Who Has Better Skill Players

Detroit > RB
MN > WR
DET > TE

Until TJH shows he can come back to pre-injury form, he's a question mark for me. Could have a bigger year if he's healthy and with essentially a rook QB.

purplefaithful wrote:
Detroit > RB MN > WR DET > TE

Until TJH shows he can come back to pre-injury form, he's a question mark for me. Could have a bigger year if he's healthy and with essentially a rook QB.

Gibbs is such a weapon. The best thing that happened to Detroit was when Montgomery went out for a bit and Gibbs got the majority of snaps. He’d easily put up 1800 rushing yards as a sole back.

TJ a full year+ removed from the cheap shot is going to feast with JJ.

I'll take our skill guys over theirs any day of the week, save for Gibbs. He's a bad man on the football field.

As for TE, I think TJ & LaPorta are a wash. Oliver gives us an edge there.

WR? Next question.

Jamir Gibbs torched the Vikings in both games last year.

160 yards/ 2tds in game 1, 170 yards 4 tds in game 2.

Vikings defense only gave up 9 rushing tds in 2024, Gibbs had 5 of them.

The lions had the better personnel in 2024.

2025 the Vikings players will be the better of the two..

I think it's pretty close between the two. Lions have better RBs, we have better WRs and TE is a tie. Weird that the graphic matches RB2 Montgomery with RB1 Jones and RB1 Gibbs with RB2 Mason.

MaroonBells wrote:
I think it's pretty close between the two. Lions have better RBs, we have better WRs and TE is a tie. Weird that the graphic matches RB2 Montgomery with RB1 Jones and RB1 Gibbs with RB2 Mason.

They also have the lead at QB....

It's why I can't bet against them to 3peat in a tough division.

purplefaithful wrote:

They also have the lead at QB....

It's why I can't bet against them to 3peat in a tough division.

No, I agree, the key difference is at QB, so they have to be the favorites to win the division. Especially when you consider all their injuries last season. 

But they did also lose some key players, not to mention both coordinators. It was tighter than a gnat's ass last year. A good year from JJM and I think the Vikings can overtake them. Injuries will likely be the deciding factor.

I think the Lions group is clearly better than the Vikings group. It’s not a huge gap, but the only spot we’re better is at WR1. WR2 and TE are a wash to me. Their RB1 and RB2 are both tier levels better than our RB1 and RB2. That said, I think the biggest differential between our offenses is OLine and Coaching, which they were better at then us. With Johnson gone, and Ragnow retiring, maybe we can be better than them in those areas. Until I see us able to field a functional running game, I don’t think we’ll be in that upper echelon of offenses.

medaille wrote:
I think the Lions group is clearly better than the Vikings group.  It’s not a huge gap, but the only spot we’re better is at WR1.  WR2 and TE are a wash to me.  Their RB1 and RB2 are both tier levels better than our RB1 and RB2.  That said, I think the biggest differential between our offenses is OLine and Coaching, which they were better at then us.  With Johnson gone, and Ragnow retiring, maybe we can be better than them in those areas.  Until I see us able to field a functional running game, I don’t think we’ll be in that upper echelon of offenses.

^^^ at the bold

I'm not sure what a functional running game looks like under KOC? Sorta joking. 

He's never going to run the ball 30 times a game, he gets too big a dopamine hit passing. 

Maybe it's situationally running? Situations where we utterly failed last year and it cost us games. 

That feels right. 

JJM
Running GAme
Secondary

IMO the 3 biggest quesiton marks heading into 2025.

purplefaithful wrote:

^^^ at the bold

I'm not sure what a functional running game looks like under KOC? Sorta joking. 

He's never going to run the ball 30 times a game, he gets too big a dopamine hit passing. 

Maybe it's situationally running? Situations where we utterly failed last year and it cost us games. 

That feels right. 

JJM
Running GAme
Secondary

IMO the 3 biggest quesiton marks heading into 2025.

My criticisms of our offense is mostly due to it’s lack of multiplicity (being productive in multiple different ways).  If a defense takes away our best stuff, can we do something else and win that way? 

With regards to the running game, I think it means, can we run the ball when the defense knows we’re going to run the ball and still be effective.  If it’s 3rd and two, can we run the ball and get the first down like 90% of the time.  If it’s first and goal from the 5, can we run the ball 3 times and expect to score a TD 80% of the time?  If our QB is having a bad day, can we switch over from passing to setup the run, to running to setup the pass, and jump start the confidence level of our QB?  For me looking at last year, for the first time in a while we had a statistically decent running game, but I think it was from within a pass to setup the run concept.  When our offense was humming and the defense was on it’s heels, we could run the ball, but I don’t think we really could run when we needed to.