Dan Campbell Isn't Concerned With Your Lions Coordinator Questions, With Diante Lee

0:01Diante Lee:Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm your host Sheil Kapadia here with Diante Lee. We just got finished watching a very entertaining Monday night football game. Lions go to Baltimore, beat the Ravens 38-30. Diante, I think it's the most impressive win by any team through three weeks this season. Is that a crazy take? Not a crazy take. I think that the way I'm thinking about this game, you usually associate with like college football, right? Your statement win, your identity win, your proof of concept victory. I feel like that's exactly what we just witnessed on Monday night. This felt like a Dan Campbell.

0:36I'm shutting everybody up who has been talking for the last couple of weeks about my coordinator hires. I'm shutting everybody up, you know, who are concerned about whether Jared Goff is going to be the same quarterback that he's been with Ben Johnson. Now that that guy's out the door. This defense obviously dominated, and I know we'll get into all of that, but this felt very much like an intentional statement to the rest of the NFC, really the NFL at large, that Detroit's not going anywhere just because some coordinators left the building.

1:02Diante Lee:I think we have the same big takeaway. So let's take a break. Let's come back. There's so much to get to on both sides from this game. We'll do it when we come back. This is the Ringer NFL show presented by FanDuel, and the NFL is officially back. So if you're going to be in it, be in it with FanDuel. They've got the goods, futures, live betting, SGPs, your way bets, all of it. The app's clean, it's fast. And yeah, when you win, you get paid instantly, which is nice because Sunday patience doesn't exist. So get your bets in, build something bold and make every game feel bigger. Download the FanDuel app or head to fanduel.com slash Ringer NFL to get started.

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3:28Diante Lee:All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show. Deontay, I couldn't agree more. That's my big takeaway from this game is that this is as much of a statement game as you can have in week three. You know, the Lions said, we're still here. Don't forget about us, especially the coordinator thing you mentioned. It's like, you can shut up about our new coordinators now because we are a complete team and we can win the freaking Super Bowl. There's just been so much talk about them, their window. Did they miss their chance? And those were legit concerns with the coordinators. Would they be up for the challenge, the new offensive linemen who were in there?

4:01Diante Lee:But teams don't go into Baltimore during this era of Ravens football with Lamar Jackson healthy and win in that impressive of a fashion. I mean, the core of this organization, the Lions, just continues to impress. they're now 29 and 8 over the last three seasons most wins in the NFL and I know it's early but I feel like they have as good a chance as any team in the NFC to get to the Super Bowl you'd have to think that way and you know when I was going through power rankings before those run probably around the time that you guys will be listening to this podcast the statement I made about Baltimore is that Lamar Jackson aside you've got to look across that sideline in Detroit and say hey isn't that the team that we're supposed to be?

4:43Are we supposed to be the team that mashes you up front, that can run the ball at will, that can take the run game away from you whenever we want to, that can pressure your quarterback at will? And that was exactly what Detroit did to win this football game, especially once you get outside of the opening script that Baltimore had. And this was actually, it was funny seeing how the game flow worked out because early in the game, I thought that Baltimore was really owning the line of scrimmage on first and second down, especially when Detroit had the ball. There was really no room for Jameer Gibbs and David Montgomery to work into.

5:14A lot of their possessions were being sustained by third down, long yardage. They're able to convert and move the chains. And we've watched that kind of game a bunch of times. And you think like, OK, eventually this stuff is going to start evening out. You're not going to convert these third and sevens, third and eights, third and twelves time over time. And maybe Baltimore is going to be able to stack a couple of good defensive possessions together to take control of this game. and then you look up midway through the second quarter and it's like wait that's not happening actually it's the opposite and the more that this game goes on the more the Detroit is really kind of leaning on this defensive front that Baltimore has I'm obviously missing Nnamdi Matabika and I think that his his absence was sorely sorely met you know he was definitely sorely missed in this game on Monday but I do I just could not look away from how often first down second down Detroit is getting in heavy personnel you know the run game's coming there's nothing that Baltimore can do to stop it.

6:07And then specifically in the second half, you really saw those pass rushers start tearing off once they figured out that Baltimore really couldn't block them up front. Even when they were only rushing three, we saw Lamar Jackson really kind of struggling with managing the pocket because his tackles and guards were struggling up front.

6:23Diante Lee:It's a great point. I didn't think about it that way, but you're absolutely right. I mean, the Ravens, when they're clicking, are the team where it's just like, man, they're unstoppable. There's too much physicality at the line of scrimmage. And then with Derrick Henry and their run game. And that was the Lions today with two. Again, I know the Ravens had injuries. We get that on defense. Listen, a lot of teams have injuries this time of year. And I know those are good players that they were without. But it was just such a big two weeks for the Lions. When you look at their offense after week one in Green Bay, where you say like, uh-oh, this could be a problem without Ben Johnson and without the veteran offensive lineman.

