Lions' Analyst Says Run Game Is 'Predictable'

A normally potent Detroit Lions run game was stifled in a Week 9 loss to the Minnesota Vikings.

Despite boasting one of the league's best running back duos in Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery, the Lions were held to 65 yards on 20 rushing attempts in a 27-21 loss.

As the team looks for answers heading into a showdown with the Washington Commanders, former Lions offensive lineman and current broadcast analyst T.J. Lang shared an intriguing observation.

Lang believes the Lions' run game has become predictable for opponents. Though he couldn't quite pinpoint exactly what made it predictable, he noted that the way the Vikings' defense reacted to play action fakes and attacked downhill against run plays indicates that teams have identified tells within Detroit's offense.

"I just think that there's something that looks predictable," Lang said. "When I watch the run plays from last week, and the way that Minnesota's linebackers were playing so fast downhill, and against the play-action they weren't even taking a step up to the line of scrimmage, it's just immediately drop in coverage. I don't know if people are reading stances or formations or probabilities based off of formations and down and distances. That's pretty concerning, especially coming out of a bye week where you spend 90 percent of your time on self-scout."

A 10-year NFL veteran who played for the Lions and Green Bay Packers, Lang noted that there isn't enough diversity within Detroit's run scheme. He suggested the team incorporate more jet-sweeps and reverses to keep defenses off balance.

"There's not enough variance to — hey, let's throw a reverse in there. When we do these jet motions, hand it off," Lang explained. "Minnesota did it last week, and it didn't turn out to be a touchdown but it was a 13-yard game where they just handed off to (Jordan) Addison. You do all these motions, you're doing it for a reason. Not only to pause the linebacker's eyes a little bit, get him to freeze, but maybe you can hit one of those. If you're watching the backside defensive end and he's crashing, crashing, crashing, let's hand one of these off because guess what? The rest of the game, when you give them that motion, they're gonna be thinking about, 'Oh, I can't let up another big play over here,' and then you give the ball to Gibbs and it's 20 yards out the front side."

Coming off the bye week, the Lions' offensive showing was largely disappointing after the team had the previous week to self-scout and put together a thorough plan. Dan Campbell and the staff noted that improving on third-down was one of the team's biggest points of emphasis.

Lang believes that may have had some counterintuitive effects, as the team's production in early downs slipped leading to disadvantages in third-down situations.

"I think that they kind of let some other areas slip," Lang explained. "It's like, 'We want to be really good on third-down.' They weren't good on first-down, they weren't good on second-down, and you're facing so many, let's call it third-and-seven pluses where you don't have an option to run play-action or a bootleg at that point. Because you're not going to fool a defense."