Evaluating Detroit Lions Defense Against Chicago Bears Week 16

Chicago Bears On SI

Evaluating play of Detroit Lions defense against Chicago Bears Week 16 at Soldier Field.

Transcript

00:00Turning our attention now to the line of defense. I thought overall just based on the new additions

00:05Uh based on the opportunity to see a fatu melifan will play seeing amik robertson opposite of terry and arnold

00:11I thought the defense did good enough, but I do think that there are things that kind of stood out

00:17When you look at what they're able to do in terms of their past defense

00:21I just thought that the past defense kind of got exploited a little bit there

00:24With keenan allen on terry and arnold and I thought that the difficulty limiting caleb williams in the run game

00:31Was a little bit challenging but first credit to the rush defense

00:34I thought they did very well limiting swift to basically nothing

00:37Uh less than 10 carries and uh less than 30 yards, I believe in rushing numbers there

00:43The leading rusher I think was caleb williams for the bears

00:45So you look at the the first part of what they the line staple on defense is is the rush defense?

00:51I thought they did a good job

00:53DJ reader you look at a stabilizing force along with the derrius smith

00:57They're doing enough in terms of okay stopping the run the question mark comes in in terms of pressures and sacks

01:04And limiting, you know explosive plays in the secondary

01:08That's something that is, you know to be looked at and you hope can improve

01:13As guys come back because the defense will look different when alex ancilloni returns

01:18Uh as jay jalen reeves maven gets more involved as well as the rotation gets more set

01:23With the players that the lines feel like they can trust so overall defensively

01:28I just thought that look part of what the lines wanted to get back to was forced turnovers

01:33And when you're able to knock the football loose when you're able to capitalize on mistakes of your opponents

01:39That's a good thing those extra possessions early on in the game help the lines get momentum

01:44And that's the early narrative of that football game

01:47So I just thought that the defense comes out

01:48Okay, but with some clear alarming signs that you gotta clean up dan campbell kind of constantly talks about hey

01:55We still got some things to clean up. I do think that more of them probably are going to be involved on defense

02:00But look if that's what you need to do is to have an explosive offense and you still gave up less than 20 points

02:06You look at that and you say okay, that's a good starting point for this detroit lions football team

02:11but hey against the vikings against a team like the the bucks or the rams or the

02:16Commanders my goodness. You're gonna have to step it up and across the board on defense

02:22What was your reaction to the defensive performance against the bears?

02:25Yeah, I like you said I think that there's some room to grow there

02:28I think that kayle williams presented a challenge with his ability to extend plays

02:32That the lions struggled with at points. Um, I know early on I believe it was the first series

02:37uh

02:37Zedaria smith and ifatou melafon who both had a chance to bring him down in the backfield and he kind of scrambled around

02:43Um and ended up throwing an incompletion

02:45But still that was kind of the theme a little bit was that williams was able to extend some of these plays

02:51and while he doesn't do it at the level of a guy like josh allen who can extend the plays and wait and wait and

02:56Wait, and then when somebody comes open 60 yards down the field, he can just sling it out there

03:00Um williams does have some playmaking ability with his legs and that's a challenge for any defense

03:06Not just alliance defense that while they have been pretty solid all year long

03:10They're really banged up. Um, and they were able to get home a couple times al-kwadim muhammad

03:15Got one and then uh melafon who actually got one in the fourth quarter as well

03:20Um, so yeah, I think there's some room to grow

03:22I think tyrian arnold he got beat to the touchdown one time

03:25And then he got beat on a fourth down conversion by keenan allen as well

03:28And allen is one of the better veteran wide receivers in the game

03:31Like that was no easy task for tyrian arnold to kind of take him away

03:36Um, but this is a learning experience for him and now that he's the cb1 moving forward

03:41um, you're gonna get to see him, uh get some work against some of these top tier receivers like

03:45Uh, it's not going away like san francisco and then you go to have minnesota come to town

03:50And he could be lined up against justin jefferson for long spurts of that game

03:54Like these are experiences that tyrian arnold is going to need to have and while he'll have some cushion with their safety duo

04:01Of branch and joseph and then you'll have uh, if branch slides into the nickel corner like he did against chicago

04:07Melifan will be back there

04:08There's playmakers back there and it was melifan whose first game back and so there was some rust to be expected there

04:15But this secondary is going to be tested these last two games and then into the postseason

04:19So I think that there are some lessons that can be learned from this game against the bears

04:24Because when you take on san fran and then the big one against minnesota that could be for the one seed

04:30You're going to need that secondary and that pass rush to be on its best behavior

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