{"id":113732,"date":"2025-10-14T06:56:34","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T10:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/?p=113732"},"modified":"2026-02-18T14:31:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T19:31:36","slug":"nfl-week-6-recap-lions-play-calling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/analysis\/nfl-week-6-recap-lions-play-calling\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL Week 6 Recap: Lions Play Calling Let Them Down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Lions had four plays all game where they needed to gain just one yard in Week 6 against the Chiefs.<\/p>\n<p>They passed the ball all four times.<\/p>\n<p>One of the plays was the trick play on fourth and goal from the 1 that didn\u2019t count due to a penalty.<\/p>\n<p>The other three ended the game: Second and 1, third and 1, and fourth and 1 with 2:14, 2:07, and 2:03 left in the game.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-shortcode\"><iframe title=\"How Lions Coaching Failed Jared Goff vs Chiefs | NFL Week 6 Recap\" width=\"1100\" height=\"619\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/erX66-Zom-0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m mentioning those times for a reason.<\/p>\n<p>They wouldn\u2019t run the ball in the most optimal situations to run the ball.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, the Lions called runs on 54% of first downs.<\/p>\n<p>In the first half of the game, they called runs on 77% of first downs.<\/p>\n<p>Those runs?<\/p>\n<p>They averaged -0.01 EPA per rush and a 39% success rate.<\/p>\n<p>But when they passed the ball on first down?<\/p>\n<p>+0.58 EPA per pass and 91% success rate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jared<\/strong> <strong>Goff<\/strong> was 11 of 11 and averaged 11.0 yards per attempt.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, I mentioned the Chiefs were the #32 defense against play action, and the Lions had been using it at the #1 highest rate.<\/p>\n<p>The Lions used play action on just 29% of early down passes, #17 in the NFL.<\/p>\n<p>Detroit could have easily shifted those first down runs, which were averaging negative EPA, into first down passes, which were the best in the NFL last week, with 55% of them gaining another first down.<\/p>\n<p>This was one of the first big games with <strong>John Morton<\/strong> calling the shots and needing to scheme up to take on a good defense, and he failed miserably.<\/p>\n<p>Too many runs when they should have passed the ball, and too many passes when they should have run the ball.<\/p>\n\t<div class='sfa-image-adds' style=\"margin-bottom: 20px;\">\n\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/newsletter\/'>\n\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Sharp-Football-Analysis-Newsletter-Ad.jpg\" class=\"attachment-size-full size-size-full\" alt=\"Sharp Football Analysis Newsletter\" \/>\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Lions had four plays all game where they needed  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113738,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"NFL Week 6 Recap: Lions Play Calling Let Them Down","_seopress_titles_desc":"Warren Sharp examines how play calling hurt the Lions in their Week 6 loss to the Chiefs. How can John Morton improve his play calling moving forward?","_seopress_robots_index":"","mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-113732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","tag-articles"],"acf":[],"featured_image_urls":{"medium":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-300x200.jpg","thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-150x150.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-768x512.jpg","custom-size":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-694x683.jpg","custom-size-content":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-300x300.jpg","podcast-custom-size":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-350x350.jpg","homecustom-size-content":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-500x500.jpg","viz-thumb":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-255x140.jpg","amp-wp-small":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-100x100.jpg","amp-wp-large":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-738x430.jpg","amp-wp-normal":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-230x160.jpg","blog-large":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-669x272.jpg","blog-medium":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-320x202.jpg","recent-posts":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jared-Goff-Week-6-2025-1-700x441.jpg"},"appp_media":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113739,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113732\/revisions\/113739"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}