Pride of Detroit
The Detroit Lions coordinators had a lot to answer for after the team’s lackluster performance in all three phases against the Green Bay Packers in Week 1. The three spoke on Thursday, addressed their units’ struggles, and spoke about how they plan to fix things in Week 2 against the Chicago Bears.
Detroit’s offensive troubles vs. the Packers—particularly in the run game—have been well established at this point. But if you need a quick reminder: 2.1 yards per carry running the ball, and no touchdowns until the final minutes of the game.
Like many others this week, Morton talked about communication issues being at the forefront of some of the offense’s execution problems. But his overall takeaway from the game was that a lot of these issues can be correctly quickly.
“It’s an easy fix, it’s an easy fix. Again, we’re not in panic mode,” Morton said. “But 2.1 (yards per carry), that isn’t going to cut it. That isn’t going to cut it, that should never happen.”
Why is Morton so confident in getting the issues smoothed out? For one, Morton admitted he’ll be taking a little off their plate so they can play faster. But, additionally, most of the stuff they’re doing is stuff this roster has done before.
“We’re doing plays that they’ve done,” Morton said. “Now, there’s some young guys, right. So we’ve just got to make sure we give them the right looks, all the different type of right looks, and to make sure they know exactly what they’re doing. And that’s what we’ve done.”
Morton did say—almost under his breath—that “we’re totally expecting Decker to play,” but the Lions left tackle has missed the first two days of practice this week with a shoulder injury. Morton was asked of his confidence in second-year developmental tackle Giovanni Manu, if it’s necessary for him to step in on Sunday against the Bears.
“The good thing is when Decker was out there, he got a lot of reps, so that’s beneficial for him,” Morton said. “So, there’s things we know that we’ll have to do to help, but listen, he did a really good job and we’ll be aware of that if that happens.”
In other words, Manu is the next man up, and they’ll likely shade protections and chips his way, if necessary .
Sheppard said coming off the field he was “pissed” about the defensive performance. But after watching the game a second and third time, he came away with a much more positive outlook of the game.
“You go, ‘There’s a lot of good football on this tape.’” Sheppard said. “We played 47 snaps defensively and they had 188 passing yards, 78 rushing. So if you look at an NFL game and you tell me the Green Bay Packers...
