On a balmy Monday morning, the Detroit Lions returned to practice as they prepared for a week with the Miami Dolphins. On Wednesday, Mike McDaniel and company come to town for a pair of joint practices (Wednesday, Thursday) and a preseason bout (Saturday). Before that, the Lions got to work with themselves in a two-hour practice.<\/p>\n
Here are my biggest notes from Monday\u2019s session<\/p>\n
Reminder: You can get a full injury\/participation update here.<\/a><\/p>\n Offense starting to click<\/p>\n I thought the offense looked the best it has all training camp on Monday, and it started with individual drills. Rather than 1-on-1s between the wide receivers and defensive backs, the Lions opted to run some condensed formations. So it was often 2-vs-2 or even 3-vs-3 to work on route combinations from the offense and working through traffic\/passing off assignments on defense. It\u2019s a far more realistic drill than typical 1-on-1s.<\/p>\n What followed was a pretty dominant performance from the offense. Amon-Ra St. Brown handily beat Amik Robertson twice, including a deep wheel route where he had at least two steps on the nickel corner. On another rep, Sam LaPorta also cleared out space so that Kalif Raymond could run underneath freely with Brian Branch late to react. In fact, the only defensive \u201cwin\u201d I saw during this session was Erick Hallett knocking down a pass intended for Ronnie Bell.<\/p>\n The scales continued to tilt toward the offense when they broke for red zone 7-on-7s. I had the Lions\u2019 first-team offense finish with at least four touchdowns in a row, with passes to Jahmyr Gibbs (twice), St. Brown, and LaPorta. The best of which was a pass feathered to LaPorta on a wheel route just beyond the reach of Alex Anzalone.<\/p>\n It was a little harder to judge both sides of the ball when they went to 11-on-11 drills, because they weren\u2019t run at full speed. That said, a simulated drive went heavily in the offense\u2019s favor after kicking off with crossing routes to St. Brown and Raymond went for 23 and 17 yards, respectively. Notably: on this drive, we saw a couple more snaps of two running back sets that were\u2026 let\u2019s just say interesting and mostly successful. They capped the drive with a 33-yard field goal.<\/p>\n Their second 75% speed drive\u2014which started at the opponent\u2019s 40-yard line\u2014ended in a touchdown. Jared Goff hit Jameson Williams on a 30+ yard touchdown pass after the receiver beat Kerby Joseph for the big gain.<\/p>\n That said, the defense ended practice by getting the better of the offense in a situational drill. The situation:<\/p>\n 58 seconds left, down 3 points, starting at the 50-yard line with 2 timeouts<\/p>\n On the first play, Tyleik Williams came crashing in untouched, forcing Goff to get rid of the ball quickly\u2014which was nearly intercepted by Aidan Hutchinson. After a curl to St. Brown for 6 yards and an overthrow to LaPorta, the Lions faced a fourth-and-4. Instead of trying a 62-yard field goal to tie it, they went for it, and Goff\u2019s pass intended for Raymond fell incomplete thanks to Reed being in extremely tight coverage.<\/p>\n Kyle Allen tightens grasp on backup QB job<\/p>\n By no means is this backup quarterback battle over, but Allen continues to look like he has control of the Lions offense, while Hendon Hooker continues his struggles.<\/p>\n Allen, who was expectedly with the second-team offense on Monday, had a great red zone 7-on-7 session. He hit Craig Reynolds on a nice wheel route, found Ronnie Bell on a quick slant for a strong gain, and capped his session with a touchdown to Jakobie Keeney-James. During 11-on-11 work, he led a nice drive connecting with Shane Zylstra on a play-action boot, finding Isaac TeSlaa for a short gain, and hitting Jackson Meeks for a good gain\u2014although the play was technically whistled dead after Trevor Nowaske picked up a \u201csack.\u201d<\/p>\n Allen also got an end-of-game scenario in which he put the team in a position to win. The situation:<\/p>\n 28 seconds left, down 2 points, starting at his own 30-yard line with three timeouts<\/p>\n Allen only had time to run four plays, but you could make an argument that each one was successful. First, he hit Meeks on a curl for 10 yards. Then he found Zylstra in the flats for 4 yards, allowing the receiver to go out of bounds to stop the clock. He connected with Meeks again for a 13-yard gain, and then ran a draw play for Reyonlds for about 5 yards.<\/p>\n That left enough time to try a 55-yard field goal to win the drill, but unfortunately, Jake Bates\u2019 attempt went wide left.<\/p>\n Hooker, meanwhile, had a rough go during his 7-on-7 drills. On the first attempt, he did not appear to see the safety, and Loren Strickland jumped in front of the pass for an interception. Hooker did rebound with a nice fingertip touchdown catch from Meeks, but on the next play, he couldn\u2019t find anyone open and was \u201csacked.\u201d Those were his only three 7-on-7 reps.<\/p>\n He got one opportunity to run a drive on Monday, but he only threw the ball once, connecting with Meeks on a nice gain downfield. Meeks ran an incredible route that had Luq Barcoo beat soundly. It wasn\u2019t a terrible day for Hooker, but on limited opportunities, his poor plays stood out.<\/p>\n As you may have noticed from the notes above, it was a very strong day for Jackson Meeks. With Tim Patrick and Dominic Lovett still sidelined, he is starting to separate himself from the second and third-team receivers.Tough day for Jake Bates. He had misses from 55 and 56 yards, and also missed an extra point. He did have successful makes from 28 and 33.I thought Strickland was another standout in practice. On top of the aforementioned interception, he also came in for a strong run stop in the red zone, and made a \u201ctackle\u201d on special teams.During 1-on-1 OL\/DL drills, here are the players who stood out:Mitchell Agude had one of the most forceful bull rushes that had new OL Gunner Britton on skatesKeith Cooper pulled off a textbook push-pull move to blow by Jamarco JonesAl-Quadin Muhammad pulled off two nice speed moves around both Dan Skipper and Giovanni ManuGraham Glasgow vs. DJ Reader may have been the most even matchup of the drill. I had Reader with a win on the first rep, but Glasgow matched with a stalemate on their next rep.Kingsley Eguakun has the most decisive win for an offensive lineman, completely stopping Brodric Martin in his tracks for several secondsThe Lions did some interesting things along the offensive line in practice. Giovanni Manu got most of his work at right tackle. Dan Skipper and Taylor Decker split time at left tackle with the first-team offense, while Jamarco Jones was the second-team left tackle. Manu still got some time at left tackle with the third-team offense, while newly-added Gunner Britton served as third-team right tackle.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a balmy Monday morning, the Detroit Lions returned to practice as they prepared for a week with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,449,23618,7452,2506,7,147,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-280402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-lions","8":"tag-detroit","9":"tag-detroit-lions","10":"tag-detroit-lions-analysis","11":"tag-detroit-lions-preseason","12":"tag-detroit-lions-training-camp","13":"tag-detroitlions","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-lions","16":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115012066652553592","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}