Here’s a closer look at the Lions’ personnel decisions that led to them moving to 9-3 on the season.
Offense
Quarterbacks
Jared Goff: 58 (100%)
Teddy Bridgewater: N/A
Add a couple more victory formation kneel downs for Goff.
Running backs
David Montgomery: 36 (62%)
Jahmyr Gibbs: 26 (45%)
Craig Reynolds: 2 (3%) — 17 special teams snaps (57%)
The Lions clearly thought they were going to be able to ground-and-pound the Saints run defense this week, hence a hefty load for Montgomery after Gibbs had seemingly taken the RB1 role away from him. Unfortunately, that game plan didn’t work for most of the game. Montgomery finished with just 3.1 yards per carry on 18 rushes, while Gibbs was much more efficient on the day (7.5 YPC), but only got 10 touches.
Also worth noting: Malcolm Rodriguez was needed more on the defensive side of the ball this week, so they took away his fullback duties against the Saints. Those snaps actually went to Sam LaPorta, who had five fullback reps on the day.
Tight ends
Sam LaPorta: 47 (81%)
Brock Wright: 23 (40%) — 15 (50%)
James Mitchell: 3 (5%) — 10 (33%)
The tight end group remains unchanged week-to-week, except for the aforementioned move to make LaPorta the team’s fullback. Pretty awesome that LaPorta had the most production of his career on a day he was also playing a whole other position.
Wide receivers
Amon-Ra St. Brown: 46 (79%)
Josh Reynolds: 44 (76%)
Jameson Williams: 33 (57%)
Kalif Raymond: 13 (22%) — 4 (13%)
Donovan Peoples-Jones: 12 (21%)
Antoine Green: INACTIVE (healthy scratch)
Curiously, St. Brown played his lowest percentage of snaps in a game since Week 2—when he had to leave the Seahawks game several times with injury. He has played at least 88% of snaps in every other game, so this was a fairly big anomaly. As a result, St. Brown’s two catches were the fewest he’s had in a game since last year’s game against the Cowboys (in which he was pulled for displaying concussion-like symptoms).
St. Brown’s snaps were seemingly split between Reynolds and Peoples-Jones, who both saw a slight uptick in their playing time.
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