Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Morning Lions Links for Tuesday 12-7-21

Articles:

KEY QUESTIONS: What are Campbell's takeaways from game tape of Lions' first win?:  https://www.detroitlions.com/news/what-are-campbell-s-takeaways-from-game-tape-of-lions-win-goff-harris-stbrown

TIM AND MIKE: Week 13 observations:  https://www.detroitlions.com/news/tim-and-mike-week-13-observations-goff-stbrown-reynolds

Lions’ Evan Brown, the replacement for Frank Ragnow, headed to COVID list:  https://www.mlive.com/lions/2021/12/lions-evan-brown-the-replacement-for-frank-ragnow-headed-to-covid-list.html

Detroit Lions showed serious signs of life in passing game despite continued third-down struggles:  https://www.mlive.com/lions/2021/12/detroit-lions-showed-serious-signs-of-life-in-passing-game-despite-continued-third-down-struggles.html




Dan Campbell to Jared Goff: "That's the way to throw it, motherf**ker!":  https://www.audacy.com/971theticket/sports/detroit-lions/dan-campbell-to-jared-goff-way-to-throw-it-motherf-ker




NFC North Week 13 recap: Bears, Vikings could be headed for big changes:  https://www.prideofdetroit.com/2021/12/6/22820302/nfc-north-week-13-recap-bears-vikings-headed-big-changes

Lions rookie WR Amon-Ra St. Brown's defensive play made first win of season possible:  https://touchdownwire.usatoday.com/2021/12/05/lions-rookie-wr-amon-ra-st-browns-defensive-play-made-first-win-of-season-possible/

NFL Week 13 Team of the Week & Awards (Play of the week - The Lions win):  https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-week-13-team-of-the-week-awards-key-takeaways-2021

Schein: Nine things I loved/loathed from Week 13 (What I loved - 1. The Lions winning a football game!  YES!!!!  On the last snap of the game, with Detroit trailing Minnesota 27-23, Jared Goff found rookie Amon-Ra St. Brown surprisingly open in the front of the end zone to clinch the team's first win in 364 days. The Lions got off the schneid! And their elation was palpable. I like Goff, I like Dan Campbell -- and I loved seeing the emotional embrace between these two men immediately following the walk-off touchdown. Pure, unadulterated joy.  I have appreciated the energy these rebuilding -- and clearly overmatched -- Lions have been playing with all season. And they had been so close to logging the first win of the Campbell era on multiple occasions, suffering five of their 10 defeats by a single score, often in agonizing fashion. So when Detroit failed to convert a fourth-and-1 deep in their own territory, setting up Minnesota's go-ahead touchdown with less than two minutes remaining, it appeared we were looking at yet another Lions letdown. But Campbell's charges persevered, taking advantage of some mind-numbing decisions by Mike Zimmer (stop chasing those two-point conversions, coach!) and some ridiculously soft coverage on the 14-play, 75-yard, game-winning touchdown drive.  Campbell's first win as Detroit's head coach. Goff's first win without Sean McVay. Every Lion needed this triumph. And every Lion hit all the right notes postgame, dedicating the win to the Oxford community after last week's horrific mass shooting at the Detroit exurb's high school.):  https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-week-13-lions-and-steelers-win-thrillers-while-teddy-bridgewater-and-jimmy-g

The Lions won a game! | SEC teams favored in CFP:  https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/the-lions-actually-won-a-game-plus-why-the-sec-teams-are-so-favored-in-the-college-football-playoff/

NFL Week 13 winners and losers, plus picks for huge Patriots-Bills 'MNF' game and grades for every Sunday game (Winner: Dan Campbell. When an NFL team goes winless through the first 12 weeks of the season, you usually see the players give up on the coach, but that didn't happen in Detroit. Despite an 0-10-1 start, Campbell was able to inspire his guys week after week and it paid off with a wild 29-27 win against the Vikings. Instead of celebrating after the game, Campbell dedicated the win to the students who lost their lives at Oxford High School in Michigan. What's not to like about this guy?):  https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-week-13-winners-and-losers-plus-picks-for-huge-patriots-bills-mnf-game-and-grades-for-every-sunday-game/

