Where the Detroit Lions stand after pre-season game two

The final score of a pre-season game means next to nothing. It was nice for teh Detroit Lions and the Detroit Tigers to get the Friday night sweep over teh city of Baltimore. They beat the Baltimore Ravens and Baltimore Orioles respectively. The Tigers (specifically Prince Fielder) bailed out a sub par performance by Justin Verlander. The Lions had an up and down game. That may not be reflected in the final score, but again in the pre-season we are looking at performances more than who actually wins or loses the game.

The good news here, the first team offense found its stride. Matthew Stafford and Calvin Johnson are as dangerous a duo as there is in the NFL currently. They can virtually score at will. Of course the Lions offense remains a tad bit one dimensional and that is going to hurt them in the regular season. However the running game showed a few things. 166 yards on 27 rushing plays, 6.1 yards per rush play, and four first downs on the ground. It’s not where they need to be, but it is a start. Again this is the cast we are going to see in the Lions backfield as Jahvid Best may never play again, and who knows if Mikel Leshoure will ever play. If Matt Millen was the WR drafter, Martin Mayhew may wind up being the Running backs drafter.

This brings us to Nick Fairley. Nick doesn’t look really good to me. He looks out of shape, he looks miserable, and he continues to take bad, undisciplined (and yes that was a word used a lot last night) penalties. Jim Schwartz might like his aggressiveness but far too often he takes a dumb penalty. The simply fact here is given the reputation of this time currently; they simply cannot get involved in all of that extra crap.

The special teams, especially the punt coverage unit, looked pretty bad. If not for some penalties, and one Raven stepping out of bounds this game would have had a much closer final score. My bet is some special teamers played their last game with the Lions last night, as that is an issue that needs to get fixed sooner rather than later.

DJC would like to give Willie Young a big shout out for almost getting a safety, blocking a punt, and insuring himself a position in the D line rotation. WR Titus Young also had a big game, along with LB Carmen Messina. IN his first action of 2012 Cliff Avril has two tackles.

All in all the performances were largely positive, there are some issues to work on, and again we will look to game three to see if those issues get resolved.