Detrot Lions Remake Linebackers in Jim Schwartz’s Image

June 13, 2010   ·   Blue in Greer   ·   Jump to comments

Look at that picture.
That's Lions linebacker Julian Peterson on the Vikings All-Pro WR Sidney Rice.
Seems to be doing a pretty good job of it too.
I've talked about the new faces in the secondary, I've even talked about Schwartz and his history a little.
We had a nice discussion on the pass pressure and how that should help. I need to get back into that later, but I wanted to talk about an often overlooked part of the pass defense, the linebackers.
First thing we have to know is Schwartz and Gun love their LBs. No other 4-3 team played as many snaps at LB as the Lions, and the Lions LBs actually had more plays than a few 3-4 teams like Baltimore and New England.
This isn't something new for them, ProFootballFocus analyzed 26 of the last 33 games in Schwartz' role as Defensive Coordinator at Tennessee and it was the same thing. There are a lot of linebacker snaps taken in this defense.
Also interesting is how they use those LBs. Last year the Lions we...

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