How are you feeling about the Lions heading into the opener?

0:00How We Made Your Mother Is A Rewatch Podcast That Looks Back Episode By Episode At The Hit TV Show How I Met Your Mother. It's hosted by me, Josh Radner, along with series co-creator and my friend, Craig Thomas. Follow How We Made Your Mother, wherever you get your podcasts. Thank our Scott Anderson. I gotta tell ya, first of all, it's good to have Jerry Beckon. And he is. Oh, that's good to have me back on the show. Well, it's okay. No, that's cool too. But, but I'm trying to balance expectations for Drew Petzing with everything we hear. Right? The coordinator position is one that is under heavy scrutiny. It is one that is probably in some ways over scrutinized because, because play calling is a function of so many different variables that we in the media don't know and that the fans don't know. And there's one aspect of play calling that is wildly overrated, but it gets people on your side.

1:05And that is trick plays. If you run a successful trick play, a creative trick play, if you throw the ball to Penny Sule, if Penny Sule throws the ball. I can't any of that stuff. And it works. You get so much street cred in whatever town you're called plays in, but it's probably an overrated aspect of the game. The previous very successful play caller in Detroit, Ben Johnson made an aim for himself for creative trick plays. And it felt like they worked more often than not. But it's so much more than that, right? And there's sort of like, I don't know if you noticed, but Michigan didn't play very well on Saturday. But we heard a lot of stuff about what their offensive, they were hoping their offense would look like and it didn't look anything like that. The defense lived up to the billing. But so here we've got Drew Petsing and I made the comment yesterday that all the preseason, meshing between quarterback and coordinator.

2:06It's probably about 5% of the job. And he's got like 100 out of 100 in this 5%. But the other 95% starts Sunday and the big bulk of how you get judged and how good or bad you are at your job. And Kang pointed out there were probably we don't have the exact quotes of what people are saying about John Morton a year ago, but they weren't trashing him. No, I think. And I think I said this last week, I feel like in the offseason, everyone's going to say the right stuff. Everyone's going to say that it's going to be positive. Hey, John Morton's awesome. He really works with us. So we, you know, we, we, we sink. We do all this and then they have the season like they did last year, which wasn't bad. By the way, I mean, this team was still, it was one of the top offenses in the league. But when you compare it to the year prior, there's like a 30 year difference per game that they did better two years ago. And there's a five point difference from two years ago to last year. So it was tangible in the yards up and the points per game, even though they had a hell of a season last year offensively, it was better before.

3:15Were they right to make a change? Sure. If if the standard wasn't, if it wasn't up to the standard, then yeah, you have to make changes. So there's no guarantees it's going to be better this time around. But I don't think it's going to be worse this time around. So hopefully there's, there's jumping off points where this offense does look better. And I think it's got to start with the offensive line when you've got the best offensive lineman and football. And now he's playing, you know, the, the quarterback protector, or left tackle. I feel better about that. I feel better that there's, that there is competition at left guard. Okay. If Mahogany is as good as he was last year, but he's being pushed by Ben Barch, I should feel better as a fan. Because if he's not getting a done, but Ben Barch is, and Mahogany was as good as he was last year, then you're getting an improvement at that position. If I look at Scroggs, and I know he's not the number one center, it's supposed to be a K-Maze, but if Scroggs is better than what Glasgow was, that's, that's, take that. Take Rattledge at right guard should be better in year two.

4:16And by all accounts, he's a lot better in year two. And then he's got the rookie at right tackle, which according to everybody, hey, he soaks everything up. He doesn't make the same mistake twice. He just goes out there and, and he's going to do his job, and he's going to be a very solid tackle. And hopefully, when, when, when all is said and done, it's, it's, it's a really, really good draft pick to have with the right side. So you're making this case for what I was just talking about a couple segments ago. If they were a B minus C plus O line last year, it's hard to imagine they won't be better. Well, yeah, and it really, the big variable that we just don't know is Blake Miller. He's never played NFL game. And, and so, you know, that there's probably going to be a learning curve there. And he could be the next Taylor Decker. He could be the next stocker McDougal. Like he, we don't know what direction this is going to go. But there's a lot riding on that. John Morton lasted eight games as offensive coordinator.

