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Speaker 3: Hey, everyone. Jeff Risen here with your Daily DLP. It is July 14, Bastille Day. Listens some rush today and honor the French holiday. Don't actually know the entire history of that, but I know the Rush song. I like Rush a lot. Going to see them on my birthday. Very happy about that. Gonna talk today about the Detroit Lions defense. And one of the things that I do every summer is I go through all the teams, and I'm starting with the Lions this year because that's my team. And I look at areas where maybe they were either underappreciated, overrated, over ranked, just weirdly off from what you might expect. And the Detroit Lions defense in 2025 immediately stood out. Now I will warn you ahead of time. I am using grading things grading metrics here as one of the baselines of points, and they are inherently subjective. Now I do know their methodology pretty well, and but some of this shows the the folly in trusting statistics, and and subjective analytics. Certainly, there's a lot of that because the eye test told me in watching the lions last year that the defense wasn't good enough. But the difference between not being good enough and being bad is also a subjective line. But I think the lines were probably closer to just being unfortunate and unable to make plays when they really needed to is the bottom line. Because they did make plays, they just and I I think back to the Pittsburgh game. You know? They couldn't make one's one big play is what they needed on their defense, whether it was a takeaway, a sack. Derrick Barnes or Alex Anzalone making one play in coverage, and none of that happened. And it felt like that was sort of the story of the year for the twenty twenty five Lions on defense, which is why they ranked twenty second in scoring defense, seventeenth in yards allowed per game, eighteenth in yards per play. So just right there. A lot of Lions fans have the impression that this defense was the worst in football. It was not. They certainly struggled some. No doubt about it. Twenty second, that is the top of the bottom tier or the bottom of the mid tier, however you wanna say it. There's 32 teams. There's not really an even dividing point there. Bottom 10, bottom 11. Not obviously not good enough. Yards per play, 5.4 yards per play is eighteenth. Middle of the pack. Yards per game, 332.8, ranks seventeenth, almost dead middle of the pack. On third downs, they were actually pretty good. They allowed a 36.9 conversion on third downs. That was the ninth best in football last year. It was actually better than their offense. The Lions' offense, by way of comparison, converted 38.8, was ranked to nineteenth. Yes, folks. The numbers say that the Lions' defense was better on third downs than their offense was. Yeah. I'm laughing too. I know. I get it. But the broader point here is that there's all this doom and gloom about how bad this defense was. And are they any better now than they were? Because they've lost Terry on Arnold. They've lost Alex Anseloni. Brian Branch won't be back for a while. Kirby Joseph, who knows? Their starting slot, Amiek Robertson, is gone. But there there have been changes. DJ Rita, their nose tackle's gone.

