The Silver (and Blue) Lining: 3 positive takeaways from the Lions loss at Washington

This week’s Silver Lining identifies 3 positive takeaways from the Detroit Lions Week 12 loss, including Bo Scarbrough’s continued success, improved run defense, and the Lions trio of wide receivers reliability.

The Detroit Lions took their (3-6-1) record into Landover, Maryland to take on the Washington Redskins and their lowly (1-9) record, in what should have been a fairly routine Lions victory — someone must have forgotten to explain that to the team.

Perhaps I am the jinx for the Lions, as the third installment of the Silver (and Blue) Lining follows a third straight Lions loss. In a game that the Lions only helped their draft position — they’re currently slotted to pick 7th overall — there were some positive takeaways for the team.

Bo Scarbrough is the real deal

The Lions are still playing with a running back by committee, however, the snaps for Scarbrough are starting to lean in his favor as he saw 51% of the offense plays. In just his second career game, which was also his second career start, Scarbrough finished the game with 98 yards on the ground with 18 carries — averaging 5.4 yards per attempt.

With Ty Johnson and J.D. McKissic both healthy, we haven’t seen what Scarbrough can do in the passing game yet, and may not as McKissic has made us completely forget about Theo Riddick.

Scarbrough brings an angry, downfield running attack that the Lions, who have struggled to run the ball for the better part of 20 years, has been missing. Scarbrough won’t outrun or make a lot of defenders miss him, but he will run through them — as he’s proved in each of his two career games.

As the Lions have completely fallen out of the playoff picture, the newly anointed starting running back should continue to see more playing time and get more reps under his belt.

Defense against the run is coming together

Over the years, the Lions defense has been used to getting gashed by future Hall of Fame running back, Adrian Peterson. This season was a different story, as the Redskins running backs were held to just 86 yards collectively for the game. The Lions mustered three sacks, an interception, and a fumble recovery, not to mention they were missing Trey Flowers.

The Lions have yet to show a solid defensive effort on all levels, but with Damon Harrison and Mike Daniels holding the middle of the line in the last two games, they have shown that they can hold the rushing yards to a minimum.

Receiving trio causing problems for defenses

It is sort of a pick your poison when it comes to the Lions receiving corps — namely their top three options.

Kenny Golladay, Marvin Jones, and Danny Amendola have all been the game leaders for receptions and receiving yards at different points this season. While the stat lines for this particular game may not be flashy, the trio of receivers hauled in 12 of Driskel’s 20 completions and had 128 of his 207 passing yards — with the offensive line unable to give Driskel a clean pocket for most of the game.

  • Kenny Golladay — four receptions for 61 yards
  • Marvin Jones — five receptions for 46 yards
  • Danny Amendola — three receptions for 21 yards