up football. It was what Ponder did NOT do against Detroit last season.

There is room for improvement, to be sure, but I would not fault Ponder for the offensive woes on paper against the Lions.

Great content to show how misleading stats can be. You play to win the game, the Vikings won the game without much difficulty. Ponder was not required to make a lot of plays in this game, so the conservative Vikings didn't call on him to do much and risk negative plays. Pretty much a non factor in that game, but so be it.

Can we put another shout out for Sherels run though. That play really put this game away for us and it was one of the better punt returns I have seen. I was really concerned when he didn't call a fair catch with the Lions player bearing down on him. Looked like he was ripe to get slaughtered, fumble the ball and put the Lions right back in it. It all worked out and changed the second half strategy instantly.

[tastywaves]

Do you have access to the stats on that page anymore? Since they changed the format I don't have access because you have to pay for it now.

Anyway, PFF referenced some of their stats on the Vikes that were pretty amazing. Just couldn't validate them on the site.

No access to the premium stats, just the game review that I posted.

[kevoncox]

You know what a great team is......A team that can come onto the field (especially someone else) and beat that team by exposing their weaknesses.

Lions primary weakness.....Return coverage.....Result...14 points. Coaches got that one right and players executed it to perfection (except the one missed FG - Walsh let me down on that one).

Lions secondary weakness....Stopping the run...Result....AD goes over 100.

Lions tertiary weakness.....Playing in a game that is slowed down. See their secondary weakness. Running the ball on offense coupled with our great defensive play, absolutely kept them out of synch all day.

You know what else makes a team great? When you can overcome one of your own weaknesses......

5 Sacks and 8 tackles for loss and this was provided by the front 4 more the most part which allowed the S's to play deep (and hit hard) in their zones. Also allowed Jasper to roam further away from the DL (back in his zone were he belongs) which allowed him time to read-react to the play.

Long story short, that's how you play the C2 my friends. Front 4 getting it done (I'm loving me some Ballard, Griffen and Guion today), LB'rs back in their zones, DB's routing receivers to the inside and S's laying the lumber from their zones.

On a quick note, ......Hey Kev.....You still say that Everson only has straight inline speed. Cat put his hands on the QB 3 straight plays when we needed him to and had a 4th later on that was also pretty dang crucial.

For the Ponder Hackers......

You do realize that the focus wasn't to come out and light the world up in the air. The goal was to come out and exploit one of the weaknesses of the Lions.....Run Defense.

The ability to succeed/score points by the ST's allowed us to run a ball control, clock eating, offense frustrating game plan which completely kept the Lions offense out of synch. Most of the play calling reflected that.

Sure, there were a few plays that left one wondering (WTF), but thats what you get with Musgrove I think. He seems to like to just throw something out there that doesn't make sense to see what the result will be.

In the end, 0 turnovers from our QB my friends. Zero turnovers. Some very nice completions when we needed them and some really nice 20 yard + throws to Simpson that got the desired result.

I'm liking this team. We can win with any one of our 3 assets (Offense/Defense/Special Teams) and this team is getting better each and every week. Sure, we will see some inconsistencies (Like we did in the passing this week) but lets not go off the deep end and think the players are crap because of it.

Sometimes its because the coaches have them doing something for a reason. It might just be, that the reason they are doing it is because it limits one of our weaknesses so a team can't expose that.

......Just saying.

On a side side side note.....The PUKERS won, but that win only means they are one point better than the 0-4 Head Coachless Aints.........snicker.......snicker.....

I think Griffen has adequate agility for a DL... i think his quickness at LB where they tried him is lacking. The fact that he was moved back to the DL for the 2nd time is telling.

[kevoncox]

I also wanted to state that we are doing great as a team but we must improve our scoring. We simply kick too many FG and fail to score on too many drives. This is on Ponder. The play calling on the drive that stalled was great until it bogged down in the redzone. The Harvin Cat was called perfectly and was blocked well along the OL except for our in house "Load of crap" His man beat him and made the tackle on a play that Harvin walks into the endzone on. The other passes by Ponder were not good. He has always seemed to bog down in the red zone.

[Reignman]

I believe the staff put a tighter leash on Ponder for this game because of how he played at Detroit last year. For whatever reason, he was very aggressive in that game last year and it was one of his worst games. Having said that though, I think the ultra conservative approach on Sunday would have cost us a win too if the ST's didn't bail us out. We had no counter to them shutting down Harvin.

The other passes by Ponder were not good. He has always seemed to bog down in the red zone.

That's because our short passing attack doesn't work very well in the red zone where the field shrinks down and everything gets much tighter. Swings and screens just aren't going to work in that environment. We don't have a tall jump ball possession type receiver either so our options are limited. Rudolph is really our only jump ball option, and that always seem to work out nicely. And I've said it 1000 times, PA on goal line is money every time and for every team. Someone is always wide open in the flat or the back of the end zone.

