The Detroit Lions and New England Patriots are not practicing together
By Ash Thompson
The Detroit Lions will not be holding joint practices with the New England Patriots this week. Here is what they hoped to gain from them.
The Detroit Lions had originally been scheduled to host the New England Patriots for two practices prior to their match up this weekend. The Patriots are one of the NFL’s drivers of this practice, and have been using it extensively under Bill Belichick.
It was no surprise that Bob Quinn brought that tradition with him to Detroit. Teams gain a great deal of benefit from such practices. Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks went over the benefits of these joint practices in their Move The Sticks Podcast this week. It is unfortunate for both teams that this did not work out. Here are the reasons that the Lions have been trying to implement joint practices.
Preventing injury
Players get important reps against opponents in a situation where they have reason to be directly competitive, with less danger. Quarterbacks are not getting hit, and skill position players are not -being taken to the ground in practice. Coaches can rapidly run play after play in 11-on 11 without nearly the level of risk that a like game implies.
While nothing is exactly the same as a real game, most NFL starters have plenty of game experience. While a rookie may need to get snaps in order to adjust to the speed of the league, an eight year veteran does not.
The Patriots have been using this methodology more and more as time goes by. That makes this pull away from this week’s originally scheduled events puzzling. “They are really playing all their starters in these practice sessions.” Brooks states regarding why the patriots so often utilize these sessions. He later adds: “then in preseason games they’re playing their backups so they don’t have to expose their starters to injury.”
While that’s not great for their season ticket holders and others attending the games, it makes sense for the team to avoid as many injuries as they can before the games actually matter. The Lions were decimated by injuries to their running back and linebacker corps in 2016, but their starters made it to week one.
More honest player evaluation
Sometimes a particular position group will look like they’re ready to dominate the league in the preseason. The Lions wide receiver group in the mid 2000s always looked great during training camp. More often than not, it turned out that the reason for that was more related to the Lions having a terrible secondary than having dominant receivers. Lions fan’s expectations were unreasonable to open many seasons because of this.
Bucky Brooks spoke on the subject. “The beauty of it is, you have an opportunity to finally evaluate your guys against other competition. You get a chance to see how they play in a very competitive yet controlled environment.” The Lions would be less likely to be blindsided by the team’s inadequacies. In 2015 the team started the year 1-7. They had not participated in a joint practice since the year 2000. Immediately after taking charge Bob Quinn began to set up joint practices for the team.
Playing against professionals in different schemes
NFL players are great at what they do, but they are not great at what other players do. The Lions struggled against three man fronts offensively last season. Teams do their best to prepare for the teams they know they are going to play, by getting their players to do their best impression of that other team against the starting offense.
As Per Jeremiah “you’ve got guys going off the cards, trying to run the schemes that the Bengals run, the next day would be the Browns and the following day might be the Steelers.” While that is useful, The Lions do not have personnel to effectively run an NFL caliber 3-4 defense in practices.
“That’s one thing to try and mimic the look of a 3-4 team, it’s another to practice for a couple days with another team that majors in it.” Jeremiah adds, “you get a chance to see different schemes and get full speed practice reps.” The Detroit Lions are in joint practices with the New England Patriots this week, but in week one it was the Indianapolis Colts. The Colts run a 3-4, and those practice reps should pay dividends later in the year.
Experimentation without putting anything on tape
Jim Caldwell likes to keep things as close to his chest as possible. Preseason games are all available to every team. In an hour, a well prepared scout can have a game time stamped with all kinds of analytics for opposing coaching staffs. Only the teams participating in joint practices get any footage of what happens during those practices. As long as the two teams do not meet again in the regular season, coaches are free to show as much of their playbook as the team is capable of running.
As Brooks put it “In these joint practices you can do the things that you may want to save until the regular season. You can keep those things a secret but still work on them.” This is the reason that the Lions offense is extremely bland in the preseason. Last week the Lions used 11 personnel (one running back and one tight end) on 51 of 61 offensive plays. While that is likely to be their base offensive formation, the Lions are highly unlikely to be that predictable week in and week out through the year. It is during the joint practices that they are able to work on other personnel packages without tipping their hands to the opponents that matter.
Scouting the other team’s players
Coaches and scouts get a direct look at the other team’s players in a setting that allows them to directly compare the results with those their own players have been putting up. When the time comes for teams to make final decisions on who they will and will not keep that matters. The more information a GM has to work with, the better their decisions are likely to be. Side by side Bob Quinn can look at how successful the pass rushers of both teams were against Greg Robinson for example.
Daniel Jeremiah said “It’s invaluable to keep your scouts in the building and be able to look at the back end of the roster of the team that you’re working against for the next couple days.” Such scouting allows for more informed decision making for pre-season trades, in season waiver wire moves, and free agency the following year.
Next: Lions offensive line still a work in progress
I think that the Detroit Lions are definitely doing the right thing by engaging in more of these practices. They have not been able to get visiting teams to come to Detroit, which is a long term problem. As more teams see the benefit of these practices, that issue should be less and less prevalent. This season however, it has limited the Lions to a single set of these joint practice sessions.