Detroit Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold is heading into his second season, and it\u2019s fair to say expectations are high for the 2024 first-round pick. Arnold showed a good amount of growth in his rookie season, and he\u2019s turned heads all throughout training camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cT.A., man. I\u2019ve been thoroughly impressed with him, not only in training camp but also the things he\u2019s been doing in the spring,\u201d Sheppard said.<\/p>\n
Sheppard took the compliment a step further, suggesting Arnold could be establishing himself as a top corner in the league.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe job that (defensive backs coach) Deshea (Townsend) has done with that player, he\u2019s looking like a CB1 that can go follow people and do it on a consistent basis,\u201d Sheppard said.<\/p>\n
Much like his predecessor Aaron Glenn, Sheppard warns not to get too high on a player too quickly\u2014and he doesn\u2019t want it to go to Arnold\u2019s head before the work has been done\u2014but it\u2019s clear the Lions coach is excited for what could be coming for Arnold. He not only credits Arnold for the work he\u2019s put in and the help from Townsend, but some additions to the cornerback room, particularly D.J. Reed, the veteran cornerback who signed a three-year, $48 million contract with the Lions this offseason.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a mix of the development and growth that Deshea\u2019s worked with him on, but also the addition of D.J. Reed I think has added a level of maturity to that room, but also a level of detail that I\u2019m not going to say has been missing. It\u2019s just the standard has been set now,\u201d Sheppard said.<\/p>\n
Arnold finished his rookie season with 60 tackles, 10 passes defended, and a fumble recovery, but he was also tagged with 11 penalties\u2014second most of any defensive back in 2024. Those tapered off as the season went on, and although he finished the season with a 51.5 PFF grade, from Week 11 and beyond that number jumped to 58.9.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think as the season went, you saw some of the pass interferences go down,\u201d Townsend said earlier this offseason. \u201cBut our next step is how can we get the ball back to the offense? How can we transition from man to ball, from it not being a PBU to an interception?\u201d<\/p>\n
Arnold has yet to log his first interception, but from the way players and coaches are talking about him, it doesn\u2019t sound far off. Just in the past few weeks, Arnold has received praise from Brad Holmes, Amon-Ra St. Brown, and Dan Campbell. We\u2019ll see if he can live up to the hype with the season now just a few days away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Detroit Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold is heading into his second season, and it\u2019s fair to say expectations are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[4992,4993,349,99],"class_list":["post-127570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-detroit-lions-news","tag-detroit-lions-quotes","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}