The Detroit Lions pass rush has been underwhelming all season, but the Week 7 loss to the Vikings took the disappointment to a new level. Minnesota QB Kirk Cousins was not sacked once, and the initial stat book logged just three QB hits by the Detroit D on 34 dropbacks.
Trey Flowers was asked after the game why the pass rush is struggling. The defensive end, who signed with the team for $90 million this offseason but has registered just one sack and three QB hits through seven games, gave an interesting answer.
“Today, it wasn’t a lot of opportunities because like I said, we didn’t stop the run,” Flowers stated. “Anytime you don’t stop the run, they run a lot of play-action, now it’s like you try to stop the run, but now it’s a play-action pass. It’s tough to get there on the play-action pass, obviously it’s still our job to get there, but I think we’ve got to start out by stopping the run. That’s one of the big things we’ve got to fix. We’ve got to earn the opportunity to rush the passer.”
Flowers instantly goes into a discussion about the run defense when asked about the pass rush. That is no accident or misinterpretation of the question. Instead, it reflects on the bigger reason why the Lions pass rush has been somewhere between ineffective and terrible all season:
The coaches simply do not emphasize the pass rush.
Flowers’ honest answer reveals where the coaching points and priorities are from Matt Patricia, Paul Pasqualoni and the staff. Stopping the run is paramount. When the team’s top pass rusher spends almost his entire postgame press conference chiding the run defense, it shines a light on the mindset of the entire defensive scheme.
It’s almost as if Patricia is channeling Pink Floyd to his defensive charges.
“If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?!”
What’s truly sad about this is how poorly the Lions run defense has played. It’s left Lions fans hungry for both meat and pudding, but sadly the defense didn’t cook up anything worth tasting in the rotten loss to the Vikings.