[singersp]

First, it is difficult to put up big numbers when the team does not have the ball. The Vikings special teams basically took two drives away from the offense, and that is fine with me.

The Vikings T.O.P. was 29:18 to Detroit's 30:42, which is only 42 seconds away from an even 30-30 split.

They also had the ball for 9 other drives not counting the returns, which led to only 6 points.

There's a time to be a little conservative, but I think Frazier/Musgrave, much like Childress, is too conservative. Not putting up any offensive points in the second half out of conservatism, happened to work out to a win this past week, but against better offensive teams, they'll crawl back into it & go ahead just as we've seen many times before.

[Caine]

While I agree that the third down efficiency was not great and must improve, I have to disagree somewhat about Ponder in this game because of four factors.

First, it is difficult to put up big numbers when the team does not have the ball. The Vikings special teams basically took two drives away from the offense, and that is fine with me.

The Vikings had NINE drives compared to ELEVEN for Detroit. Taking away 2 drives does NOT automatically account for Ponders lack of production in the passing game. It's a nice spin, and it distracts from what occurred, but it isn't factually accurate.

Second, the playcalling on offense was inconsistent, and the Harvin tricky play sidetracked a drive once again. On another play, Ponder cannot personally add YAC to a two yard flat pass that needs eight yards for a first down.

I agreed earlier that Playcalling was questionable. But citing 2 plays as the reason for Ponder's lack of production also doesn't tell the story. Virtually every pass Ponder completed was a "short" pass until the 4th quarter throw to Simpson for 27 yards. And while Ponder can't "personally add YAC", he CAN personally throw to a deeper target instead of immediately checking down to his dump-off route.

Third, the Lions defense gave the Vikings yardage on two deep plays that Ponder will not get credit for in his stats. The Vikings went deep more times against the Lions than they had in any game this season, and it paid off, but it neither shows up in Ponder's stats nor is reflected in his QB rating.

PI calls are not a validation of a QB's abilities. I question whether or not Simpson would have or could have caught them anyway. (But I was damn happy for the flags) He also threw a single deep pass to Harvin that didn't connect and wasn't penalized. Fact is, on the deep throws, Ponder didn't excite me with his accuracy. Something he needs to work on. If he can't develop a down field threat, teams will start cheating on him and eliminate his short game - which is apparently all we have right now.

Fourth, sometimes Ponder just had to take what the Detroit defense would give him or not give him on the plays called. If the situation was third and long and the defense had coverage and provided pressure, Ponder threw the ball away. That is heads up football. It was what Ponder did NOT do against Detroit last season.

But that's - again - not what happened. Of our 12 third downs in this game, all but one were passes. AP converted his 3-1, and Ponder completed a 6yd pass on a 3-4, and a 17 yd pass on a 3-2.

However, he was INC on a 3-8, 3-6, and a 3-3, and was sacked on a 3-8. The other 5 third downs were ALL short passes that fell below where we needed to be. That's not "taking what the defense gives you", that's a combination of poor play calling, and checking down to your escape receiver.

So, either the Receivers aren't getting open (which is a part of the problem), Musgrave's play calling sucks (another part), or Ponder is making the easy throws but not getting the job done.

It's actually a combination of all three...but this is about Ponder.

There is room for improvement, to be sure, but I would not fault Ponder for the offensive woes on paper against the Lions.

I'm not faulting Ponder for "paper woes", I'm faulting him for what occurred. Yes, we won...and I'm thrilled we did. But his ROLE in that win was smaller than it could have been...and if he's going to be our future, then he needs to expand his role. Something Jackson never did.

I'm not throwing in the towel on Ponder, I'm not declaring he's a bust, I'm simply pointing out that HIS part of the game was disappointing. Because it was.

Look at it another way; if this was Brady, Manning, Rodgers, or any other QB, we'd say that the Defense shut him down. But because it's Ponder, we say "He took what the Defense gave him" or "He managed the game". The TEAM won, but Ponder did not have a great game.

Once in awhile, that's fine. It happens. And I will point it out when it does. But if it becomes a pattern - like it did with Jackson - then we have a bigger problem.

For now, however, it's just one game. But I'll be watching for improvement....not making excuses.

Caine

[Zeus]

I agreed earlier that Playcalling was questionable. But citing 2 plays as the reason for Ponder's lack of production also doesn't tell the story. Virtually every pass Ponder completed was a "short" pass until the 4th quarter throw to Simpson for 27 yards. And while Ponder can't "personally add YAC", he CAN personally throw to a deeper target instead of immediately checking down to his dump-off route.

Dude - you have zero knowledge of whether or not the primary target on any play is a WR in a short route or a deep route.

=Z=