Pride of Detroit
Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell faced a gauntlet of questions on Monday afternoon following the team’s rough performance against the Green Bay Packers. Topics included offensive line woes, pass rush troubles, John Morton’s game plan, and some injury updates.
Here’s a breakdown of the most important takeaways from Campbell’s presser.
Injury updates: Good news for Terrion Arnold, bad news for Jamarco Jones
Campbell confirmed earlier reports that Terrion Arnold’s groin injury is not considered serious. However, his status for Sunday’s game against the Chicago Bears is still up in the air.
“I don’t feel like this is serious. Now, that doesn’t mean—I can’t say for certain he’ll be ready to go, but I don’t think it’s a serious injury,” Campbell said.
The news wasn’t as good for reserve offensive tackle Jamarco Jones. The veteran lineman suffered an injury during practice last week and was placed on injured reserve on Saturday. As it turns out, Jones’ injury is season-ending, according to Campbell.
Behind Jones, the Lions have second-year tackle Giovanni Manu, who was active for his first career game on Sunday, and Dan Skipper on the practice squad. Skipper missed last week’s practices with an undisclosed injury, but if that’s not considered serious, don’t be surprised if he’s signed to the active roster .
Missed assignments were a problem, and that’s on coaching
The common theme among Campbell’s diagnosis of their issues against the Packers was MAs, or missed assignments.
“We had a lot of MAs, so that tells me that we had too much on their plate, which is my fault,” Campbell said.
Fundamentals were also a problem, according to Campbell. But the Lions coach said the diagnosis is the easy part of fixing the problems. The challenge will be to actually improve.
“Because it really is that simple. Nothing is easy about (fixing) it, but it’s that simple to diagnose,” Campbell said.
Dan Campbell explains the lack of “razzle dazzle” on offense
Lions offensive coordinator John Morton is already coming under fire for what looked like an overly simplistic game plan. When you look at Jared Goff’s passing chart, it reveals a ridiculous majority of passes thrown within the first 5 yards of the line of scrimmage.
So why didn’t the Lions get creative or push the ball downfield more?
“We’ve got to master (our) bread and butter before you get to all the other stuff,” Campbell said. “The other stuff won’t matter if we can’t find a way to run the football (for) more than 2.1 yards per carry. That’s where everything starts for us. If we can’t, then you’re out of play action, you’re out of everything. Guys pin their ears back, and it makes it harder on some of those guys up front.”
As for the lack of deep shots, Campbell noted that they emphasized to Jared Goff that he should check down if the looks weren’t there. They dialed up a few designed deep passes, but either the look wasn’t there or pressure got to...
