OTAs Are Starting And Yes, Everyone Will Be Watching Who Shows Up
The Detroit Lions begin organized team activities this week, which means it’s time for the annual ritual of overanalyzing attendance sheets like we’re tracking Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve. But before we all lose our minds over who’s there and who isn’t, let’s talk about what actually matters.
Voluntary Means Voluntary, Not Secret Code For Drama
Here’s the thing everyone forgets every single year: these workouts are voluntary. An absence doesn’t mean someone is being selfish or staging a holdout or plotting their escape to Green Bay. Sometimes it really is that simple.
The Lions know when a player isn’t going to be there because they’re training elsewhere with someone else. This isn’t some crucial part of the season where they’re installing the playbook or running actual plays. We’re talking about drills here.
That’s why guys like Amon-Ra St. Brown last year can skip these sessions to work with their preferred trainers, and the Lions are totally fine with it. Sometimes players are coming off injuries and continuing their rehab with the trainers they’ve been working with all offseason.
Yes, some players do hold out during OTAs. We’ve never seen that happen in Detroit, and we probably never will. If there’s any team in the league that takes care of its players, it’s the Lions.
The Attendance That Actually Tells You Something
What you really want to pay attention to is which players coming off injuries show up and participate. If Sam LaPorta and Kerby Joseph are out there on the field doing things at OTAs, that’s reason to feel very good about where they are with their recovery.
On the flip side, if they’re not there, don’t immediately assume the sky is falling. As we just covered, some guys prefer working with their own trainers. Even if they miss mandatory minicamp, you still shouldn’t panic.
When should you start to worry? When they’re not at training camp or they start camp on the PUP list. That means they still need more time, and that’s not what you want to see.
Most Everyone Is Already In Allen Park
The Lions have been doing workouts together for weeks now, and they’ve been posting pictures the whole time. It appears most of the team is already in the building and participating. But there are some players we haven’t seen in these social media updates, and Joseph and LaPorta are among them.
We’ll find out Wednesday who’s actually on the field when the real show starts.
Are you already stress-refreshing Twitter for OTA attendance updates, or have you learned to save your anxiety for things that actually matter? Let me know in the comments.
This is the kind of common sense take we need. Campbell and Holmes actually respect their players enough to let them handle their own training, and that’s refreshing compared to how things used to be around here. Let’s wait for actual training camp before we start doom scrolling about injuries.
I get what you’re saying but also I’ve seen enough in my years as a Lions fan to know that sometimes what seems fine actually isn’t. I’m not panicking about OTAs, but I’ll definitely be watching when camp starts to see where LaPorta and Joseph really stand. The team knows what they’re doing though, I’ll give them that.
You know back in the day we’d have been losing our minds and making up drama that didn’t exist. This front office has earned enough trust that I’m not gonna freak out over who’s at voluntary workouts. That’s a pretty wild thing to say about the Lions organization but here we are.