The Lions are going to have one of the slowest pass rushes in the NFL this season and nobody should care
Here we go again. The Detroit Lions finished fourth in the NFL in sacks last season. Fourth. They ranked sixth in pressure rate. Sixth. And yet a significant portion of the fanbase spent the offseason obsessing over one stat: time to pressure. Detroit’s 2.86-second average ranked third lowest in the league, per NextGenStats, and for a lot of people that was proof the pass rush was broken. It was not broken. It was exactly what it was supposed to be.
That number is going to look the same this season under Kellen Sheppard. Maybe worse. And that is totally fine.
Time to pressure is not a pure pass rush stat
According to NextGenStats, the clock starts at the snap and stops when a defender gets within two yards of the quarterback at the throw or within a yard and a half at any point during the play. Sounds straightforward, right? It is not. Time to pressure is influenced by scheme, opponent tendencies, quarterback play, coverage philosophy, and offensive game plans. It tells you when pressure happens. It does not tell you how good your pass rush actually was.
The Lions played man coverage at one of the highest rates in football, right around 32%. They blitzed just 23.7% of the time, which ranked 20th in the NFL. Think about what that means. They are not sending extra rushers. They are trusting their corners to hold up in coverage while four guys get home. That is a choice. A deliberate one.
On top of that, Detroit’s defense forced opponents into one-dimensional game plans. Dan Campbell has said it over and over again: the Lions want to stop the run. When you can’t run the ball, you can only do one thing. And when you throw the ball, three things can happen, and two of them are bad.
The actual results say the pass rush was good
When opposing teams had to throw last season, their quarterbacks averaged about three seconds to release against Detroit, one of the slowest marks in the league. If quarterbacks are holding on to the football longer, it is naturally going to take longer for pressure to arrive. That is not a flaw. That is a byproduct of how the Lions want to play defense.
The Lions finished with 49 sacks, fourth in the NFL. They had a 36.8% pressure rate, seventh in the league. They ranked sixth in sack percentage. When they were getting pressure, more often than not, they were getting sacks. One metric saying pressure arrived later than most teams does not erase the rest of that production.
Detroit had the ball passed on them 604 times, the ninth most in the NFL. If you look at the time to pressure stats for other teams who got passed on that frequently, they are right in that same ballpark. Context matters.
The top 10 in time to pressure were not exactly dominant
Look at the teams that ranked in the top 10 in time to pressure last season: the Vikings, Falcons, Giants, Browns, Buccaneers, and Chiefs all missed the playoffs. The Jaguars, Steelers, Broncos, and Eagles made it. An overwhelming number of those teams did not even reach the postseason. The Lions had more sacks and more pressures than the Vikings, Giants, Buccaneers, Chiefs, Jaguars, and Steelers despite being slower than all of them.
So what exactly are we complaining about here?
This is not changing under Kellen Sheppard
If you were thinking this was going to change under Kellen Sheppard, think again. The Lions are going to continue to rank near the bottom of time to pressure this season, and that is fine. Sheppard is not going to turn this defense into a heavy blitz team. They are going to trust their corners, rush four, and make quarterbacks hold on to the football. That is the philosophy.
Players like Tyleek Williams, Alim McNeill, and DJ Wonnum are not built for quick pressure. They are built for Detroit’s system. Quick pressure does not mean you are getting sacks. The Vikings had the fastest pressures in the NFL last year and finished with 219. The Lions had 234.
The real issue was depth, not speed
The real problem with last season’s defense was simple: they had Aidan Hutchinson and Al-Quadin Muhammad for stretches, but beyond those two, the rest of the team combined for 2.5 sacks. Thirty-two of Detroit’s 49 sacks came in just six games. It was Hutchinson or bust.
That is why you bring in Wonnum. That is why you draft Derrick Moore. That is why you hope Ahmed Hassanein and Tyler Lacy develop. The Lions can absolutely get back to a 50-sack season, but it has to be spread out among more players. And if they need to fix anything specific, it is finding a cornerback who can hold coverage for the extended windows Detroit asks of its defensive backs.
The Lions are not going to get faster on defense. They are going to keep playing their game. Let’s see if the depth catches up to the philosophy.
So are we done panicking over time to pressure or do we need to keep doing this every offseason? Drop your take below.
