Talking Grit: A Detroit Lions Podcast
Talking Grit: A Detroit Lions Podcast
Episode 9: Lions PFF Rankings Breakdown, NFL Lawsuit, and the Lions Breakout Player
In this episode of Talking Grit, a Detroit Lions podcast, hosts Jason Harwood and Jacob Litton discuss the latest updates and insights related to the Lions. Jason shares his vacation experiences, and the duo banters about the past week's podcast and Lions' developments. They dive into Pro Football Focus (PFF) rankings, highlighting the Lions' offensive line and defensive line. Additionally, they touch on a significant NFL lawsuit related to Sunday Ticket pricing, potential changes to streaming rights, and conclude with the Honolulu Blitz
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Good day, everybody. And welcome to Talking Grit, a Detroit Lions podcast. I'm Jason Harwood. And with me is Jacob Litton. I just got back from vacation, Jacob. So you could take advantage of my lag here. I'll be, tired and you'll just walk all over me.
Jacob Litton:That's an every week occurrence
Jason Harwood:Yeah it'll be a blowout this time. It won't be close. Yeah. I come with pre built in excuses now. So that's why I said that right away. Yeah. Yeah.
Jacob Litton:First ten seconds, get that out of the way.
Jason Harwood:One thing that did not happen on my vacation is my air did not go out on my vacation.
Jacob Litton:riding bikes around, so it didn't
Jason Harwood:I was riding bikes around the Island, man. It was great. Yeah. I had had air conditioning. It was cold on the island. It was like 65 degrees when we first got to the Island. So a little cold, but.
Jacob Litton:Great weather for
Jason Harwood:Yeah, it's perfect weather for me, man. I like the cold weather, so I can wear my shawl or whatever we talked about before. We talked last week about the devastating losses. We're not going to be depressing this week. We're going to talk about some other Lion's news or Lion's information this week. Rest assured you don't have to walk away from this podcast depressed like last week. Have you recovered from last week yet?
Jacob Litton:Yes, I'm fine
Jason Harwood:Okay, good.
Jacob Litton:It's easier getting over it, talking over it a second time.
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob Litton:a couple weeks as the games were happening, and reliving it. But
Jason Harwood:Yeah. I had to edit it. So I kept having to listen to it over and over again. And I got immune after a while and I'm like, okay, I
Jacob Litton:and just numb
Jason Harwood:Then on the way to the vacation, the boy's let's listen to the new episode. I'm like, okay, we can listen to it. So I listened to it again on the way up and it's, it is so much fun having them like argue with me. The radio me instead of just like me in the seat. They're just like yelling at, no, that's not right. Or, oh, I hate that or whatever. It's funny.
Jacob Litton:even your kids know how bad your
Jason Harwood:No, it's not a lot of it's you. And they're like what is Jacob thinking? It's,
Jacob Litton:don't
Jason Harwood:uh, You're probably right. So it's mostly me. They're used to yelling at me all day and they might as well yell at radio Jason as well.
Jacob Litton:Yeah.
Jason Harwood:What we're going to start out first here with is PFF came out grades on players and on certain position groups. And I thought we'd hit on a few of them that are interesting for the lions. Do you want to start us off here, Jacob?
Jacob Litton:Yeah. We're gonna start off with the the best one, the highest ranked one for us anyway. Pro football focus does rankings. For those of you don't know, I'm sure everyone does. They rank every single player individually on all kinds of different aspects of the game. What these rankings are, they took some of last year's rankings, but also put it in with their projections. And they ranked a lot of the positional groups. So the first one we're going to talk about we actually ranked number one in the NFL and that's going to be our offensive line. Was not surprised to see our name at the top of the list. I thought this was well deserved. What did you think, Jason, before The list came
Jason Harwood:When this list came out, if we weren't number one, I would have said some things. It would have been a shock. I would have had to read their full article as to why we would not be number one. Cause this is, just seems like a no brainer to me.
Jacob Litton:For sure. You. separate our line. We have, this is their pro football focused rankings. Decker is rated 81, which was ninth in the league. this is for tackles. Sewell was 92, which was actually first in the league and the top lineman overall. Then you have Glasgow was ranked 74, which is eighth. Zeitler was 71, which is 15th, and then Frank Ragnow 88, which was first. you've got first, first. 8, 9, 15. And that's a killer offensive line.
Jason Harwood:Ed, did you happen to look up Jonah Jackson's rating?
Jacob Litton:I did not. What is he?
Jason Harwood:He has three stars. 34th guard. So he is the number 34. So if you're worried about us losing Jonah and, us moving things around it's actually, for a one year, it's been an, it'll probably be an upgrade. So it was Zeitler. I was just curious as to where Jonah fit in that, just cause, he's been a big part of our offensive line now. 34 is based on last year's rating. He was injured a little bit. And to be honest, last year was not, in my opinion, his best year. So he may play above that this year. So it may not be a one to one comparison, it's nice to be number one on the list. And it's nice to replace number 34 with number 15 positional rank. So I love that.
Jacob Litton:Upgrade.
Jason Harwood:Yep.
Jacob Litton:Just a real quick go through a couple of the other top five. So they had the Eagles rank number two. I feel like that's a fair spot for them. They obviously have to replace Jason Kelsey, but I think that's fair. Colts were number three. And the Colts, I read who the offensive linemen were on the Colts. I knew about Ryan Kelly, he's the center. Both of their tackles were in the top seven in the league. And I, the names were not familiar to me. Do you know who their
Jason Harwood:No, I don't. No, I didn't look this up.
