The Lions defeated the Colts 39-35. The new look Lions offense looked good in the first game of the season, albeit against a shorthanded Colts defense.
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Detroit started the drive with a great deal of confidence. Overall there were some positives and negatives to take away from the first game of the 2016 National Football League season.
During the off-season and preseason, Indianapolis talked about wanting to have a semblance of a balanced offense instead of relying on Luck’s arm. This isn’t the only time it has been a problem, but it is the first that it indirectly cost the Colts a game.
Is the Lions’ run game performance Sunday sustainable? He also had four touchdown passes and no turnovers.
Stafford also got after tight end Eric Ebron the previous play, when the young tight end wasted precious seconds appearing to stare down the defender he had just beat for a 9-yard reception.
It was one game against a decimated Indianapolis Colts defense. He rushed seven times for 45 yards and one touchdown while catching five passes for 63 yards and another TD.
Then he went back to work, regained his pre-2015 form and almost led the Colts to their first opening day victory in three years. “If you’ve got your timeouts in your pocket you can take it down a little ways, but oftentimes they’ll get you in a situation where they force you to use one here or there even when you don’t necessarily want to. The season isn’t going to stop for us”. “If we give them another timeout, that is more time to look around and (Andrew Luck) is a pretty unsafe player”. When the Lions missed that fourth quarter extra point, everyone in the stadium had to expect that Luck would march the Colts down the field for a 35-34 lead, and that’s exactly what he did.
Luck erased any doubts as to his health by completing 31 of 47 passes for 385 yards and four touchdowns. Perhaps the Lions are 1st and 10 from their own 15 with just:27 seconds to play. One bright spot for the Lions was defensive lineman Kerry Hyder. “We knew what we were up against and we didn’t make plays”. The Colts took a timeout with just over a minute to play in order to get their preferred package in, but could have taken an additional 20 seconds off the clock in the process. The most disturbing thing for the Lions moving forward was the lack of production from their front seven. But the confidence they showed because they’ve done it, you know, numerous times. That they actually had timeouts to play with made things easier.
As a team, the Lions rushed for 116 yards on 24 carries and averaged 4.8 yards per attempt. That would have left four more chances to get into the end zone.
After Prater missed a crucial extra point with 4:04 remaining and then watched the Indianapolis Colts take their first lead with 37 seconds to play, Stafford was on a mission.
Luckily, Stafford was not finished as he drove the Lions into field goal territory and Prater redeemed himself by connecting on a 43-yard field goal to all but seal the deal for Detroit. While it’s only one game, Luck looked more like the Luck from 2014 (the 2nd highest scoring QB in fantasy) than the Luck from 2015. It feels like they don’t understand what makes for a good game plan and are more interested in “winning their way” as opposed to just winning.
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Matthew Stafford wanted Matt Prater to have a chance for redemption.
