Three and Out: McNeill's welcomed impact, a defense on the hunt, and an offense in quiet need of a bye-week reset
Allen Park — Here are three observations after a second viewing and a night to ponder the Detroit Lions’ 24-9 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Big Mac attack
About two hours before kickoff, I did an interview with the Buccaneers’ flagship. We hit on a number of components regarding the night’s upcoming matchup before they asked me what Alim McNeill’s return to the lineup would mean for the defense.
It was an easy question to answer because I felt like I’d been talking about the topic since it was unexpectedly announced that Levi Onwuzurike was lost for the season due to a knee injury. Without McNeill or Onwuzurike, the Lions lacked a traditional 3-tech defensive tackle, the interior lineman who lines up between the offensive tackle and guard and can regularly disrupt the pocket.
Leaning on a rotation of DJ Reader, Tyleik Williams and Roy Lopez on the inside, Detroit had effectively been utilizing three players with body types better suited to play nose tackle. Admittedly, that’s an athletic group for their size, but the collective couldn’t stack up to McNeill’s ability to penetrate and disrupt.
Leading up to the game, we were told that McNeill was wearing out Detroit’s offensive linemen on the practice field. Regardless, you wanted to see it with your own eyes before fully buying in. He has looked to be in great shape for months, had checked all the boxes in the rehab process regarding flexibility, strength and extension, but you couldn’t reasonably know how things would look under the lights after more than 10 months since his last game.
However, we knew that if he was anything close to the player he was before the injury, it was going to provide a massive boost to the defensive front and fill a schematic hole, even if the Lions had been able to creatively pathwork things with the way they used some of their edge rushers the first month and a half of the season.
McNeill drew the start on Monday, and it took him one Baker Mayfield dropback to demonstrate what the Lions had been missing. The defender put second-year center Graham Barton on skates, imploding Mayfield’s protective bubble and forcing the QB to scramble. He ultimately stumbled and was touched down by linebacker Jack Campbell for the sack, one of four the Lions recorded in the victory.
McNeill wasn’t part of the sack parade, but he tallied five pressures in his season debut, exceeding the season-highs for Reader, Williams and Lopez. It’s everything you could have hoped for in the return.