Jacob Litton:their names are Bernard Raymond and Braden Smith. For both being top seven tackles man, I have not heard much about these guys. The Colts actually have all five of their linemen last year, returning this year. And they were all rated high and that's,
Jason Harwood:Yeah. We're going to see them this year. We play them. So better be ready.
Jacob Litton:and personal. They had the Browns number four, they had injuries and stuff last year, but based on pro football focus projection, they think they're going to be, a top unit. The most interesting one, I only went through the top five, but the most interesting one has got to be number five because they put the Jets at number five and the Jets offensive line was terrible last year. They might've been the bottom. If they weren't the bottom, they were bottom three last year. they did add, they got Tyron Smith, Morgan Moses. They've added some pieces, but to put them all the way up at top five just based on what you hope they're going to be seems crazy.
Jason Harwood:Yeah. PFF seems to be really on the jet's boat this year, just based on where they're projecting.
Jacob Litton:Right. And that's gonna come up again soon here in this talk, but, you know. I definitely feel like before the list even came out, I felt like we had the best offensive line in the league. When the Eagles had Jason Kelsey, we're like neck and neck, we're both up there and now that Kelsey's gone, I feel like we definitely, are at the top of that.
Jason Harwood:It's interesting some of these are Quinn's leftovers and that's just seems to where Quinn was really good at drafting was offensive line. Not anywhere else, but basically offensive line. So it's nice that we're going to be able to keep an A, sign them to the extension. Taylor Decker is going to be up soon. Frank still signed and then Graham signed the three years. We got Zietler for one, but we had spent some draft capital this year on some offensive linemen. So we're hoping that, someone can step in if we, don't re sign Zietler at the end of the year. And, you love. Them building the trenches. I love it.
Jacob Litton:Yeah, for sure. Speaking of the trenches, what was the next
Jason Harwood:Oh, the next one is the defensive line. And this one was I was shocked to see them rated this high. They're rated at number four. Were you surprised by that or is that something you expected?
Jacob Litton:was, like when I saw that number lions rank number four right away first First instinct is that, they're high on the Lions Kool Aid, we're finally getting some respect. They like what the Lions are doing, so they're putting us up there. Once you start breaking it down, the teams that are around us and above us and everything, I can see us being number four.
Jason Harwood:Their run defense last year was stellar. If, I'm not sure what the ranking was, but it was number one for most of the year and it might've ended there and then they added DJ reader. So if, reader comes in healthy, he's going to be, just make that even more stout. From, just as a casual watcher, it just felt like we weren't getting enough pressure or the, we weren't containing enough. It was either we're just over pursuing and then breaking contain, or we just weren't getting enough pressure. They were having to send the blitz and everything like that. So I guess from the perspective of, rank four, I was surprised by that. Just seeing the number. But, they got DJ reader ranked number 13, PFF has always been high, but they're really high on Alim McNeil. They got him ranked 15. They have Aiden ranked as a sixth in the Edge rusher category. And then the surprising they have Marcus Davenport number 32 ranked in their projections this upcoming year. So,
Jacob Litton:Interesting. I didn't See that about Davenport.
Jason Harwood:They have what you had mentioned earlier, where they have they take last year's grades and then they project or whatever. Davenport, he wasn't ranked 32 last year, but that's where they project them this year. Cause
Jacob Litton:where they're
Jason Harwood:That would be amazing if that's that happens, cause you figure there's 64 starting. So you're in the top half there with there being number 32. And then you have Aiden obviously way up at number six. So I. Yeah, I'd love to, I'd love to see this work out and us be number four, cause, the number one offensive line, number four defensive line, you gotta, right in the trenches, man, we are, we'll dominate the trenches.
Jacob Litton:Yeah, you're set up for success if you can have two, both of those units ranked in the top
Jason Harwood:Mm hmm.
Jacob Litton:Looking at the other teams that are ranked, so real quick, Aiden was rated 91 last year, Aleem 88, DJ Reader 82. So those are all solid numbers, and then, that kind of gives you an idea of why they ranked them number four. Number one defensive line they ranked was the Jets. They had Quinnen Williams, who's a monster. I believe he was rated 90. But then they added Hasan Reddick. They have Will McDonald, Jermaine Johnson. That's not a bad defensive line.
Jason Harwood:Jets have a very solid defensive line.
Jacob Litton:I can get on board with the Jets defensive line being ranked high. Not so much the offensive line, the defensive line, yes. Then number two they have the 49ers. Which is okay, Nick Bosa for sure. They've got Hargrave, you're talking this year, based on their projections, they lost Eric Armstead. So everyone, outside of Bosa, I think even Hargrave wasn't rated very high. So outside of Bosa, who was rated like 93, they don't have anybody that's rated higher than like 70. And they put them number two. So when you're matching them up against the lions, you're like, how does that really make sense? Which of course this is just pro football focus projections. These are their numbers that I'm using. Know how they're going off of that. They have the Eagles at number three, which are the Georgia Bulldogs
Jason Harwood:Yeah, Georgia Bulldogs North,
Jacob Litton:jalen Carter, Jordan Davis, Nolan Smith,
Jason Harwood:they were very high on, they were very high on Jalen Carter. They had him like projected a ninth best inside defensive lineman coming into this year based on their projections. We'll see. I, he started out last year on fire, Jalen Carter, but then he tailed off. Which sometimes happens as a rookie, but based on his concerns coming into the draft, that would be it. I'd be watching with caution for sure.
