Quick Slant: TNF - The Caiman and the Jaguar
Packers @ Lions, Thursday @ 8:15 PM
Green Bay is the NFL’s Old Testament. The league’s roots grow from there – a lush maroon-brick stadium sprouts from a suburban neighborhood, its PA system inspiring the dreams of children sound asleep on school nights. The smell of brats augments sleepy, cold Sundays along maple-lined sidewalks cutting through resilient Kentucky bluegrass; those among them rake leaves as the distant echo of familiar fanfare walks them right to it. They whisper along under their breath, now visible: “Go Pack, go!”
The community owns the team – quite literally – and the team is a limb for it. If the innocence of watching in awe at a child’s game played by grown men still survives, it does so in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Another Midwestern town, almost as small, once hosted a team much like it: the Portsmouth Spartans. Donning royal purple and gold, the Spartans tangled with the Packers as early as 1932 in what was dubbed “The Iron Man Game,” where the Spartans never subbed a player for a single play and won 19-0.
The Spartans were succeeding on the football field but failing to generate revenue; in the winter of 1934, George Richards, a Detroit radio magnate, bought the club and moved them to his hometown. The Motor City was massive – the fourth biggest in the U.S., behind only New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. It was a thriving metropolis, an industrial power, and a center of culture and art. We know it as dih-TROYT; the French established it as de-TWAH. In fact, its founder, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, founded it with a slightly different spelling: Détroit, with an accent agiu. We think of Detroit as a casualty of one of our country’s most severe economic crises – a tough, blue-collar city in the Rust Belt curated by survivors and hardliners; it was once known as The Paris of the Midwest.
In a way, the Spartans gave up their Green Bay-esque heritage and sold out to the flashing lights of the big city. They were re-dubbed the Lions and surged to early prominence; they immediately established a Thanksgiving Day game, an annual tradition ever since.
The Lions and Packers have been part of the NFL establishment since 1934 and 1920, officially; they have only been in each other’s division since 1967. Ever since, the Packers have mostly pushed the Lions around their plates out of boredom. The Lions’ streak of futility is well-documented by now; they haven’t won it all since 1957 – nearly seven decades ago. Since then, the Packers have won seven of their 13 recognized championships – four in Super Bowls. If the Packers are the NFL’s Old Testament, the Lions are its Prodigal Son. Today, under everyone’s favorite coach, Dan Campbell, they’ve returned to prominence with the adoration of the national fan base transforming them into a new America’s Team.
Long ridiculed as the NFL’s embodiment of suffering, the Lions have shed their past indignities. At 11-1, they share the league’s best record with Kansas City. Green Bay, meanwhile, is 9-3 yet stuck in third place in their division. And if the Pack wants to track down the Lions, it begins Thursday with a road victory in a hostile environment.
Packers’ Implied Team Total: 24
Let’s get something straight; the Packers are third in their division, but they are an excellent football team – legitimate Super Bowl contenders overlooked because of the greater beasts of their own dwelling. They are like a caiman – an apex predator in almost any scenario – taking a backseat to the impressive jaguar, who steals all the jungle’s press. A game such as this played out in the public theatre of a nationally televised island game could go a long way in evening the perception of the NFC North in the minds of the masses, but only if the Packers can actually catch a Lion by the tail, which is not going to be easy.
Based on Pythagorean Wins, an expected wins model centered on points for and points against, both teams are among the league’s best seven. The Lions, the current betting favorite to win the Super Bowl, are ranked first and are over an entire expected win ahead of second-place Buffalo. But the Packers are lurking beneath the surface, biding their time for a good, old-fashioned insurgency. The memo has to have circulated around 1265 Lombardi Avenue this week: Thursday, we ride at dusk.
Green Bay ranks eighth in EPA per play and 15th in offensive success rate. They rank fifth in EPA per dropback and 13th in offensive success rate on dropbacks.
They are the second run-heaviest team in the league in terms of pass rate over expected (PROE), trailing only the Eagles. They have the second-highest neutral run rate and are tied for the eighth-slowest neutral script seconds to snap. Despite this, they are 19th in offensive plays per 60 minutes – around average. As with most Shanahan-based schemes, the Packers are relatively efficient and capable of producing a lot out of a little. 44.5% of Green Bay’s possessions end in scores, seventh in the league.
We may assume the run-heaviness could be attributed to two games with Malik Willis under center. Willis’s presence in a lineup tends to turn the offenses for which he plays into service academies; with the Packers, they have run nearly half the pass attempts per game with Willis as they have without him, and they have run nearly twice the rush attempts.