6:59Diante Lee:And you have two young guards in there. And then to do that in Baltimore, where statistically, Deontay, based on EPA per drive, this was the best game by any offense this season because I know it might not feel like that way to everyone, but when you consider they had two touchdown drives of 95 plus yards, like that doesn't happen in the NFL. It's so funny. I like Aikman as an announcer, but I also like that it reminds me of sort of the old school way of thinking a lot of times where he'll just be like, you know, I would take the points here or, you know, you just want to get a first down here.

7:32Diante Lee:Like he was, and that's not wrong. A lot of coaches think that way, that you're backed up at your own five. You just want to get a first down, get in position where you can get a good punt off. But it's like, that's not how the Lions operate. That's why I love watching this team. They are like what I want for my football team, where they're like foot on the gas. We're at our own five. OK, let's pick up the first first down. Then the second one, let's get an explosive. Let's run the ball. And they run for 224 yards in this game. Jared Goff, not sacked to your point. I mean, Jared Goff not sacked once in this entire game.

8:06Diante Lee:And then I think the John Morton, you know, aspect of this is big because let's be honest. It's not like we know John Morton well. And it's like we have a long history with this guy, but we know him because he replaced Ben Johnson. And we know Ben Johnson was very good at his job last year for the Detroit Lions the last few years. And so I felt like, are we going to see that type of offense, even if it looks good? Is it going to feel the same way? And that call on fourth down with the handoff to Amon Ross St. Brown, and then he flips it to Jameer Gibbs for the touchdown. I mean, the crispness of a play like that and the execution that just speaks to how well of a coach team you are when you're able to execute something like that.

8:451 ,000%. And I think that it speaks to exactly what is typified a Detroit win over the last three seasons, right? That they can rip those types of plays off kind of at moments notice because they are so sharp in their execution. But the reason why the trick plays, the deep play actions, the double moves are so effective is because it is all grounded in this foundational belief that they can line up and take five yards whenever they want. And if you're not ready to defend those five yards, it will quickly turn into 20 with Jameer Gifts. It will quickly turn into 35 with Jamison Williams. It can quickly turn into 15 with Sam Laporte and Amon Rod St.

9:27Brown. and to be able to do that against a Baltimore defense, which I think we need to have a maybe longer conversation about the state of this defense in general this year because of how they've looked against other top competitors in the NFL so far this season. But to be able to do that against a Baltimore defense that does sell out on loading up the line of scrimmage to take away the run game, that wants to play tight coverage. I mean, we said this at the top of the show. So much of this, I think, just speaks to who Dan Campbell is as a temperature setter in that building. that you can go on the road against another competitor, another contender in this league and feel like there's nothing they can do to beat us at the line of scrimmage.

10:06Diante Lee:Yeah, let's stick with Dan Campbell because you're so right about all the, and I love what you said about, it's about the basics of sort of just smash mouth. We can run the football and now you have to be ready for that. And so now we can do, if you just start doing all the pretty stuff, it's not going to work without the stuff that is actually at your core. So I think you're right about that. But Deontay, we got to have a moment for the nerds. You know, you're talking about the beautiful X's and O's, but you know, you got some nerd in you as well, uh, with me and I'll try not to get preachy here with it, but one 56 left lions up 31, 24.

10:41Diante Lee:They have a fourth and two from their own 49. No hesitation. They're going for it. They don't want to give Lamar Jackson, the football back. Beautiful play call play action. Jared golf, Tom on Ross St. Brown, 20 yards. Uh, and then David Montgomery runs it in for the long touchdown, they put the game away. Now, Deontay, let's have a little hypothetical here. If that pass goes incomplete, the talking heads are going crazy about how analytics have ruined football and coaches no longer have common sense. But guess what? Now all those people are quiet. Or now they'll say, you know what they'll say now, Deontay?

11:18Diante Lee:They'll say, well, of course you go for it there. You are liars. And I know who you are out there. How you would have how you would have described this if they would have failed in one of those instances. But we know that it's about process over results. And that's not just something you say. It's just the fact that you don't know the outcome when you have to make the decision. And this was another example that the Lions have a terrific process. They mentioned it during the broadcast that John Morton knows when they're in four down territory. So he can make a play call on third down, knowing that we're going to go for it on fourth down.

