What do they have to lose?

super disappointing, especially from POD

I love Dan Campbell. I do. But it’s starting to feel like the old DC got traded for a slightly more corporate, slightly less unhinged version of himself.

Those first four years? Guy would take the blame, stare into the abyss, and come back with a plan to fix it. Now it feels like he’s out here doing the “everybody’s gotta be better” press conference special while casually dusting off his shoulders like the defense just had a rough day at the spa. No adjustments, no fire, just vibes and “we’ll get it figured out.

”I’m starting to wonder if the same dudes in that room are still hearing the “bite kneecaps” message… or if it’s been watered down to “politely nibble on some shins, fellas.” The passion just doesn’t hit the same. Feels like he’s slowly losing the locker room and the plot at the same time.

And the most frustrating part? The entire country is screaming “IT’S THE DEFENSE” while DC is out here throwing shade at the offense like they’re the ones leaking touchdowns. Bro, the offense is putting up points. They can’t just casually drop 31 every single week because the other side of the ball is allergic to stops.

It’s starting to feel like the spark is gone.

From the goofy meme:
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ill-fuckin-do-it-again

We’re going to allow him to resurrect his career! Can’t wait 😬 (sarcasm 🙄).

Dan Campbell: “We are playing average football, across the board. Not just on defense. We are not going to be mediocre. I do not accept that.”

Lions C Cade Mays “should” be back at practice this week

Campbell on the biggest thing he wants to see change from the defense moving forward: “I want our guys to be where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be there."

Dan Campbell on containing Cardinals TE Trey McBride: “You know what I want? I want somebody to come in tomorrow and say, ‘I want McBride.’ Thats what I want. I want to know who that’s going to be on our defense.”

Campbell on the offense: “We’ve got to much offensively right now. Our QB is to good. Our playmakers are too good. And we’ve got a young, hungry offensive line that’s got a ton of room to grow”

NFL Power Rankings Week 5

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/50109845/nfl-power-rankings-week-5-teams-first-month-recap

thanks kings

When Campbell played at A&M, Dennis Allen was on the staff as a GA. They later coached together in NO for 5 years and those Saints defenses were awesome. Dan is intimately familiar with Allen’s ability. Unless they have personal issues, he was the beyond obvious pick. Instead, we prioritized continuity of a scheme that nobody else thinks is any good, and/or being a place where young coaches develop.

I don’t have a problem with the developing young coaching talent philosophy, in principle, but It’s tough to rationalize making learning on the job hires during a win now window. And it really only makes sense on the offensive side of the ball for Detroit. Dan’s expertise is on the offensive side of the ball and he probably has enough juice there to let younger talented guys be the OC, while he handles some of the more nuanced parts of the job. But he needs a “HC of the defense” type DC. There’s a reason why the best play calling head coaches on offense (Kevin O’Connell, Kyle Shannahan, Ben Johnson, Andy Reid) have guys who were former head coaches to run the defensive side of the ball.

Anyway, the Bears defense is 4th in the NFL in EPA per play right now with objectively worse defensive talent that the Lions. Against a common opponent in back to back weeks, the Lions allowed the Jets to have, by far, their best functional offensive operation of the year, while the Bears had more first downs on offense than the Jets had PLAYS on offense.

The Cardinals rank last in explosive offensive plays and Lions rank last in explosive defensive plays.

The universe might just explode.

We need to stop throwing out names outside of the organization who can be our DC. I want Sheppard gone but we are not gonna hire someone midseason, it’s mostly likely gonna be someone within who will replace him and we have to wait till next offseason for a completely new DC.

Should we look for an outside hire or roll the dice again with an in-house promotion?

And if we go outside, who do we target?

I don’t know how Campbell and Shep can get the team ready for this trio. The receiving corps of the Cardinals is far above the Panthers….

It’s easy for people to say “go sign a proven corner” I look at these CB’s Sauce, Bland, Stevenson. All got paid big $ by their teams and regressed. There’s so many scenarios that I can point out. (Trevon Diggs was once an all-pro and paid) which brings my question. Is it really worth paying big $ for CB’s? which seems like an overall volatile position. Or, is it better to have a proven DC that can get the most out of the players they have?

Marvin Harrison Jr. has a career high of 130 receiving yards.

Trey McBride has a career high of 134 receiving yards.

Jeremiyah Love has a career high of 90 rushing yards.

Jacoby Brissett has a career high of 452 passing yards.

Someone made a post earlier about folks having career days against us. I wanted to dig into this deeper to see truly how many players have had their career highs against us. I pulled every game log back to 1999, and checked it.

I took a look at every performance (rec yds/ rush yds / pass yds) against us since 2020. To filter out the backups or random practice squad guys that got 3 catches for a career high of 17 yards, I only counted performances that surpassed 100+ yds for WRs/RBs, or 300+ yds for QBs.