Jacob Litton:Yeah, definitely. Great point. Rounding out the top five for the defensive line is the Browns. They've got Miles Garrett. He's the highest ranked defensive lineman in football. ZaDarius Smith. They added Zedarius Smith last year, and Miles Garrett even took off higher than he was before. He took some of that pressure off him. So then, that's what you're hoping happens this year. You added DJ Reader for us. You're hoping that
Aiden and Alim take that
Jacob Litton:leap. They get some of the pressure off of them. And just help them blow up even more.
Jason Harwood:Yeah. That's that's interesting. Cause the Browns are in the top five on both. The Jets are in the top five on both. San Francisco's not, it's there, obviously there's teams that, want to build through the trenches. There's other teams that build outside in, but I'm more of a inside out type guy. I think that just sets you up for success. Just consistent success. You're going to have games where you're, your superstars on the outside are going to take over no matter what you guys is in the trenches do, but for consistent success and beating all sorts of different type of teams. I'd rather build through the trenches, especially during a playoff time.
Jacob Litton:So the next one, the last positional group that we have is the receivers. know you didn't check, you didn't see the receiver list, right? Or did
Jason Harwood:No, I didn't check this out before, and this is a last minute addition, so
Jacob Litton:Where do you think we would have ranked on the list of the positional group for receivers?
Jason Harwood:I know they're gonna, they're super high on Amun Ra, um. The rest of it's a question mark. I'm going to go 12.
Jacob Litton:We were seventh,
Jason Harwood:Wow. Okay.
Jacob Litton:seventh.
Jason Harwood:They mention Khalif Raymond in there.
Jacob Litton:yeah.
Jason Harwood:Okay. They are super high on Khalif Raymond.
Jacob Litton:Yeah, you know, Amon Ra was the number four overall receiver. But Jamo was actually ranked 77th. This is out of 128 receivers. So on Mount Ross 4, Jamo was 77, but Kalief Raymond was 32nd. And a lot of that's because of the routes that he wins, and also what he does with his receptions for his targets, Which he didn't really drop a lot of balls. They were high on Kalief Raymond. So they ranked us 7th. Who would you think is 1st?
Jason Harwood:49ers.
Jacob Litton:They were first, I, I thought that the first would have been an easy answer and I would have said the team, which they actually ranked
Jason Harwood:Bengals?
Jacob Litton:is the
Jason Harwood:Oh, Dolphins. Yeah. Okay. Bengals too. Where's Bengals?
Jacob Litton:they most of them, they have just two receivers, a couple of them, they have three. So the 49ers were first, they listed IUK and
Jason Harwood:Mm hmm. That's pretty good. Yeah.
Jacob Litton:and waddle the third place. They had Eagles, AJ Brown, Devante Smith, then fourth, they actually put the bears. DJ more Keenan Allen, Roma dunes, a. They look dangerous. They look
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob Litton:dangerous. So I can see that now were fifth. They've got digs, Nico Collins, tank
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob Litton:and then the Vikings were sixth. Jets, Jordan Addison. I only put the teams that were in front of us. I don't know how far much further the Bengals
Jason Harwood:yeah. Yeah.
Jacob Litton:I'm not very high on the Bengals.
Jason Harwood:It's NFC North is stacked on three of the top seven we're seven and there's two teams ahead of us. However. Both of them have rookie quarterbacks too that's gonna definitely affect how those wide receivers go, but it's good for those rookie quarterbacks, for sure, to have that kind of wide receiver core.
Jacob Litton:Yeah, it works out for JJ McCarthy if he gets a shot
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob Litton:The the Bengals, they had them at number nine, Jamar Chase,
Jason Harwood:Okay.
Jacob Litton:I don't, T Higgins didn't grade very well
Jason Harwood:Now,
Jacob Litton:contract thing going on. When they're fighting for contracts, the players start playing really well
Jason Harwood:yeah.
Jacob Litton:year, but
Jason Harwood:Certain players do, and if you listen to Dan Campbell, they don't want those players, because they should be playing that hard all the time.
Jacob Litton:yeah,
Jason Harwood:Their motivations, money is always a motivator, but is it the prime motivator?
Jacob Litton:Now, honestly, when I look at those receivers for Jamar Chase and T Higgins, I feel like that's a money's the prime motivator for both of those guys. Did you see the clip of, uh, Jamar Chase at that fan
Jason Harwood:with Amon Rah's jersey.
Jacob Litton:yeah, he made him take off the Amon Ra
Jason Harwood:Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah.
Jacob Litton:on.
Jason Harwood:What, do you think it was just Amon Rah's jersey, or is it because he's another top one, or is it any, he wouldn't have taken any other jersey?
Jacob Litton:you know, I don't but I
Jason Harwood:If T, if he had a T Higgins jersey, would he tell the guy to go away with a T Higgins jersey?
Jacob Litton:You'd have to, you'd have to let him do
Jason Harwood:Yeah, I would hope so.
Jacob Litton:Ra though, showing you up and getting paid and everything. I think he's a little salty about
Jason Harwood:Apparently. Amun Ra made up to that guy. Did you see that? It's gonna, he's gonna hook that guy up.
Jacob Litton:No, I
Jason Harwood:Yeah, there was a report that Amun Ra said I'll hook you up. So hopefully, I don't know. I don't know what that ended up being. I'm sure it's like a signed jersey or whatever, so the next, another PFF thing. The players that are drafted in 2021. So that's the Penei Sewell class. From that class, the Lions have three of the top eight players which just shows how dominant Brad Holmes is at drafting. It's unbelievable. So Sewell's number one at 92 and a half. Parsons, who we talked about. Earlier was number two, 92. 4. Nico Collins was actually the third. I don't know if you saw that or not. 91. 4 rated ahead of next Amun Ra St. Brown at 91. 2. That seems strange to me. They have Nico Collins rated above Amun Ra. But, maybe we're partial down here.