11:54Diante Lee:There are teams in the NFL that don't do that. We all watch the games on Sunday. And so I love that. They don't waste time making decisions. The players know what to expect. And they've practiced the fourth down calls. Like a lot of times it's like, all right, you decide you want to go for it, but are the players confident that during the week we have repped this and we know what place we want to go to in this situation. So I thought today was just such a beautiful example of what it's supposed to look like. You know, they converted three huge fourth downs in this game. And even if they got stuffed, it still would have been the right decision.

12:25Diante Lee:So let's remember next time with another team and it doesn't work out and people get all up in arms about the analytics. Go check their timelines and say, hey, did they have anything to say during that Lions Monday night game? So sorry. You knew that was coming. Do you do enough to know that was coming? One thousand percent. I knew that was coming. And I would say, I would say this in the funny thing about the conversation about fourth down decision making is that so much of it, so much of the reaction to it, I should say, is based on reputation. Right. And it's one of those things that like we have by we bias ourselves so heavily to the teams that win and go for it on fourth down.

13:01Right. And negatively, you know, the inverse for the teams that lose when they go for it on fourth down. Right. You think about Brandon Staley. And I think that he probably existed on like some pretty extreme ends of the margins at times. But I think that's also reflective of the fact that he knew he was dealing with a flawed roster. They just came up short in quite a few nationally televised fourth down decision making. I think that what you spoke to, not only the decision, like when we went to the two minute warning, I was trying to get my laundry together and I had a moment where I was like, I can't leave the room because I need to see this fourth down.

13:33I know they're going for it on fourth down. I want to see this play out. Right. and for them not to just run like you know a sprint out to the sideline and we're going to try to hit sam laporta literally an inch and a half past the yard you know the line to gain we're not just going to run a toss to jameer gibbs and just hope that he can make a guy miss on basically a glorified punt return they go play action and jared golf doesn't take the little dump off out into the flat he sees oh we're getting man coverage i like my matchup with my big receiver running this big corner out why not take the shot right there's nothing to lose and i I think that, again, this speaks to the confidence that I think Dan Campbell has breathed into his team.

14:12The fact that they do prepare. I think that you look at the way that they execute on fourth downs and how they've executed prior to John Morton taking this job. It's the same way you talk about like the best teams in the NFL and two point conversion situations where, you know, like there's no hesitation. Nobody on the sideline is waiting to see what the decision is. We know what our two point play is. We're getting right on the field. We're going to execute it and we know we're going to have a great option. And then you look at the other side of this game when Baltimore has got a goal to go situation, three straight opportunities within a yard and a half of the goal line, stuffed, stuffed.

14:45And I thought an awful execution of a play call on fourth and goal trying to do this rollout. You've got Zayf Bowers running the back line of the end zone. I don't understand why your smallest wide receiver is the guy running on the back line of the end zone because you would like for Lamar Jackson to be able to lay the ball up. especially when you have a guy that has freakishly like alien sized hands on this team and DeAndre Hopkins and you have another big jumper you know in Rashad Bateman and Mark Andrews right there are so many other options I think they could have gone to um so you just kind of see those differences in late game execution and to me again I think that there are a lot of ways you can look at it we haven't even gotten to the Derrick Henry fumble yet but to me I think that this game the story of this game is the second half because that is where adjustments were made by Detroit They really felt confident in their run game.

15:32And they basically held Baltimore at arm's length the rest of the way. After they take the lead, they were able to kind of keep them away for the rest of the game. And I think that that speaks so highly of just how well this team has executed in these got-to-have-it situations, especially bouncing back from the way they looked in the second half of the Green Bay game to open the season.

15:51Diante Lee:Yeah, no doubt about it. Let's take a break. I want to come back and talk more about that. Talk about the defense. We got to give the Lions defense some love. And then, like you alluded to, where do the Ravens go from here? It's a one and two team that's going to Arrowhead next week. So what does this look like? How do they look better? And how do they bounce back after this loss? We'll do all that when we come back. This episode is brought to you by NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. NFL Sundays are back and you won't want to miss the action. NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV lets you catch every game every Sunday all in one place.

16:24Diante Lee:And now new users get NFL Sunday ticket for eight payments of$34.50 per month. Head to youtube.com slash ringer NFL and sign up now. New users pay$276 or eight non-cancellable payments of$34.50 per month, first charged at purchase. Availability varies with NFL Sunday ticket for out-of-market games and YouTube TV base plan for local and national games. Base plan required. Device and content restrictions apply. Terms, restrictions, and embargoes apply. excludes digital-only games, commercial use excluded, no refunds. Somewhere out there is a Chevy truck. And the person who drives it, well, that's a Chevy person.

