Got Right

The Lions were able to get that bounce-back game against the Bears last week. They kind of get another one this week, and when the division is as tight as it is, I don’t think they will be complaining. The offense was rolling again. Jared Goff had 300+ yards in the air for 3 TDs, and Jahmyr Gibbs had over 100 yards and a TD on the ground. Their defense held the Bears to just two TDs. Exactly what you ask for against these teams. What Detroit needs to do is continue to win against bad teams. They lost David Montgomery for the season and are still missing numerous key players on their team. Nonetheless, they believe in the “next man up mentality,” and will have guys ready to go come Sunday. They face the second-best defense in the league in San Francisco, and the Lions are the second-best offense in the league. It will definitely be a battle, but I think the Niners are too beat up and dysfunctional this year to put up a fight with this NFC North monster.

The Niners just continue to have a rough year, and the end of the season has been no different. They have lost consecutively in their last two weeks and have been sort of unable to score points over those two weeks. Their playoff chances are finished and have extremely key injuries to Trent Williams, Christian McCaffrey, Nick Bosa, and Brandon Aiyuk. Brock Purdy hasn’t necessarily struggled all year, but it hasn’t been one of his better ones by far. They need to hope their defense can withstand the Lions offense and make a larger impact on this game than they have been able to over the season. I don’t think the Lions lose here. San Francisco is going to be already thinking about next year.

POSTGAME:

You know what, this was a good game. Despite everything I said about San Francisco, they had the Lions on their heels for the first half of this game. And by that, I mean they established themselves early and it was clear they were not going to be rolled over. The Niners looked as of old, as they scored a TD on three out of their four drives in the first half.  But we’re talking about Detroit here, who were playing for the #1 seed which was temporarily lost to the Vikings, (for a few hours.) They came back from an 8-point deficit, which they were held at for the majority of the game, as Brock Purdy made some costly interceptions that both led to TDs for the Lions on the ensuing drive. The Lions defense played well tonight against a surging 49ers offense. Kirby Joseph had both of those picks tonight, and now leads the league with 9 INTs. They shielded their Achilles heel, against a typically tough team, that played particularly tough tonight. And as Jared Goff just said in a postgame interview, “It was personal. These guys knocked us out last year on this field and we wanted to make a statement.” So you know they had some extra (unneeded) motivation. They made another statement and went full throttle, again. But they’ll be doing that next week too.