Jacob Litton:they factor that, but you know what? Michigan, man. Good for
Jason Harwood:Yeah, exactly. I like seeing them get love, but I'm, more partial to Amun Ra. But anyways, so Amun Ra number four, then Javon Holland and Jalen Waddle, both dolphins. The next two, Greg Russo. And then number eight is Alim McNeil at 86. 8. So three of the top eight from, in that draft class are lions. And so that. It just tells you why the Lions are, they're setting themselves up for success. It's pretty awesome.
Jacob Litton:That's been like a huge problem for us in the past is that we just couldn't hit on the draft. It's like, what are we doing? Are we not doing the research? Is everyone really a bust? Why are we not consistently getting good draft picks? then for this to happen, when Brad Holmes takes over and now the draft, we're getting guys in fourth round that are playmakers and are actually contributing to the team. That's crazy.
Jason Harwood:Yeah, that's where you get the quick turnaround, and that's why there was no turnaround during the Quinn. One of the reasons why in the Quinn Patricia era, you're just not hitting on so many draft picks. I mean, Brad Holmes is hitting on, More than his fair share of draft picks just, you getting three in the top eight is insane. You can't expect that to happen every year for Brad Holmes. Although, in three years wait till this last draft classes up there. It's could be even more I, it was really nice seeing this. It's just confirmation of what we're all seeing on the field is, the Lions homegrown players are. balling out
Jacob Litton:How far do they go on that list? Was it just a top 10 or like how far did they go on that
Jason Harwood:So,
Jacob Litton:if he was also in 2021.
Jason Harwood:if he's number 10, actually no, for me, we could have went out to 10 and said, if he, however, that a lot of that was to me the last six games. So that, I, That projection was probably heavily biased for recency bias. Whereas the other three players on the list, I've shown it for all three years. Whereas if he show, he played all games last year, all 17 games last year, I do believe, but it was just the back end, the six and the playoffs where he really shined. It's awesome to see him up on that list, but it's just
Jacob Litton:He definitely, he took a big leap.
Jason Harwood:He did.
Jacob Litton:Last year, but they actually, he was ranked the ninth highest safety last year,
Jason Harwood:Yeah. Yeah. I knew that and if he'd have played all year, at that level, he would have been way higher than ninth. I'm sure that it was, cause really, like I said, it was just in the regular season, it was the back six games, so that he really played a while. Yeah. It leads us into the,
Jacob Litton:that kind of goes into
Jason Harwood:yeah, exactly. It's a natural transition into our next topic. What will the Lions do at safety this year? What do you see them doing?
Jacob Litton:obviously they're going to have some rotational pieces in there, but I feel like by the time the season starts, I feel like the plan should be to have iffy and branch back there and have Kirby rotate in more. I think when you have Iffy and Branch, they've both proven coming off the edge, disguising blitzes also dropping in coverage. They've proven, really valuable. Whereas Kirby, I feel like, is much better in the passing game and maybe not so much with his blitzing ability. That's what I feel like maybe we should have, cause if Iffy and Branch are both out there, you really don't know which way they're coming up. You're gonna have to start sending Kirby more, if that's the game plan. And not to say that he's not able to blitz, I just don't think he's really shown that so far as much as the other two. What are you
Jason Harwood:I think Kirby's, I think Kirby's going to be out there. He's a great, center fielder. Good ball skills out there and can, he just has good instincts. But branch, they're never going to take out that field. I, he's going to be out there and you wanted the safety positions or in the nickel position. I, I looked. It what happened when CJGJ comes back and they had that rotation of Ify, Kirby, and CJGJ, that's going to be like, like the blueprint of what's going on. Branch was, they only played him at Nickel after a certain point last year, they just moved into Nickel only. I actually looked just to see where branch had played and they had played more snaps in the first two playoff games. But then in the 49ers game, how many, what percentage of snaps do you think branch played in that 49ers game?
Jacob Litton:Eighty.
Jason Harwood:41 percent of the snaps that game.
Jacob Litton:Less than
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob Litton:was hurt, right?
Jason Harwood:I don't think it was, no, I don't think it was that. It was more that They just, they couldn't get him on the field in the, in, in the right packages with the nickel. And I think they were loading up on the run and they, for whatever reason, didn't put them out. They had more heavy linebacker sets, but he paid less than 50 percent of those snaps. And then also last year they played in the playoffs. They played some for safety sets. But I think that was just because they didn't have enough corners. The corners they had weren't, um, talented enough. And this year, hopefully it's going to go the other way. Cause you've got a meek that can go inside rake straw. That's perfect. They're training inside. So it'll be interesting cause branch will be playing in there too. But I like the idea of having Kirby branch and iffy out there, cause you got iffy and branch that could come and that's going to be really confusing for our defense.
Jacob Litton:Definitely. That's what I was saying. I think that if you're putting two as starters, I think if he and branch, but you're leaning more towards Kirby and branch,
Jason Harwood:I think I think Kirby plays deeper. And like you had said before, Kirby's not going to be someone that's necessarily going to be what you're going to have a run stopper, but I, My feeling is that it's going to branch is going to be out there, either nickel or safety depending on how it breaks down, but branch could almost, he'll play that free floating safety where you're almost like a linebacker out there and you don't know where he's going to be on the field.
