Monday Night Observations
I only watched the five-minute highlights, but it was enough. The Lions were in an ideal spot, coming off the easy-to-flush blowout loss to the Ravens, while the Raiders are a doormat of doormats, playing on the road. The final score was 26-14, but one of the Raiders’ TDs came on a 75-yard pick-six, which is essentially a 10-point play. When you cover easily despite giving up a long pick-six, you dominated.
The win ran my “Normal” picks to 4-0-1 for the week, and I’m kicking myself for not doubling up on the “Ugly” entry as it was the most obvious play of the week.
The Lions ran for 222 yards to the Radiers’ 80. With David Montgomery out, Jahmyr Gibbs had the role we drafted Bijan Robinson for, but Craig Reynolds also had a big game, so chalk it up in some measure to the opponent.
The Lions passing game didn’t need to do much, but Amon-Ra St. Brown always gets his when he’s healthy. And by “his” I mean catches and yards more than TDs. If Jameson Williams ever amounts to anything, this Lions offense would be loaded.
The Raiders are the 32nd best team in the NFL right now. Jimmy Garoppolo is trough Matt Ryan at this point. The Raiders should trade Davante Adams today. Might as well move Josh Jacobs too — there’s no point in keeping valuable, but depreciating assets around.
I'm not so sure. If you look at his skill set, He's very athletic and can do some of the things that Reynolds does in getting contested catches, and he can also do some of the things that Jamo does as a field stretcher. I think from that standpoint, they view him as injury coverage as an outside wideout, particularly with losing the corpse of Marvin Jones to family matters. Now if either of the 3 of Reynolds, DPJ, or Jamo go down, they're still fine from a gameplaning standpoint.
Coincidentally DPJ, like Jamo, is a bit of an underachiever himself. He was one of the more hyped High School players in the state of Michigan in my recent memory (until this current #1 QB in the country at Belleville High: dynasty alert), so much so that I even went to watch DPJ play a High School playoff game, which isn't something I normally do. He went on to underwhelm at Michigan as a highly touted recruit and fell in the draft as a result. I was kind of always surprised that he didn't develop into an dominant player. Maybe the change of scenery in moving back home will be good for him. Trouble is, if he excels, he's a UFA next year so he probably ends up somewhere else.
I'm hoping the Lions told Maxx Crosby and/or Marcus Peters to pack some extra clothes and walk right on over to the home locker room after the game