Motown Bombers

Tiebreakers. It's the same rules that allowed Tampa to go to the playoffs with a worse record than the Lions.

I kind of looked at it the other way. Swift is from Philadelphia and probably preferred the Eagles so they accommodated him.

I don't see a measurement for grit?

Lions were without St Brown, Swift and Chark. Still hung 45 on them.

Seattle played the NFC South where no team finished above 500 and still went 0-4.

Not by the end of the year. Neither was Seattle.

Lions and Seattle had the same record, but the Lions had the better point differential, strength of schedule, strength of victory (Seattle was 3rd lowest in the NFC), and the Lions beat more playoff teams than Seattle.

They had the same record.

Yes and no. If the Lions didn't beat the Packers then Seattle misses the playoffs. It's why all of Seattle were Lions fans that night.

The Eagles had the 3rd most rush attempts in the NFL and the Bears were 2nd (Falcons were 1st). Dallas was 6th, Giants 8th, and 49ers 9th. The NFC does run it more than the AFC. Some of that is QBs like with Philadelphia and Chicago but a good LB with speed should help with that.

Seattle and Detroit had the same record and Seattle literally needed Detroit to get them into the playoffs.

This decline as the season went on should be troubling if you're on team Geno.

If they get 5 really good years out of Gibbs, that would be worth it. RBs, unlike other positions, can start and make an impact from day one. It it really better if you get 8 years from another position but it took a year or two to develop them?

You would think the Lions would want to button up the leaker. Teams can just read Charlie Campbell's to know who the Lions are going take.

Right and NYLion literally said career trajectory.

Had the Lions as day two winners. He also likes the Lions day one draft.

The team with the fewest rush attempts had 386 for the year. That's still over 22 per game. The league is passing the ball more but teams still run and QBs run more now than ever. A LB with sideline to sideline speed is valuable against these mobile QBs that gashed the Lions. Gibbs is often compared to Kamara who gets anywhere from 250-280 total touches per year. That's about 15+ touches a game. WRs aren't touching the ball that many times a season. Only a QB is.

They aren't. It's their career trajectories. Both Stafford and Goff had rather abysmal partial rookie seasons. Both then quickly peaked. Both then regressed and hit bottom around age 25-26. Both got new offensive coordinators around age 27 and both started to rebound and become less turnover prone passers under the new offensive coordinator. One had the narrative that he's only successful because of the coordinator while the other did not.

That is a good comp. I wouldn't say Harbaugh was as bad as Geno but those early Bears teams were a lot better than the Jets.

You look at the splits and Geno Smith did start to crater back to reality by the end of the season. Goff got better as the season went on. As the run game regressed with Swift being injured, they leaned on Goff more and he got better. Goff had more pass attempts in December than any other month and had his best month of the season. It was also when the Lions were in playoff contention. Geno Smith in December also had the most pass attempts of the year but it was his worst four game stretch of the year and Seattle was 1-3.

Plunkett was ROY like you mentioned. Geno Smith was flat out awful with the Jets and was a journeyman backup for years. Only comp I come up with is Rich Gannon but IIRC injuries were a part of Gannon's early career.

It's weird how RB and LB are considered low value positions when RBs touch the ball more than any player on offense other than the QB and LBs tackle more people than any other player on defense.

I'm trying to think of a QB in recent memory who was completely awful their entire career until breaking out at age 32? Rich Gannon is the only one that comes to mind and I wouldn't even say he was as awful as Smith before breaking out.