Jacob Litton:around.
Jason Harwood:then, and that's the thing, if you get him and iffy out there together and they're moving around, it's going to be. You could set up some confusing defenses for the quarterback. And for their offensive line of the opposing team, they're not going to know where they're, where Pressure is going to come from.
Jacob Litton:That's exactly what you want.
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob Litton:Especially you send them sometimes, but then, there's the threat of them coming. Then you drop them back in coverage and you hope that, Hutch reader, I'll even hope somebody gets home
Jason Harwood:that's also thing is sometimes Aiden does that thing where he backs out into coverage and, the pressure comes from somewhere else. And then, yeah, they don't, they, they don't expect that. And then he gets that, pick cause he's just in a lane, the they know where, if they could anticipate where the hot read is, Aiden just steps in that lane and you're hoping that he, takes it or, does what he did yeah. Carolina, where he just reaches out and snags that the screen pass. That was such an awesome interception.
Jacob Litton:Is that the one where he got flipped to his hips? Which
Jason Harwood:Yeah, that was a game where he was gonna, he was trying to score for a touchdown and yeah
Jacob Litton:yeah.
Jason Harwood:blindsided and it was like a very scary moment for, yeah.
Jacob Litton:second. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Harwood:I was, that was there and you're texting me what's Aiden doing? And my wife had eyes with the binoculars on the sideline. Okay, he doesn't have his helmet, but he's running. He's running. So that's good. He's just stretching out. And then Sarah told me, he's got his helmet. So I texted you back. I'm like, he's got his helmet. So he's coming back on. It was such a relief when he had his helmet in his hand.
Jacob Litton:source.
Jason Harwood:exactly. Also with the safety thing, lines like to play matchups too and move people around. They could have weeks where, it's going to be, like you said, if being branch out there, you might have other weeks where Kirby's out there more. If everybody's healthy, I think, it also might just depend on the team they're playing and, what they need to stop. All right, man. So next question that we have is, based on everything that we saw and we talked about, who do you think is going to have a breakout year for the Lions this year? Who do you anticipate? Before we hit training camp who's your guy?
Jacob Litton:I'm going to throw you a curve ball here.
Jason Harwood:All right.
Jacob Litton:I'm looking at the roster. I'm trying to think of a bold prediction to make who, because you have some obvious people, but then there's also is it really considered a breakout year if they've already been showing different things? My guess for a breakout year is going to be Khalif Rehman.
Jason Harwood:All right. I like it.
Jacob Litton:You can't hide Laporta anymore. Teams know he's there. They know who Amanra is. They know how dangerous he is. And JMo also has a speed, they're got eyes on him. And if Khalif is the other one out there, I think he, is going to be able to find some holes and do some damage. Key. We already talked about pro football focus rated him high, running his routes and everything like that. He got a decent number of targets, but we already talked about with Ronald's being gone, who's going to step up. I think that if he holds off DPJ and is, week one, he's the one starting getting the majority of the snaps back there. I think that he's actually going to be able to do a lot with it. So my my bold prediction here, I'm going to say that Kalief gets 50 catches. going to say 800 yards, five touchdowns.
Jason Harwood:Man.
Jacob Litton:save this time right here.
Jason Harwood:No, it's all right. I like it. I always like Kalief. I think that he's a very hard worker. Just, he doesn't have the necessary skill set that Amun Ra has, but, he'll get more time on the field now with Josh Reynolds not out there, hopefully. So I like it. I like your pick a lot. I was struggling with this question, for me, the obvious answer is Jamo I think that he's gonna have a great year this year and I know that's not like a bold pick like you picked but I just I The way he came on the back end of the year Started to connect with Jared Goff. It seemed like a little bit more and I you know would Josh Reynolds gone. I think JMO is going to be JMO is going to have it this year. I think he's, you're going to see some fireworks with him and Jared Goff. I think Jared Goff will know to throw it up. I'm just hoping that JMO, ball tracking skills are, A little more refined and he can, come down with, because if we can just give the threat of going deep, that's just move those safeties back and make our running game even more dangerous, especially with, the number one offensive line, as we mentioned earlier. So I'm I'm expecting JMO to have a big year, so I'm hoping it, so both of us are picking wide receivers, just. Two different ones. So
Jacob Litton:No, that's a hundred percent though. What we saw with JMO last year in the 49ers game, especially having the full off season, everything like that, he already showed some flashes and OTAs tracking the deep ball and stuff like that. You hope the improvements there, you hope finally having a full season. Yeah, definitely. I'm on board with that one too. I just felt like that was an easy
Jason Harwood:yeah yeah, I was good.
Jacob Litton:answers.
Jason Harwood:with easy. We're out, man. I was on vacation. You had mentioned the play in the 49ers where they had their, the huge reverse where he takes it for a touchdown. Same thing in the saints game. I Anticipate some wrinkles on that reverse this year. I don't know what they're going to do if they're going to, have him take the primary reverse and, Gibbs run in the other way or Kalief run in the other way, all the attention, it just seems Hey, they ran it twice, pretty successful. I, no, I'm not saying they won't run it with Jamo. They will, but I expect Ben Johnson to play the next level of, we're going to get the defense to over pursue one way and just shock them and go back the other way, or they could even do that flip back to Jared Goff. And, they did that. What was that camera? That was the Carolina game. LaPorta was just wide open. They. They threw that. Yeah. And then the 49ers basically ran that same exact play later on that same day, which was very interesting. So the NFL script writers got screwed up and just, did our, Wrote the same play for two different teams, screwed it all up, man.
