The Detroit Lions were poised for a breakout season with many analysts, including Reddit’s NFL community, placing them as a legitimate contender. Unfortunately for Lions’ fans, a controversial no-call penalty against the Seahawks sent them to 0-4 virtually ending all hope for the Lions’ chances at making the playoffs.

From a statistical standpoint, the Lions aren’t the worst team in the NFL. According to Football Outsiders’ DVOA Rankings, the Lions are ranked 22nd overall with both offense and defense ranked similarly. So how can a team that is slightly below average have the worst record?

Troubles with Touchdowns

One of the major issues affecting the Lions this season is their inability to score. While only averaging 16.5 points per game, the Lions are ranked 29th in the league at converting drives into scores. Compare that to their 18th ranked defense allowing on average 24.0 points per game for the first four games of the season.

In the Lions’ opener they took an early lead off of an interception returned for touchdown, and scored twice on two long drives to lead the Chargers 21-3. One of those touchdowns was capped off by a 24-yard inside zone run by rookie running back #21 Ameer Abdullah.

The offensive line starts zone blocking to the right engaging with their defenders. Abdullah reads the right side of the formation seeing Chargers’ linebacker #56 set the edge outside of tight end #85 Eric Ebron. He then looks back to his left seeing a crease appear between his left tackle #71 Riley Reiff (circled in yellow) and rookie left guard #72 Laken Tomlinson. Abdullah plants his outside foot and cuts up the field through the hole. He only has one man to beat: All-Pro free safety #32 Eric Weddle (circled in red). Abdullah executes a great juke move in space making Weddle look foolish in the process.

From the defense’s perspective, the Chargers run a 4-2-5 Cover 1 look bringing in their strong safety into the box to help in run support. The reason why this run is so successful against this defense is the wide spacing between the defensive tackles. Due to the flow of the linebackers, the right defensive tackle (left on the image) gets pushed out of position forcing middle linebacker #50 Manti Te’o to cover the backside B- and A-gaps by himself. Once left guard #72 Laken Tomlinson engages with Manti Te’o there is only free safety Eric Weddle left in the play. A perfect play call and well executed by the Lions’ blockers.

This is the longest run the Lions have had all season. The Lions, in their first four games, have averaged just 47.0 rushing yards per game with an average of 2.7 yards per attempt. That’s good for dead last in the NFL. After this play, the Lions allowed the Chargers to score 30 unanswered points in an offensive and defensive implosion losing 33-28 at Qualcomm Stadium.

The Blocking Blues

Offensive line breakdowns haunt the Detroit Lions. In 173 passing plays the Detroit Lions have allowed 65 total pressures – sacks, hurries, and hits – which is the worst pass blocking efficiency in the NFL according to ProFootballFocus. Here is an example against the Denver Broncos in Week 3.

The Broncos rush four defenders and the Lions use a five-man protection scheme to defend. By simple arithmetic, the Lions should be able to handle the four-man rush of the defense. The Lions combination block defensive end #90 Antonio Smith leaving one-on-one match-ups for the rest of the blockers. Normally fine, but linebackers #58 Von Miller and #94 DeMarcus Ware are debatably the best duo of pass rushers in the game.

Von Miller lines up against right tackle #66 LaAdrian Waddle. Miller executes a speed rush where he “dips and rips” around Waddle for the sack on Stafford. Waddle makes three mistakes on this play. First, he underestimates Miller’s burst off of the line of scrimmage and does not take a wide enough first step after the snap. Second, he barely gets a hand on Miller to slow him down. Third, he does not compensate for the speed by opening his hips fast enough to engage properly after Miller gets the edge.

Stafford has only taken six sacks in four games. This is a surprising low number considering that he is constantly pressured leading to rushed throws and runs getting stopped in the backfield.

An astute viewer might notice similar defensive line play from these two plays on the inside zone run and the sack by Von Miller and wonder why Stafford did not audible into an inside zone run like before. It’s because of the game situation. This sack came with just 50 seconds left in the 4th quarter while the Lions were down 24-12 already. They had to produce points quickly and an inside zone run would eat up too much clock.

Inconsistent Quarterback Play

When a team can only average 2.7 yards per carry it becomes one-dimensional. The Lions exemplified this by turning into a pure passing team throwing 169 times to only 69 rushing attempts (2.4:1.0 ratio). Teams typically aim for a balanced approach (1:1 ratio) with a slight emphasis on one side of the ball. Definitely not over two times as many attempts, though.

Once teams took away the Lions’ threat of the run, Stafford was forced to throw downfield behind a suspect offensive line forcing the ball to wide receiver Calvin Johnson. Teams caught on to this and started double-teaming and triple-teaming the All-Pro wide receiver bracketing him out of the play. Second string wide receiver Golden Tate has not fully been utilized as Stafford is getting pressured to make decision more quickly, while emerging tight end Eric Ebron was injured against the Seahawks last Monday. Hopefully, he will return quickly to the lineup. This can be seen in the following example from the Broncos Week 3 game.

The Lions are in empty-set shotgun running a three-level concept on the right side of the field. The Broncos run a Cover 3 defense splitting the deep secondary into three zones while running four underneath zones with their linebackers. It is 3rd and 12 with 3:44 left in the 4th quarter and the Lions are down 12-17. The Lions need to convert to have a chance.

Stafford takes the snap, attempts to look off the safety, and then fires the ball to wide receiver Calvin Johnson at the bottom of the formation running a post-route. There are three zone defenders surrounding Johnson. Strong safety #30 David Bruton intercepts Stafford after reading his eyes the entire play.

Simply terrible decision by the veteran quarterback. Stafford needs to read the coverage, realize the three-level zone concept works against Cover 3 defenses since you are overloading the zones on the right sideline, and find his checkdown receiver in the flat. Since it’s so late in the game, the Lions will realistically go for it on 4th down anyways, so a more manageable fourth down attempt is better than throwing the game away, which is precisely what Stafford did here.

For how inefficient the offense has been, the defense and special teams are not terrible. Outside of a few coverage breakdowns the Lions’ run defense is usually solid. Their run defense will be greatly assisted with the return of All-Pro linebacker DeAndre Levy, who is expected to play this Sunday versus the Cardinals after missing the first four games with a hip injury.

Overall, it was pass blocking breakdowns, a lack of run game, poor play calling, and inconsistent, at best, quarterbacking from Matt Stafford that caused the Lions to lose their first four games.

The Lions are actually the only team to finish winless in the post-expansion era of professional football and it happened only seven years ago in 2008. The last two teams to achieve that feat before them were the 1982 Baltimore Colts and the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. According to Football Outsiders, the Lions at 0-4 still only have a 0.09% chance at repeating a winless season.

Very small odds considering their poor start to the season.