Getty Danny Amendola misses a pass in the end zone.
The Detroit Lions went on the road without their starting quarterback and lost another close game to the Chicago Bears.
In spite of a decent effort, there was simply no moral victories on the afternoon for the Lions. The team was sloppy on defense, struggled to maintain any type of consistent offense and couldn’t play with enough needed poise in order to get over the hump late.
As a result, the grades aren’t great for the Lions in yet another week. How does the team get graded for their work? Here’s a look at the Week 10 ledger for the team.
Offense
D+
Detroit was down Matthew Stafford and lost the duo of Ty Johnson and Rick Wagner with injury, however the team still had big offensive pass catchers on the field. In spite of this, the Lions only managed to score one touchdown despite over 300 yards of offense. Jeff Driskel couldn’t get the team in the end zone but once, and the Lions managed to squander field position. It was a tough day for this group as expected, and they will have plenty of work to do as long as they are without Stafford on the field. It wasn’t a good first start for the team in this vein minus their best player.
Defense
D-
The Lions get a bit of a pass for generating pocket pressure, but the team didn’t exactly slow down what’s been an awful Bears offense. They allowed them to explode for 3 touchdowns and allowed far too many big plays in order to win. The defense didn’t force a single turnover and couldn’t keep Chicago out of the end zone multiple times on the day. All in all, a frustrating effort for the team’s defense who needed to do much, much more in order to play a winning game on the road. The secondary struggled during the game as well.
Special Teams
A
For the better part of a half, the Lions managed to control things from a special team standpoint. The Lions nailed a couple of Matt Prater field goals, saw Sam Martin pin the Bears deep and got a few decent returns. Things fell apart a bit in the second half, but Detroit’s special teams helped keep them in it most of the afternoon and was almost a reason the team was able to pull off a win. As a whole, this group was pretty solid and did a nice job. Arguably, they were the one area that did stand out on the afternoon for the team in a positive way.
Coaching
C
Detroit’s offensive game plan minus Stafford was understandably muted, but once again, the execution was extremely poor and the team looked sloppy in making plenty of notable mistakes. Defensively, the Lions don’t seem to have any type of plan to be able to stop the opposition. All told, an average performance when the staff could have schemed the team to a victory and saved a ton of face. Not an above average effort from the staff this week.