Jacob Litton:Identical. Sweet play,
Jason Harwood:Yeah. I, another thing, this is a cheap answer for the breakout season, but I expect Aiden to have a really good season and I don't know. It's hard. You can't, it's like saying Amon Ra's going to have a breakout season, even if they do better is I wouldn't consider what a, Aiden gets, unless he, were to break the sack record or something like that. Not that I expect that, but that would be considered a breakout season, but I expect Aiden to have us really. Strong statistical season. He's had a lot of the QB pressures were second in the league, but he just couldn't transform all that into sacks. And hopefully with, Aleem and DJ Reader up the middle, and hopefully, if Marcus Davenport can play good on the other side, you're going to see an uptick in Aleem's edge stats. Stats that, you look at edge rushers, QB pressures, sacks.
Jacob Litton:He's also fighting off two people, and he's taking the long way around trying to get to the quarterback. He's just, relentless, going after the quarterback. I think that's why he's leading in pressures, or doing so well in pressures. But yeah, if they can't double him every time, they can't have someone there to chip him every time. That's what we're hoping is that he takes a leap. Like you said, it's hard to call it a breakout season because we expect him to have a good year and having DJ reader and everything. Now we hope that he, takes it even further than he did before.
Jason Harwood:Yep. So I expect I expect a sec note totals to go up this year. So it'll be interesting. Anything you want to add on that?
Jacob Litton:No, real quick just to touch on before what we talked about because I was curious about the Brian Branch because you said he played 41
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob Litton:of the snaps. So he actually was the highest rated defender for that game. He had a 77 rating, which was actually highest. Branch, then Aleem, then Anzalone. the lowest graded defender was actually CJ Gardner Johnson.
Jason Harwood:Yeah. I don't know if that personal follow that he took a grade. I don't know if they take into that account and their grades, but yeah, that's why you got to have branch on the field. You can, you get your highest graded defender sitting on the bench for over half the place. So that doesn't make sense. I get it. Yeah.
Jacob Litton:still feel like there has to be something to do with the injury or if he's playing 60 percent of the snaps, you've got who else? Kirby played 82 percent of the snaps. CJ played 50%. You're telling me you couldn't fit branch in there somewhere. I don't know if it is a coverage thing. Maybe, I just, I feel like it has to be some sort of, he just wasn't a hundred percent.
Jason Harwood:All right, then our next topic is we're going to just touch on this briefly is NFL lawsuit. The NFL lost a sizable lawsuit 4. 7 billion in damage damages, and then another, that wasn't enough. So then. They lost another 96 million to the commercial class, like the bars and things over the NFL Sunday ticket pricing. Did you have any thoughts on that at all?
Jacob Litton:I feel like everyone knew the whole time that you're overpaying. Nobody knew it wasn't a secret that we're all getting ripped off. I only got Sunday ticket, I think one or two years. And it was just, this isn't worth it. If I'm getting the game to try to watch the lions, these games are getting blacked out. Anyway, I'm watching them on local and now, cause that was years ago, but now you have, even if you buy Sunday ticket, how many games, they've got Amazon games every Thursday. They've got games on Netflix this year. They've got, Peacock and Paramount and all these other things. So even the people that bought Sunday ticket, like the last year or two, still weren't able to see all the games paying an astronomical amount. It's way overinflated. So it's not surprising to me at all. That it came down the way that it did. I saw something though. They said where it stands right now, I know the NFL is appealing, but where it stands right now, each team would be on the hook for 440 million in
Jason Harwood:Yeah, I saw that. That's like a ridiculous amount of money. But to be honest with you over that time period, the value of their teams have went way above that. So most of those owners, if you've owned your team for that amount of time, a half a billion dollars is a lot of money to lose, but they've gained A lot of money over the past, decade or so, and just team value. But so the reason why this case was brought up is because there was, the football has, and all major sports have what's called an antitrust exception, which basically the leagues are allowed to negotiate broadcast rights as a whole, as opposed to each individual team doing their broadcast rights, it's supposed to even out the playing field. You share that revenue evenly among all the teams. Cause you would expect say the Dallas Cowboys to make more money than the Arizona Cardinals or,, a team that's not as popular. But what the plaintiff said is, okay, that works for. Free TV, but we're talking about for pay TV, it should be different. I shouldn't have to pay for basically all these teams when I only want to see the lions, right? I'm I know our listeners, we got people, just based on the downloads are listening all over the country and some people are out of the country that are listening to us. So there's some people that are very interested in this because I'm sure they had the Sunday ticket and they paid, a large amount to watch the Lions play. So it's, It'll be interesting to see, cause it's going to go to appeal. So it's going to be a long time before this gets fully decided, but this is going to affect streaming rights as a possibility affecting the Amazon rate. Cause that's a pay TV program. You have to pay for Amazon prime to get that, the Netflix it could affect that too in the future cause they're Netflix has Christmas Day games this year, which they, paid a lot of money for. So it'll be interesting, because I think that this lawsuit could affect all those streaming services too. I don't think it's just they're going to pay this 450 million, and then each team or whatever, and then it's going to be done. There, there's a lot of more implications. Passed just this lawsuit it not just the Sunday ticket, but I think it affects, just general streaming rights, too
Jacob Litton:and where do we go moving forward? Are you going to be able to buy just a package with just your team? Are you going to be able, is it going to be like a pay per view game kind of system where you got to pay for each game that you want to see?
Jason Harwood:Yeah,
Jacob Litton:gonna just incorporate that with NFL Plus?