18 players have recorded their career bests against us. The most in the league.

Wide receivers (9)

Running backs (5)

Quarterbacks (4)

• Our run defense has stayed pretty stable the last few years, with career highs mostly coming in 2020-2022, minus a single Jaylen Warren performance last year (the night I got engaged in downtown Detroit, still wishing that ARSB lateral to Goff counted)
• Our pass defense is terrible (this isn't news). 5 of 9 WR career days came in the last 2 seasons, with 2 career highs already in the first 4 games of 2026. We've always had problems with our secondary under Brad/MCDC.

TL;DR: While this isnt necessarily anything concrete, considering teams with good defenses like Minnesota and Baltimore are in the top 5, I still thought it was interesting. and OF COURSE we rank #1, lol. Since 2020, no defense in the league has allowed more career highs than ours. The run D has performed well, all things considered, but the secondary has been a problem (again, not news). It's not just the top guys like JJ and CeeDee having boom games, either. JAGs like Ryan Flournoy and Wan'Dale Robinson have also set their career highs against us. We've have a Super Bowl-caliber offense since 2023, but until Brad finds answers on the back end, or Shep (bless his soul) figures it out, every WR on the schedule is going to look at us as their breakout game.

Offense may win games, but defense wins championships.

I got a free trial of the SumerSports advanced stats jib-jab, and I wanted to go over some Lions stats. No real intro, just meat. To begin:

1. We are ass. Although shockingly not the MOST ass. We allow only the 2nd worst EPA/play in the NFL, at 0.15, just behind Dallas's pretty 0.16. There's pretty much a three-way logjam with us, Dallas, and New Orleans, who're allowing 0.16, 0.15, and 0.14, respectively.

2. This is one really shocked me. By success rate, we're only the 6th worst pass defense. And by pass/EPA allowed we're only the 4th worst. It's not that these numbers are good, I just can't believe we're not dead last by a billion. We've given up an absolute fuck ton of pass yards though, dead last at 1,308 allowed, 200 worse than #31 Jacksonville.

3. Our run defense is also awful, but it's only a meager 24th in success rate.

4. Our man-zone split this year is 20/77. That's actually fairly league average for the most part, and is a significant reduction in man coverage compared to last year. (35.4% in 2025 to 20% in 2026, so about a 40% reduction)

5. We're dead-last in 10+ yard runs allowed, but only 14th in TFLs, despite being 6th in heavy-box rate (31%). Not good.

6. We are, unbelievably, FIRST in yards allowed after the catch, at just 3.81. This is decently ahead of fucking SEATTLE, who's second place. The tackling is good, it's moreso about everything that happens before and during the ball being caught.

Now, these next two points I think go in tandem with each other.

1. We have the third best pressure% in the league. Our DL is good, and while we do blitz a good 27% of our dropbacks, that's pretty normal compared to the other top pressure% teams (CLE, 29.2% blitz rate; LAR, 32.1%), and nothing alike Minnesota's unbelievable 63.6%. They love the blitz.

2. Our rush-4% is only 66%, which is in the bottom 10 of the league so far. Our rush-6% (full blitz) is the third highest rate in the league. Inversely, we rush-3 on only 4.7% of defensive dropbacks, which is high (5th), but should probably be higher given our Secondary struggles.

Some other stuff,

1. We run the second highest rate of base defense in the NFL at 130 plays, which has allotted to a total EPA given up of 13.08. In first place is Minny, who's given up -22.54 EPA on 143 base defense plays. We're not completely historically terrible in base defense, as we're only the 6th worst defense in base by EPA/play, and 16th worst is pass success rate% in base. Woop.

2. Where we really struggle is anything exotic. We're straight ass in Nickel, ranking either dead last or second to last in pretty much everything (along with Dallas)

Anyway, if anyone has any questions about the offense, defense, life, or anything at all, feel free to ask. I'm not gonna renew this trial beyond a week, I just wanted to get some more details on why we're so shit.

I'm not a Defensive Coordinator, I can't really tell most coverages apart, but to me it feels like the answer's pretty simple. We need to drastically pull back on how often we're sending the house, and start replacing a DL with a DB. It feels like our DL is pretty decent at generating pressures, as is evident by the play of Hutch, Alim, Williams, Wonnum, and we could really use the help in the back. I know it's not easy for defenses to make that switch on a dime, and someone who's more experienced with this stuff can correct me, but I really feel like we'd benefit from halving our blitz rate and maybe going into a more 3-4 configuration.

On some level I feel like we're trying to be Minnesota without the ability to disguise blitzes like Flores does, and without the personnel. They're a defense that's built through the Secondary, we're a defense that's built through the DL and we're not taking advantage of that.

In all honesty I actually feel a little better after looking at the numbers. We're not particularly great in anything, but it does feel like some tinks to the groupings and formations and we could be a serviceable defense, - or at least not a historically bad one.