It was a haunting Halloween for the Detroit Lions in 2021 for so many reasons.
The Philadelphia Eagles came to Ford Field and met little resistance when they ran over, around and through the Lions’ defense in a 44-6 victory.
The Eagles ran the ball 46 times (with just 16 pass attempts) for 236 yards (5.1 yards per attempt) and four touchdowns.
“You know what, I don’t know offhand,” Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn said when asked if this was the game last year where he “burned the tape.”
“I think I burned a couple of games.”
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Joking aside, Glenn said he has since watched the game multiple times to prepare for this season’s opener. The Eagles return their head coach (Nick Sirianni), offensive coordinator (Shane Steichen), quarterback (Jalen Hurts) and most of their running backa.
“I don’t think he’s going to change too much,” Glenn said of Sirianni. “I know if I was him I wouldn’t.”
The Lions, however, have to change if they’re going to start off the season with a victory. That starts with slowing the rushing attack of Hurts, who ran seven times for 71 yards.
It’s a tall task for the entire Lions defense, including newcomers such as rookie Aidan Hutchinson. He said he has watched more film than ever before — joking it’s because there’s a lot more free time in the NFL, where you don’t have to write a paper after you get home from practice — and that Sunday’s game will be a good barometer for the defense.
“Philly has one of the best rushing attacks in the league,” Hutchinson said. “Especially with Jalen at quarterback, they’ve got a lot of dangerous people, and if we’re going to have any success in this game, we’ve got to stop that run first.”
Hutchinson’s response on how the Lions have prepared for a dual-threat quarterback featured an accidental shot at Lions starter Jared Goff — “We don’t get a lot of that with Jared” — met by laughter from the media.
“But with Jalen for sure, he’s such a dangerous threat we’re really putting the emphasis on him and stopping the run,” he continued. “Have him as least as we can, we’re going to try our best.”
Glenn believes the Lions’ defense is in a better spot this year; they’ve added talent, had another offseason to work on technique and have a “better understanding” of how the scheme is used against the run.
Still, sometimes it comes down to beating your man.
“We have to account for (Hurts rushing), this guy is a really good player,” Glenn said. “I think he had the most rushing yards — I could be mistaken — of any quarterback, but I know he had the most rushing touchdowns. So that’s something we have to account for.
“We have things in our system to account for that, but at some point there’s going to be a one-on-one play and our guys have got to get him down, and that’s just how this game is, for the most part.”
Hurts rushed 139 times for 784 yards and 10 touchdowns last season; all three were indeed tops among quarterbacks. The Lions will have to toe a fine line against him. Play too timid and he’ll pick them apart; play too aggressive and he can break big plays once they lose containment.
The Lions had a “read and react” defensive philosophy last year; this year’s plan with the move to a 4-3 base defense is to move the line of scrimmage back and hold blocks to let the second level make plays.
“Here’s the thing you need to be careful when you play against a quarterback like that, you can over-coach the players to be so careful that you’re not getting a rush,” Glenn said. “Obviously, rush lanes are important, but for the most part I’m not going to sit back and tell Charles (Harris) and tell Aidan (Hutchinson) to sit back — we’re still going after his guy.
“Do we want to be reckless? No, we don’t want to do that. The one thing we have to do is be disciplined, be assignment-sound and play hard, physical football. We’ll let everything else take care of itself.”
Another challenge: The Eagles’ offense is deeper this time, as starting running back Miles Sanders missed last year’s game. And over the offseason, they added one of the game’s best big-play wide receivers in A.J. Brown, “another good player who has to be accounted for,” in Glenn’s words.
But the environment at Ford Field will be different, for what that’s worth on the field. The Lions entered last season’s game 0-7 and played in front of just over 47,000 in announced attendance.
This year, the Lions are sold out for the first time for a non-Thanksgiving day game since 2017. Glenn said thinking about the crowd gave him “chills.”
But he knows the fans in the building won’t be making tackles; the Lions need to do so in their opportunity to make amends.
“We all take it personal,” Glenn said of what happened last year. “That’s every game, regardless of what happened, I learned this from (former Pittsburgh Steelers coach) Bill Cowher — take every game personal, somehow someway. That’s my mindset as a coach, and trying to instill that into the players.
“But this game in particular, absolutely.”