Detroit threw it 32 times and handed it to Jahmyr Gibbs 29 times. Green Bay threw it 45 times and gave Josh Jacobs 11 carries. That is the entire 20-17 Lions win, and the scoreline flatters the team that lost it.
I'll take the process over the result. Detroit (4-2) won this at the point of attack and kept its quarterback out of trouble. Green Bay (4-3) built a game plan that asked Jordan Love to carry it, and he couldn't.
Jared Goff's line is the cleanest thing on the page: 22 of 32 for 303 yards, 9.5 yards per attempt, two touchdowns, no interceptions, a 119.7 passer rating. He was sacked once for seven yards. That's a quarterback who was never asked to do anything he doesn't do well, because the Lions kept handing off. Amon-Ra St. Brown turned 11 targets into 9 catches and 153 yards, including a long of 40, at 17.0 yards per catch. Gibbs took 29 carries for 116 yards at 4.0 a pop, long of 15.
Here's the part that should bother Detroit. None of it ended in the end zone. St. Brown's 153 yards produced no touchdown. Gibbs' 116 produced no touchdown. Three hundred and three passing yards produced 20 points. That's a red-zone problem wearing a win's clothing.
Green Bay's side is the mirror image, and it's uglier. Love went 27 of 45 for 274 yards, 6.1 per attempt, two touchdowns, one interception, an 83.0 rating. He threw it 45 times because the backfield never got going: Jacobs 11 carries for 36 yards at 3.3, MarShawn Lloyd 6 for 20, Savion Williams 2 for 4. Jacobs salvaged his afternoon as a receiver with 5 catches for 55 yards and a touchdown on 7 targets. That receiving role is real and worth chasing in PPR. Eleven carries for the lead back in a one-score game is the tell that Green Bay abandoned the run before Detroit made them.
Christian Watson caught 5 of 8 targets for 57 yards. Matthew Golden saw 12 targets and turned them into 6 catches for 39 yards, which is volume without production. Tucker Kraft caught 4 for 48 and a touchdown, and that's the Packers pass-catcher I'd trust going forward.
The last play of consequence in the payload was Gibbs going up the middle and losing two yards to Detroit's own 22 with 4:53 left, dropped by Keisean Nixon, who finished with two tackles for loss and two pass breakups. Detroit's answer with a three-point lead and the ball backed up was to hand it to Gibbs anyway, even when it went backwards. An official timeout at 3:21 followed, and the game ran out from there. Isaiah McDuffie made 11 tackles and recovered a fumble for Green Bay. Xavier McKinney made 10. Evan Williams made 9. Those numbers are what a defense looks like when it's on the field all day.
Gibbs' 29 carries and zero touchdowns is the best kind of bad fantasy line: volume you cannot bench, touchdowns that will come. St. Brown at 11 targets is unchanged. Goff at 32 attempts is a streamer's ceiling, not a QB1 week, and I wouldn't chase the 119.7 rating. The actionable item on the other side is Jacobs' 7 targets, because that's the only way he stays startable if the carries stay at 11.
My verdict: Detroit is 4-2 with the right process and a finishing problem, and I'll bet on them losing a January game they out-gain someone in. Green Bay is 4-3 with a coordinator who doesn't trust his own run game. One of those is fixable. The other is who they are.
