Before the Detroit Lions kicked off their third OTA practice of the week, coach Dan Campbell took the podium, and clearly, he was expecting some questions about injuries. Before any reporters had a chance to ask any questions, he gave a vague update on safeties Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph, along with tight end Sam LaPorta.<\/p>\n
\u201cKerby, Branch, LaPorta, they\u2019re all improving,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cNone of them are practicing. That\u2019s the best I can tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The media wasn\u2019t going to let him get away with such a vague update, so Campbell did provide a little more\u2026 but not much. When asked if there was any need to see those players get involved during OTAs, when padded practices aren\u2019t allowed, Campbell said it wasn\u2019t worth it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not the priority,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not worth all of that anyways. Now, LaPorta\u2019s taken some walkthroughs, jog-throughs. He\u2019s done some of that. He\u2019s not going to be out there today. But, listen, the most important thing is: continue to let them improve, rehab, all that. That\u2019ll take precedence right now. So, they\u2019re in meetings, they\u2019re getting the mental side of this and take it day-by-day.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a reminder, here\u2019s what each player is currently dealing with:<\/p>\n
Branch: Suffered a torn Achilles in early December vs. the Cowboys
Joseph: Dealing with a lingering knee injury that caused him to miss the final 11 games of the season
LaPorta: Underwent back surgery in November<\/p>\n
In addition to these three players, Campbell provided two more minor injury updates on cornerback Terrion Arnold and defensive lineman Levi Onwuzurike.<\/p>\n
Campbell said Arnold is not expected to practice on Friday. While he didn\u2019t provide details on what Arnold is dealing with, he did say it was precautionary at this point.<\/p>\n
\u201cTA probably won\u2019t practice. We have a couple of these rookies that probably won\u2019t do very much,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s more precautionary.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Onwuzurike, he lost his entire 2025 season to a torn ACL. While Campbell was careful not to hype up the defensive lineman too much, he likes the progress he\u2019s made thus far.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like where Levi\u2019s at, and I\u2019ll leave it at that,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cHe\u2019s working, he feels good. I\u2019m not hyping anybody up, not in May. It\u2019s not worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not much of an update from Campbell, but we\u2019ll take what we can get.<\/p>\n
After practice on Friday, we\u2019ll provide a full participation list of the players who were and weren\u2019t at practice. Although it\u2019s important to keep in mind that the team is clearly being overly cautious when it comes to players dealing with any sort of injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before the Detroit Lions kicked off their third OTA practice of the week, coach Dan Campbell took the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[121340,153,23208,23618,7452,7,6],"class_list":["post-904549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-detroit-lions-injuries","tag-detroit-lions-news","tag-detroit-lions-otas","tag-detroit-lions-preseason","tag-detroit-lions-training-camp","tag-football","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116658866995883269","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904549","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=904549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}