Will Detroit’s Historic Postseason Luck Run Out Sunday?

The narrative for the Lions is that they’re a cursed franchise.

But this postseason, they’ve been one of the luckiest teams, if not THE luckiest, in recent history.

In both of their playoff wins leading to the NFC Championship Game Sunday in San Francisco, the Lions have been badly outgained in yards per play.

They are the only home team this century to be outgained by at least one yard per play in two games in one postseason.

Of course, they beat both the Rams (who outgained them by 1.66 yards per play) and the Bucs (1.29).

Home teams in the postseason this century who get outgained by at least one yard per play are 11-27, according to Pro-Football-Reference.

So the Lions had an 8% chance to win both games despite this deficit.

If we look at all games where one team outgained the other by at least one yard per play, irrespective of any other stats, the prevailing team was 96-28 (77.4% win rate).

Explosive Niners A Defensive Nightmare

So the Lions have been playing with fire this postseason and now head into San Francisco to face a team that’s been the most dominant in the statistic all year, averaging a league-leading 6.6 yards per play and allowing just 5.0 (ninth), a 1.6 net advantage that led the NFL.

We note that in the Divisional round, the Niners barely outgained the Packers, 5.6 to 5.3.

This expected efficiency advantage for the 49ers on Sunday is the main reason they’re currently 7-point favorites.

If the Lions allowed the Buccaneers, who averaged just 5.1 yards per play in the regular season (20th), a whopping 6.8 yards per play in Detroit, how can they possibly stop the high-powered San Francisco attack?

For further context, the Rams had their best yards per play game of the season against Detroit and the Buccaneers had their third best.

The 49ers’ best game this year was 9.94 yards per play. If the Lions allow another team to set a new season high, they’re almost certainly dead.

The all-time record for a postseason game in yards per play during the Super Bowl Era is 9.3 by the 2009 Cardinals (51-45 OT win against the Packers).

Only 14 teams in the period (since 1966) have averaged at least eight yards per play in a postseason game and those teams are 13-2 (the lone loss the past 40 years was by the Patriots in the Super Bowl against the Eagles to cap the 2017 season).

The average winning margin is 20.3 points – massive.

Deebo Samuel’s Availability Is Critical

But the Lions seem poised to catch another big break.

49ers’ Deebo Samuel doesn’t have fracture in shoulder, status still uncertain for NFC Championship Game ⤵️ https://t.co/8ZEPTDlme6

— The Athletic NFL (@TheAthleticNFL) January 23, 2024

From The Athletic article:

“It wasn’t broken, so that was a real good sign,” Shanahan said of Samuel’s shoulder. “But it’s still hurting too much for us to have a good idea of how it’s going to heal up this week.

So we’ve just got to be patient, see how he feels on Wednesday. And based off of (whether or not) it’s improving, we’ll see if he has a chance for the game or not.”

Losing Samuel on the surface doesn’t seem like that big a deal. He had 1,117 scrimmage yards in 15 games. But without Samuel, the 49ers still have three elite weapons in the passing game (Brandon Aiyuk, George Kittle, Christian McCaffrey).

Samuel is a gadget rushing threat but how hard to replace 255 total rushing yards spread over all those games when you have arguably the league’s best running back in McCaffrey?

But upon closer examination, losing Samuel seems to put the Niners super-charged offense into a lower gear.

In the two games he missed in the regular season, the Niners scored just 17 points in each (losing both).

And when Samuel left the game against the Packers, the 49ers offense and Brock Purdy looked quite ordinary against a Green Bay defense that was poor most of the season.

Let’s look further at the Niners offense this year with and without Samuel on the field. With him, they average 7.1 yards per play. Without him, 5.7.

Maybe this is noise but I doubt it. It’s just too extreme and the without sample has 345 plays, not tiny by any means.

What does this mean for the NFC Championship game?

Samuel’s ability to not only play but to take a normal amount of snaps seems critical.

With Samuel active and able to function close to normally, the Niners seem poised to win easily.

But without him – or should he aggravate his shoulder injury and be forced to the sidelines or locker room – the Lions have more than a puncher’s chance to win this game outright.