What Dirk Nowitzki texted Cooper Flagg after Dallas Mavericks selection, he wants to repeat Luka Doncic connection

If you’re asking me, reacting to exactly one game of a 17-game season is not the way to go, but there will be a ton of criticism. Specifically, on the way the defense played. The Lions didn’t look like one of the top defenses in the league like they were last year. The bulk of the complaints will come in the edge rusher department.

This is all that Lions fans wanted this offseason, and the Lions did downplay it quite a bit and made no effort to get anyone in outside of Ahmed Hassanein in the sixth round of the draft. He’s currently injured. Fans will be hitting the comment sections, the radio guys will be doing their thing, and that one writer will write something about how someone could get fired, and the national media will blame it on Aaron Glenn not being around.

Again. I think it’s way too early to get this way because it’s Week 1, and this roster isn’t even fully formed yet. Detroit is getting some solid players back from injury soon, and things will begin to gel more with time. Throwing Za’Darius Smith at this wasn’t going to change much.

His accuracy was fine. He only threw eight incomplete passes, with an interception being one of them. But the offensive line failed to hold up for him, and Goff spent a good amount of the day being moved off his spot and having to check down.

There just wasn’t much the Lions could do on offense. Part of that was because of the pressure being allowed, and part of it was because the game plan was overly conservative.

Kelvin Shepperd talked about keeping the Lions’ defense pretty similar to what it was under Glenn, but said there would be some tweaks. Putting Marcus Davenport in coverage on third down was not the tweak anyone probably had in mind.

The Lions should be bringing pressure with their edges, not dropping them into coverage on third down. You do it sometimes, and it makes sense. The multiple times it happened did not make a lot of sense. Davenport wasn’t the only one who did it. Aidan Hutchinson did it, too. It never worked.

Look, I know there was this big belief that Ben Johnson was drawing up 38 trick plays a game, but that was not the case. He had his moments, just like this, where you wondered why he was being so conservative.

There is a gelling period, and that was always understood, but this felt like training wheels were on. Even scarier, it felt kind of Jim Caldwell-ish. Like, these are good players you have. You don’t have to hold them back for any reason.

We knew this would happen to a degree, right? The Lions’ offensive line just lost nearly the entirety of their interior with Frank Ragnow’s retirement and Kevin Zeitler leaving for the Titans. Everyone had a bad day. Penei Sewell included.

He allowed three pressures in this game. That was the most on the team. Goff got sacked four times, and they all came from the interior. Growing pains were expected, but such a flat start was not.

Arnold looked great in camp, and every coach on this team has been selling everyone on how good he has looked. That did not translate into this game. It might have been because he got hurt.

He went out with a groin injury, and before that, he was targeted six times and allowed four catches for 86 yards and a touchdown. He did have one touchdown-saving PBU early in the game, but otherwise it was a pretty bad day for him.