Pride of Detroit
As we learned from last year, the Detroit Lions’ depth on defense could be critical to their success. So as the Lions trim down their roster from 91 to 53 this week, some crucial decisions will be made on both sides of the ball. Earlier on Monday, we already offered our predictions for the offensive players on the roster bubble. Now it’s time to make our best guesses on defense. Before we get into our final predictions, take a look back at our predictions six weeks ago, before training camp began. Things look a bit different now.
Voting:
Interestingly, the news that Josh Paschal—who had 10 “IN” votes last week—is likely staying on the Non-Football Injury list to start the season didn’t change the outlook at defensive end much. Instead, most of those votes went to defensive tackle. More on that in the next section.
Instead, the only minor tweak to this section is that upon learning that rookie Ahmed Hassanein’s injury will sideline him for “a while,” our staff is clearly projecting him to land on the short-term IR. That leaves a roster spot for Nate Lynn, who our staff believes decisively won the EDGE4 job.
Voting:
Mekhi Wingo’s somewhat surprising return from the Physically Unable to Perform list was the biggest shift on the defensive line that basically counteracted the Paschal news. It also took some votes away from undrafted rookie Keith Cooper Jr., who is now basically a 50/50 split to make the roster per our staff. Some of the hype on him has cooled down due to mediocre performances in the preseason game, but it’s still hard to ignore how high he was repping during training camp practices.
The linebacker room remains unchanged again. But it’s interesting to see just how far Zach Cunningham has come. He started Bubble Watch with just two votes in his favor. Now, it would be shocking if he didn’t make the team.
Voting:
