Pride of Detroit
With the Detroit Lions coming off their bye week, the team’s coordinators are entering the final stretch of the season with a new perspective on the team. Both John Morton and Kelvin Sheppard admitted they spent much of the bye self-scouting the team—evaluating both their own tendencies and areas of struggle.
On Thursday, both provided some insight into their findings and how they plan to adjust moving forward.
“I failed” Jameson Williams
This offseason, Morton proclaimed that Jameson Williams was in for another breakout season and professed his love for the deep ball. Through seven games, neither of those things has materialized. Williams sits at just 17 catches for 289 yards—well below his pace from last year—and the Lions are averaging just 15.7 yards per game on passes of 20+ air yards (29th in the NFL).
While Morton lamented the ways defenses are covering the team—often taking the deep shots away with cover-two shells—he also took responsibility for not getting Williams the ball enough. He even said he went directly to the fourth-year receiver to apologize.
“I’m going to do a better job with that. But there has been opportunities where it just didn’t happen. It’s not like we aren’t going to try to target him. So, that was the biggest thing. So, I looked at everything, and I failed him. That’s what I told him,” Morton said.
So what does he plan on doing? Well, with teams often drawing extra attention to Amon-Ra St. Brown, but still staying in those cover-two shells, he’s going to have to dig deep into his bag.
“That’s my job during the bye week, because I stayed here. And that was my job, and third down, to really study that. And just create how to get him open,” Morton said. “Because there’s a lot of, especially on third down, they’re doubling (St. Brown) Saint, they’re doubling him, there’s a lot of stuff that’s going on. So, I have to be creative. I have to go in the archives to try to get these guys open better.”
Third-down defense
Like coach Dan Campbell said earlier in the week, Morton attributed the team’s third-down struggles (37.6%, 22nd) to a myriad of issues: protection, poor play call, and poor execution. Morton said he went back to last year’s tape and watched every single third down. He found that the concepts he’s running are the same, but he needs to polish them up.
“In my mind, that’s kind of the stuff I’ve been doing. I want to run the same type of concepts, and I’ve got to dress it up with formations here and there and find ways to get guys off,” Morton said.
In addition to these quotes, Sheppard addressed speculation about his interest in the LSU job. That story is here.
Bye week changes
With time to self-scout during the bye week, Sheppard admitted he found some concerning things. For one, he said there were some...
