Author: Blake Froling

By Blake Froling

Two primetime games, two very different results.

It’s not really fair to compare the Lions’ win with the Packers’ loss. Atlanta is far superior to New York right now and let’s be honest, the Falcons simply own the Packers. The Giants were dealing with a depleted offensive line that couldn’t block me and receivers who couldn’t catch the ball. The Falcons looked nearly flawless against the Packers in the first half. Two completely different situations. Let’s look at them one at a time.

Lions beat Giants 24-10

It definitely wasn’t a pretty game to watch. Matthew Stafford did just enough to put the Lions ahead with touchdown passes to Marvin Jones and Eric Ebron, but threw for just 122 yards. 122 yards??? Did the Lions run the triple option the whole game or something?

Despite his low passing yards, Stafford looked impressive. He continues to surprise people with his scrambling ability, something he was dreadful at during the first few seasons of his career. Stafford also seemed more in control at the line of scrimmage than in recent years, and Jon Gruden made sure to point it out several times on the ESPN broadcast. He engineered the win more with the intangibles than the stats last night.

Running back Ameer Abdullah showed improvement running the ball against the Giants after a lackluster performance against the Cardinals. He looked like the elusive back we saw in his rookie year and ripped off a couple big runs, finishing with 86 yards on 17 carries. Believe it or not, that’s the most rushing yards for a Lions running back since Joique Bell had 91 yards against the Bears on Thanksgiving 2014. There’s your sad Lions stat of the day.

The Lions have shown now that they are committed to the run, whether it’s successful or not, and they’ll need more performances like that out of Abdullah if they’re going to keep defenses honest.

On defense, Ziggy Ansah and company exploited the Giants’ paper thin offensive line and sacked Eli Manning five times. I almost felt bad for Manning a couple times after seeing the sad attempts his offensive line made to protect him. Let’s just pretend I didn’t pick the Giants to win their division.

The front four for Detroit, which had been maligned as the weak spot of the team going into the season, has gotten to the quarterback for six sacks and allowed just 107 rushing yards through two games. Ansah has already surpassed his sack total from a year ago, when he was dealing with a high ankle sprain. I, along with many other fans, was worried about how Ansah would play early in the season after being M.I.A. for most of training camp and the preseason. Through two games, it’s safe to say he’s back.

The secondary looked extremely impressive for most of the night, minus one breakdown in coverage in the red zone that led to a touchdown. Giants receivers had no space to work, Eli constantly ran out of time to throw and Odell Beckham Jr was held in check.

That secondary will be tested even more on Sunday when the high octane Atlanta Falcons come to town. They effortlessly dropped 34 points on the Packers and have a stable of talented receivers to spread out the Lions defense. Add in two great running backs with Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman, and this will be the toughest game on the Lions schedule this season. Speaking of those Falcons…

Falcons beat Packers 34-23

I bet if you Google who owns the Packers, instead of seeing thousands of Green Bay residents, you’d get Matt Ryan. At least that’s what it should say. Ryan surgically picked apart the Packers’ revamped secondary early in the game. I had flashbacks to the NFC Championship game last year where he basically did the exact same thing. I certainly didn’t mind.

The absence of Jordy Nelson completely derailed this powerful Packers offense. It’s clear that despite having a bevvy of talented receivers, Aaron Rodgers depends on Nelson the most, and without him, things go wrong. It also doesn’t help when you have two starting offensive linemen out, and your best defensive tackle, and two members of the secondary.

Injuries cost the Packers a real shot at a Super Bowl last season, and they’re already threatening to do the same this year. We still don’t know the severity of these injuries yet, so don’t jump to conclusions, but if this becomes a trend, they’ll have to wait another year to get over the hump.

Maybe this is me reading into things too much, but if the road to the Super Bowl runs through Atlanta again, does Green Bay even have a chance? Right now, I’d say no. Whatever adjustments Dom Capers made from the NFC Championship game to Sunday night clearly didn’t work. For all the talk the young secondary gets and how great the “nitro” defense is, will it ever be good enough to beat these Falcons? I have serious doubts.

Last season: 2-7, 1-5 in Mid Pen

Playoffs: None

Only six players in the Mid Pen Conference who earned all-conference honors last season are returning this year. Westwood has two of them.

While seemingly every team in the conference suffered heavy attrition from graduation, Westwood was barely affected. The Patriots started six sophomores, four juniors and only one senior for the most part last season, according to head coach Scott Syrjala. The playing time for the underclassmen was invaluable, even though they certainly took their lumps — a 35-0 loss to Chetek-Weyerhaeuser to open the season, a 30-0 drubbing from Ishpeming, a 34-0 loss to Gwinn and a 28-0 loss to Negaunee to end the season, just to name a few.

