The Detroit Lions pulled off an absolute shocker in New York, dominating the 7-2 Giants 31-18 and improving to 4-7. Many fans around the league believed the Lions would at least keep the game close, but a performance like this was absolutely wonderful to see.
The Lions absolutely shut down New York running back Saquon Barkley who has been fantastic this year. Second year defensive tackle Alim McNeil dominated all game long and was consistently disruptive at the line of scrimmage.
In the passing game, both rookies Aidan Hutchinson and Kerby Joseph had interceptions, as they continued to reward General Manager Brad Holmes faith in them. Defensive end John Cominski also had a strong performance, regularly getting pressures and stops as well. All in all this was easily one of the best games from the Dline this year considering the challenge of trying to contain both Saquon and Daniel Jones on the ground.
On the other side of the ball Detroit’s offensive line continued to win the battle in the trenches in both run and pass protection. Jared Goff was only sacked twice but didn’t see much in terms of pressure throughout the afternoon. There weren’t many chunk gains on the ground, but the run game kept drives alive when it needed to, killing clock and getting first downs which led to scores. When the Lions offense stalled out, punter Jack Fox consistently pinned the Giants inside the 15 and had the G-men backed up deep in their own end for the better part of the contest.
Jamaal Williams had a breakout game as well with a career high three rushing touchdowns. All of them were inside the five as he’s become the Lions de-facto battering ram, punching the ball in for the scores in short yardage situations. He now leads the NFL in rushing touchdowns with 12.
Backup running back Justin Jackson had a good game splitting time between both running and kick returning duties, as he put the Lions in good field position twice on kickoffs. D’andre Swift has been struggling to get on the field of late as his production has been on the decline for several weeks now. Swift had 5 rushes for 20 yards Sunday but he salvaged the day with a rushing touchdown late.
The Lions are on a three game win streak, and have improved their record to 4-6. The recent on field success means Detroit has an outside chance to flip the script on the season. Because of how open the NFC is, the Lions playoff chances aren’t dead yet, but they’ll have their toughest matchup yet with the Thanksgiving day game against the Super Bowl favorite Buffalo Bills this week.
Lions fans also have the Jameson Williams debut to look forward to at some point in the near future. All the signs point to him coming back in the next couple weeks, but it will be extremely interesting to see how fast he can get up to speed considering how much of a game changer he is when fully healthy.
Win or lose this week, there’s suddenly a great deal more optimism around Detroit these days than there was a few weeks prior.
-Robert Martin
Twitter: @Defense_Rob
Photo: All-Pro Reels. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.