Into the Den of the Lions

We are not supposed to be here.

It is year one of new ownership. We have a rookie QB. The roster has enough holes to open a golf course.

But: rule the Washington Commanders out at your peril.

There are only eight teams left with a shot at the Superbowl and even the most optimistic of Commanders fans would not have laid down a marker that Washington would be in a divisional play-off. But we are in that play-off, almost like the gate crasher who brings a bottle of Hennessey to the party and instantly becomes Mr Popular.

This season has had it all. The countless last winning drives, a Hail Mary, the OCD kicker (bless him by the way, what a dude to open up about his issues) and a collection of so-called past-its, the forgotten men and a coaching staff with a variety of perceived red flags against their name.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, the Commanders will face their toughest assignment to date. A road trip to Detroit is the prize after a sensational wild card victory vs the Buccaneers. The Lions offense is, by any tangible data, a historically great one. OC Ben Johnson is the most sought-after coach to land a HC position for next season and will have an army of ownership suitor at his door.

The Washington run-game has been mediocre, and our big hope CB Marshon Lattimore arrived with a hamstring injury and less than stellar performances. We have a short week to prepare, Detroit is well-rested and yet, still, would you 100% bet against our Commanders? Again, doubt us at your peril!

Here at UKHTTC, founder Christian Burt caught a breath in this whirlwind of emotion to talk to Roar of the Lions UK. No doubt, the Lions will be supremely confident going into the weekend, but they also have a ton of respect for the burgundy & gold.

It has been another standout season for the Detroit OFF. The Lions rank second, with an average of 409.5 yards per game, can you give some insight into that offense's success?

The Offensive success can be put down to four different areas

Coaching: the Offensive staff is a perfect marriage of former players and innovative minds. The skill groups are led by some of the best in their field like Hank Fraley with the Offensive Line and Antwaan Randle-El with the Receivers who have overseen terrific development of our draft talent.

Then they are put into Ben Johnson’s system which is a perfect hybrid of Dan Campbell Old School Power and Ben Johnson Modern Flair. The Offensive Line is built to be a battering ram with the run game and then Ben unleashes his plethora of playmakers in the passing game with dynamically aggressive intent.

Personnel: this Offense is the very definition of a team. To a man they all work for the team and not themselves. The receivers will block till the cows come home in the run game, the running back tandem are an inseparable pair who push each other to be great, the Offensive Line is a juggernaut, and they are led by one the greatest redemption stories in modern NFL history at Quarterback. They’ve been written off, disrespected, overlooked, and they use that as a fuel to be the very best they can. To be a Lion it’s not all about the talent, it’s about the mindset, and mentally they are all the exact type of player you need to run the system we do with the mentality we do, that makes them even more dangerous!

Aggressiveness: 3rd down in 2nd down, 4th down is 3rd down. As a Defense that’s a hard mentality to combat.

Thinking you’ve made a 3rd down stop and getting ready to go off the field only to see the Offense lining up again and converting is demoralizing and part of the ‘grinding down’ method the Lions use to break your spirit and pull away late in games.

Dan Campbell was criticised for his aggressiveness in his early years, but what people failed to see with this is we were playing for nothing, and whilst we were playing for nothing, he put our offense through a trial by fire, consistently putting them in high risk 4th down situations so they could hone their craft so that when the years that mattered arrived, they’d be trained to go for and convert in the most clutch of moments.

It’s why we have been so successful with aggression in dangerous situations, the offense knows their coach trusts them implicitly and they’ve been trained to handle that pressure. 

Ingenuity: two names. Ben Johnson and Dave Fipp. Whilst we are built to always work first and foremost as a traditional power offense, the flair Ben Johnson adds to it with his playbook is constantly evolving and throwing off defensive game plans.

The Hook’N’Ladder has been a favourite this year, but he’ll throw in flea flickers, multiple reverse handoffs, eligible linemen who he will actually target as receivers. Hell he created a fake fumble play to use against the Chicago Bears this year after watching a Packers-Bears game in 2023 when Green Bay accidentally scored a big play after fumbling the ball on a handoff and throwing off the Bears Defense so they could pass deep downfield.

