Which Detroit Lions Need To Step It Up The Most Down The Stretch? | Costa and Jansen

Which Detroit Lions Need To Step It Up The Most Down The Stretch? | Costa and Jansen

texts coming in. We’ll read some of those. It’s 9:00 hour on a football Friday. Good morning with the Lions. Is it enough to win this game or do you need to see more? And we want to know the one Lion that’s got to step up from now until the rest of the season. So, we’re going to double down on a question that we had yesterday in the Thursday touchdown about this. And I’ve thought a lot about this. My my guy is Graham Glasgow. And I’ll tell you why in a moment. And I I don’t want to steal your thunder, but you’ve kind of made me think because you were talking about Alen McNeel. That’s who you mentioned yesterday. Um and it’s really weird place because I generally don’t think much about what you have to say. Um you made it very clear today. Yeah. Thank you, John. Um, but with what we saw last night, the context of a Houston team that really struggled at the start of the season, they’re without their starting quarterback and CJ Stout. Nobody’s going to con, you know, uh, mistake Davis Mills for a franchise quarterback. Yet, they’re able to go out there and beat a team like Buffalo and sack Josh Allen eight times because they’re getting really good play from their defense or one of the best defensive teams, maybe the best defensive unit in the NFL. Um, but by applying pressure to to quarterbacks. And I’m not going to go down the road of, you know, hey, Hutch and somebody rushing opposite him cuz we’re good. Um, but I do think that Alen McNeel may be that guy that if he can play the way that he did against Tampa and get back into that rhythm and that impact that the defense, we could have a team much like we saw last night. Now, I think the the the Detroit offense is better than Houston’s offense and the Davis Mills le Houston Texans offense. Yeah, I would think so, too. Um, but I I’m I’m going to stick with Graham Glasgow because for the offense to be operational, you’re going to have to get good play from those three inside. And there’s going to be ups and downs as we have seen and as we expected from two very young, inexperienced guards. But what you need is both experienced tackles and an experienced center to play at a certain level throughout the course of the season, a consistent level, so that they can comfort those guys, they can guide those guys, they can they can shepherd them throughout the course of the season. And you need more better consistent play from Graham Glasgow. There’s no doubt they need Graham to to stabilize the middle of that offensive line. I just have come to the conclusion I don’t expect the offensive line to be what it’s been the last couple years and the path forward for this football team is going to be defense first and last night’s a great blueprint when you have two disruptors on your defensive line. Now Houston has them on the edges. Detroit has played Ali McNeel a little bit on the edge last week but interior with him and on the outside with Aiden. If they can have two disruptors on their defensive line that’s the best path forward for this team. The most important player down the stretch for the Lions is Alen McNeel because now you can hit the quarterback. You can force takeaways. You can get off the field. Lions have been great on third down this year. Top five defense on third down. Imagine when you get a leem really going when that Bucks game becomes the normal game. Now Aiden, who already leads the league in pressures, already has nine sacks, becomes that much more dangerous. Now I don’t have to blitz as often. Now I can drop a little more into coverage. I’m getting my safeties back eventually. I’m I’m going to have my corners back eventually. My defense becomes complete when Alen McNeel gets into his groove into the player he can be and transforms his defense. I mean, it it’s hard to argue that. It really is because we’ve we’ve seen it play out in and and some of it’s just I think Calvin Shepard has done a tremendous job of calling the defense and finding ways against Tampa with four, you know, no-name defensive backs because everyone was either dead or suspended and you find a path to allow your team to to to win. And I felt like the defense had found that path against Philly. They did a really good job against Jaylen Herz. Jaylen Herz wasn’t that much better than Jared Goff. I know Jared Goff had the interception, was a tip pass, blah blah blah, but Jaylen Herz was 50% as a passer. It wasn’t like he was lighting the world on fire and it wasn’t like Saquon was going off. The defense did a tremendous job as they did against Lamar and Dererick Henry. They did it against Jaylen Herz and Saquon Barkley. I like both your guys’. I mean, the thing that stands out here to me is you’re asking for the two guys in the middle on both sides to step it up. Yeah. You know, for Graham just to play consistently and for Alm to make more splash plays. I mean, last year when he was before he got hurt, there were moments getting after the quarterback disrupting up the middle kind of like what’s happening to Jared Goff. We need to counter. Yes. I really like it. I’m going to get a little frisky here. I’m going to call out a pretty big name here. Superstar Amandra St. Brown. So in the they’re two and three in their last five. During that fivegame stretch, he has he’s averaging just under 65 yards a game. It’s not good enough. And I know there’s reasons, but he’s also had the drops. The pressure on golf is affecting this. But you got to elite wide receivers overcome, I think, virtually anything in this league. I’ll back you up on this. Drops are becoming concerning from a guy who never dropped a football. If you’re 27th on third down, who’s the guy you go to on third down to fix that? Yeah. I’m on Ross St. Brown. and and to all procaliber players, we expect more. So, I have no issue if you want to spotlight him and say you need to keep moving the sticks and and help this offense. I but I also think that he is garnering more attention as he should. I do think he’s an elite receiver even though there’s been a couple of drops. We’re just not used to him dropping the ball. I think he is getting more attention because they’re not utilizing that third receiver like we have seen in years previous. Yeah, Isaac Tla has not been a part of this offense. He has not been a target. He has not been a weapon and heck, most games he hasn’t even been on the field. I think maybe, you know, you’d have to look at the all 22 to see, okay, is there a significant or more emphasis, you know, on stopping St. Brown from