Chiefs vs Lions NFL Opener

[JohnNord]

I came away from this game thinking not overly impressed with Detroit.  They had one very good drive but aside from that the offensive game plan wasn’t great.  
 

Hutchinson was a beat defensively and KC got away with so many calls.  Still, if Toney doesn’t drop those passes they might not get the W.

 

Overall I see Detroit in a similar position as last season.   Good news for them is that the teams in their division are relatively weak

[uninja]

5 minutes ago, JohnNord said:

I came away from this game thinking not overly impressed with Detroit.  They had one very good drive but aside from that the offensive game plan wasn’t great.  
 

Hutchinson was a beat defensively and KC got away with so many calls.  Still, if Toney doesn’t drop those passes they might not get the W.

 

Overall I see Detroit in a similar position as last season.   Good news for them is that the teams in their division are relatively weak

 

Maybe it was game plan as well, but I just don't see a very robust passing game with the Lions. I get weird shades of Greg Roman and the 49ers and Ravens offenses where the running game is extremely well developed and absolutely lethal but the passing game has maybe 5-10 plays. Maybe it's anecdotal, but I swear the only pass play the Lions have is that in-cut to the middle of the field and Goff completes a pass to a WR between the hashes. Everything else is screens and short passes to a TE.

Edited September 8, 2023 by uninja

[JohnNord]

3 minutes ago, C.Biscuit97 said:

He wasn’t Mahomes level but how many qbs win that game with that crew? He wins if Toney wasn’t completely terrible. 
 

that’s definitely a stats don’t show good he type of game. He wasn’t MVP Mahomes but he was pretty damn good considering what was around him.

He is a great offensive mind. We would be creaming ourselves if he was calling plays for us. 
 

this board loved crappy on Tua and McDaniel helped him have the highest qb rating in the league. He’s a top 5 offensive coach. And definitely a nerd. 

I agree.  McDaniel is very good with play design which is part of the reason why you saw some many open WR’s last season.

 

Also he’s helped Miami develop a decent running game despite not have a great OL or and a low-end RB

 

I also think he’s a big reason why Tua played so well last season.  IMO it isn’t as much about him as a QB, as it is about the offense McDaniel built based on his strengths.

As a head coach, I think he’s very corny though he’s sometimes his comments are funny.   So many have made the comparison to Rex Ryan in that aspect which I have to agree with.  

 

[Bob Jones]

37 minutes ago, C.Biscuit97 said:

I sometimes ask myself how do idiots like Wright and Skip Bayless makes so much money with the dumbest takes ever. Then I see threads about him and realize so many people fall hook lne and sinker for it. 

IMO, 99% of sports talking head “experts” are a joke. They have no more knowledge or insight than tens of millions of serious NFL fans who have been watching the game for decades. At least former players can give some “inside info” that non-players don’t have access to. How somebody like Mina Kimes, as well as many others, could get paid so much is just astounding. Good for them though.

[Shaw66]

10 minutes ago, uninja said:

 

Maybe it was game plan as well, but I just don't see a very robust passing game with the Lions. I get weird shades of Greg Roman and the 49ers and Ravens offenses where the running game is extremely well developed and absolutely lethal but the passing game has maybe 5-10 plays. Maybe it's anecdotal, but I swear the only pass play the Lions have is that in-cut to the middle of the field and Goff completes a pass to a WR between the hashes. Everything else is screens and short passes to a TE.

It's the re-emergence of the running game in the NFL.  At first it was just Tennessee, then the Ravens, and now it's the Lions.  And other teams.   If you can run on first down and get five yards (or more) on a lot of those plays, which is what the Lions did, you can control a lot of games.  With teams so focused on stopping the pass, running has been getting easier.  I believe that's why the Bills like Spencer Brown and wanted Torrence.   I'm guessing that this season, finally, we'll see the Bills be serious about running the ball, because McDermott wants to take what the defense is giving.   If the passing game is solid, running is going to get easier, and stopping the offense will be a bigger challenge.

[Franco_92]

8 hours ago, Araiza Curse said:

Much better than watching it from home like Davis. 

This is fiendishly bad logic. Every starter on every super bowl team ever must be better than any bills player to play in history then. Because they happened to be on a super bowl roster. 

 

It was a nice punt return, no doubt. 3 catches in 3 playoff games? Gabe Davis might finish top 10 in career playoff touchdowns in NFL history.

 

toney is in serious danger of riding the bench or being cut. 

[K-9]

1 hour ago, John from Riverside said:

Hoping that Dalton can make that kind of a difference for us

I always wanted to meet hos

I always felt sorry for his horse.

