The first few weeks of the 2016 season were pretty ugly for Golden Tate. He had seven catches for 41 yards in Week 1, but totaled just seven more catches for 54 yards through the Lions' next three games, and he was even benched during the latter part of Detroit's Week 4 loss to the Bears.
The next week, the Lions came out and tried the damnedest to get Tate involved, tossing him five passes and even giving him the ball via hand-off three times. He totaled 45 yards on six touches.
Over the last two games, though, Tate has broken out in a big way as pass-catching back Theo Riddick and tight end Eric Ebron have sat out with injuries. Tate racked up 14 catches for 258 yards and a touchdown in wins over the Rams and Washington, and has finally made some hay after the catch as well.
To hear Tate tell it, it was the benching against Chicago that motivated his recent uptick.
"(The Chicago game) kind of lit a fire under my tail a little bit," Tate said, per MLive.com. "I had to dig deep a little bit. I had to soul search and think about some things. But it just came down to one thing for me -- be confident in who I am as a player, work my tail off and control what I can control. And that's when the ball is thrown my way, make something happen."
He's certainly done that, though it did take him an extra week after that Chicago game to really get going. It came just in time for the Lions, who, as mentioned above, have been hit by injuries to their pass-catching corps. We'll see if Tate can keep up the increased production when those two get back on the field -- they were each eating up a fairly large percentage of Matthew Stafford's targets, and it will be interesting to watch how they are redistributed now that Tate is back on his game.
