Who are the Detroit Lions in 2017?
By Bruce Walker
What does this balance mean for this year?
Monday night, the Lions beat the New York Giants with a balanced team. It was a primetime game on the road, outdoors. It was against one of the highest regarded defenses in the NFL (well, at the time). The win was against a Giants team that prevented them from clinching the NFC North crown a short eight months ago, holding the Lions to a scant six points while scoring 17.
It was the type of game that the Lions would lose in years past, but not this year.
This year is different.
They are winning with balance. Against the Giants, the Lions could have scored more. They just didn’t have to for a change. The offense ran the ball more than they passed for the first time in half of forever. The defense held the Giants to ten points despite a blown coverage mistake in the first half. They scored with a special teams punt return by their fifth round rookie pick, Jamal Agnew.
They beat their first opponent, the Arizona Cardinals, with scores from all three phases: offense, defense and special teams.
The Lions won their time of possession battle in both games, 33:20 against the Cardinals and 32:47 against the Giants.
The Lions are currently seventh in the NFL in scoring defense and sixth in scoring offense. Ranking in the top ten in both categories is typically playoff worthy football.
They are playing as a team.
Are they a playoff team right now? No. Not at all. There is an entire season to play before we will know that. We may know by Thanksgiving. Or we may not. By November however, we should have a pretty good idea of the identity of the Detroit Lions.
Will they prevail this week against the Atlanta Falcons? You are going to have to wait a few days before finding out my pick for this weeks contest.
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I am not saying that the Lions are the best team in the NFL at the moment. I am not even saying that they will emerge victorious this coming weekend. I am saying that they are playing balanced, strong and dangerous football.
And that is who they are now.