Detroit Lions lone NFL team without preseason sack: ‘It is a biggie’

Carlos Monarrez | Detroit Free Press

Halfway through the NFL preseason, the Detroit Lions are the only team without a sack.

Zip. Zero. Zilch.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Bears have 13 sacks and the Lions’ other two NFC North division rivals have combined for 12 sacks.

Even Buccaneers defensive end Pat O’Connor, a 2017 Lions draft-pick castoff whom they will face in Friday’s exhibition, has out-produced the Detroit’s entire defense with his half a sack.

“Definitely, I take it personally,” Lions linebacker Devon Kennard said Wednesday of the sackless stat. “Definitely want to continue to improve in all facets of our pass rush and get to the point where we can get a sack on the board. That’s what we’re focused on.”

When he was told the Lions were the only NFL team without a sack, defensive tackle Ricky Jean Francois began to say he wasn’t concerned. But he soon changed course.

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“Now since you guys are telling me that — because I didn’t realize that myself — now I know what I have to do,” he said, “or what we have to do as a group and a unit, to get on that field and make sure we get to the quarterback, because we’ve got to get pressure. You can’t sit in this league without no sacks.

“And I understand it’s preseason and most people may be like, ‘Aah, it’s no biggie.’ It is a biggie, because if you can’t execute that now, imagine when the season comes up and you’re playing against ones the whole time where people have a whole game plan and video against you. So you can only imagine how (much) harder it’ll be then than trying to get it done now.”

One big difference in the preseason is that teams use vanilla defenses and stay away from exotic blitzes that would tip their strategy for the regular season. Matt Patricia’s defenses in New England certainly showed an ability to get home and ranked among the top seven in sacks two of the past three seasons.

But Patricia stayed away from explaining the Lions’ sackless number and what it might say about his defense at this point in the preseason.

“Again, we’re really not into stats here right now,” he said. “As far as that’s concerned, we’re into evaluation. That’s the biggest thing and that’s the most important process for us right now. Stats aren’t going to get us anything as far as the regular season is concerned right now in the preseason. But evaluating our team and our talent and our ability, and what we have from that standpoint, and making sure we really understand that’s the biggest concern for us and the biggest thing that we have to try to figure out.”

Beyond just the sack number, the Lions’ defense simply hasn’t been very effective in disturbing opposing quarterbacks in two exhibitions. Opposing QBs have managed high passer ratings and three touchdown passes; the New York Giants converted 50 percent of their third downs last week.

“So obviously if we’re not getting great production, we’re going to make sure that we try to improve that the best we can,” Patricia said. “So I think, again, it’s part evaluation, which is important. And it’s part also trying to understand, ‘Do we get any production from what we’re trying to do?’ So both of those kind of go into play there.”

The Lions not only haven’t sacked any of the six quarterbacks they’ve faced so far. They’ve barely touched them, with just three quarterback hits.

“It just tells us we need to work harder,” said Jean Francois, who has one of the QB hits. “We need to do better in our technique. We need to be a little more eager to get to that quarterback.

“If we can’t sack the quarterback, we can’t get off on third down. And we’re not trying to stay on the field for a long period of time.”

Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.