In 17 games of his career, Matthew Stafford has successfully lead the Lions down the field in a late, game winning drive.
Lions offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter has worked well with Stafford since taking over in the middle of last season, and is making the hurry up offense a bigger slice of the pie in 2016.
"The biggest reason we're going to do so well I think this year is because this is something that Matt is very comfortable with, something he's has wanted and he's thriving in this right now. He's ballin' out there," receiver Golden Tate said.
Perhaps it's that do-or-die pressure that makes Stafford so successful in those hurry-up situations.
"The faster you can push the tempo, when you want to really, just makes it more stressful for the defense, if you feel like you're playing at a normal speed and they think you're playing really fast, it feels a whole lot better for us," Stafford said.
But speed for the sake of speed isn't always a good thing. The Lions aren't completely abandoning the huddle, or other varying speeds of play.
"Going fast and not being effective is just going fast. We want to be effective as well, we need to have pass completions, runs with positive yardage and things of that nature to go along with it, we're more interested in effectiveness than anything else, but we have different ways certainly to go about that," head coach Jim Caldwell said.
The Lions starting unit should have more reps to work on this style, and others, on Saturday night in Baltimore as they are expected to play more in the third preseason game.