the other teams, the opponents? We’re like, “Okay, we’re going to take him away.” Now, this team can’t run the ball as good as it used to because of its offensive line. So, we’re going to focus on St. Brown, and then their number two isn’t holding his own enough, which is J Mo, because they don’t have a number three to John’s point. It it some of it’s and they don’t have Leapora right now. So, yeah, it puts more on on a guy like St. Brown’s plate, and and defenses know that. You know, defenses are going to account for it. I think it’s telling the last time the Lions uh lost prior to this week, they lost to Minnesota and then they bounced back. St. Brown caught a touchdown early in that football game against the Commanders. Won’t be surprised if hey that’s that’s where they go this week against the Giants to get the offense going. But the real test is not going to be can you get St. Brown into the end zone against the Commanders or the Giants. Tom, to your point, Green Bay, LA, playoff game number one, playoff game number two, playoff game number three, like he’s gonna have to be a star. So, I’ll I’ll make this comparison. You guys remember when Brandon Marshall was in his prime? Yeah. In the absolute monster reception games he would have. Yep. No matter what the defense did, they couldn’t stop it. And I kind of expect the same of a Monro St. Brown. Like, there’s got to, and maybe the drops are in his head a little bit. Look, the guy’s not perfect. I mean, he’s been absolutely an elite player since he’s been here. But I don’t think there’s a problem. Continue to be. I don’t think there’s a problem though with calling out these guys. Your stars have to be stars when you’re struggling. No, but it’s it’s just important like we get texts on Hutch. Look, I expect a lot from Aiden Hutchinson. It’s okay to ask your stars to give more, but you got to also the connotation isn’t that they’re struggling. Like St. Brown is top 10 in receptions and yards among receivers. Aiden is number one among all edge players in pressures and he’s got nine sacks. He has the same number of sacks as Micah Parsons, right? The same number of sacks as um as Will Anderson. So Aiden’s doing his thing. Aiden’s pulling his weight. I have no issue asking for more of star players, but let’s not get it twisted and act like St. Brown or Aiden are underachieving, right? I think when you But but but when fans look at the pressures and the pressures are impactful. I I don’t want to I don’t want to underestimate what they are, but they’re not sacks. And he’s got nine, and I understand that. I just think there are opportunities that maybe he has missed on when you got a guy wrapped up in the end zone and he finds a way to get out. But aren’t we we’re focused on that, especially these last five games. And Hutch’s production, especially sackwise, hasn’t been there as it was early in the season. I mean, the stars need to be stars. Yep. But it could be anybody. Like, shout out anybody. You know, John and I focused on both sides of the line of scrimmage on the interior. We’ve gotten people calling out the stars to be stars. Uh Ticket Texture points out Khalif Raymond, special teams, Malcolm Rodriguez, punt coverage, kick coverage, special teams, which haven’t been very good of late. Yeah, I mean, Khif has been that guy in in years past. We’ve seen it only once or twice where, you know, he breaks free. Now, he needs a lot of help, right? He needs the blocking to be there, but it feels like on the kick returns, and I know it’s a new system, is new all this stuff. It feels like the the kick return game is in slow motion when he’s trying to bring the ball back to the middle of the field or even take it to the other side. Like, it just feels like he’s in slow motion. Let’s get to Carl in Groveland. You’re on 971. Hey, the first thing I want to say right now is it’s just a philosophical situation where we’re making it sound like the Lions have done nothing but drafted first round linemen when we have been going after wide receivers since we started. You look at the first thing su Su when they drafted Su we attempted to trade up to get Chase Daniels. We look at Tesla wear excuse me but we multiple cho choices we’ve given up to give a third round wide receiver to sit on the bench. There’s things that Jordan Davis went one pick behind JO. Okay, we traded up for an injury issue. This is a GM that takes injury risks and gives up good talent when it falls into their laps and then we get chastised as fans at this and they’re saying, “Oh, we’re supposed to be all Lions. We’re supposed to be the team that always fights for our own people.” But you know what? We’re building ourselves into a weakness that are allowing teams in our conference to build stronger and the responsibility of that falls on our general motor or our general um manager and I’m sorry to be that guy but we got to look at this for reality. So I don’t expect Brad Holmes to bat a th000% in the draft. I agree that if you’re going to spend that much capital on Tesla like he needs to be he should be a bigger part of this. But they’re also not drafting these guys just for one year. I think the projection is also that he’s going to be huge down the road, but we need him to be that now. But then they look back and what we do is it was smart to get the two strong guards. Okay, I love I love who they drafted, but then what do we do? We fall back to the weakness of a aging center who has um re let go off to Denver and come back to us simply because he couldn’t run block. And what do we do? We attempt to build on that not anticipating the issues that we are facing right now. The teams that are beating us are beating us from interior defensive strength and they’re pounding. You’re cutting out Carl. You there? I think we got the gist of it. Yeah. Hey, John. John, to his point though, kind of where he’s going is you wanted to draft Jaylen Carter. Yeah. I wanted to draft Jaylen Carter. You wanted to trade for Will Anderson. Yeah, we wanted to make that move. You see that last night and you see what if a Will Anderson is paired with Hutch or what if Jaylen Carter is paired with Hutch and you also got McNeel and his point was that you’re getting toys instead of doing that, right? and and the fact that it it the success all started with being able to win at the line of scrimmage offensively and you go get an RA draw instead of anyone else to help solidify the injury of that offensive line. Let us know Lion that needs to step up down the stretch. It’s 971.

Jon and Jim give their most important Lions for the rest of the season. #lions #nfl

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