ALLEN PARK -- The Detroit Lions have enjoyed their most success on offense when able to pound the rock. The main problem with that is that this team has played behind for most of the season.
Jamaal Williams has started all four games, running 42 times for 187 yards and two touchdowns. D’Andre Swift has served in a more multi-faceted role, coming off the bench while regularly seeing more snaps than Williams. Swift has 41 carries for 139 yards and one touchdown, adding 23 receptions for 199 yards and one score, sitting second among all running backs with 29 targets.
The Lions are averaging 4.3 yards per rush, putting the team 13th on the league’s rushing charts. Those aren’t mind-blowing returns by any means, but it’s a step in the right direction for a team that hasn’t finished in the top half of the league in rushing since 1998.
Williams was rolling through the first half last week, but with the Lions trailing 21-0 early in the third quarter, they ran only four designed running plays in the second half. He went into the break with 12 runs for 57 yards, seeing the ball only twice more across the final 30 minutes. Lions offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn said he’s all about riding the hot hand, even admitting he should have continued to find ways to get the ball to Williams last week.
“I probably should have used him more, to be honest with you,” Lynn said. “I’ve been looking at the tape the next day, like ‘That man ran extremely hard.’”
It’s been mostly the same story for this team all season. The 49ers led 38-10 early in the third quarter before the Lions stormed back to make things interesting in Week 1. Detroit went into halftime leading the Packers in Week 2, then got blanked in the second half on its way to the 35-17 loss. Week 3′s devastating loss to the Ravens was the closest game of the campaign to this point, with Williams running 12 times for 42 yards and a touchdown, and Swift adding 47 yards and one touchdown on 14 carries, the first time the scoreboard seemed not to dictate the attack.
Lions quarterback Jared Goff leads the league in passing yards when trailing, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Goff has completed 110 of 161 passes for 1,110 yards with seven touchdowns and two interceptions, with 925 yards and five of those scores taking place when playing catch up.
“Just doing your job, executing. The times we’ve done that, we have started fast, but we turned the ball over or those self-inflicting penalties like that and things like that, it just kills the drive,” Lynn said of those slow starts. “We have yet to play four quarters of focused football and that’s what we’re trying to do right now. We’re sitting here and evaluating ourselves over the last quarter of our season, we did not start the way we wanted to start, but when we looked at the film, there are a lot of things we could have done better, and we feel we can make people go through us and not stop ourselves. We have a pretty good idea of what we can do now and what we can’t do. Hopefully, moving forward we can put this all together.”
Duce Staley, the team’s assistant head coach and running backs coach, agreed with Lynn that he’s all about riding the hot hand when it comes to the team’s one-two punch.
Something worth tracking heading into the weekend’s game against the Minnesota Vikings is the status of the offensive line. Taylor Decker is expected to miss another game, while Pro Bowl center Frank Ragnow joined him on injured reserve to start the week. Penei Sewell has missed both practices this week while dealing with an ankle injury, potentially throwing a wrench into the team’s plans.
“Nothing changes our approach,” Staley said. “We’re still going to be aggressive. We still want to run the ball. It’s the next-man-up mentality around here. That’s what coach Dan has said, that’s what we believe and that’s what we’ve told the team.
“You still stick with the hot hand, but you can still keep them off guard by rotating them, just creating that one-two punch. Still get the ball to Swift. Try to get him in space little bit more because he’s so dynamic in space, but you still give him the ball as a runner, too. Throughout this league, when you think back to good one-two punches, sometimes that No. 1 gets going and No. 2 kind of falls in and plays the role, and vice versa. Well, you just gotta know how to get them in and out of the game in certain situations.”
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