I have incomplete data for this game but I’m posting what I can based on highlights, box scores and play by play. I’m not going to do a full review based on highlights, because that leaves out most of what I look for like, where are guys on key plays? Were there mistakes on boring plays that didn’t make the highlight reel? Near misses? What was the actual game flow like?

That said, here are my highlight level takes on the Lions game:

Injuries played a factor, did not play in this game:
- Dalvin Cook
- Christian Darrisaw
- Eric Kendricks
- Anthony Barr
- Patrick Peterson
- Adam Thielen (after his 6 snaps)
- Everson Griffen
Plus longer term misses in Hunter and Irv Smith that are largely baked in to expectations.

The offense was basically reduced to Cousins + ONiell + Jefferson and they still handed the defense a lead with under 2 minutes left. The top 3 players in terms of snap count of the defensive line were DJ Wonnum, Sheldon Richardson and Kenny Willekes – not what I’d call a the A-Team.


Key Play
The Vikings had the Lions in 3rd and 10 on the final drive.  Detroit had no time outs and needed a touchdown.  This was an underneath completion to Godwin Igwebuike:



I picked this as key for a few reasons:
- Personnel changes are necessary. That's Mackenzie Alexander flailing at the tackle. Alexander was not involved in the stop, he ran backwards up field away from the runner and did nothing. The Vikings might as well have been playing this play with 10 men.

- It highlights everything wrong with the urgency of the Vikings pass defense.  The Vikings made nothing difficult for Goff on this drive.  Everything was an easy pitch and catch.  This is Zimmer's system failing in real time.  I get the point of the system "Keep everything in front of you and wait for 1 mistake to kill a drive", if the offense has to make long drives, that one fatal mistake becomes likely.  However it all falls apart when keeping everything in front of you means "giving the other team everything they want.  

I picked this play because it's a 3rd down, not the final play of the game.  However the final play of the game has all the same problems as this play with the Vikings just giving the Lions as much space as they want.  Dantzler get's burned for playing off too much, but he is literally the defender closest to his man at the snap.  Every other Vikings player is also a spectator even further off the line.  Neither safety made it as far forward as being even on depth with any of the four receivers on the play.  I maintain this is the scheme failing, not Dantzler the individual.  




Passing Offense:
The Lions were aggressively pressing all the short stuff, but had no answer for Jefferson deep.

In a case of extreme karma, Adam Thielen played 6 snaps before he was injured. The injury happened on a pass behind the line of scrimmage, an route that does not play to Thielen’s strengths that the Vikings have run repeatedly with very little success. After 13 weeks, they didn’t learn their lesion and got one of their best players injured pounding their metaphorical head against a wall.

Tyler Conklin can’t create separation. The Jets significantly overpaid to get him. He’s a fine player as a dependable blocking TE, but he is in no way a playmaker.

Oli Udoh was playing left tackle, he gave up a sack fumble. The sack was at least a 50/50 coverage sack but still, this won’t help Udoh’s reputation.
Incomplete Game Rating of +1


Rushing Offense
This must have been extremely inconsistent. The highlights showed Mattison with several solid runs of 8-12 yards plus is touchdown. However 22 carries for 90 yards is not a good day. This would align with the season arc of way more inconsistent play from the running game than I would have expected – based on both reputation and recollection.
Incomplete Game Rating of -1


Passing Defense
I’ll give credit to Goff first: this was a good game for him. He had several throws that made me think “Wow! That’s a big boy throw right there!”. If the Lions get this version of Goff every game, they could probably have a winning season.

There was Xavier Woods’ #23 popping up in lot of highlights and not in a good way.

Breeland was bad – I’ve defended him some, but not this game.

Dantzler was good.

The Vikings played incredible soft on the last drive. When everybody is doing the same thing, I put it on coaching, not player mistakes.

The Defensive line was not up to the task of creating pressure, 2 of the team’s 3 sacks came from Blake Lynch at LB.
Incomplete Game Rating of -2


Run Defense
Held their own, this group seemed to contribute. Not much to add without more game flow context.
Incomplete Game Rating of +1


Special teams
Did their jobs well enough to win.  The return game gifted the offense a short field at a critical moment.
Incomplete Game Rating of +2


Coaching
The Lions were the more aggressive team. The Vikings weren’t able to capitalize on their own strengths. This was a bad game for the coaching staff, but there are a two mitigating factors:
- The Lions made their own brakes with aggressive play.
- There were a lot of injuries.  
It's a minus two because of the late game strategy.  I think the failure of the last drive was more coaching / game planning / situational awareness than failures by individual players.
Incomplete Game Rating of -2