[GunnerBill]

40 minutes ago, uninja said:

 

Maybe it was game plan as well, but I just don't see a very robust passing game with the Lions. I get weird shades of Greg Roman and the 49ers and Ravens offenses where the running game is extremely well developed and absolutely lethal but the passing game has maybe 5-10 plays. Maybe it's anecdotal, but I swear the only pass play the Lions have is that in-cut to the middle of the field and Goff completes a pass to a WR between the hashes. Everything else is screens and short passes to a TE.

 

Yea it is a bit Greg Romanish. All the creativity on display is really in how they make the run game go. Passing game wise it is pretty simple and even slightly vanilla, but he calls a game with good feel Ben Johnson. His instinct for when to be aggressive and when to be conservative is very good. 

[C.Biscuit97]

39 minutes ago, JohnNord said:

I agree.  McDaniel is very good with play design which is part of the reason why you saw some many open WR’s last season.

 

Also he’s helped Miami develop a decent running game despite not have a great OL or and a low-end RB

 

I also think he’s a big reason why Tua played so well last season.  IMO it isn’t as much about him as a QB, as it is about the offense McDaniel built based on his strengths.

As a head coach, I think he’s very corny though he’s sometimes his comments are funny.   So many have made the comparison to Rex Ryan in that aspect which I have to agree with.  

 

Oh, he’s definitely a nerd who is trying to impress the cool kids 

[Franco_92]

1 hour ago, Shaw66 said:

Oh, I disagree.  His decision making was superb.  His movement in the pocket is excellent, and his decisions to run are almost always correct.   Give him a 10-yard completion instead of the pick six that was totally not on him, and his passer rating was in the 90s.   Give him a better receiver (Kelce, or a wideout), and Chiefs would have cruised.  All they needed was one score. 

 

There is no one better. 

I agree there is no one better, but as last night's game went on, a higher and higher percentage of his throws were in horrible spots. Moore and Toney were bad but a few times their drops had them flipping their hips and reaching behind at the last second. He got happy feet and his placement suffered badly. He was not comfortable. It's exactly how josh looked down the stretch last year. 

[mannc]

30 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

It's the re-emergence of the running game in the NFL.  At first it was just Tennessee, then the Ravens, and now it's the Lions.  And other teams.   If you can run on first down and get five yards (or more) on a lot of those plays, which is what the Lions did, you can control a lot of games.  With teams so focused on stopping the pass, running has been getting easier.  I believe that's why the Bills like Spencer Brown and wanted Torrence.   I'm guessing that this season, finally, we'll see the Bills be serious about running the ball, because McDermott wants to take what the defense is giving.   If the passing game is solid, running is going to get easier, and stopping the offense will be a bigger challenge.

C’mon, the Lions’ offense scored 14 points against an OK defense missing by far its best player.  They had two good drives the whole game.  Gibbs is a serious weapon, but he played less than half the snaps and the Lions hardly controlled the game with the run.  I think the game showed how limited the Lions offense is without a field-stretching WR…they badly need Jameson Williams back.

[GunnerBill]

7 minutes ago, arcane said:

I agree there is no one better, but as last night's game went on, a higher and higher percentage of his throws were in horrible spots. Moore and Toney were bad but a few times their drops had them flipping their hips and reaching behind at the last second. He got happy feet and his placement suffered badly. He was not comfortable. It's exactly how josh looked down the stretch last year. 

 

At least one of those from Moore was totally on him. He ran the wrong route. He was terrible last night, probably worse than Toney. Toney had two awful drops but at least he was open. Moore didn't know what he was doing out there. 

[chongli]

3 hours ago, eball said:

 

Wrong analysis.  If up one and you score a TD in the 4th quarter you absolutely go for two, because the TD itself puts you up 7 and no team coming back is going to go for two instead of kicking the PAT to tie.  If you get the 2-pointer you’ve sealed the game by going up 9.

 

 

But if Detroit goes for 2 and fails, then they are up just by 7, and KC then can win the game by scoring a TD and going for 2. 

[Shaw66]

5 minutes ago, arcane said:

I agree there is no one better, but as last night's game went on, a higher and higher percentage of his throws were in horrible spots. Moore and Toney were bad but a few times their drops had them flipping their hips and reaching behind at the last second. He got happy feet and his placement suffered badly. He was not comfortable. It's exactly how josh looked down the stretch last year. 

That's true.  He needed pinpoint accuracy on some second-half throws, and they weren't there. 