People keep thinking he’s giving away his best kept secret plays from deep inside his bag of tricks, when the fact is he just keeps creating new plays and drilling them in to the playbook. It makes it incredibly hard for a DC to contain this type of offense.

And Dave Fipp the Special Teams Coordinator is responsible for coming up with all our fake punts and trickeration.

His ST unit is one of the best in the leagues which is why our conversion rate is so high, you don’t know whether the punters gonna throw it or the personnel protector is gonna run it and it’s stolen us plenty of extra possessions which teams can ill afford against us.

Who has been the MVP for the Lions this season?

This is not easy to answer.

Offensively it’s Penei Sewell. He was the first foundation piece of this entire rebuild. He’s the tone setter, he’s the standard.

He’s the best RT in the NFL but in his eyes he still isn’t as good as he can be. That mentality has seeped through into this entire offense, no matter how good they are they can always be better and that has created this monster of an offense.

There was a play against Jacksonville in the red zone where he was run blocking, he dealt with 2 defenders on his own and then rushed forward and powered David Montgomery into the endzone when it looked like he was gonna be stopped short. Nothing will stop him. Even more so than Goff, he's the one who if he’s not there, you notice immediately that you are not as good, and that’s what an MVP is.

Defensively it’s Alex Anzalone. He’s the glue which holds the Defense together, the green dot who meticulously organises the defense and leads from the front, he comes back from 6 weeks out injured and has a strong cast on and he plays all but one snap in a season defining game against Minnesota, that’s the leader he is. The defensive stats nosedived after he broke his arm and it’s no coincidence it happened with him on the shelf.

This is a little hot-takey in Lions land but his loss to the Defense was more impactful than that of Aidan Hutchinson as he’s that crucial cog that makes the rest of the Defense tick!

A 15-2 team might not have many disappointments on the roster, but has anyone veered into that category?

Not particularly. Injury has put paid to guys like Emmanuel Moseley and Marcus Davenport so it’s not really fair to say they are disappointments, but they will end up contributing precious little in the end in positions we needed so technically they could be classed as such.

The closest thing we have to disappointment in the roster is a couple of 2nd year later draft picks in Brodric Martin and Colby Sorsdal who aren’t even making the active game day roster yet when they should be starting to threaten as much.

But Brad Holmes draft picks have no set time scale, some start right away, then you have the likes of Levi Owuzurike who it’s taken till his last rookie season to get healthy and start contributing but he’s had a great year and is what we invested in 4 years ago. His picks always find a way to the roster eventually so again this is a minor concern at this time as opposed to a huge worry.

Where can the Lions have success vs the Commanders?

The Run Game.

There’s a big bullseye on that Washington run Defense. 3rd worst in the NFL over the season in terms of Yardage Given Up and Yards Per Carry. If you want to hang with us you’ve got to slow down the run game so we can’t control the Time Of Possession.

The trouble for Washington is that not only is David Montgomery back, but in his absence, Jahmyr Gibbs flourished as a solo act, and our depth has been given much needed reps so you are not only dealing with Sonic and Knuckles but our depth is ready to step up as well and really hammer the run game home if Washington struggle with it.

And then on the flip side is our run Defense.

Washington has the 3rd best rush attack by Yards Per Game this year, but they are coming up against a Lions Run Defense that has allowed a 100+ yard rusher ONCE since December 2022 (James Cook for Buffalo, a game we lost).

We watched Tampa shut the Commanders run game down but not take advantage of that, but sadly for Washington this time if it happens, they are coming up against an Offense that will kill them in Time Of Possession and not give them a second chance!

And is there an area that Washington can exploit?

It’s no secret that Detroit has had its struggles with dual threat Quarterbacks over the years.

We have been really struggling with injuries at Linebacker, season ending injuries to Malcolm Rodriguez and Derrick Barnes and lengthy absences for Alex Anzalone and Jalen Reeves-Maybin means we’ve been leaning a lot on Special Teamers and low depth guys.

This creates a problem which Buffalo exploited really well. They use a tonne of motion pre snap to get our 2nd level out of position, and then they created an offensive plan which gave Josh Allen plenty of opportunities to use his legs.

