Lions need to rise to Matthew Stafford’s level in 2017

Through 13 weeks, Matthew Stafford played the best football of his career to lead the Lions to the top of the NFC North. Then, a dislocated finger derailed Detroit’s championship aspirations and Stafford’s MVP campaign.

The question now is whether the veteran quarterback can push his team past the border of greatness in 2017 and earn the franchise’s first postseason victory since 1992.

Stafford’s injury didn’t take him off the field but still sent the Lions’ promising season into a tailspin. He managed to play out a narrow win over the hapless Bears to push his team to 9-4, two games ahead of archrival Green Bay. Then, the wheels came off. Detroit finished its season with four straight defeats, losing each game by an average of nearly 15 points.

A defense that had been puffed up by a string of games against low-firepower offenses was beaten up in the process. The Cowboys rolled up 42 points in Week 16. Seven days later, the Packers sprung for 35, along with 448 total yards, to clinch the division title.

Stafford did his best to guide an offense that could win late-season shootouts, but was clearly hindered by his injury. Here are his numbers before and after suffering that dislocation.

It wasn’t the first time playing with a glove had a distinct negative impact on his play.

Now he’ll have to prove his pre-injury 2016 was no outlier. Stafford has been a good quarterback throughout his career. Last fall, he spent three months flirting with greatness. However, the season ended the way each winter has in Detroit since 1991 — without a postseason victory.

The Lions fielded a middling offensive line last season, allowing Stafford to get sacked on just over six percent of his dropbacks — a mark that ranked 20th in the NFL. In order to fix that and keep their soon-to-be-extended quarterback upright, they invested in a pair of veteran blockers and rolled the dice on a former No. 2 overall pick. Detroit’s front office is hoping this will be enough to elevate its line into a top 10 unit.

The two big free agent acquisitions were guard T.J. Lang and right tackle Ricky Wagner, who will combine to earn at least $39.5 million in guarantees with the club. Lang, tentatively slotted in at right guard, spent six seasons as a starter with the Packers and earned his first Pro Bowl nod last year. Wagner, the younger of the two at 27, just finished up his rookie contract with the Ravens. That Baltimore line was significantly more effective than Detroit’s; it allowed sacks on just 4.6 percent of Joe Flacco’s dropbacks last fall and 3.4 percent in 2015.

Both will bring immediate value and consistency to the Lions’ blocking corps, but the biggest upside on the depth chart could belong to another new addition. Greg Robinson was the second pick of the 2014 NFL Draft after two seasons as Auburn’s starting left tackle. Despite huge potential and even bigger expectations, his career with the Rams failed to pan out.

Robinson struggled through his first two seasons with the team, but his inability to connect his prodigious talents to the NFL game came to a head in 2016. He was a healthy scratch for a Week 11 game against the Saints after rolling up 12 penalties in the 10 preceding weeks. That led Los Angeles to decline the fifth-year option on his contract after announcing plans to move him back to the interior of the line.

Then, they cut bait altogether, jettisoning him up north in exchange for a sixth-round pick. That’s a pittance for a player Geoff Schwartz described as “the last great college tackle.” The shift in blocking philosophy from the Rams to the Lions should give him a great foundation for a career revival in the NFC North. His ability to set his feet and drive forward in run assignments could make him a standout guard, but his athleticism and high ceiling suggest anything other than tackle would be a disappointment.

Robinson isn’t the only buy-low candidate on which Detroit is taking a small gamble. Cyrus Kouandjio was a second-round pick in the 2014 draft. Three underwhelming seasons in Buffalo led him to an inexpensive $800K, one-year deal with the Lions. At only 24 years old, he still has time to develop into a valuable starter.

With starting left tackle Taylor Decker out for an extended period due to a torn labrum, Detroit has made moves to improve even without him by adding steady, versatile veterans and cheap young players with promise. Decker’s replacement won’t be official until training camp sorts itself out, but Robinson and Kouandjio look like early favorites to fill that gap.

Keeping Stafford happy and healthy will be the key to keeping him in town. While the young veteran has never made any waves about leaving the only franchise he’s called home, he’s also only got one season left on the three-year, $53 million contract extension he inked back in 2013. He’s due for a bank-breaking re-up — perhaps even something that could eclipse the $25 million per year Derek Carr just earned.

Of course, if Stafford has a sudden change of heart as his pocket continuously crumbles around him and he decides he can’t win in Motor City, he wouldn’t be the first Lion to abandon ship.

The Lions have lacked continuity in their quest to build an elite defense in the Stafford era. With the exception of 2014, they have failed to rank in the top 12 in either yardage or points allowed every season since 2000. Recent years have seen the team fail to find support behind All-Pro Ndamukong Suh or develop stars after his departure.