Syrjala said he can see the experience is already showing in the preseason.

Syrjala also noticed a greater number of players working out in the offseason than in years past, coming in to lift weights as a team year-round. Instead of getting discouraged by a losing season, they dedicated themselves to getting better in the winter and summer months.

“They see how strong they have to be and how fast they have to be,” said Syrjala, “and if it wasn’t a good group of kids, they wouldn’t have responded in the offseason the way they have.”

Listen to Scott Syrjala’s full interview here

“This is a kid that would go in for basketball practice and then lift afterwards,” said Syrjala. “He would ask to come in on Saturdays and Sundays and I’d have to tell him, ‘Becks you have to take a break, you have to rest your body a bit.’”

Beckman completed 45 percent of his passes and threw for 610 yards, ranking third in the conference. He also tossed eight touchdowns and only three interceptions. Syrjala said Beckman isn’t making some of the simple mistakes he did as a sophomore and is ready to take the next step.

“The game is starting to slow down for him, and he’s starting to make his reads and go through his progression,” said Syrjala. “His footwork is getting better, he worked on his footwork in the offseason, and I expect big things out of him this year.”

Westwood also returns three of its top four receivers from last season, which should boost an offense that was stagnant at times. Junior Jacob Adriano caught 11 passes for 144 yards and three touchdowns. Speedy senior Ethan Burke averaged an incredible 24.9 yards per reception and found the end zone three times.

The defense is just as young as the offense as well. Burke, Beckman and Adriano had an interception each, and junior defensive end Sam Gilles earned all-conference honorable mention last season. But their inexperience showed as they allowed fewer than 28 points in a game only twice, their two wins against L’Anse and Manistique.

In a year when the Mid Pen Conference might be perceived as being “down” due to the exodus of talented seniors from last season, it could turn into the perfect landscape for the young but more seasoned Patriots to shoot up the standings. Syrjala doesn’t have any specific expectations for his team — he’d prefer to focus on the little things.

The Chicago Cubs made the first splash of the MLB trade season, nabbing pitcher Jose Quintana from the Chicago White Sox in exchange for OF Eloy Jiménez, RHP Dylan Cease, 1B Matt Rose and INF Bryant Flete. This trade has ramifications for the Detroit Tigers as well, both positive and negative.

The negative of this trade is that the Tigers lose out on a possible trade partner. The Cubs had been reportedly interested in the likes of Justin Verlander, Michael Fulmer and Daniel Norris, but talks never got too serious. Now Chicago filled its pitching need. The Cubs were seen as a potentially perfect trade partner for the Tigers to dump Verlander because they aren’t afraid to spend big money and they have a deep farm system. Now that Chicago is off the table, the likelihood that Verlander gets dealt just plummeted.

In the case of Fulmer, the Cubs had plenty of top prospects to give up in order to land him, as seen with the Quintana trade. This might seem like a blow to the Tigers, but there is a positive way to look at this. Fulmer is younger, cheaper and having a better season than Quintana, which means his trade value should be higher. If the White Sox were able to get this impressive of a haul for Quintana, the return for Fulmer should be even greater, if the Tigers decide to deal him.

I was against the idea of trading Fulmer initially, but seeing the Quintana deal might change my mind. Jiménez is the No. 5 prospect in the MLB, according to Baseball America, and Cease is No. 83. The White Sox are writing the book on how to do a quick and effective rebuild, and the Tigers should be taking notes. The Sox now have seven of the top 100 prospects, according to Baseball America, and only one of them was originally signed by the organization. The rest were acquired via trades like this one and the Chris Sale deal with the Boston Red Sox.

The argument against trading Fulmer, which I used, was that it would be trading the future for an uncertain future. But if the haul included at least two top 100 prospects plus maybe a major leaguer and another lower-tier prospect, that would be a huge boost for Detroit. It would replenish their farm system and signal that the Tigers are finally committed to an actual rebuild.

Other names that could be thrown into trade conversations would be closer Justin Wilson, outfielders JD Martinez and Justin Upton, and catcher Alex Avila. But by far the most valuable commodity in Detroit’s organization is Michael Fulmer, and the Tigers absolutely have to listen to any and all offers for the young ace.

The only caveat is that general manager Al Avila must make sure he doesn’t take a lesser deal for Fulmer just for the sake of making a deal. After striking out last offseason, he might be more desperate to pull the trigger. If he doesn’t get the same or better return for Fulmer as the Sox got for Quintana, it would be a complete failure and could set the rebuild back drastically. What Avila does in the coming weeks could determine his future and the future of the organization.