$.10 After NFL Week 13 ($.01--The long regional nightmare in Detroit is over. The Lions won for the first time in almost exactly a calendar year, beating the visiting Vikings 29-27 courtesy of a walk-off touchdown pass from Jared Goff to Amon-Ra St. Brown on the game’s final play.  That sound you heard around 4:11 p.m. ET on Sunday might have been the collective Lions fandom sighing joyous relief. This was the fourth Lions game this year decided on the very last play of the game. The first three, including the first meeting with the Vikings and last week’s Thanksgiving turkey, ended in Detroit's defeat. Not this time.  To those folks outside of Lions fandom, it might seem crazy to celebrate a win that elevates the record to 1-10-1. But unless you’re from Cleveland or Detroit, you don’t understand the life-sucking malaise that is a winless season. As a Lions fan and Cleveland native who has professionally covered the only two 0-16 teams in NFL history, trust me when I tell you there is nothing lower than the sheer futility of losing every single game. It’s truly devastating to a regional psyche.  Dan Campbell’s undertalented LIons have fought hard and been more competitive than they have any right to be in the last few weeks. In their last four games, they’ve now gone 1-2-1 with a point differential of just minus-3. Learning how to win and showing something tangible for the dedication to player development and positive reinforcement was critical.  Campbell really needed the win. His playcalling and in-game decisions have been major contributing factors to some recent losses, and he nearly blew this one with an astonishingly bad decision to call a rollout pass by Goff on 4th-and-1 from his own 28 while nursing a 23-21 lead late in the fourth quarter. But Campbell learned from a similar situation a week earlier and engineered a great two-minute drive to answer Kirk Cousins’ go-ahead TD strike to Justin Jefferson (for my money the NFL’s best WR this year). Goff was sharp and the Lions smartly, methodically chewed up yardage to get into striking distance. The game-winning TD throw proved not only that Campbell can win, but was also evidence that other teams also have coaches who make terrible decisions in crunch time that directly lead to losing.  To (mis)quote Hans Gruber from Die Hard, the greatest Christmas movie of all-time, “You ask for miracles, I give you Mike Zimmer.”  Zimmer deserves the heat in the Twin Cities for his decisions to go for two. Three times they tried, three times they failed. They lost by 2. The first two attempts were obvious interior runs into stacked boxes, against a defense that ranked 30th in red zone passing efficiency no less. His soft-shell scheme made it a little too easy for Goff, to this point in the season one of the NFL’s worst passers, to carve up an injury-ravaged defense and continue to find receivers who could get out of bounds.  The Lions dedicated the win to the suburban Detroit community of Oxford, where a horrific school shooting this past week left four students dead and several others injured. A lot of times, the NFL players and coaches are only paying lip service to social situations like that. Not these Lions. They proudly sported Oxford HS shirts during the pre-game and donned decals on the helmets. Oxford High’s football coach is Zach Line, a former NFL fullback who played in New Orleans while Campbell coached there. The sentiment was genuine and heartfelt, and it’s something these Lions should be very proud of. It’s terrible that it was needed, but Michigan really needed the positive outcome to help heal some very deep wounds across the state.):  https://football.realgm.com/analysis/3422/$10-After-NFL-Week-13

What we learned in the NFL Week 13: Gardner Minshew turned up, Mike Zimmer probably got himself fired:  https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/nfl-week-13-recap-eagles-gardner-minshew-lions-vikings-mike-zimmer

32 things we learned from NFL Week 13: Stars shine in clutch (30. A hearty congratulations to the Detroit Lions, who won their first game in 364 days – while avoiding a winless 2021 season – by toppling the Minnesota Vikings 29-27 on the game's final play, an 11-yard Jared Goff TD pass to rookie Amon-Ra St. Brown.  30a. The Lions also won their first game since 2010 without QB Matthew Stafford and scored at least 20 points for the first time since their Week 1 loss to San Francisco.  31. Yet leave it to ever-emotional Detroit coach Dan Campbell to share the success of his first win with nearby Oxford High School's grieving community. Campbell dedicated a game ball to Oxford, which lost four students in last week's shooting at the school. "I just, I want us to not forget these names," Campbell said, naming the victims – four dead and seven injured. "Madisyn Baldwin, Hana St. Juliana, Justin Shilling, Tate Myre, Phoebe Arthur, John Asciutto, Riley Franz, Elijah Mueller, Kylie Ossege, Aiden Watson and Molly Darnell, who’s a teacher." Well done, Coach.):  https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/columnist/nate-davis/2021/12/05/nfl-week-13-32-things-we-learned-2021/8801797002/

How Lions overcame questionable call by Dan Campbell to stun Vikings for first win:  https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/news/lions-vikings-dan-campbell-first-win/oewtbsxd2p9z187ima8dqjnk6

FiveThirtyEight: The Lions Won A Game, The Ravens Lost A Close Call, And The Chiefs Made A Deal With The Devil:  https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-lions-won-a-game-the-ravens-lost-a-close-call-and-the-chiefs-made-a-deal-with-the-devil/?addata=espn:nfl:teams

2022 NFL Free Agent Rankings: Top 75 players expected to enter free agency:  https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-2022-free-agent-rankings-free-agency

2022 NFL Draft:


College Football Players of the Week from Conference Championship games:  https://www.profootballnetwork.com/college-football-players-of-the-week-2021-cfbwk-14/

VIDEO:




'GMFB' crew discuss significance of Lions' first win of '21:  https://www.nfl.com/videos/gmfb-crew-discuss-significance-of-lions-first-win-of-21
Posted by LionsFan at 4:13 AM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
.main-inner .sidebar .Poll { background-color: #AD966C; padding: 15px; }