Jason Harwood:I know there's gonna there's a lot of different things But I mean if you've listened to the case at all They like ESPN had a plan they wanted to ESPN plus or whatever the Sunday ticket and they were willing To sell it for like less than 100 for the package But the NFL Didn't choose that partly because CBS and Fox says that devalued their product cause they're paying the NFL billions of dollars for the rights to show the games, on Sundays. So there's a lot that went into, into this case but it's going to be interesting cause it definitely will change the Sunday ticket for sure. And, you might be able to just get your own, the team that you want as opposed to buying a bunch of games that mostly don't have interest in,
Jacob Litton:for sure.
Jason Harwood:All right, that's enough of that. We're off lawsuits and bumming stuff. Let's go into the fun stuff. Let's go into the Honolulu Blitz. All right, Jacob. I get to ask you questions first this time. Are you ready?
Jacob Litton:I'm ready.
Jason Harwood:All right. What is the Lions longest winning streak since 2000?
Jacob Litton:The longest winning streak since 2000. I don't feel like it was very long. I'll say four.
Jason Harwood:Nine. It's actually nine games. It's
Jacob Litton:year was
Jason Harwood:so 2010, 2011, they won the last four games and 10, and then they won the first five games in 11. That fifth game was the Bears Monday night game. Remember when it was going crazy, we ended up being five and oh, so that was yeah, so that was they won. It's across two seasons,
Jacob Litton:question. It's two seasons. I was trying to think okay yeah, no, you're
Jason Harwood:Yeah. Yeah.
Jacob Litton:I see what you're doing
Jason Harwood:So I didn't include the longest winning streak. I just said since 2000, but the longest winning streak is actually 10 games and it was 1934. So way back in 1934, I didn't I didn't play the trick question on you on that time.
Jacob Litton:Yeah,
Jason Harwood:but all right, ready for the next one.
Jacob Litton:let's go
Jason Harwood:How many seasons have the Lions made the playoffs in their history? 90 90, yeah, 90 seasons, how many how many have they made the playoffs?
Jacob Litton:Super Bowl and everything
Jason Harwood:Yeah, just everything, in their 90 seasons.
Jacob Litton:seven
Jason Harwood:Just 7 times? Out of 90? Eighteen, actually. So about one every five years we average to get to the playhouse. Ugh, I saw that number and I was like uh,
Jacob Litton:obviously a shot in the
Jason Harwood:yeah, no. It's I hadn't even thought about that. I just saw this trivia question somewhere. I was like, oh, that's interesting. I still think eighteen's disappointing. Your seven is much more disappointing.
Jacob Litton:the Super Bowl era? Have that or
Jason Harwood:Since 1967, we are one in eleven in postseason play. But that must be before last year. Yeah. Yeah. So that was before last year. Because it's there. Yeah, so 12 and two of them would have been, we would have all two of them would have been in the same season, 91, but the rest of them, so that's 12, so we would have made it 11 times, so including last year would have been 12 yeah, crazy.
Jacob Litton:than I thought
Jason Harwood:Yeah, still disappointing though.
Jacob Litton:How many of those did we win?
Jason Harwood:Yeah, not enough. All right. It's a opinion question here for you. Will Aiden have over under 13 and a half sacks this year?
Jacob Litton:I'm gonna be positive. I'm gonna say over.
Jason Harwood:I'm guessing 15. That's what I think he's going to get. All right. What is your favorite win in the Dan Campbell era? So since he's been the head coach, what's your favorite win that we've got?
Jacob Litton:I'm gonna say the first one the win against the Vikings when Amon Ra caught the ball in the end zone like that
Jason Harwood:yeah,
Jacob Litton:The season was going terribly and everything, but it just finally I don't know a breath of fresh air. It felt like
Jason Harwood:finally got the muck up.
Jacob Litton:important more meaningful more iconic but I guess that one was a good one
Jason Harwood:That's good. All right. What movie have you not seen that everyone's seen that you're embarrassed to admit that you haven't seen?
Jacob Litton:I haven't
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob Litton:So like a really popular
Jason Harwood:Yeah. Popular movie that everybody's seen that, People talk about, but you've never seen.
Jacob Litton:Oh man. That's tough. Cause I can't even if I want to see a movie, I'll see it. There's gotta be some iconic, like best picture movie that I'm just not thinking of.
Jason Harwood:It doesn't have to be a newer movie. It could be an older movie. Something I would make fun of you for, maybe.
Jacob Litton:Yeah, maybe I really can't think of one.
Jason Harwood:I stumped you.
Jacob Litton:You did, but you know what? The first thing that came to mind is not even a movie, but the show, there's a TV show that everyone talks
Jason Harwood:Yeah,
Jacob Litton:is Game of
Jason Harwood:okay.
Jacob Litton:I have not seen Game of Thrones. I don't watch Game of Thrones. I watched an episode of that with my mom, and it was like towards the end of it. And it was like I don't even remember why it was over there, but it was like she was watching Game of Thrones, I saw like the last half of it, and I was like, that was actually pretty cool. So then I watched the first episode of the first season, I was like, this is terrible, I can't watch this. And that's all I hear is positive things and they're remaking the new show now and everything. I just, not my
Jason Harwood:Not your thing. All right, man. That's good. I'll accept that. That's, very popular and you miss that.
Jacob Litton:Yeah, you did stop me. Cause I can't think of the movie. I'm sure there's plenty, but nothing jumped out of me.
Jason Harwood:All right, man. I'm up.
