Going into the Week 16 matchup with the Minnesota Vikings, one of the big questions for the Detroit Lions was how the team would attack coordinator Brian Flores’ exotic defense. The Vikings blitzed more often, but also dropped extra players in coverage more often, than any other defensive scheme.
The Lions and offensive coordinator Ben Johnson had a plan. All the window dressing about wondering where a blitz might come from, or if the defensive end will drop back in coverage, doesn’t really matter if the ball comes out quickly and stays short. Johnson designed a game plan that exploited the inherent weaknesses in the Vikings’ unusual defense.
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Minnesota was terrible at covering running backs and short passes to wideouts entering the game. The Vikings counter those issues by tackling well in space and limiting yards after the catch (YAC). Johnson and the Lions correctly divined that Jahmyr Gibbs, Amon-Ra St. Brown and the Detroit skill position players were good enough at YAC to exploit that potential. And exploit it they did.
The Lions finished with 152 yards of YAC in the game out of 257 passing yards total from Jared Goff. They averaged over 5.0 YAC per reception.
Goff’s passing chart (via Next Gen Stats) shows just how focused on the short passing game and YAC the Lions’ game script was against Minnesota. He attempted 40 passes and not one of them went more than 20 yards down the field. Instead, Goff sprayed the shallow flats and short middle — and did so quite effectively.
It’s an unusual strategy for the Lions. Goff entered the game 8th in average air yards per attempt at 6.5. In this game, Goff’s average air yards were a paltry 3.8 — the lowest of his career in any game where he’s thrown at least 10 passes. But it worked well at taking advantage of the inherent weaknesses in the Vikings’ complex scheme. Having elusive players like St. Brown (60 YAC) and Gibbs (33 YAC in a game where he had 20 total receiving yards) made it work.
It was a stark contrast to his Minnesota counterpart, Nick Mullens, who averaged a league-high 14.5 air yards per attempt. The Lions’ biggest defensive weakness is covering the deep throw, and that’s what Mullens and the Vikings tried to exploit. It worked fairly well for them, too; Mullens posted 411 passing yards and two touchdowns but also threw four INTs and could have thrown two more on the high-risk/reward style of play.