Are the Lions on pace with pre-season stat projections?

Back in August I sat down and made a projection on what the Detroit Lions offensive stat lines would look like at the end of the season. The plan was to come back to it twice. Once at the bye and once at the end of the year. Here we are at the bye, now it’s time to check in to see where we’re at on those projections. Let’s get into it. 

Passing

Ok, starting off with Goff. He’s well on pace to do everything that we projected him to do in August. He’s been very good this year except for the occasional interception. Each one of those have looked less like a problem and more like this weird lapse in judgement. He’s largely been money outside of those picks. He’s averaging a career best 68.3% completion percentage. 

There’s nine games left in the season. Here is what Goff will have to do in them to match the preseason projection. 

That’s pretty doable. He’s really have to step up on the touchdowns end of things and back off on the interceptions. If he’s going to do this, his per game stat line has to look something like this to pull it off. 

That’s not out of this world. I thought he’d be throwing a lot more touchdowns, but the Lions have been pretty run heavy this year. He might not hit that touchdown number. I also realize now that I might have added way too many attempts. As far as passing yards, that shouldn’t be an issue. Goff is already averaging 271 yards per game. We’ll see at the end of the year where this shakes out. 

Receiving 

St. Brown is also well on pace to hit these projections. The place he’s going to have some trouble sat is the catches. At least that’s the way it seems. If he wants to catch up on catches, he’d have to get seven a game. That’s not too off base. He’s had at least six in every game this year except one. Here’s what St. Brown would have to do to hit the projection as well as what he’d have to do per game. 

Seven catches for 95 yards and a touchdown per game is very doable for St. Brown. Right now he’s averaging 8 catches and 95 yards a game. Let’s see where this goes.

Yeah, I don’t know if this going to happen. I really thought at the time that Williams would be a bigger part of the Lions offense in 2023. Since he’s come back, he’s barely been used. There’s still nine games left. If he’s going to catch up, he’s going to have to come out of the bye as a part of this teams offense. I just don’t know if that’s going to happen. He’d have to get six catches for 61 yards a game and five touchdowns. Right now I just don’t see it. 

Reynolds is going to surpass the projections. I didn’t think that he was going to be this big a part of the offense going into the season. I thought the Lions were going to utilize Kalif Raymond and Marvin Jones more. Reynolds has been great this season. 

Gibbs might seem pretty behind on the projection here, but he’s not that far back. He just needs to get three catches for 40 yards per game in the next nine games. He might not hit that touchdown number, but he can definitely will hit the catches and yards portion. 

Raymond can also hit his projection this year. Still, it feels like Raymond should be a bigger part of this offense. With Donovan Peoples-Jones coming in, that might affect things. We’ll see.

LaPorta has already started passing some of the projections. The way we got LaPorta’s number was that we averaged out the rookie numbers of the last 26 tight ends taken in the first two days of the last 10 drafts. LaPorta putting up numbers that just aren’t normal for rookie tight ends. I look forward to seeing what he’s at when the year is over. A strong chance he could win Rookie of the Year.

Rushing

Believe it or not, Montgomery can hit his projection if he comes back in Week 10 and stays healthy for the final nine games of the year. He’d have to get 83 yards a game and then score four more touchdowns. That seems very doable. We’ll see though. Jahmyr Gibbs might be a much bigger part of the offense after his breakout play in the last two games. 

If Gibbs wants to hit his projection, he’ll have to rush for 41 yards a game in the next nine games. That seems doable after he just ran for 152 yards against the Raiders on Monday night. I can’t wait to see what he’s able to do in this offense once the Lions continue to open the playbook for him.