Pride of Detroit
It was an informational and entertaining Thursday from Allen Park, as all three Detroit Lions coordinators held their weekly press conferences. Here are my biggest takeaways from the three sessions.
Earlier this week, Lions receiver coach Scottie Montgomery praised Williams’ ability to put Sunday’s tough game behind him. The first-year wide receiver coach noted Williams’ year-to-year growth in his overall attitude after a bad outing. Morton took that one step further and said that despite some of the errors against the Browns, Williams rebounded well during the game.
“Look at what he did after in the game. He continued to block his butt off during the game. We hit him on that one third-down play,” Morton said. “So, he bounced back the next play, that’s what I think. And then the way he practices, listen, there’s no problem with Jamo.”
We’ve run out of ways to talk about St. Brown, who continues to chip away at Lions records one-by-one, despite this being only his fifth NFL season. Morton was asked if the two-time All Pro receiver is on track to be a Hall of Famer, and it’s clear his answer was yes.
“It isn’t even close,” Morton said. “I told St. Brown the other day, ‘You’re the best I’ve ever been around. Run and pass. The way you prepare, the professionalism,’ what he does in the offseason […] I told him, I said, ‘I don’t really care what the coverage is, you’re going to get open.’”
Morton was quickly reminded that he once worked with Jerry Rice who was toward the end of his playing career with the Raiders. He made sure to clarify.
“I’m talking about running, pass, everything,” Morton said. “I mean Jerry would block every once in a while, but I don’t think Bill Walsh wanted him to block too much. He had other guys for that.”
During Sheppard’s opening statement about last week’s Browns games, he said something that caught my attention.
“The volume that these (coaches) are able to teach weekly is really amazing. This is the most defense we’ve played week to week since I’ve been here, so I want to credit them,” Sheppard said.
From the naked eye, it certainly seems like Detroit is changing their defense more week to week. Whether it’s using more zone one week, utilizing a QB spy, or finding subpackages for players like Trevor Nowaske and Tyler Lacy. So I followed up with Sheppard about this newfound flexibility.
“I believe in putting players in position to make plays and not just being stuck in your ways,” Sheppards said. “(Not) ‘These are my three, four defenses, we’re going to do this,’ and never adjusting. Because that’s when you start to get attacked and schemed up and the players feel hopeless out there. And that’s the worst thing,...
