How did you spend your Monday afternoon? Probably enjoying life more than I did, for I watched every play of Sunday’s Detroit Lions vs. Arizona Cardinals tie. Twice.
Much like the tie outcome, it was an unsatisfying way to spend a sunny late-summer day. But I did pick a few things up more in-depth than I did in watching the game in real time on Sunday.
Jamal Agnew cost the team heavily
Agnew was wretched as the return specialist. His terrible play cost the Lions significant field position as well as a possession, one which gave the Cardinals points just before halftime. Agnew’s muff was the point where the Cardinals comeback officially began.
His return effort prior to that muff was a well-blocked setup where he only needed to beat the first tackler to get a good 15 yards of open turf right in front of him. Agnew made an unnecessary spin move, jogged backward a step and got buried by the only Cardinal within two seconds of him.
Later he didn’t cleanly field a fair catch on a kickoff. Agnew finished with minus-2 yards on five return attempts. His best effort was negated by a penalty. None of his kick return attempts advanced the ball farther than simply not catching it and letting it roll out of bounds in the end zone would have. He certainly didn’t redeem himself on defense, either.
T.J. Hockenson was even better than his record-setting stats
Hockenson set the NFL record for most receiving yards by a rookie TE in his first game. The first-round pick caught six passes (on nine targets) for 131 yards and a TD. But he did more than that, too.
He was very effective in the run game, walling off his blocking mark consistently. Hockenson saved a sack of Matthew Stafford with a great effort to lunge and chip-block away a free rusher, coming across the formation to make it happen.
I haven’t seen the All-22 film yet, but it appeared the Cardinals changed their coverage to pay more attention to Hockenson after halftime. He still got free thanks to speed, precision and nice wiggle for a big man. The extra attention gave Danny Amendola more room to operate.
The run game was largely awful
Through the first three quarters, Matthew Stafford was the Lions’ leading rusher with 22 yards. Kerryon Johnson gained nine yards on his first carry. He got eight total on his next eight attempts, including one run for one yard where he broke three tackles.
Johnson did finish with 49 yards on 16 runs, reliably churning 3 yards when the Lions were efforting to run the clock in the fourth quarter. C.J. Anderson managed 35 yards on 11 carries, getting over a quarter of those on one run.
The run blocking was mostly inadequate, save some really good work from Taylor Decker (his pass pro was trash but he reliably opened holes in the run game) and the tight ends. Running to the right did not work at all.
The defensive front was outstanding vs. Kyler Murray for 3 quarters
Detroit’s defense dominated the first half, completely smothering rookie Kyler Murray. The No. 1 pick was 6-for-16 for 41 yards, got sacked three times and had three passes swatted down at the line. The option play was basically nonexistent.
Some of it was Arizona coming out slowly, but the Lions defense was perfectly choreographed to take away what the Cardinals were trying to do. It was the best half of football I’ve ever seen Christian Jones play, and Devon Kennard was even better. The line, namely A’Shawn Robinson but also Trey Flower and Romeo Okwara, expertly played containment rush on Murray, not giving him escape lanes.
And then it stopped…at about the same point where the Lions defense started playing softer in coverage and giving the Cards more room on the outside. Whether they got fatigued or the Arizona line got more aggressive (it did) and effective, the front wasn’t as impressive during the comeback. The smartly timed rushes went away. Jones and Kennard went away, too.
The decision to move Rashaan Melvin and Darius Slay to initial alignments deeper off the receivers will (rightly) draw a lot of criticism, but the guys in front simply stopped playing well, too.
