The NFC North rivals meet again on Thursday Night Football, with the Packers looking to avenge an earlier defeat and slow the Lions’ pursuit of back-to-back division titles.
Since the start of October, the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers have lost a grand total of one game, combining to go an impressive 15-1.
The lone blemish between Green Bay and Detroit was when they met at rainy Lambeau Field back in Week 9, with the Lions prevailing 24-14.
These NFC North rivals meet again to open NFL Week 14 on Thursday Night Football, with the Packers looking to avenge that defeat and slow the Lions’ pursuit of back-to-back division titles.
Sitting atop the NFC with an 11-1 record, Detroit is a virtual lock to make the playoffs. Our all-seeing, all-knowing supercomputer has calculated the Lions’ probability of making the postseason at 99.1% (as of Tuesday).
Despite riding a 10-game winning streak and being on the cusp of a playoff berth, a second straight NFC North title is no guarantee for the Lions given the nature of the division. The Minnesota Vikings are just one game back at 10-2 and the 9-3 Packers are right on their heels.
Green Bay is firmly in the playoff picture having reeled off three consecutive wins since that setback to the Lions, and our supercomputer has the Packers’ probability of making the postseason at 87.9%.
The Packers also enter this rematch at Ford Field playing some of their best football of the season.
After dismantling the defending NFC champion San Francisco 49ers 38-10 in Week 12, Green Bay rolled to an easy 30-17 win over the Miami Dolphins on Thanksgiving night, jumping out to a 24-3 halftime lead behind a pair of Jordan Love touchdown passes.
In the last three weeks, the Packers are averaging 6.6 yards per play and have a successful play rate of 46.7 after achieving a successful play just 38.9% of the time through Week 10.
Part of the reason for Green Bay’s solid play in the last few weeks stems from Love doing a better job of taking care of the ball.
He hasn’t thrown an interception since the second quarter of Green Bay’s 20-19 win over the Chicago Bears in Week 11, going 56 consecutive passes without a pick. Prior to this stretch, he threw at least one interception in each of his first eight games of the season, never going more than 36 passes without a pick. He has a pickable pass rate of just 2.17 in the last two weeks after registering a pickable pass rate of 4.80 through Week 11.
Packers Player Projections (as of Wednesday)
- Jordan Love: 304.5 passing yards with 1.6 TDs and 1.6 INTs
- Josh Jacobs: 20.8 rushes for 100.7 yards with 0.5 TDs
- Jayden Reed: 3.7 receptions for 81.7 yards with 0.3 touchdowns
- Christian Watson: 3.5 receptions for 76.2 yards with 0.5 touchdowns
- See all the player projections
Love is also making better decisions with his throws, passing more frequently to an open receiver compared to earlier in the year when he was forcing the ball to a receiver that was covered.
Through Week 10, he targeted an open receiver on just 75.1% of his passes, but in the last three weeks his open target rate of 93.7% is the best among the 30 QBs with a minimum of 50 attempts.
And although most of the names on the following list, which charts the open target percentage leaders in the past three weeks, aren’t exactly considered among the upper-echelon of quarterbacks, there is a major difference between Love and the others.
Whereas the other QBs are simply finding the open man on short passes and dump-offs, Love is throwing downfield, averaging nearly 2 more air yards on his passes than the next-closest quarterback.
Throwing downfield has been Love’s approach in the passing game all season, as his average of 9.35 air yards per pass ranks fourth among qualifying quarterbacks. But what’s interesting as of late, is Love is going through his progressions and isn’t just throwing to the No. 1 intended receiver on a given passing play.
Since Week 11, he’s throwing to a checkdown receiver on 23.8% of his throws – the highest rate among qualifying QBs. This comes after he checked down on just 10.7% of his throws through Week 10 – the 11th lowest among the 31 QBs with a minimum of 150 attempts.
Thanks to Love’s turnaround since Week 11, the Packers are finding success on 52.5% of their passing plays after sitting at 41.2% through 10 weeks. The only team to achieve a higher success rate on passing plays in the last three weeks happens to be lining up on the opposite sideline, as the Lions are registering successful passing plays 53.4% of the time.
Jared Goff has bounced back from his five-interception dud in Detroit’s 26-23 comeback win over the Houston Texans in Week 10 by completing 71.7% of his passes for 902 yards with six touchdowns and no picks for a 120.0 rating in the last three weeks.
