Pride of Detroit
The Detroit Lions closed out their ninth and final OTA practice on Thursday afternoon. Next week, their offseason program will conclude with two days of Mandatory Minicamp, and then the team will be off until late July.
“They will have gotten their full share of the program,” coach Dan Campbell. “You know everything is a little different this year because it’s a later start for the league year, but no, we’ll get them out of here.”
Here are my observations from Thursday’s final OTA practice. If you want to know which players weren’t practicing on Thursday, you can check our unofficial injury/participation report here.
The Lions’ practice was very similar to the previous two we’ve watched. The format: 30-ish minutes of walk/jog-throughs, positional drills, special teams drills, and one full-team drill. This week, they worked on punting during special teams, and we saw a full 11-on-11 situational drill at the end of practice. The walkthroughs were slightly different this week: instead of working on two separate fields between the first and second teams, they were all on one field running simulated drives.
This was the second straight practice in which they did not run any 7-on-7 drills in front of the media, which, at this point, feels intentional. That makes observations pretty difficult with almost zero full-speed drills and no pads, but I’ll do my best.
However, next week the Lions won’t be able to hide any drills with both minicamp practices being open to the media.
While it’s important not to read too much into rep order at this time of year, it is an interesting peek into what Campbell and company may be thinking about the standings of each player. Here are some interesting notes from Thursday’s practice:
Right tackle
Larry Borom continues to rep ahead of rookie Blake Miller, but they are splitting time nearly evenly. Miller is getting plenty of work with the first-team offense, and it feels like it’s only a matter of time before that job becomes fully his to lose.
Don’t sleep on Juice Scruggs
Scruggs, who the Lions obtained in the David Montgomery, has consistently been the backup center during the spring program, but on Thursday he even got a small amount of work with the first-team offense at left guard. That spot has been occupied by Christian Mahogany nearly all of OTAs, while Miles Frazier has commonly repped with the second team.
Scruggs seems like the front-runner for the backup center job, and so it makes sense for Detroit to test out whether he can be a versatile reserve at multiple positions.
Khalil Dorsey, come on down
With no Terrion Arnold, Rock Ya-Sin, and Ennis Rakestraw, the Lions were severely shorthanded at outside cornerback. That left Dorsey to team up with D.J. Reed for the first-team defense. Behind them were Nick Whiteside and De’Shawn Rucker.
Dorsey brings a ton of special team skills, including excellent play as a gunner. But he remains...
