u/PerfectiveVerbTense

This is from The Athletic Football Show's interview with Aaron Schatz, who is the DVOA guy and the FTN Football Almanac guy. Obviously people will have lots of different views on how valuable DVOA is, but I tend to think that while no metric is perfect, if you get a cross-section of a lot of different metrics and they all point in a similar direction, that tells you something at least.

Here's a link to the section of the show where they talk about cornerbacks. Schatz talks about "coverage DVOA" which is a stat they use to rate CBs. They chart plays where CBs are in coverage and is adjusted for quality of receiver, quality of opposing offense, area of the field (for example, granting that covering in the slot is easier than covering outside).

Anyway, in Schatz's system, the worst CB in the NFL by coverage DVOA in 2025 was your very own Terrion Arnold.

He concludes from this that the loss of TA may not be as much of a loss as it seems like it would be (keep in mind, this is to a national audience who may just remember TA as a first round pick and).

Again, it's just one metric based on one system. I know a lot of people here don't like PFF either, but if you look at PFF numbers from last year, for Lions CBs, you've got:

• DJ Reed 65.2 (47th of 114 CBs)
• Rock Ya-Sin 62.8 (57th)
• Terrion Arnold 52.6 (97th)

If you look at Pro Football Reference's QBR against and Approximate Value (that's PFR's attempt to boil a player's value down to a single number):

• DJ Reed 72.8 QBR Against, 4 AV
• Rock Ya-Sin 72.6 QBR, 3 AV
• Terrion Arnold 101.5 QBR, 3 AV

If you removed the draft pedigree and the career trajectory, there's certainly an argument to be made that Rock Ya-Sin would have been the more attractive option at CB2 even leaving aside health and legal concerns.

ETA: I didn't include Amik since he's not on the team any more, but he had a worse PFF grade (48.7, 108th) and QBR against (115.7) than any of the four guys mentioned here, FWIW.

If you're not familiar with TAFS, I've simped for them before on here, but I honestly feel like they're one of the better national sources. Thoughtful and evidence-based, data-driven, and IMO armed with ball knowledge.

Their latest episode can be found [here] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUpFqT7pTbA) and they spend about the first 25 minutes talking about the Lions. Bullet points if you don't want to watch it. They:

• Find the defensive personnel a a little spooky, especially the secondary, especially after TA's release.

• Like Hutch and love Jack and see a potential rebound from Alim and development from Tyliek as ways you can keep the floor of the defense from dropping too low.

• Like Shep and credit him with keeping the defense from completely falling off a cliff last year with all the injuries.

• See the Lions defense as like a top 14 unit at best, but think something like middle of the pack is absolutely reachable.

• Think the offense will be cooking with gas and will likely be the best in the division and reasonably a top-5 unit in the league.

• Are bullish on the o-line generally.

• Note that while the offense felt "bad" and had an off year last year, it was still a top 10 unit by almost any metric. They note that Goff was like top 5 in EPA per drop back but 12th in success rate — pointing to the idea that they were still explosive but inconsistent, which certainly matches my eye test from last season. They contend that with an o-line and OC that may not be elite but will raise the floor, the consistency should go up.

• Can see the offense "printing explosives" (Klassen).

With all that in mind, they:

• Think it makes sense that, given the roster, the coaches, and the 4th place schedule, the Lions are the betting favorites to win the division (that was basically the question going in — is it reasonable that the Lions are betting favorites for the division), BUT

• Don't think they're in the "contender" category. They boil this down to basically one thing:

Drafting.

They:

• Acknowledge that sometimes you're just going to miss on picks. Every organization drafts some guys that don't work out. BUT:

• All the trade ups have hurt this team. They stack up ALL the picks that the Lions have sent away to trade up for the likes of Arnold, Vaki, Manu, TeSlaa, and others, and make the case that if you took ALL off those sent-away picks, you're looking at the value of another first round pick in totality.

This means that while the core of the team has remained strong, the second level of the team has suffered. IMO, this absolutely bears out when you look at the depth chart, and it's why we're having to scrape guys of the FA scrap heap to fill out the depth chart.

And to be clear, I'm not saying that I 100% agree with TAFS that the Lions aren't or can't be contenders, but their logic makes a lot of sense to me. And I think it's worthwhile for us as fans of a single team to at least hear out what folks outside the organization looking in perceive.

Hi, everyone. First time posting a build here. I need to step away from the game for a while and wanted to share my final project before taking a bit of a hiatus.

This base is possessed neither of the grand scale nor the cleverest design when held against some other constructions that are posted here, but I had a lot of fun working on this. I’m midway through my second run (just defeated Moder while almost done with this build) and this is the most time I’ve put into — and most satisfied I’ve felt with — any build so far. I still really suck at circular structures, and the south tower especially doesn’t look great IMO. The flying bedroom addition looks a little better, but still not great.

Going through these pictures, I see a lot of flaws and things I would improve. I’m always looking to improve my building and design skills, so if any experienced builders have any tips or suggestions for how you might improve this build, I’m open to suggestions!

I use a decent number of mods, though I do not use Gizmo (I’m a filthy controller player) which means my building is a little less flexible. In terms of building mods, I’ve tried to stick to building mods that mesh will with the vanilla aesthetic and follow the progression of the game.