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Speaker 3: As was his backup, Roy Lopez, who wound up playing very well at the end of the year. I understand that. I'm just telling you that the data says that the Lions defense wasn't terrible. They were just untimely would be the word that I would use. Now I'm gonna pull up for the benefit of everyone here. Those of you watching on video will get to see this. If not, I'm just gonna read from it. This is pro football focus. This is their premium stuff. By the way, forgive my appearance. I ate the lettuce, and I am really sweating a lot of time dealing with that, and it's not been pleasant. Please wash your lettuce. Don't eat bagged salads. There's a very bad thing going on out there, and it hit me, and it's hitting me. And I am not enjoying it. So this is Pro Football Focus. This is their twenty twenty five player grades. This is their premium stuff. I do subscribe to their premium. Shocker. Alright. Let's look at overall. I will sort them by things. Lions had the third best overall team grade last year behind Los Angeles Rams and Seattle Seahawks. The Seahawks, by the way, won the Super Bowl. The Rams were very close to that. Patriots were in the Super Bowl. They were fourth. Texans were fifth. Lot of good teams there. Kansas City, by the way, at eleventh even though they missed the playoffs as well. Let's go to the defense because we know the offense pretty good. Defense. Overall defense, you will see that the overall cumulative grade grade for the Lions defense is 81.8, which ranks fifth. Yeah. Fifth. Did this look like the fifth best defense? Not even in my rosiest dreams was this close to the fifth best defense. Let's go to run defense. 78.5 grade. They were fourth. This lion's defense last year had the fourth best run defense grade from Again, there are two ways to look at this. They were probably better than you thought they were, but, also, the grading system doesn't really equate to points on the board or wins and losses. It's grading players, and some individual players had great run defense seasons. Jack Campbell comes to mind. So the defensive backfield all en masse comes to mind in that. Tackling. Now I know this from from writing about it before. The lions were number one in tackling in 2024. They were number two last year, just behind the Packers. They're 74.9 grade. Very, very good. Again, with with tackling and it's not a missed tackle if you don't touch them. You have to actually touch the player in order to be credited with a missed tackle or missed tackling attempt from I have shared with them before they were purchased and, refocused, that that's an error. Because I see many times where a player should be able to make a tackle, and Jameer Gibbs winds up making a move, and they don't touch him. To me, that's a missed tackle. To it's not. Subjective. Again, points out the definite inherent follies in having individual grades going to a cumulative team grade that seems weirdly detached from reality. But it's that way with every team. They're doing the same things with every team. So the grades might be funky, but the ranking overall, like, where they the lions sit, where where they're second in tackling their, what, what were they, fourth in run defense? Pass rush, they were fifth. That one does actually check out. They were sixth in sack rate, in in terms of everything. They were fourth in pressure rate. So, yeah, that that one does check out. Aidan Hutchinson had a lot to do with that. Okeadeem Muhammad down the stretch had a lot to do with that after his midseason slump. Came back very well. Coverage. Now this is the one. This one made me laugh too. The lions were tenth in coverage grade last year at 74.1. Now the raw data

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Speaker 3: I kinda get that. I'm just looking at their past defense, and I'm looking on this one at team rankings, which gives the, the numbers and the ranking. It it's a very good site for raw data on this sort of thing. The alliance allowed the sixth highest or sixth lowest pass completion rate at 61.6. Yards per pass was 7.3, which ranked twenty third. They ranked, eighth in sack percentage at 8.11. That means they sacked the quarterback about once out of every 12 throws. It's pretty good. Again, they were very good on third downs. So why why were they so bad? Why were they twenty second in scoring? Why is the wide impression that the defense was, if not the worst in football, like, you could see the bottom from them. It's kind of a weird thing. Just by the way, I'll I'll finish the thing out. Special teams, the lions were sixth. That's on the strength of their specialist because their coverage units weren't great last year. Again, all subjective data. And I wanna reiterate, My personal take is that the Lions defense was not bad. Not saying they were good, but they weren't bad. They were just unfortunate and untimely, unable to get the key turnover, unable to stop the third and five, unable to prevent the long completion or or the big play. They did allow a a very large big play rate. I looked at Sharp Analytics, and they allowed an explosive play rate of 7.5%. I'm sorry. That's their offense. They were they were good on that. Defense, they had the sixth worst explosive play rate allowed. They gave up too many big plays. They also dealt with a short field poorly, and this sort of ties into where the offense probably wasn't as good as you remember it. They scored a lot. They also sacrificed some field position by missing on third and fourth downs, and that hurt their defense. It's a long winded way of saying that what ailed the defense, which all these metrics are telling you wasn't terrible. Wasn't great, but it wasn't wasn't terrible. It's correctable. It's fixable. Do they have the personnel to do that? We'll find out. I like the depth better in the secondary, but missing Kirby and just Kirby and and Branch to start the year at least, It's not optimal. I'm very hopeful that Derrick Moore is gonna make an impact. Hopeful that Tylek Williams will make a step up, but I don't know that. I don't know they're gonna do that. I am very hopeful that the idea of replacing Alex Anzalone with a safety or an extra alignment or an extra corner instead of playing base defense all the time, the base four three is going to help the defense, specifically in coverage. I think you might see a little bit more zone this year. I think that will help. One of the reasons why I'm optimistic about this, and I will go back to the Houston Texans teams when I lived there, and I actually moved back from Houston. This come this week. My my son's 20 birthday is Saturday. We moved on his eighth birthday back to West Michigan. We were down in Houston for three years, which was when the Texans sort of rose up from being not very good. And they had a year, and I wish I could remember the year. I believe it was '11 to '12. It might have been 12 to 13, where they were very similar to this. They had decent individual performances, but collectively as a defense, they couldn't make plays, couldn't get off the field on third downs. They couldn't there was turnovers. I remember they were thirty first in turnover rank that year. And I made the argument before the season that if they even get even in turnover differential, and they go to be the top 15 in yards per pass and the top 15 in third down conversions, but they're a playoff team. That's exactly what happened. So it can happen. Not they had JJ what? Career year from Connor Barwin helped. They had they had dudes. No doubt about it. They did. Lions have dudes too. They've got two all pros on this defense, Aidan Hutchinson and Jack Campbell. Alene McNeil and Tylik Williams should be should be a pretty damn good one two punch at defensive tackle. Got some questions around that, but there are decent candidates. This is not a defense that's bereft of talent. It's bereft of being proven where they might be right now.

