Pride of Detroit
The Detroit Lions closed out their spring program with their second and final day of mandatory minicamp on Wednesday. It was a shorter practice, but there was still plenty to take from the session.
Here are my main observations from practice.
Detroit opened with a lot of walkthrough work, per usual, but on Wednesday most of that took place within the red zone. Team rules prevent me from giving away too much strategy here, but I’ll just say that the use of some heavy sets allowed the Lions to move around players into positions they don’t normally play, and I certainly took note of which players they opted to use in those situations. Unfortunately, I’ll have to keep those notes to myself for now.
Once walkthroughs expanded to the full field, I noticed something interesting with the reserves on the field. As they trudged down the field, Penei Sewell—by himself—followed the line of scrimmage from the sidelines, paying close attention to the play. I didn’t get a chance to follow up with Sewell to ask what exactly he was looking at, but it certainly would make sense if he was just observing and analyzing the offensive line play. Earlier this offseason, Sewell talked about the need for him to step up as a leader in a revamped offensive line room.
“It’s just a lot of new faces,” Sewell said. “But again, with all that said, the standard’s the same and I’m the one that’s kinda been here the longest in the room. So, it’s up to me to really hold that and to really show the guys, not just tell them.”
Sewell wasn’t kidding.
A large portion of practice was spent on pinning punts inside the 10-yard line, with gunners fighting through contact, turning to the punt, and trying to stop it before it bounced into the end zone.
Punter Jack Fox must have kicked 20-25 punts (from the opponents’ 45-yard line), and I don’t recall seeing a single one land in the end zone. I would estimate about 90 percent of them bounced between the 0-10 yard lines. It was truly impressive to watch, and it was obviously a big help in running the drill.
As for the gunners, I thought Cedrick Wilson and Keith Abney had the two best reps, saving the ball from bouncing in the end zone in impressive fashion.
The punt returners in the drill (who were mostly there for show) were Greg Dortch, Tom Kennedy, Isiah Pacheco, and Amon-Ra St. Brown.
The offense was put in a really tough position to close out practice:
In essence, the goal was to score a touchdown as quickly as possible while trying to retain all three timeouts to force a three-and-out, get the ball back, and have a chance at a game-winning field goal. Both...
