Lions edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson on “deep relief” of contract extension
Hutchinson said he wasn’t involved too much in the contract negotiations, but feels relieved that he can focus all his attention on playing.
When Dan Campbell took over as the Miami Dolphins‘ interim head coach in 2015, he sent a message to his players about toughness by having two veterans line up for an Oklahoma drill in a midseason practice.
Current Detroit Lions defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard was one of those players.
Sheppard recalled that moment Thursday when asked when he knew Campbell could lead the Lions to a turnaround. Sheppard, who played for the Dolphins when Campbell was on staff in 2014-15 and was part of Campbell’s first coaching staff with the Lions, said he knew Campbell had the goods to succeed as a head coach when they were together in Miami.
“Listen, I love Joe Philbin,” Sheppard said of the former Dolphins coach who was fired early in the 2015 season. “But in the Miami Dolphins facility, all the lights were off. We didn’t pay the electric bill all year. And then when Dan took over, he paid the whole six months that were unpaid. Because guys had a fire. You went to practice with a purpose. Like I’ll say it, I was one of those guys. Shame on us as players to let the environment or the situation dictate how we put forth to our profession. But it just shows you the quality of a head coach.”
Sheppard said Campbell sent him and veteran center Mike Pouncey out to the middle of the field for an Oklahoma drill, in which a defensive player takes on a blocker while trying to stop a ball carrier in a confined space.
“He put a circle around us,” Sheppard said. “That’s illegal to do now, I guess, in the league, but, and, ‘Go.’ We’re like, ‘What do you mean go?’ ‘Go.’ And it was ‘mono y mono.’ And it set the standard for how we played the rest of the year, and it’s just carried over here to him getting the ultimate chance at it. And you see kind of the fruits of the labor of Dan Campbell.”
No Jayden Daniels
Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels will miss Sunday’s game against the Lions with a dislocated left elbow, but Sheppard said he sees “absolutely no difference at all” in Washington’s offense with veteran Marcus Mariota at quarterback.
“That offense is that offense, and they have full trust in Marcus Mariota,” Sheppard said. “If anything, he’s bigger and a little more physical. Jayden, I’m not saying you’re not physical. He’s going to be like, ‘Dang, big bro, it’s like that?’ I’m not saying that. But like Mariota’s 220, 230. He’s a physical player, and he’s not looking to slide a lot. He’s looking to convert, get first downs.”
The Commanders, who beat the Lions on their way to the NFC championship game in January, are 3-6 this season, but 1-2 with Mariota at quarterback.
Mariota has four touchdowns, four interceptions and is completing 63.6% of his passes. Daniels, the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year last season, is one of the most dangerous dual-threat quarterbacks in football.
“They trust this player,” Sheppard said. “It’s not a conservative approach to it. They’re down the field, striking just like if Five (Daniels) was back there. So we’re looking at it all the same, and we know it’s a great chance for us to bounce back after what they did to us in the NFC divisional game last year.”
Protect this house
Protection has been a problem, and Lions offensive coordinator John Morton said that’s been the root of his unit’s choppy play this season.
“That’s the biggest thing,” Morton said. “I can draw up all of these plays we wanted. If you don’t protect and have sound protection so the quarterback can throw the ball, it doesn’t matter. So that’s the biggest thing. And listen, this is fixable, that’s the beauty of it. This is all fixable and we’ve addressed it.”
The Lions are allowing sacks on 7.47% of their pass attempts, this season, their highest total since 2019, and their rushing yards per play (4.41) has dropped to its lowest level of the Dan Campbell era.
The Vikings had five sacks in last week’s upset, and Jared Goff is on pace to be sacked a career-high 38 times this season.
Morton said the Lions were good at identifying blitzes against the Vikings and that communication hasn’t been a problem since a Week 1 loss to the Green Bay Packers. Rather, “guys are breaking down” in protection, he said. “And we’ve got to collectively get it right.”
“It’s just a matter of some guys getting beat,” he said. “That’s all it is. I’m just telling you that’s – when you look at it over and over and over, it’s one or two guys that are just breaking down. And we’ve got young guys and they’re still learning. And really they shouldn’t be, because we’re halfway through the season. I mean, everybody’s a vet. And we’ve addressed it.”
Low blow for Jake Bates
Lions special teams coordinator Dave Fipp said the 45-yard field goal attempt that Jake Bates had blocked in last week’s loss to the Vikings was kicked at too low a trajectory.
“There’s people who could’ve protected maybe a touch better but at the end of the day, the ball just came off low,” Fipp said. “If you hit a ball that low, usually it’s going to be blocked as long as they put their hand up and their guy did a good job of getting his hand up there.”
The Vikings kicked kicked a field goal to go up 10 points on the ensuing possession and also scored a touchdown on a drive started with a 61-yard kick return in the first quarter, but Fipp said his special-teams unit played well in the other phases of the kicking game.
“Going into the game, I think we were – the way I calculate it out (just on coverage kicks, not including balls that went out of bounds or landed in the kicking zone for a touchback) – sixth-best in drive start in the National Football League on kickoff,” Fipp said. “So it’s not like, ‘Oh man, you guys have been terrible.’ There’s 20 teams that would like to be in our shoes right now. So anyway, I think you’ve got to take it with some perspective. Now that being said, we obviously have to get better – we can’t let that happen again. We’ve got to be urgent about it.”
Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.