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    • 5 things to watch in the Green Bay Packers Week 9 game vs. Detroit Lions
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    5 things to watch in the Green Bay Packers Week 9 game vs. Detroit Lions

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    GREEN BAY – Here are five things to watch when the Green Bay Packers face the Detroit Lions on Sunday at Lambeau Field.

    Will Matt LaFleur get the ball again if the Packers win the coin toss?

    During last year’s Thanksgiving Day meeting, Packers coach Matt decided to host LaFleur after winning the coin toss and it paid off as the offense marched down the field for a touchdown. However, LaFleur has decided to win the coin toss after winning it for the past two weeks, and it has yielded no results. Against the Jacksonville Jaguars, he took the ball, and the offense gained 15 yards on six plays before punting. Against the Houston Texans the week before, he picked up the ball, and Jordan Love threw an interception on the fourth play. The Packers have had the first possession in four straight games and have failed to score all four times. Overall, the Packers had the ball first in seven of the eight games and the only time they scored a touchdown on the first drive of the game was against the Tennessee Titans. For the season, the Packers are 4-4 in coin flips.

    Packers catch Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs on hot streak

    The Packers are familiar with Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs. They’ve never seen him so handsome. Gibbs has back-to-back rushing games of 100 yards and is averaging a whopping 9.35 yards per carry. He has scored three rushing touchdowns, including scampers of 45 yards at Minnesota and 70 yards against Tennessee. Gibbs didn’t explode against the Packers in two meetings, gaining 40 yards on eight carries in a win at Lambeau Field and 11 carries for 54 yards in Detroit. The Packers have faced six of the top 20 rushers, but they haven’t faced a guy capable of breaking long runs like the 6-foot-1, 200-pound Gibbs. “It’s about fine-tuning, being precise with it, understanding what impact you should have on the block, and then setting edges,” defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley said. “You have to set edges and send the ball back (the other way). When this guy gets to the perimeter, he doesn’t have to be on the ground; there’s a chance he’s gone.’

    Lions quarterback Jared Goff pays special attention to ball security

    Lions quarterback Jared Goff is constantly reminded to protect the ball in the pocket by quarterbacks coach and former Packers quarterback Mark Brunell, but if for some reason he needs more reminder, he can use the Thanksgiving Day turn on tape. After Goff turned the ball over just once on an interception in a blowout win at Lambeau Field last year, the Packers hounded him in Detroit on Thanksgiving Day and stripped him of the ball three times in a 29-22 victory. Goff threw for 332 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions, but he lost all three fumbles. The Packers returned one of the fumbles for a touchdown and while the other two failed to produce points, one ended a drive at the Packers’ 31-yard line. Goff has been sacked eight times and fumbled four times in the past two games, but that hasn’t cost the Lions anything. “Our sack numbers over the last, really four or five games, have been higher than what we’ve seen over the last two years,” offensive coordinator Ben Johnson said. “So something we’ve talked about as a unit is there are ways we can help schematically that doesn’t put the guys on so many one-on-one islands and so we look at that every week. That doesn’t actually change.”

    Packers need to be alert to special teams fakes

    There’s not much a coach can do to predict what kind of fake punt or fake field goal a team might make, but he can put his team on extra alert. Packers special teams coach Rich Bisaccia made sure his guys were ready when Lions coach Dan Campbell made a fake punt during the Thanksgiving Day game and they knocked it out. All Bisaccia did was make sure he had defensive linemen capable of beating blocks from smaller special teams players included on the punt block team. You don’t get a lot of rushing or blocking from those types of players, but it paid off when Detroit pulled out the lead. “When you play this team that has some fakes in the 20s, in the 25s, it raises your antenna a little bit more,” Bisaccia said. “(They had) that big fake against Tampa in the 25, so we’ll play some kind of front that, hopefully to some extent, helps us discourage them,”

    Matt LaFleur expects Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn to remain in attack mode

    The Packers needed a half to adjust to the pressure the Minnesota Vikings put on them and weren’t great when opponents put extra pressure on quarterback Jordan Love. The Lions aren’t the kind of glitzy team that the Vikings are, but they had to step up their game after losing star defenseman Aidan Hutchinson to a broken leg late in the season. They rank middle of the road (16th) in sacks per pass play. At the same time, the Lions rank No. 1 in third-down efficiency and ninth in red zone success. LaFleur expects them to do everything they can to stop running back Josh Jacobs. “If they load the box and play you in tight man coverage, as they showed, you can’t go anywhere,” he said. ‘You better have an answer to that. I think it’s just a very physical defense that plays very aggressively, that’s downhill. They do a great job hitting the football and rallying into the football. So to me that’s usually a sign of a really good defense.

    From the other side: Here’s how a Detroit Lions reporter watches the Packers-Lions game

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