The cornerback room is actually good and nobody saw it coming
Going into camp, the cornerback situation looked grim. Carlton Davis III was gone. Dan Arnold was gone. Rock Ya-Sin was supposed to be a question mark. Ennis Rakestraw was coming off injury concerns. Nick Whiteside had one good game against Tampa Bay and we were all quietly wondering if it was a fluke.
Two weeks later, this position group looks completely different.
Ya-Sin looks legitimate. Is he going to the Pro Bowl? Hell no. Is he an All-Pro candidate? Absolutely not. But he can play, and frankly that is more than we had any right to expect. Rakestraw has been getting first-team reps with sticky coverage and appears to be in the best shape of his career. Knock on wood.
The biggest surprise has been Whiteside. He has been a playmaker every single day at the Meijer Performance Center. The conversation around him has gone from “I don’t know if he’ll make the 53-man roster” to “this guy might actually start.” It is still an outside shot, and nobody is handing him anything, but the fact that it is even a conversation says everything about how he has performed.
That said, the Lions could still use one more veteran cornerback for rotational depth. Dan Campbell mentioned Khalil Dorsey recently, and Dorsey is a strong special teamer, but there has not been enough defensive tape on him to feel confident. As for trading for a corner, that should probably wait until the trade deadline. Teams are not giving away good corners right now, and Detroit’s group looks solid enough to buy some time.
The defensive line is solving depth with versatility and it might actually work
The edge rushers were never the concern. Derrick Moore, Aidan Hutchinson, Ahmed Hassanien, and D.J. Wonnum form a strong group. The worry was interior defensive line depth, specifically at nose tackle.
Turns out, the Lions are just going to use versatility to solve the problem.
Tyler Lacy will play nose tackle and kick outside to the edge. Hassanien will move inside and outside. Levi Onwuzurike looks good and healthy and will shift around. Skyler Gil-Howard projects as a pass-rush specialist. Tyleik Williams is the nose tackle. Four different guys can play that spot depending on the look the defense wants. Want Lacy against a particular run-heavy offensive line? Kick him inside. Want Hassanien setting the edge against a specific tackle? Put him there.
The answer to “what are they going to do without another nose tackle?” is simple. They are going to have guys do more than one thing. It does not have to be one player locked into one position as the sole backup. Credit to Pride of Detroit’s Jeremy Reisman and Eric Schlitt for turning that idea on early. Seeing it in action at camp has been the lightbulb moment.
Nickel defense is coming but not as aggressively as we thought
Under Aaron Glenn, the Lions ran nickel at one of the lowest rates in the NFL. The percentage sat around 35%. The expectation was Detroit would jump from 35% all the way up to 75% and join the rest of the league.
That is probably not happening.
Right now, it looks more like a move from 35% to 50%. It is still early, and the coaching staff is still installing the new scheme, so the number could climb as camp progresses. The Lions will still play a lot of man coverage and spend significant time in their base defense. But nickel will be a bigger part of the equation than it has been, and that is where players like Christian Izien and Roger McCreary will prove their value.
Multi-tight end sets are happening in a big way and the offense is leaning into it
Some people tried to temper expectations by pointing out that the Lions’ new offensive scheme only ran 12 and 13 personnel around 30-some percent of the time in Arizona. That may be true, but the Lions are clearly buying into it. Multi-tight end sets have shown up frequently at camp, and with Tyler Conklin back on the field, it is only going to increase.
Brock Wright, Conklin, and Jackson Meeks (assuming he makes the roster) will all factor into these packages. The Lions are going to run a lot of two and three tight end sets with plenty of different wrinkles. If you thought Detroit would shy away from this, think again. They are all in.
The deep ball is back and Jared Goff is launching it every day
Every day at camp, Jared Goff has loaded up and thrown at least one or two deep passes. The Lions have wanted to add this to their offensive repertoire for a long time. Part of the issue was that Ben Johnson simply did not call deep shots. When John Morton took over, the offensive line could not hold up long enough to let those plays develop.
Detroit appears to be in a better spot now, and offensive coordinator Mike Kafka looks like the right addition to unlock that part of the offense.
The Lions are not forcing the deep ball, but they are definitely making an effort to incorporate it. The Lions’ first preseason game is about two weeks away. Expect the team to be vanilla, but some of these elements should show up. There is still a lot of camp left, and more will come into focus as the weeks go on. For now, these are the big takeaways from the first two weeks in Allen Park.
Which one of these surprises you the most? Are we actually allowed to feel good about the cornerback room or is that just asking for trouble? Drop your take below.
