The bye week is over for the Detroit Lions and the big questions going into their Week 6 game against the Dallas Cowboys is will they be healthy? Lions head coach Dan Campbell gave some really good updates and one potentially really bad one on Monday.
The Good
Frank Ragnow missed last week’s game with a partially torn pectoral muscle. He really wanted to play in that game, but the Lions decided to sit him. Ragnow is back at practice on Monday. That’s a great sign that he’ll be playing Sunday in Dallas.
Brain Branch went into concussion protocol after the win over the Cardinals. He came back to practice, but was added to the injury report with an illness on Saturday afternoon and then missed Monday’s game. Branch also returned to practice on Monday.
The Bad
As the weeks go by it’s looking more and more like Derrick Barnes may be out for the rest of the season after getting hurt in Arizona. Campbell was asked about Barnes on Monday and his answer didn’t give a lot of confidence.
“Yeah, I think it’s, it’s tough to say right now. I think it’s, you know, I think we will be fortunate to get him at any point this year. I don’t want to say it’s not going to happen, but I think we, we would be pretty fortunate if it does.”
Losing Barnes for the year would be a hard loss for the Lions, but the good news is that it’s a loss at the Lions deepest position on the team. This means you can expect to see more Jack Campbell and Malcolm Rodriguez going forward. Hopefully we’ll see a return this year.