Pride of Detroit
The Detroit Lions and Houston Texans faced off Thursday morning for an iron-sharpens-iron practice. With both teams coming into 2025 with very high hopes, it was unsurprisingly a very competitive day for both squads.
I was focused on the Lions offense, while Al Karsten took notes on the defense. His post will come later in the day, but here are my observations from Detroit’s offense against a very competitive Texans defense.
The Houston Texans may arguably have the best secondary in football, so I was eager to see how Detroit’s star-studded receiver group would handle them. I came away very impressed with Detroit’s skill position players.
Don’t get me wrong: Derek Stingley got his. So did Kamari Lassiter. But more often than not, I thought Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams were both consistently finding open field. During the opening 7-on-7s, Jared Goff completed 4-of-6 passes for two touchdowns, and one of the incomplete passes was a pass to a wide-open Williams (beating Stingley) that he dropped.
Both St. Brown and Williams did a lot of their damage over the middle. St. Brown caught a 25-yard pass over the middle, then drew a pass interference on Stingley later in practice. Williams rebounded nicely during a series of second-and-long drills, with chunk plays over the middle with Stingley in coverage.
The play of practice happened during a full series that started at Detroit’s own 30-yard line. Facing a second-and-5, Goff uncorked a bomb to Williams, who had beaten Stingley and ran right past the single-high safety. Goff’s pass landed perfectly in Williams’ hands in the back of the end zone for a 36-yard touchdown… but unfortunately Lions officials let us know that their video of the play had shown Williams’ second foot was out of bounds. He still celebrated with fans as if it were a win. Oddly, the teams treated it as if it were complete, too. The drive ended there, despite the fact that it would’ve been third down.
I was hoping to see Detroit’s run game handle an interior defensive line that wasn’t too threatening this week, but Houston held up well. Detroit rarely got any push up the middle all day, which had David Montgomery visibly frustrated at one point in practice.
That said, Jahmyr Gibbs made some magic on his own. On back-to-back red zone plays, he had explosive runs where he utilized his speed to get outside of the Texans’ defense. On the first, he faked an inside move, kicked outside, and scored a 20-yard touchdown. The next play was very similar, picking up about 10-15 yards to move Detroit into a goal-to-go situation.
In terms of pass protection, it was a mixed bag. During one set of second-and-long drills, Will Anderson Jr. used his speed and freaky arm length to maneuver around Penei Sewell and strip the ball out of Jared Goff’s hands. Danielle Hunter also pulled off a nasty spin...
