Fans of the forward pass might want to avert their eyes from Thursday’s Thanksgiving matinee in Ford Field. The two teams playing, the host Detroit Lions and visiting Chicago Bears, feature the two worst passing offenses in the NFL through Week 11.
Chicago and Detroit rank 31st and 32nd, respectively, in average yards per pass. The Lions sit at the bottom at just 5.53 yards per pass play, with the Bears next-to-last at 5.75. The Bears spiked up significantly in their Week 11 loss to the Ravens thanks to two passes by backup QB Andy Dalton that produced 109 total yards. One of those, a 60-yard touchdown to Darnell Mooney, was entirely on the legs of Mooney, who took a quick pass caught at the line of scrimmage and sashayed to the end zone while four separate Ravens blew tackle attempts.
Dalton is expected to start in place of injured/ineffective rookie QB Justin Fields. He could bolster what is by far the league’s lowest passing yards-per-game average. Chicago nets just 155.3 passing yards on average, over 40 yards lower than the Lions (197.8), who sit 30th in that category (the Texans are 31st at 194.6).
One of the reasons the Bears passing offense is so bad is their pass protection. No team allows a higher percentage of sacks per dropback than Chicago. Bears quarterbacks are sacked on an astonishing 13.3 percent of dropbacks; only one other team, the 2014 Jaguars, have allowed a sack percentage higher than 11 since 2007. The Lions offense currently ranks 24th with a sack percentage of 7.5, though they blanked the NFL’s top pass rush in Cleveland in Week 11…enough that the Bears defense now has the league’s top sack percentage at 9.8.
In terms of total pass defense, both the Bears (11th) and Lions (13th) rank in the middle of the pack. But the Detroit defense has proven more exploitable. The Lions are 31st in yards per pass play allowed at 7.85, with only the New York Jets allowing more. Chicago sits 19th at 7.0 yards per pass allowed. The Chicago passing offense against the Detroit defense is the resistible force versus the movable object. Whichever team lives up to the laws of physics in that matchup is likely to win the turkey leg on Thursday.
[listicle id=69305]