 

The thing about the great QBs is that when they get in great offenses, they're completely deadly.  Mahomes and Brees are/were at their best when the offense is creating a lot of open throws, because they make those throws over and over again.  (I think, for example, that Goff never will be a star, because he isn't consistently accurate.)   When the offense fails to generate a lot of those open throws in rhythm, even the great ones have trouble.  

 

That's why I've thought all year that Dorsey is perhaps the most important key to the Bills' success this season.  His job is to have an offense that flows, that generates open receivers on schedule.   If that's what Josh is looking at, and if he's patient, Josh can be deadly.  

 

Still, I saw Mahomes' greatness last night.  He knows exactly what's going on.   

 

Several times they showed Mahomes after a play had failed, and he was make this signal with his hand, as if to say, "Come on, come on, give me the next play."  He's really focused, always thinking about what he should be.   Someone drops a pass, he may make a little gesture, but you can see that he doesn't dwell on it.   He just moves on.  

[Beast]

Mahomes obviously needs to focus more on football and less on his commercials.

 

🤪

[Shaw66]

7 minutes ago, mannc said:

C’mon, the Lions’ offense scored 14 points against an OK defense missing by far its best player.  They had two good drives the whole game.  Gibbs is a serious weapon, but he played less than half the snaps and the Lions hardly controlled the game with the run.  I think the game showed how limited the Lions offense is without a field-stretching WR…they badly need Jameson Williams back.

I didn't say they were great running the ball, and I didn't say they can win just with that they have.  My point is that they, like many teams, have decided that they're going to feature the run more than was common a few years ago.   Coaches are figuring out that it's gotten more difficult to pass than a few years ago, and one of the reasons is that defenses (including the Bills' defense) are selling out to stop the pass.  That's why the Bills play a slot corner instead of an outside linebacker in a 4-3 alignment.   As teams have sold out to stop the pass, running is getting easier, so coaches have realized that featuring the run is a viable way to build an offense.  See Ravens, 49ers, Titans.   The pendulum is swinging, and the Lions clearly are part of that trend.  

[Franco_92]

5 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

That's true.  He needed pinpoint accuracy on some second-half throws, and they weren't there. 

 

The thing about the great QBs is that when they get in great offenses, they're completely deadly.  Mahomes and Brees are/were at their best when the offense is creating a lot of open throws, because they make those throws over and over again.  (I think, for example, that Goff never will be a star, because he isn't consistently accurate.)   When the offense fails to generate a lot of those open throws in rhythm, even the great ones have trouble.  

 

That's why I've thought all year that Dorsey is perhaps the most important key to the Bills' success this season.  His job is to have an offense that flows, that generates open receivers on schedule.   If that's what Josh is looking at, and if he's patient, Josh can be deadly.  

 

Still, I saw Mahomes' greatness last night.  He knows exactly what's going on.   

 

Several times they showed Mahomes after a play had failed, and he was make this signal with his hand, as if to say, "Come on, come on, give me the next play."  He's really focused, always thinking about what he should be.   Someone drops a pass, he may make a little gesture, but you can see that he doesn't dwell on it.   He just moves on.  

Don't disagree with any of this. 

Josh's best year passing was 2020, and what I remember most about that season was that everyone was open all of the time. What made Josh marvelous that year is that he was finding them whether the pocket was clean or if he had guys in his face in a 10 step dropback off his back foot. 

11 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

At least one of those from Moore was totally on him. He ran the wrong route. He was terrible last night, probably worse than Toney. Toney had two awful drops but at least he was open. Moore didn't know what he was doing out there. 

Yeah that guy is unbelievably bad. Goes to show that no team can get everything right for very long.

[GunnerBill]

2 minutes ago, arcane said:

Don't disagree with any of this. 

Josh's best year passing was 2020, and what I remember most about that season was that everyone was open all of the time. What made Josh marvelous that year is that he was finding them whether the pocket was clean or if he had guys in his face in a 10 step dropback off his back foot. 

 

 

He also had his best OL of his career. It all goes together, protection holds up, provides half a second longer for the receivers to get open, for Josh to release the ball, he gets completions, rhythm and confidence then on the occasion the protection does break he gets out and feels like he can make any throw rather than getting into panic mode.  Hopefully the Bills will be better up front this year. 

[eball]

25 minutes ago, chongli said:

 

But if Detroit goes for 2 and fails, then they are up just by 7, and KC then can win the game by scoring a TD and going for 2. 

 

Which just about nobody would do.  They'd kick the point and go to OT.

 

[Marcus Aurelius]

16 minutes ago, Beast said:

Mahomes obviously needs to focus more on football and less on his commercials.

 

🤪

He must be "lazy"  ...