If the Lions were getting 3-6 yds a carry on the rush, and their QB was untouched and under no pressure? Makes sense, because our entire DL was decimated.
But the Lions were completing easy passes all night and their players were running through our secondary untouched regularly...until they reached the red zone.
Our secondary was just fine physically, but played worse than our injured DL.
Any of our secondary or LBs just rolled over and spread our legs whenever the Lion O player wanted to raw dog us. And they did, all night. Injuries had little to nothing to do with that. That was us peeing down our own leg.
I think this is something that people ignored from last year that we just saw the result of tonight: When every play is guaranteed to get into your secondary, tackling is going to look bad.
People thought all the tackling issues last year were because the team 'gave up' on Pete. That's not what happened. The problem was that we were soft in the middle and got weak up front when Nwosu went out.
Tackling looks good when multiple bodies are getting to a guy and if your first 7 guys can't be counted on to make an impact, you are immediately setting yourself up for more missed tackles. Add on that relying so heavily on secondary players in the run game is going to tire them out and then they get dissected.
This team didn't just all of a sudden forget how to tackle or not want to win. We started the game with a three-and-out. But you can't decimate your entire front seven and think the secondary is going to save you. If you get some picks, yeah, but you can't do that if the other team spends the entire game out front by two scores. They aren't desperate for points... you are.