The Detroit Lions didn’t exactly leave Week 1 with a clean defensive performance, but there was enough underneath the chaos to suggest something important may have started to click.
Detroit survived a wild 31-30 overtime win over the New Orleans Saints, and the second half was rough enough to raise eyebrows. The secondary got picked apart, the defense lost its grip, and New Orleans stormed back into a game that had looked headed toward a blowout.
Still, when it mattered most, the Lions got the one stop they needed. In a game like that, that can be the difference between a bad afternoon and a win.
The biggest positive came where the Lions needed it most: the pass rush. One of the main questions entering the season was whether Detroit could create consistent pressure beyond Aidan Hutchinson.
After one game, the answer looks encouraging. The Lions led the NFL with 26 pressures in Week 1, according to Nolan Bianchi of the Detroit News, while also ranking fourth in time to throw at 2.6 seconds, eighth in pressure rate at 40.6%, and 12th in blitz rate at 31.3%.
Hutchinson was a wrecking ball, as usual, with two sacks. But he wasn’t alone.
Detroit finished with five sacks, which leads the league after Week 1, and got pressure from a handful of different places: defensive tackle Alim McNeill, linebacker Derrick Barnes, and cornerback Roger McCreary, who also forced a fumble. That kind of spread-out production is exactly what this defense has been missing.
The back end still has plenty to clean up, and that part of the unit has to get tighter. But if the front can keep this up, the whole defense has a chance to look a lot different as the season goes on. Health and time could help the coverage, but the pass rush is the piece that can raise the floor for everything else.
Hutchinson also brushed off the second-half collapse as something that can be fixed. In the first half, the Lions were flying around, shutting out the Saints and looking like they might cruise. Early in the third quarter, even after Detroit grabbed a pair of takeaways to seemingly seize control, New Orleans answered with an aerial barrage that turned the game on its head.
That’s where the flow of the game changed, and Hutchinson’s view was that the offense and defense stopped feeding off each other. If one side can start handing momentum back to the other instead of letting things snowball, Detroit should be in better shape moving forward.
For now, the Lions have a win, a league-leading sack total, and at least a hint that the pressure package may be more than a one-week fluke. That’s a solid place to start.
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Not every rookie looked ready for a bigger bite of the playbook, though, and Keith Abney II had a tougher time when his defensive snaps came up. Skyler Gill-Howard also got a first taste of real action, and the varied workload is exactly why these early weeks matter for the Lions, who are tracking which newcomers can handle more responsibility as the season moves along. [Read more 🡒]