Wowza on the Lions’ Red Zone D this game.
Wowza on the whole game; every few minutes it seems like there’s something insane happening.
Why is it dangerous?
Football is an inherently dangerous sport. Injuries happen frequently even on routine plays. You have 200+ lb. people running into, over, and falling on to each other on every play. Human joints aren’t really made for that.
Not to mention CTE issues that can happen over the course of career when the helmet hits the ground even outside common helmet-to-helmet collisions.
Sorry, “dangerous” is probably the wrong word.
I guess what I’m getting at is that the NFL in general is very dangerous. Players get hurt all the time. And there is nothing to be gained by the Chiefs in winning that game, so their number one priority is to avoid injury.
So dangerous is the wrong word… I’m not sure what the right word is, but I mean that the only thing that can happen for a Chiefs fan (or, honestly, a Chiefs player) is bad. It’s a stupid game. It’s not fun to watch for fans of either team.
I know similar things happen in other sports all the time, but the omnipresent threat of injuries in the NFL makes it much worse, IMO.
Maybe a Broncos fan can chime in and tell me it was a super-fun game from their perspective, but as a Chiefs fan it was awful (and not because they lost - if they could have just forfeited 40-0 or whatever I would have been happier).
ETA: I think this is largely on the NFL for adding a game and a playoff team. The more games you add the more likely there will be games at the end of the season that don’t matter. Especially with the new playoff system where the only seed that matters greatly is the 1. Before there was a significant advantage to being the 2 vs. the 3 (bye), and 3 v. 4 (playing the worst team), and the 4 vs. the 5 (home field in the first round). Now it feels like the only spots that matter are in vs. out and the 1 seed.
Forfeiting would be best for health, but the teams play just to get playing time for scrubs and backups and also to make money off of the TV/ticket revenue.
Oh I know it’s all about the money, but as entertainment it’s worse than a preseason game IMO.
Non-competitive. One team actually is motivated to win; the other is looking forward to the next game, and just trying to get through the game without suffering any significant injuries.
I dunno, the most fun I’ve ever had watching a game was Super Bowl 48.
Sometimes a blowout can be very fun if you’re a fan of the winning team, especially when your team is an underdog.
(Then again I get that this game was meaningless and the game I referenced made my team the champion.)
Oh blowouts can be awesome. But a predicate to enjoying a blowout is knowing that the other team is actually trying to win and is still getting their teeth kicked in.
One could count on the league not approving, in the slightest, of a team trying to forfeit a game just so that they can stay healthy for the playoffs.
That’s totally fair. If the Broncos were fielding their third string guys it probably wouldn’t have been nearly as thrilling.
Watching this Detroit-Minnesota game, the Lions better hope they win. Their defense was already down something like 12 guys and I think they’ve lost a couple more. And that’s just on defense. No team needs a bye more than them.
And let’s be honest, if you play your practice squad it’s effectively the same as forfeiting anyway.
Me as the Lions line up to go for it on 4th and 2 at the 6 while up by 15: I get being aggressive but you have to make it a 3 score game. Don’t be an idiot, Dan.
Me as they successfully draw the Vikings offside with a hard count: Dan Campbell is a genius!
You’re right, but the defense has been shocking today. I can’t imagine getting Anzalone back has made that much difference, but the Lions defense looks completely different than their last 5 games. I had little hope for a super bowl run before today, but this game is giving me hope.
Especially given the attrition.
I can only attribute that to coaching.
I had a feeling when they lined up, the Lions were doing that to try to draw the foul and pick up the first down. Not that I’m any football strategy expert, far from it, but I’ve seen enough times where a team lines up at 4th down as if to go for it, but they were bluffing to try to get the defense to jump early on a hard count. Thing is, with most other teams, it’s a pretty easy guess it’s a bluff and if the defense doesn’t take the bait, they call a timeout and just go for the FG attempt. But nobody thinks the Lions are bluffing when they line up to go for it on 4th down! And if they hadn’t gotten the Vikings to jump, they probably would have gone ahead and tried to punch in the TD.
There was an earlier Lions’ 4th down attempt that also looked like a ‘WTF’ decision at first-- early on in the second half, the Lions were 4th and literally inches at midfield. The ‘WTF’ part wasn’t the choice to go for it on 4th-- of course the Lions were going to go for it…it was the choice to try a pass play. Which was incomplete. WTF? Why didn’t they run it, or even just do a QB sneak and pick up a new set of downs?!? But then when I thought about it, the Lions were totally lined up as if to run it. Who would expect a pass attempt in that situation? If the play had worked, they could have caught the Vikings flat-footed and had a huge gain, and I would have been yelling ‘genius!’.
That’s the thing about these decisions; sometimes a low-percentage play may be useful to ensure that higher-percentage plays in the future succeed. A good example is from baseball, when Greg Maddux deliberately threw a crap pitch to some slugger, who promptly blasted it over the fence. When he faced that slugger in the playoffs, he fooled him on something else.
Post-game, Goff said the plan was to kick the FG if they couldn’t draw them offside.
You’re right, Williams was in for the TD if the pass wasn’t tipped at the line. Still an easy call to second guess, but there was some logic to it.
But it was a good example of what was actually a really shitty game for Goff. His numbers (27 for 33) look better than he played. He had another pass tipped at the line that was intercepted, the deep interception, a terrible screen that should have been a pick-6, another screen that almost killed Gibbs, and just some bad choices all around.
And they still stomped on the Vikings. If Gibbs and the defense play like last night and Goff plays like he has the rest of the year, they’ll be tough to beat.
Didn’t basically the same thing happen on 4th down later in the game (not inches, but maybe 2-3 yards)? And the pass went to the RB coming out of the backfield for a TD?
Passes on obvious running downs can be huge gains when they work. High risk - high reward.
Interesting. I was wondering whether it was a true bluff or if it was just the Lions going for it on 4th like they always do. But, that’s why it worked so well- you don’t see the Lions lining up to go for it on 4th and think, “eh, they’re bluffing”.
Yep, and even though the previous pass on 4th and inches failed, that’s what makes the Lions’ aggressiveness pay off. Goff makes most of his passes. If at first it doesn’t succeed, try again. I long ago stopped armchair second-guessing Campbell’s aggressive calls, other than a knee-jerk ‘WTF’ reaction for one second, like immediately after the 4th and inches play that failed.