In Willis’s two starts, the Packers were far and away the run-heaviest team in the league in neutral scripts, running on 79% of their plays in closely contested games; this led the second-place Chargers by a whopping 21 percentage points over these two weeks. In the nine games since Willis gave the reins back to starter Jordan Love, the Packers have remained the second run-heaviest team in neutral run rate. Willis’s starts contribute to the run-heaviness but are not responsible.
Between the missed games and the run-heavy approach, Love ranks just 20th in pass attempts, and yet he ranks sixth in TDs and third in FPOE. He has had positive FPOE and multiple TDs in all but three games.
The Packers’ pass-catching corps is notoriously nebulous and has been since before the season started; this is why so many Green Bay WRs and TEs were pushed down draft boards this summer despite youth and efficiency, which typically attract fantasy managers.
In the past six games, the Packers have four players with market shares over 15% with none exceeding 21%: Romeo Doubs (21%), Christian Watson (16%), Jayden Reed (15%), and Tucker Kraft (15%). Additionally, Josh Jacobs and Dontayvion Wicks each draw 12%.
In general, these are meager percentages; they are made worse when combined with extreme run-heaviness and average play volume. Doubs leads the Packers with just 5.3 targets/G, the fewest targets/G of any skill player leading his team.
This reinforces that the Packers’ pass-catching pieces, while probably pretty good at football, are not overly viable weekly fantasy plays.
The most desirable are Reed, Watson, and Kraft. Reed and Kraft are each efficient on a higher percentage of their touches, leading to greater weekly consistency. However, they are also capable of ceiling, as each has logged both a No. 1 and a No. 2 fantasy week at their respective position so far.
Watson is playable based on the upside he’s shown in past seasons. While he only has one WR1 finish in 2024, he finished between No. 2 and No. 8 at WR four times in his rookie year, and he was a WR1 in two of his nine games a year ago. While he is difficult to use, he has proven occasional upside. If you want a wild swing, Watson is always realistic; but we should understand what we are getting. Contrary to the way things were with Aaron Rodgers in 2022, this Packers’ team is full of receiver talent rather than replete. If we haven’t already, we should readjust our thinking to consider Watson as something of a Marquez Valdes-Scantling or Nick Westbrook-Ikhine type. There can be hefty payouts here and there, but these spikes may be hard to pin down.
Doubs will miss his second consecutive game due to a concussion. Doubs’s absences – not unlike any pass-catcher in the offense, likely – lead to a redistribution of vacated targets. We’ve heard the expression, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” So does the Archimedes Principle of Buoyancy and Fluid Displacement, and when one Packer leaves the lineup, his targets are submerged in the basin, pushing everyone’s volume up.
Tucker Kraft has experienced the most significant improvement without Doubs:
Jayden Reed has also performed better:
And Christian Watson, as well:
The Lions are first in the NFL in EPA per play allowed and fifth in defensive success rate. They are second in EPA per dropback allowed and eighth in defensive success rate on dropbacks.
The Lions play the highest amount of man defense in the league at 44.9%. They are good at it, allowing only the seventh-fewest points per dropback while in man. Detroit plays the highest percentage of Cover 1 at 39.6% and the ninth most Quarters at 18.0%. They only run Cover 3 at a 16.5% rate, the eight-smallest percentage in the league.
Love plays well against the types and rates of coverages the Lions run. According to Fantasy Points’ Matchup Expected Points model, he ranks 6th among 26 expected starting QBs this week. Watson is the Packers’ best receiver against the types and rates of coverages the Lions play; he ranks sixth among all WRs and TEs in this week’s matchups with 0.56 expected fantasy points per route. Watson ranks first against Quarters defense at over a full expected fantasy point per route against it. Reed and Kraft land just inside the top 36 in the model among pass-catchers.
Terrion Arnold will likely one day be a great corner, but for now he is inconsistent. When Watson or Reed line up on Arnold, they should have advantages. However, these moments should be infrequent. Reed will often square off against Amik Robertson in the slot, which is a satisfactory matchup. It seems like Watson will frequently line up with Carlton Davis, a tougher spot. Then again, the nature of Watson’s game is volatile and less susceptible to specific matchups; one misstep taken by a defender, and Watson can make his day.
The Lions’ great weakness is the amount of pressure they generate defensively. Without superstar edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson, who is out for the year, the Lions rank 29th in defensive pressure rate over expected (PrROE); against the Packers’ 11th-ranked offensive PrROE allowed, the Packers have the fifth-biggest advantage of the week in pass protection.
The Packers are ninth in EPA per rush and 16th in offensive success rate on rushes. The Lions are third in EPA per rush allowed and defensive success rate on rushes.