Lions Player Projections (as of Wednesday)
- Jared Goff: 269.4 passing yards with 1.5 TDs and 1.4 INTs
- Jahmyr Gibbs: 13.4 rushes for 69.0 yards with 0.5 TDs
- David Montgomery: 13.8 rushes for 67.1 yards and 0.8 TDs
- Amon-Ra St. Brown: 6.7 receptions for 76.5 yards with 0.5 touchdowns
- Sam LaPorta: 3.8 receptions for 55.2 yards with 0.4 touchdowns
- See all the player projections
Love has graded out a smidge better than Goff in that span, registering a 120.8 passer rating during Green Bay’s three-game winning streak, thanks to a season-high 129.2 quarterback rating in the Thanksgiving win.
His worst QB rating of the season? That came in the loss to the Lions. He threw a costly interception in the final minute of the first half that Kerby Joseph returned 27 yards for a touchdown to make the score 17-3 and finished with a passer rating of 69.7.
In the first meeting, the Packers held a 411-261 advantage in total yards, but the Lions defense stood firm when it mattered, holding Green Bay without a point on three drives that moved inside Detroit’s 35-yard line.
The Lions also converted two fourth downs into touchdowns, scoring their first points on the first play of the second quarter on Goff’s 3-yard touchdown pass to Amon-Ra St. Brown on a 4th-and-goal. Detroit went up 24-3 on its first possession of the second half, when Jahmyr Gibbs scored on a 15-yard touchdown run on a 4th-and-1.
Gibbs and David Montgomery combined for 138 rushing yards against the Packers, and the backfield tandem serve as the motor of Detroit’s offensive machine.
Behind the duo that has nicknamed themselves Sonic and Knuckles from the popular video game, the Lions are churning out successful running plays at a 42.7% clip to trail only the Los Angeles Rams’ mark of 43.3 for the league lead.
Gibbs takes the moniker of Sonic for his blazing speed and the ability to breakaway for a long run at any moment. Among the 35 running backs with a minimum of 90 carries, Gibbs’ average of 4.27 yards before contact trails only Philadelphia Eagles MVP candidate Saquon Barkley’s average of 4.32 for the best in the NFL, and no running back has a higher percentage of run plays gaining at least 10 yards than Gibbs’ mark of 17.8.
Montgomery has the alter ego of Knuckles because he possesses the power to bulldoze over would-be tacklers. His average of 2.16 yards after contact ranks eighth among qualifying running backs and his 13 runs with a missed or broken tackle are tied for third.
In Detroit’s 23-20 win over the Bears on Thanksgiving, Montgomery rushed for 88 yards and Gibbs ran for 87 as both reached the 60-yard mark for the fifth time in the same game. Since 1980, only one team has had two of its running backs rush for 60-plus yards in the same game more times and that was by the 2010 Kansas City Chiefs, who had seven such games between Jamaal Charles and Thomas Jones.
Gibbs, whose season EVE of 1.85 ranks third among qualifying running backs, is fourth in the league in rushing yards with 973 and is the first player in franchise history to record at least 70 yards from scrimmage in each of the team’s first 12 games of a season.
Montgomery is a mere 3 yards away from 1,000 scrimmage yards, and is on the precipice of becoming the 26th player in the Super Bowl era to begin his NFL career with six consecutive seasons of at least 1,000 scrimmage yards. (Packers running back Josh Jacobs was the latest to join this group, eclipsing 1,000-plus scrimmage yards in Week 11.)
While Gibbs brings the speed and Montgomery provides the muscle, both are a threat to move the chains anytime they touch the ball.
The Packers, however, are coming off two exceptional showings against the running game. Green Bay held the 49ers to 44 yards on 16 attempts for an average of 2.75 yards per carry and then held the Dolphins to 39 yards on 14 runs for an average of 2.79 per attempt four days later.
It marked only the second time in the Super Bowl era that Green Bay permitted less than 45 rushing yards in back-to-back games in a single season, along with the 1995 team.
Producing another such performance seems unlikely against Sonic and Knuckles, but the Packers managed to do a decent job of containing the two last month, as the Lions registered successful running plays just 37.5% of the time – their third lowest single-game percentage of the season.
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