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Speaker 3: But, anyways, I just thought that this whole because the the the the overriding narrative, and by the way, I don't think it's incorrect, that the Lions defense has to get that much better in order for this team to make another step. It's true. But the data, just the raw data and the subjective data, the

Speaker 7: I I don't know my math terms.

Speaker 3: I was a history and meteorology major. I don't know my math. All of the data, subjective and otherwise, suggests and tells you that the Lions defense really wasn't that awful. There is potential for them to pick it up. Even if you find that the the metrics are flawed, I would say that based on the coverage grade and the run defense grade, especially at the end of the season, yeah, there's probably some flaws in that. So I don't know. We're talking a lot about analytics and perception this week. We spent yesterday's show talking about how Penny Sewell is still, in fact, a good player despite what Mike Clay might tell tell you. You find those anomalies at this time of year. And, one of the things that I'm doing now is I am going through and I am doing my prediction for Real GM footballrealgm.com. Check it out. Have stuff coming there very soon on the, upcoming draft class. I do a lot of summer scouting. I've been watching a lot of college football lately, getting ready for the twenty twenty seven NFL draft. But, you're gonna see my win loss over under projections. Are the lines gonna win more or less than what the Vegas line is? And right now, it's sitting at 10.5. I'm still over. Spoiler alert. One other thing. You hear a lot about the Chicago Bears. Where are they at on this defense? Twenty third in overall defense. Run defense or that. Gotta scroll down again. Twenty second. Tackling. Might be easier to just click on the bottom thing. Okay. I missed them. They're ninth there. Okay. Alright. Pass rush. An area that they tried to address, their twenty fifth coverage. This one will indeed make you laugh because the Lions, again, were tenth at a 74.1 grade. One below the Packers were ninth. The Bears, fifty four point eight twenty first. Just something you can throw back at the Bears slappies who like to tell you that they're the best team in football. They made a lot of changes. Remember, for a time this off season, they did not have a single safety on their entire roster. Starter depth otherwise. None. They got some changes too. We'll see how that works out for them. They have reason to be optimistic. I'm here to tell you that Lions fans have reason to be optimistic about their defense too. Even with the injuries, even without Terry and Arnold, it's tough sell for a lot of you. I get that. I'm not expecting them to be twelfth. But if they're seventeenth instead of twenty second in points, and the offense is better at not putting them in bad positions, We've got an all pro punter. Maybe use them a little bit more. He's fantastic. Yeah. I think I think I'm feeling good about the lions. And, again, you can criticize You can criticize ESPN, all all the ranking stuff that you want. That's fine. Generally speaking, I will agree with you. But keep in mind that this is telling you that the Lions could be or should have been better last year on defense than they were based because of their individual performances. And will that replicate? That's why they play the games, y'all. We'll find out soon. Enjoy some rush today on Bastille Day. Jeff Risen signing out. Be good to one another, everybody.