The Detroit Lions CANNOT Let This Happen AGAIN!

the biggest question came in was pukan Nur how to limit pukan nura and what he is good at and and you also mentioned the fact that the you know Matthew Stafford uh when he's under Center hands the ball off more times than when he is in shotgun and that that's a real stat um matter of fact when I looked at this game and I kind of went through some of the nuances of what happened last season and what you know with the Rams uh the playoff game and what's probably probably going to happen this year here's what I wrote number one Nika is firmly entrenched as a 1A 1B option in this Rams passing attack some may attribute Nika's early season success in 2023 to Cooper Cup's absence to injury however ncua continued to produce at a high level even when Cooper cup was back in the lineup now why wild nula set the bar high in his rookie season his ability to excel was mainly against Zone coverage generating a lot of yak yards well guess what lions fans the lions are going to a more Man Press scheme in 2024 and we will see this particularly slow down NOA in week one with the vast amount of tape study done this offseason by all teams in the NFL and the Lions bringing in four new corners uh that all excel at Man Press it is undeniable in my opinion that the Detroit Lions defense is planning to play NOA and Cooper cup both very physical I feel this is answered when you look at the statistical output uh for the ram RS of 2023 the Rams use 11 personnel more often than any other NFL offense this Personnel Group consists of one running back one tight end and three receivers and the Rams used 11 personnel 93.1% of the time last season and 93 90.3% of the time in 2022 what was crazy to me though is that the Rams are not very deceptive at hiding what they are doing with the ball when Stafford is in shotgun he is passing the ball over 90% of the time that makes it easy to have better success when calling the defense to sell out against the past when he's in shotgun you'll have a much lower margin of error or blown coverage opportunity if you're calling a b past defensive scheme when he steps back to shotgun now 11 personnel is a very common offensive package that balances the passing and the running game it also allows the Rams to gather intelligence and force other teams to play their n defenses in ways they are not designed to so how do they stop NCA and Cooper cup and and now Williams well kyen Williams that is I said that they would probably run with a cover one nickel with Man Press and cover one with Man Press in the 4-3 and the reason why I said that is because out of the 4-3 base hybrid system that the the lions run you can literally disguise a fifth DB as a linebacker you could run with five DBS the entire game and you could have one up at in the Box you could drop one back you could shade one you could over one you could under there's a lot of different things that you could do you can Blitz one but the most important thing that I said is they need to have somebody watching Stafford and Williams at all times so maybe that means that you you relax a little bit on blitzing all the time and this is where I said last night and again today that they need to play disciplined football the sacks are going to come and they're going to come because of the Interior pressure and they're going to come because they if they're not able to run the ball they've got to pass the ball that's where you're going to sit back in nickel and you play Man Press you're jamming these receivers you're getting them off their timing routes with Matthew Stafford and that's when the door opens and when the door opens Hutchinson Davenport someone's going to go in and close it I expect to see a lot more single high safety looks in this matchup very early uh the disguise here is that the Lions can run essentially the same defense in the 4-3 that they do in the nickel uh and with the same Personnel groupings uh that all kind of look the same they all kind of blend this will allow the defense to jam the receivers at the line bumping them off the route uh in their timing with Stafford utilizing a stronger interior defensive line to create pressure up the middle that forces Stafford to move around in the pocket we know he doesn't want to run Stafford does not want to run he's too old uh his legs are not the same he's not the same you know quarterback that he was 10 years ago uh but he still can like he still can run he's quick enough he can he can gash you for a first down uh but this will allow the edge containment to sit back watch and then close um shut this thing down of course this doesn't mean that running the defense will 100% shut down the Rams all game long I'm not expecting that but it will give them better odds and that's what football is all about it's the odds game right how much percent or margin of error do you allow within the schemes that you're calling for the other team to have success versus how much your team is having success that's what it all is they are rolling the dice on every single play I'm going to put these guys against you know these guys I'm going to run this scheme against your scheme and when you know you're sigl this guy to motion I'm doing this and at the end of the day you just have to stay disguised enough to not allow Matthew Stafford to figure out what you're doing which I'll be honest and you guys know this you saw Matthew Stafford do it for years he is one of the best at diagnosing a defense pre- snap so how is Aaron Glenn going to disguise it enough to not allow Matthew Stafford to do that well it's almost impossible so that's where you have to have guys that are better on your squad than are better on their squad and you have to play very smart very disciplined football against a high octane offense that the Rams are are going to try to run on Sunday uh pressure strategies this hasn't changed uh the lions are going to run some some very well-timed blitzes I just think this year you're going to see more from our linebackers and more from our DBS than you are from our ends or our pass rushers right I think that you're going to see more coming from Jack Campbell I think you're going to see more coming from Brian Branch out of the safety look in a nickel defense if you slide one safety over right you're playing single high you drop Branch down into the box now you've protected the Run game and if they decide not to run the ball branch is going to fly and that's where Stafford's going to run into trouble so that was my quick notes on on how I believe the Lions defense is going to have some success the matchups that I want you guys to pay attention to this weekend uh Quinton Lake on am manra St Brown Quinton lake is now going to have to man am man R st Brown more often than he's going to want to and and if for some reason he's not the one well then you have travius white uh that that is also going to have to pick up the slack here with Darius Williams out this is going to be a very unique situation neither one of those guys are going to be able to hold J neither of them and that's where I think you know Eric you're you're banking on J to have a really good game because their DB room is is not anywhere close to what ours is and they don't have the speed um jir Gibbs out of the back field against Troy reer their linebacker I think that's another key matchup to take a look at uh we don't know what's going on with Rob havenstein obviously we haven't seen the injury report yet today or Warren McLendon who's going to be starting there how is Aiden Hutchinson going to take advantage of this situation of the Ram's offensive line I think the answer is yes yes he will he's going to take advantage of it uh but I also believe that Marcus Davenport and El mcneel are going to have their moment this weekend uh Jared versman this guy is an absolute wrecking ball he is going to be one of the best defensive ends in this league pass rushers outside linebackers whatever you want to call him he will be eventually just not in week one and not against panul pukan aou and tyon Arnold this is the matchup I think all of us are looking forward to is tyon Arnold going to be physical enough against a physical receiver I can't wait to see it but then again we just learned that Tyrion Arnold is going to be traveling and so is Carlton Davis we're going to see both of these guys moving around on the defense which is something that I called for early in the offseason I was hoping that we were going to see this now we haven't seen it yet the game's not here I'm just reading the tea leaves here uh this is something that we can take a look at um the Monday after or the Tuesday after when we do the game review how much tyon Arnold was moving around kooper cup I'm Brian Branch uh this was a matchup you know from last year I think Brian's going to be just fine moving back to safety but we're also going to see him up in the nickel quite a bit uh this weekend according to reports so there's your keys your stats and your matchups [Music] [Music]