The motion lightened our box to allow them to run the ball (hence Cook’s 100+ yard day), and when we tried to stack it they used their RB’s and TE’s in the passing game to pick on our inexperienced Linebackers, and that put a lot of pressure on our EDGE players to try and contain Allen and with no help from everyone else who were tied up elsewhere they were just not able to.

They just kept finding a new pressure point when we adapted and exploited it, which is one of the big benefits of a dual threat QB. Anzalone and Reeves Maybin are back now, but the injury problem is still significant enough that if you can replicate that Buffalo game plan with focus on Daniels, it could cause us a lot of problems!

Does the Commanders rookie QB and his ability to win by single scores give you any doubts as to a Detroit win?

I’ll tell you what scares me about this game.

The Washington Commanders give me major vibes of what my Detroit Lions were just 12 months ago.

They are a team who had not won a playoff game in forever, who had been given more ridicule than respect by the national media and were overlooked by probably everyone outside of their own building.

Fast forward to the start of the new year, they have just won their first playoff game since 2005, they are a team playing with a huge chip on their shoulder because of the lack of belief from the wider world for them, and they are a team who by hook or by crook are finding ways to win games, going all the way back to that Chicago Hail Mary (Thank You for that by the way, that is one of the biggest laughs we have been able to have at their expense in years and it was beautiful).

Jayden Daniels is not playing like a rookie, that team doesn't care how much of an underdog they are, and they’ve put such a level of belief in their fans they are chanting ‘Bring on Detroit’ with no fear at all.

That was us 12 months ago.

No one believed we’d ever win the NFC North, let alone a playoff game, or 2 playoff games. But we as fans knew our team was special cause we watched them week in week out and we knew what was coming, we knew we were going to win games people expected us to lose and we shouted from the rooftops that it was coming.

When I see other teams sporting that type of attitude and looking at what their team has done, that makes me nervous. This is a free shot at the top dog for Washington and they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. For us in Detroit we are still transitioning from Underdog to Top Dog. We need to show and act like a team who is going make a deep playoff run and be in contention for a Super Bowl on a yearly basis.

A loss here wipes out so much of what we have built over the last 4 years, that’s how fine the margins in the NFL truly are. That’s what scares me!

And also watching that Tampa game I was impressed how well coached Washington is. They are one of only two teams who beat us this season, in part down to that formidable front 7 they have that blitzed our game plan into the trash.

How Kingsbury protected Daniels by negating that blitz with a host of short to intermediate passes to get the ball out of harm's way was impressive, and Jaden stood tall in the face of that pressure and picked that defense apart with no run game supporting him.

Washington has my 100% respect and full attention for this game!

Score prediction?

Sadly for Washington, Dan Campbell is also going to show them his undivided attention and 100% of his respect. They’ve drawn the one team who is going to show 0% complacency in this matchup and treat it like a true battle of even opponents.

I’m completely sincere in my admiration for Washington and what it has done this year.

In years to come if you carry on the way you are, you're going to become a regular playoff team and a thorn for teams like us who are in a Super Bowl window, hell you’ll be aiming for one yourself.

But just like last year, I know my team and what they are capable of. Our GRIT culture sets us apart from everyone else, and there are few teams who can match our level of intensity and still possess the quality to best us. You are in our home, and for the first time in decades this team and it’s fans know that we are in contention for a Super Bowl which is going to create a savage atmosphere for anyone who tries to step up to us.

Washington hangs with us early but ultimately our run game will subdue the energetic underdog and we will take care of business.

Lions win 31-18!

Tell us a little bit more about the podcast and where folks can find you

Our podcast is called Roar Of The Lions UK!

Created during the COVID pandemic, an innocuous post on a UK Lions fans page turned into five UK Lions fans who had never met each other sat on zoom during quarantine whining about Matt Patricia which then turned into what will soon be a half-decade adventure where we are still going strong.

We do Lions game previews, game reviews, live play-by-play commentary and we stay active all year long. We’ve also got a separate College Football Podcast that’s been going for nearly 4 years as well to help our listeners when it comes to the draft part of the season!

Thankfully we are at the point now where we are big enough that you can just type in Roar Of The Lions UK and you will find us right away, we are on all the usual areas like YouTube, Twitch, X, and we have our own website as well with an active blog.

Best of luck for Saturday and wish all you Commanders fans well going forward.