That outlying 2014, where the Lions finished second in the league in points allowed and third in yardage, produced the club’s best finish since 1991. That success started up front, where Suh, then-rookie Ziggy Ansah, George Johnson, and Jason Jones combined for 27 sacks from the trenches. DeAndre Levy was a punishing, consistent presence at middle linebacker after recording more than 150 tackles, and Glover Quin proved an adept center fielder with seven interceptions from the safety position.

General manager Bob Quinn is working to replicate that lineup. He brought Akeem Spence and Cornelius Washington to bring depth to the defensive line in hopes of supporting Ansah, Haloti Ngata, and 2016 second-rounder A’Shawn Robinson.

2017 first-round draft pick Jarrad Davis is an uber-productive inside linebacker who can fill Levy’s spot if the veteran free agent is forced into retirement by the nagging injuries that have limited him to only four starts the past two seasons. 2016 leading tackler Tahir Whitehead will move to the weakside LB slot to give Davis the space he needs to flourish. That duo will have support from Paul Worrilow, who started his first three seasons in Atlanta before falling out of favor with the Falcons last fall. Worrilow signed a one-year, $3 million deal in hopes of redeeming his professional value with Detroit.

However, one giant missing piece in the front seven is a reliable pass rusher. The Lions managed just 26 sacks last season, which ranked second-worst in the league. None of the new pieces they’ve signed are especially proficient when it comes to creating sacks. Further complicating matters are a couple of suspensions that will give the team’s early-season opponents plenty of time to throw the ball. Defensive end Armonty Bryant (four games) and tackle Khyri Thornton (six) will both miss extended stretches this fall.

That will put a lot of pressure on a secondary that allowed the league’s highest QB rating in 2016. Detroit is hoping a pair of high-risk, high-reward players can fix things.

Teez Tabor displayed first-round talent at Florida, but poor performances in the lead-up to the draft led him to the Lions in the second round. He and 2017 signee D.J. Hayden are high-ceiling players who will have several questions to answer with their new team. Hayden, the 12th overall pick of the 2013 draft, failed to live up to expectations with the Raiders but could be aided by a change of scenery.

The team also still has defensive coordinator Teryl Austin, who interviewed for the Chargers head coach job last spring — his ninth interview in the last three years. Austin wasn’t able to mold last year’s unit into even an above-average squad, but his spectacular 2014 continues to give the team hope.

Detroit’s commitment to restocking its defensive depth chart was apparent, but lacked major headliners. Instead, the Lions are gambling on high-level prospects with questionable resumes and low-cost veterans who weren’t their team’s primary starters in 2016. That leaves a lot of pressure on incumbents like Ansah, Glover, and Darius Slay — three players who will have to return to their highest forms in order to make this a top 16 defense this year.

The Lions haven’t been to the playoffs in back-to-back years since 1994-95. If Stafford’s last-season leap is for real, they’ll have a tremendous chance to break that decades-long streak. They play in the same division as a Vikings team that may max out at eight wins in the Sam Bradford era, the new Browns ... er, the Bears, and a Packers team whose rebuilding secondary will be vulnerable to Stafford’s aerial attack.

The rest of the team’s schedule leans toward the Green Bay side of the power spectrum. While games against the Browns and Bengals lurk, non-division showdowns with the Steelers, Buccaneers, Giants, Falcons, and Ravens will pose serious detours on the path to a 10-win season. However, like the Packers, that’s a group not known for its passing defense — only the Ravens ranked in the top 17 in yards allowed last fall.

That gives Stafford the opportunity to stake his claim as one of the league’s best passers. He shined in 2016 despite the absence of Calvin Johnson, dialing up his accuracy and cutting his interception rate to a career low. He turned a receiving corps led by Golden Tate, Marvin Jones, and Eric Ebron into a deadly unit.

When healthy, he led the Lions to nearly 23 points per game despite the 30th-ranked rushing attack in the league. A healthy Ameer Abdullah should help push that average even higher this fall, though the team still has plenty of holes in its tailback platoon. Abdullah’s fumble issues could prevent him from being a reliable No. 1 option, but all the franchise did to back him up was add Matt Asiata — last seen averaging a paltry 3.3 yards per carry with the Vikings in 2016.

They’ll need Abdullah to prove he’s a legitimate NFL start, just like they’ll need Davis and Tabor and Hayden and a handful of other question marks to prove their worth. This team is capable of beating anyone through the air, but Detroit still has several questions to answer on the defensive side of the ball.

The Lions committed to bolstering their defense, but there’s no sure-fire solution in the team’s additions. That could lead to several shootouts in 2017 — but that’s something Stafford is equipped to handle.