Everyone knows that this Detroit Lions team has a ton of injuries right now. The Lions have 13 players on injured reserve and there’s been a lot of concern about how the Lions can over this.
We saw last Thursday night that the Lions defense is able to come together and get things done, even while missing players. Sure the Packers scored 31 points, but the Lions offense also set them up basically in the red zone on two of their touchdowns. Take those away and the Packers didn’t have a great night. They completed just 60% of their passes and went 1-5 on third downs. It was rough for them.
The Lions may get some guys back this week. At this time it’s a waiting game and Lions’ head coach Dan Campbell says the team will know more on Thursday as it pertains to who can come back for Sunday’s game against the Bills.
Regardless of whether or not the Lions can get any of their guys like Paschal or Onwuzurkie back, Campbell believes the Lions defense will have a better week this Sunday and it’s for a very simple reason.
“Defensively it was okay we got some new guys, ‘just give us everything you got and finish.’ That’s the stipulation. So now we need to take it a step further. Okay, now that you guys are laying it on the line, you’re finishing, now we got to start getting the grasp of what we’re doing defensively and take the next step. And, you know, the detail part of this, and to where we don’t have a few plays that hurt us. So our defense will, depending on who we have here, we’re going to be better than we were last week. I believe that. Whether we don’t get anybody back or not, this will be another week in the system with, you know, (Jamal) Adams and Myles Adams and Jonah (Williams) and Kwon (Alexander) and so I know that, you know, they’ll be better.”
That’s a pretty easy thing to understand. Last week the Lions signed four new players to come play big roles during injuries and those guys had two practices to get used to being in the system and only one of them was live. Now they have a game under their belt and had an extra few days plus this week of practice to get settled in. That could be a big help to a bunch of guys that are just figuring things out. We’ll see what happens on Sunday.
The hope should be that the Lions get some guys back this week, but if they don’t, the guys they do have should be a little sharper than they were last week.