2024-09-23 07:30:02
The Lions hit the road for the first time this season, heading out west to face an Arizona Cardinals team looking for a statement win of their own at home.
Here are five things to watch out for in today’s NFC matchup:
After talking to head coach Dan Campbell, offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, quarterback Jared Goff and a number of other players on offense this week about the troubles the team had in the red zone last week (1-for-7), the consensus is that the problem was a little bit of everything.
Johnson wanted a couple calls back, Goff made a couple bad reads, there were some missed assignments from other players and a few other issues that popped up.
All involved came to work Monday, watched the film, took the criticism and coaching, and feel pretty good about the adjustments they’ve made to rectify the problem heading into a matchup with a Cardinals team who enters Sunday ranked 22nd in red zone defensive efficiency (55.6 percent).
“Yeah, there’s a number of things you can look at from that game,” Johnson said this week. “The thing I came away with is, there’s always an importance on third down in the red zone, that’s the difference between three points and seven points, we talk about that as an offense, and so our third downs down there weren’t good enough.
“I believe we only had the one conversion there, which was a big one and resulted in a touchdown because of that. So, we have to be better there, that’ll be our starting point here this week on red zone night.”
