Snap count notes from the Lions win over the Saints reflect a shift on defense with Anzalone out
There were quite a few notable takeaways from the player participation report for the Detroit Lions in the team’s Week 13 win in New Orleans. The first that stands out is the relative lack of plays.
The Lions ran just 58 offensive plays in the game, which is low overall but especially low for a winning team that scored 33 points. The quick-strike scores off defensive takeaways really aided Detroit there. New Orleans ran 67 plays, leaving the game with just 125 offensive snaps. Detroit’s Week 12 game had 140, by contrast.
Defensively, the starting secondary of Jerry Jacobs and Cam Sutton at CB and safeties Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph all played the entire game. Third safety Tracy Walker joined them for 45 snaps, meaning the Lions were in base 4-2-5 for 69 percent of the snaps. Will Harris played three snaps, all in the goal line package, and Ifeatu Melifonwu got this customary one defensive snap.
The linebackers who constituted the “2” in the base defense and also expanded to three for the other 19 plays varied with captain Alex Anzalone out. When the Lions stuck with two backers, it was almost exclusively Derrick Barnes (56 snaps) and Jack Campbell (53). Malcolm Rodriguez saw almost double the defensive snaps in New Orleans (31) than he had in the last seven games combined (16). Vet Jalen Reeves-Maybin played a season-high 20 on defense and looked capable in those reps, too.
Aidan Hutchinson once again barely left the field. The DE played 61 of the 69 snaps. Josh Paschal repped 43 in what looked like his best game of the season. Bruce Irvin saw 11 snaps in his Detroit debut. Romeo Okwara bagged a sack amongst his nine snaps, while Charles Harris played just three.
On offense, the biggest takeaway was Amon-Ra St. Brown only playing 79 percent of the snaps. Normally he does not leave the field and he did not have any notable injuries. Josh Reynolds nearly out-snapped him with 44 to St. Brown’s 46. Jameson Williams played 33, followed by Kalif Raymond (13) and Donovan Peoples-Jones (12).
At RB, David Montgomery was the lead back with 36, 10 more than Jahmyr Gibbs. The two were on the field together for three plays. Craig Reynolds saw just two snaps as the third back.
Blocking-wise, Dan Skipper played five reps as an extra tackle, two more than third TE James Mitchell played. After center Frank Ragnow left (21 snaps), Colby Sorsdal went the rest of the way at RG while Graham Glasgow kicked inside to replace Ragnow in the pivot.
