After week 2, PFF is in dead last at predicting the winner of Vikings' matchups.  They had the Vikings as the better overall team by quite a bit, and clearly that was not the case Monday night. To be fair though, none of the other stats were that much better, although DVOA was the only metric predicting the defense was not as good as the final score in week 1 said they were.  

Moving forward and looking the matchups with the Lions, things aren't as bleak as many would expect now, but much worse than most would have guessed at the beginning of the season.  Starting off at the drive stats, the Lions are surprisingly very good offensively.

Offense




Defense




Offensively, Detroit appears to struggle to maintain drives and is living off of the big play despite scoring a lot. They are worse than the Vikings in TOP and three-and-outs per drive, putting their defense in a bad spot, something Vikings' fans should be very familiar with after last year.  Speaking of that, if the Vikings don't turn things around soon, their propensity to go three-and-out can no longer be blamed on baby Kubes as they drop to 26th in that stat after a solid outing week 1. The Vikings have also plummeted in the red zone rankings, scoring a miserable 2.86 per trip.  Fortunately for the Vikings, the Lions are terrible in that stat defensively, and the Vikings should have success there this week.

Defensively, the Vikings are actually doing a solid job at preventing the other team from scoring.  A lot of that has to do with their success in the red zone, forcing FGs or stopping teams on 4th down.  The Lions just plain suck all around, and based on the drive stats, the Vikings should score a lot of points on this team, even if they give up a lot of yards.


DVOA

Offense




Defense





Surprisingly, DVOA thinks the Vikings' rushing offense is pretty good. Hopefully KOC realizes it is a good idea to run the football against a team that struggles to stop the run this week, because he sure didn't figure that out last week. The pass offense is dreadful.

Defensively, let's hope Campbell doesn't realize it is a good idea to run the football against a team that struggles to stop the run, because the Lions are apparently great at running the football and the Vikings might be the worst in the NFL at stopping the run. I do not think this defense is 30th overall, and I still expect it to be top 10 at some point this season with the talent on the D. 

PFF



PFF thinks the Vikings are superior to the Lions at everything but catching the football and covering the football. Which would be great except PFF was so wrong about last week, and coverage and receiving, are the two best PFF grades for predicting the winners of football games historically. I am very surprised to see them so poorly graded at pass blocking.  That is really, really bad and the Vikings' pass rushers should have a field day.  

Overall, the numbers say this game should be close. DVOA and drive stats say the Lions' offense is better, while drive stats and PFF say the Vikings' defense is better.  PFF is the only stat that has the Vikings' offense superior to the Lions.  I am very concerned about the Lions running all over the Vikings, but I think the offense should be able to keep it close against what is statistically a very bad defense.  Since this game is at home, and since the Lions are the Lions, I'll predict that the Vikings win in a shoot-out.