Jacob Litton:You ready? Some of these are easy, but that's okay. I've got an opinion one mixed in here too.
Jason Harwood:All right.
Jacob Litton:Okay. What number overall was Barry Sanders drafted?
Jason Harwood:He was two or three uh,
Jacob Litton:Who's number
Jason Harwood:Three. Shoot. It was Troy.
Jacob Litton:players that were
Jason Harwood:I know Troy Aikman was drafted ahead of him. And Deion Sanders was drafted behind him. Who? Derek Thomas?
Jacob Litton:the Packers
Jason Harwood:Pac? Oh, Tony Mandarich, right? Yeah,
Jacob Litton:yep.
Jason Harwood:Mandarich, was it? Yeah, Tony, that's right. Okay, yep, all right. Three,
Jacob Litton:Alright, what current Lion wears number three?
Jason Harwood:man. Nah, you got me. Who's that?
Jacob Litton:Special teams?
Jason Harwood:I still don't know.
Jacob Litton:It's the punter,
Jason Harwood:Oh, Jack Fox. Pro Bowler Jack Fox, all right.
Jacob Litton:I was looking at different numbers, and I, Barry Sanders was drafted number three, so I was like, okay, what lion wears number three? And I actually, I probably wouldn't have known that
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob Litton:had to look. Who is the last lion to win the Associated Press Rookie of the Year? It
Jason Harwood:I know Stafford didn't win it because he got injured his rookie year. It's Calvin, isn't it?
Jacob Litton:was actually in Damakong Su.
Jason Harwood:Yes Defensive player. Yeah.
Jacob Litton:won I think it was like the Pepsi Rookie of the Year, or
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob Litton:but the Associated Press, the last time we won was Su.
Jason Harwood:Okay. Yep
Jacob Litton:All right. What quarterback led the league in passing yards last year?
Jason Harwood:Tua.
Jacob Litton:Yeah.
Jason Harwood:Yeah. Yeah, I knew it wasn't gonna yeah I know how much was it?
Jacob Litton:624
Jason Harwood:Yeah.
Jacob Litton:and then golf was second with 4,
Jason Harwood:Yeah, breeze and then we're throwing 5, 000 yards when there was 16 games in a season And now we're up to 17 and we Kevin hit the 5, 000 but yeah All right. All right, good. I felt good about that
Jacob Litton:All right. Besides Graham Glasgow. is your celebrity crush? No,
Jason Harwood:crush. Does it have to be a football player or anybody?
Jacob Litton:No. Anybody.
Jason Harwood:Eminem would,
Jacob Litton:a woman. I
Jason Harwood:oh my celebrity crush, like I, when you said Graham, okay, so Celebrity Crush. I'm,
Jacob Litton:about big, strong men.
Jason Harwood:I did. I'm confused about the, so Celebrity Crush. Oh wow. Who this is, and my wife listens to this, so let me be careful how I say this. It's not Taylor Swift. I'll tell you that it's definitely not Taylor Swift.
Jacob Litton:He's on the spot here. He's
Jason Harwood:I know I, I really
Jacob Litton:can't say the first thing that popped into his
Jason Harwood:know exactly. I got it
Jacob Litton:like
Jason Harwood:now. Who I used to like was Kirsten Dunst. I liked
Jacob Litton:No
Jason Harwood:Man movies. Yeah, I think, but now those movies are creepy. Like they have her, in the rain and yeah, it's just
Jacob Litton:Yeah.
Jason Harwood:It's creepy.
Jacob Litton:w it's weird.
Jason Harwood:Yeah, it is. It's
Jacob Litton:a
Jason Harwood:yeah. Yeah. Scarlett Johansson's pretty yeah, pretty cool. So I could take her. Yeah. All right, man. That's good. So
Jacob Litton:right.
Jason Harwood:I'm back from vacation. We actually worked together this week. Are you super excited about that?
Jacob Litton:Oh, yeah. I can't
Jason Harwood:Yeah, I'm sure. Yep. That's right. It's going to be, finally get some work done when they're on, if I hear about how you didn't do anything last week and I'm there, everyone's happy to have me back.
Jacob Litton:Yep. Fun time's over. Jason's
Jason Harwood:Yeah, exactly. That's right. No.
Jacob Litton:ready to be annoyed at work.
Jason Harwood:Yeah. That's probably cause we'll be talking about different things, sports again. A downtime for football. So people, might be able to stand around us and, tigers aren't giving us too much to talk about. Some exciting stuff here and there, but, still I'm going to say a disappointing season after starting 5 0
Jacob Litton:yeah. Now we've got Pistons and Red Wings off seasons.
Jason Harwood:Yeah, Bisson signed a big player, right? I don't follow him that much, but I saw that they signed a free agent, correct?
Jacob Litton:yeah. So we signed Tobias Harris, who actually used to play in Detroit. So he's coming back. It was a decent pickup. We need a veteran player,
Jason Harwood:And they traded for Tim Hardaway, correct?
Jacob Litton:correct. Yep. Graphics. That's Michigan man
Jason Harwood:yeah, I know, yeah.
Jacob Litton:these are good vets, but I, don't know. Don't know how much it's going to help the team. We'll see. We got another coach that just got fired.
Jason Harwood:Yeah, I know.
Jacob Litton:Historically, we don't do very well with that and we just keep doing it over and over again.
Jason Harwood:Exactly. All right. Yeah, we'll see how it goes. All right, man. Hope you guys enjoyed this uplifting podcast as opposed to, last week. Everyone have a good week and we'll be back on here again next week. All right. Go Lions!
