During the regular season Tim Twentyman will answer 10 good questions from his Twitter account @ttwentyman in a feature we call "10 Questions with Twentyman."
20man: Tate caught seven passes for 41 yards last week for an average of 5.9 yards per reception. That comes on the heels of a career low 9.0 average last season (90 catches for 813 yards).
Tate is most dangerous as a receiver running after the catch. That's his strength. He ranked eighth in the NFL last season with 525 yards after the catch. He was third in 2014 with 691 yards after the catch.
Because of that, he operates mostly within a 10-yard range of the line of scrimmage. Matthew Stafford wants to get him the ball quick, and let him make plays after the catch. The Colts did a good job limiting that part of his game last week. That won't always be the case.
Tate will catch a lot of passes – he's caught at least 90 each of the last two years – but his yardage totals are really going to vary from week-to-week depending on how many times he can get away and make things happen after the catch.
Marvin Jones is the No. 1 deep threat in this offense from the receiver position, and will have the best chance to consistently put up yardage totals from week-to-week.
20man: Concerned? Sure. But I'd never advise anyone to get into panic mode after just one game.
Slay was targeted 10 times and gave up five catches for 80 yards. One big play of 51 yards, a play in which he tripped on a deep pass to Phillip Dorsett, accounted for a big chunck of those.
Nevin Lawson had a little tougher go of things. All four passes thrown his way were completed for 59 yards. He has to be better.
But where the Lions really struggled last week was defending the tight end position, which should be a pretty big concern with Delanie Walker coming to town next. Walker caught 94 passes for 1,088 yards last year.
The Lions gave up seven receptions for 88 yards and three touchdowns to the tight end position Week 1. That's an area they should be most concerned about improving.
20man: Stafford is a very good quarterback, who I consider in the upper echelon of the league.
But to get to elite status, at least from my perspective, you have to own a Super Bowl ring. Tom Brady is elite. Aaron Rodgers is elite. Ben Roethlisberger is elite.
It's not solely Stafford's fault he doesn't own a ring, it's a team game, but my definition of elite is taking a team to a Super Bowl and winning it. I bet if you ask Stafford, he'll say the same thing.
20man: Hyder didn't make this team because of the final preseason game in which he had three sacks. It was a cumulative effect of good play stemming all the way back from the practice squad last season.
Is he going to finish this season with 32 sacks after recording two in Week 1? I'm going to go out on a limb and say he comes in under that mark. However, he appears to be here to stay as part of that rotation.
He has strength and power, and plays with an unbelievable motor. George Johnson came out of nowhere to have six sacks for the Lions in 2014. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Hyder comes in somewhere around that mark.
20man: It's not that Abdullah couldn't handle that kind of workload.
Caldwell and Co. like to utilize different backs with different skill sets to maximize all abilities. They don't view handing it off to Abdullah 20-plus times a game as a particular strength of his. They want to get him involved in the passing game and get the ball to him in space, where he's special.
Abdullah has never carried the ball more than 16 times in a game. I'm not sure he passes that mark this year, unless the Lions really see something in an opposing defense they can exploit on the ground.
20man: I believe you are referring to the situation in the second quarter after Theo Riddick caught a pass and was tackled at the 1-yard line. The Lions ran up to the line of scrimmage to run a play, trying to catch the Colts in their nickel defense, but the ref wouldn't let them snap it.
I went back and watched the play, and it appears to be an error by the officials. The rule states that if the Lions substitute personnel on the play, the Colts have to be given an opportunity to substitute as well. I think that's what happened on the play. The problem is the Lions never substituted. Stafford should have been allowed to snap the ball and run a play.
The Colts ended up calling timeout after trying to get players in and out of the game.
It all worked out for the Lions in the end. They put their goal line package in after the timeout, and Dwayne Washington scored two plays later.
But that shouldn't have happened, and it looked like Caldwell was upset about it talking to the officials during the Colts timeout.
20man: I don't think you can make any real solid conclusions after one game, but those guys played pretty well upfront Week 1.
The Colts ranked 22nd last year with 35 sacks, so they're not an elite pass-rushing team, but give credit where credit is due. Those guys upfront allowed Stafford to make plays. He was sacked just once and they opened up a lot of running lanes (116 rushing yards).
Stafford was hit six times, which they need to clean up a little bit, but overall it was a very good effort.
Tennessee has a very good front seven on defense, so they'll be tested again this week.
20man: I don't think it's hype. The guy did lead all running backs with 80 receptions last season. He's a known commodity around the league.
If you're talking about him as a runner, I think the jury is still out. Everything I've heard from coaches and teammates this year is that he's improved in that department. We saw it Week 1, but ask me again after Week 4 with a few games under his belt against some varying levels of defensive talent and styles.
20man: I thought the Colts did a good job upfront last week protecting Andrew Luck. They were very dedicated to it with extra blockers at times and chips. They paid particularly close attention to Ziggy Ansah, as expected.
This is a pretty young Titans front coming in this week with three recent first-round draft picks on it. They are a team that likes to run the ball first, so it will be a little bit of a different challenge for Detroit's defensive line. Detroit will go into the game as they do every week trying to stop the run first. They will no-doubt look to get more pressure on the quarterback collectively as a group too.
I still think this will be a good pass rush. Don't make any conclusions off one week.
20man: I can tell you this with about 100 percent certainty. This front office, coaching staff and a large majority of the locker room don't care about outside opinion when it comes to rankings, polls or anything else.
I don't know if that's always been the case since I've been covering the team, but this is a focused bunch that goes about its business without caring much what anyone outside of Allen Park thinks about it.
Just my observation.