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17:29Diante Lee:All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show. My last thing on the Lions, Deontay, I want, you know, the normies on behalf of the normies. I want to be able to claim, claim, uh, Kelvin Shepard before the hipsters get to him. You know, am I, am I too late? Okay. You're with me. Okay. It's not too late. I'm jumping on that bandwagon after this game. He's ours. I mean, dude, that was an impressive defensive game plan. I know you can look at the box score and say, what are you talking about? The Ravens score. If you watch the Ravens every week from last year to this year, you know that that was a very impressive defensive performance.

18:02Diante Lee:I mean, they were forcing Lamar Jackson to hold on to the football. Seven sacks against him. I don't remember seeing a defense. You see defenses get in position to maybe bring him down, but that's the beauty of Lamar Jackson. He's going to shake that off and come free. seven sacks tied for most of any defense against Lamar Jackson in his entire career. And so I thought that was so impressive. Guys like Al-Khadeem Muhammad was terrific in this game. Just the effort he was playing with. Aiden Hutchinson with the big forced fumble and then the sack later. So I thought, even though the numbers might not necessarily show this, that the Lions defensive performance might have shown me as much as, if not more than what they did offensively.

18:44One thousand percent. I remember, you know, in last year's iteration of the podcast, when we got on after the Sunday after the Bengals had played the Ravens the first time, right, that went down to the end, there was a fumbles and it goes over time. And eventually, you know, the Ravens are able to kick field goal to win this game. But I remember that game because Lou Anarumo threw the kitchen sink at Lamar Jackson. Every third down, you've got seven, eight guys walked up to the line of scrimmage. We're going to try to blitz you like crazy. Then we're going to try to drop guys out from all these different angles and change the picture on you.

19:16And Lamar Jackson was just able to dice that defense up. And I just remember watching that game down the stretch and feeling like, well, if this is the level of quarterback play that we're getting out of a guy who was just supposed to be the most mobile quarterback in the league, you've got no answers. And then you look at a game like this, and it wasn't perfect the entire way. I thought that Baltimore really kind of had their way in the passing game early in the action. But I think that eventually you see Kelvin Shepard start to figure some things out. OK, you know, Aiden Hutchinson is having a great day.

19:45Al-Qadid Muhammad was having a great day, even against Ronnie Stanley, you know, in these one on one situations. They're able to rush three and get home or flush Lamar Jackson, get him off his spot. Now you have a spy to go collect him when he starts to break contain. I thought they did an excellent job in the second half in coverage. I mean, you know, you saw some of those in zone shots from ESPN on some of those sacks late in the game. I mean, you're looking at where's Mark and go with the ball. There really aren't that many options, you know, especially with all the stuff working over the middle of the field.

20:15I think that that speaks so highly of Kelvin Shepard and his ability to kind of adjust on the fly. And I felt like on this staff, he was, I mean, Ben Johnson obviously leaves a huge gap, but I think that you can kind of borrow from an infrastructure that exists there offensively. We've seen that in Tampa Bay over the last few years as coordinators kind of phase out and phase in. They've been able to kind of maintain their level. I thought it was going to be much more interesting to see whether or not Kelvin Shepard can step in and replicate a style of defense that Dan Campbell has been very intentional about maintaining, being aggressive, playing tight coverage, blitzing, attacking in all these different ways.

20:53Not everybody has a stomach for that. Right. And to see Kelvin Shepard have that in him and also be able to know, OK, we can dial it back here and still be effective in reaching all of our goals. this was exactly what you'd want to see from a guy who was wearing that headset for the first time in his career.

21:11Diante Lee:Yeah, when they said on the broadcast that his inspirations were Spags and Aaron Glenn, I'm like, all right, it's my kind of guy. That's what you want to hear. This is my kind of guy. No, I don't want to hear any of this. Sit back and too high and limit explosive plays in a row. That's not how defensive players are wired. I've made this argument before. Give me someone who's going to be aggressive. And yeah, I want my defensive coordinator to say that, like, I spent three months watching Rex Ryan. I want to see I want a guy like that. Right. I need to know that you kind of have a little bit of a screw loose in there.

21:43Be, you know, be intelligent, be well prepared. But I need to know that when the chips are down, you're sending bodies at your problem. And that seems to be how Kevin Shepard is wired.

21:52Diante Lee:Yeah. And it's it wasn't reckless. It was strategic. It was smart. I mean, there aren't a lot of games where Lamar's holding the football like that, to your point, and doesn't have anyone open. I mean, this Ravens offense has just looked so unstoppable for a year plus now, even beyond that. But this version of the Ravens offense. So, yeah, I thought that was really impressive from the Lions defense in this game. All right, let's finish with the Ravens, Deontay, and where they go from here. You mentioned it earlier. They look across and maybe they're like, hey, that's the team we might want to be here.