Alex Anzalone called it a "statement win." So did Amik Robertson. D.J. Reader pumped his arm upon hearing the Lions matched the most sacks ever in a game against Lamar Jackson and exclaimed, "Ayyyyy!!"
"Shep just doing his thing, man," said Reader, "dialing it up. And we just trust him."
Last time the Lions played Jackson, they barely laid a finger on him. He picked apart their defense without getting touched. When they rushed him, he escaped. When they didn't, he torched them through the air. That was under Aaron Glenn, who was diametrically opposed to the concept of a quarterback spy. He bristled in press conferences at the very mention of it.
Kelvin Sheppard echoed Glenn, because that's what good assistants do. He coached within Glenn's scheme. But now the scheme is Sheppard's. The defense is his charge. And in the Lions' return to Baltimore, Sheppard wasn't going to let Jackson have his way again.
It started last week in practice. The Lions had former Ravens wide receiver and one-time quarterback Malik Cunningham run the scout-team offense to give their defense some Jackson-like looks. Cunningham "had a big day" on Wednesday, said Dan Campbell, which "opens your eyes a little bit." The Lions made some tweaks, implemented them on Thursday and by Friday were able to keep Cunningham contained.
"I felt really good about what we were going to be able to do," Campbell said. "The rest is just waiting until Monday night to see it in action."
The Ravens' first drive of the game looked a lot like 2023. They knifed into the end zone in six plays. Early on, said Aidan Hutchinson, the Lions were running more games than necessary up front, and Jackson "was creasing and cutting those games up." Once they pivoted to a simpler rush plan, they were able to man their own lanes and clog some of Jackson's space.
Over the next seven drives, the Lions held Baltimore to 3.9 yards per play. They made a goal-line stand late in the second quarter that started with three stuffs of Derrick Henry and ended with Jack Campbell strip-sacking Jackson on fourth down. The Lions carried that momentum into the second half and cranked up the heat.
"Shep did a great job of making it clean for us but also changing the look for them," said Anzalone.
Jackson led another touchdown drive to open the third quarter, but it wasn't as easy as his first. It included a dropped pick by Brian Branch and a sack by Al-Quadin Muhammad, who was just getting started, and required a couple perfect throws by Jackson into tight windows. The Lions were starting to cage him in. They forced a three and out on the Ravens' next drive, thanks to another sack by Muhammad.
As the Lions tightened the coverage in the backend, they rushed with more discipline up front. They muddled Jackson's passing lanes and closed down his escape lanes. They "cast the net and closed the net," as Campbell put it. They kept their feet when they pursued him and avoided any "ill-advised dives." They did what so few teams can do and successfully bottled him up.
"He had nowhere to go," said Campbell, "and that’s the key."
On some plays, Derrick Barnes appeared to be assigned to Jackson. On others, Anzalone or Jack Campbell. Even Trevor Nowaske got in the mix. With the Ravens in the red zone and trailing by a touchdown in the fourth quarter, Nowaske kept his eyes on Jackson as his pocket collapsed and then met him in the backfield for a sack. On the next snap, Barnes and Anzalone did the same, with Barnes laying out and dropping Jackson by the ankles to keep him from extending the drive.
The Lions wound up combining for 34 quarterback pressures, per PFF, and seven sacks. (Many of those pressures were shared; Jackson was pressured 16 times.) Asked what Detroit's defense did to give the Ravens trouble, "Guys were doing stunts and they had a spy and sometimes the spy was grabbing my legs," said Jackson. "That's what it was."
"They were dropping into coverage, got three safeties back, and I’m not just gonna throw a Hail Mary ball," he said. "Gonna read the coverage out and then try to make something happen."
Jackson has seen plenty of defenses deploy a spy against him in the past. It wasn't that the Lions did anything differently in this regard, he said: "They just executed."
Anzalone again credited Sheppard's pass-rush game plan for allowing the linebackers to get after Jackson when the opportunities were there: "When we go against these mobile quarterbacks we have to do something to contain him and slow him down. Obviously we weren't able to get home on every one, but we were able to get the pressure late toward the end of the down."
Most of the Lions' sacks were slow-developing plays, which owes to the secondary as much as anything else. Sometimes it's easier to just win off the line. After Hutchinson stripped Derrick Henry on the first play of a fourth-quarter drive where the Ravens could have taken the lead, he opened their next drive by toasting left tackle Ronnie Stanley with a move to the inside and sacking Jackson. The Ravens punted two plays later, and wouldn't see the ball again until they were down 14.
The Lions sacked Jackson once more on Baltimore's final drive. In a snapshot of the night, he wound up buried beneath two linebackers and two defensive ends with two more defenders in the area.
"That’s what happens when good coverage marries good rush: you get sacks," said Hutchinson. "That’s the name of the game, and today was that. And we didn’t even start off that hot with the sacks. It’s something that just kept picking up steam as we went."