5:20He got fired, or not fired. Remember, he was still on the staff, but they reduced his role. And Dan Campbell took over the play calling after they put up 24 at Minnesota. And I don't know what the breaking point was there. But it was probably about week four. I wasn't, it was, it was, it was short, it was maybe the Kansas City game that they lost where we started talking. You could, you could start it getting rumblings and watching him in his press conferences because the coordinator speak every week. And we started talking about it in the air. Morton, something's off here, something's off. And so much goes into game planning and play calling. The Morton thing didn't work. And Dan Campbell had had success, taken it over before. And, you know, the funny thing is, they, they are probably saying the exact same great things, lo and things about the coordinate. We got to see what happens when, when bullets start flying. Right.

6:20I mean, the difference is going to be how they use the players that they have. All right. If, if everything we've seen with James and Williams is correct, then I expect that he's going to have a better year in the ad last year and had a really good last year with 1100 yards and seven touch downs, but these are going to be more involved. He's going to catch more passes. The, the, the talk of Jumir Kibs being the bell cow. Well, when I hear bell cow, I think a guy is going to, you know, get in your 300, 300 carries a season. Okay. That means more production from him. If I'm getting more touches for two of the fastest guys in the league, that can't be a bad thing. Right. Now, here's what has to happen. The offensive line has to gel. They have to, to improve and they have to stay healthy. Sam LaPorta has got to stay healthy because the options they have after him, they're fine tight ends, but they are, those are backup tight ends and they're not counted on to be guys that are going to catch the ball 90 or 100 times. You know, the Thai Conquence best years are way behind him. He can still be fine.

7:20And, you know, I like Brock ride a lot, but neither one of these guys is a guy you're expecting to, to the logically 80 receptions in the season. So LaPorta is going to be key. Well, last year, Gibbs touched the football 320 times between carrying and receiving. How we, how we pushing 400. That might be a lot. And when I hear when I hear bell, Cowan, I start thinking about as in terms of running the football and last year, Jamir Gibbs had 243 carries. So is he going to get, well, 50 more carries this year? I, it's one of those things where sounds great in theory. There's also preservation, right? You need him. You, they, they should be judicious. If and when if the season goes as the way we, we want, they should be judicious in, in getting him some rest later in games. Yeah. And hopefully they'll have leads where they can do things like that. But 94 targets last year is a wide res, is a receiving running back, I should say. 94 targets and he costs 77 of those.

8:22That's a lot of receptions for a running back. How many more can that we expect? I don't know if we're going to expect a ton more, but maybe a few more. But if he gets 50 more carries, that's going to, that's going to bring about probably a couple hundred more yards rushing. And that's the guy already ran for over 1200 last year. It had what 18 touchdowns last season between running and receiving. Can you get to 20? Yeah. On the blueprint RB two is out like I say a project and that could, that could impact the use of Gibbs. It could mean more Gibbs. It could mean because yesterday Dan Campbell, me and with the media, I guess it was Monday, was really pumping up. Sarah Ivaki and saying, don't forget about him. Now he's, he's in the mix here too. But well, hard not to forget because he carried him all once last year. I know. But between Valky and say, I think he's got seven touches in his career. Sailor's look really good in, in the exhibition season, thought he looked really good. And we know that Valky is tough and hard-nosed and get a short yardage kind of guy,

9:25but he can also make people miss. Okay. Dan Campbell went on the morning show today and was asked specifically about the secondary. And he was adamant in his response. You'll want to hear this? We'll get to that today at 1105. It's Carson Anderson here on a Wednesday. Here on 97 one. Every week on the Moth podcast, real people tell their stories live on stage. I burst into tears and I wasn't sure if I was crying because I hadn't been kissed in a really long time or if I had just never been kissed like that before. To hear fascinating, heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious stories from astronauts, teachers, farmers and people just like you, follow and listen to the Moth wherever you get your podcasts.