say there needs to be a drastic change<\/a> and this didn\u2019t work, that didn\u2019t work. There were weeks we played at a high level with the exact same system and there was weeks that we didn\u2019t. And after this game, we\u2019ll go back and look at that in totality and find out the real whys behind that.\u201d<\/p>\nWhatever they find, Sheppard believes it won\u2019t require a major overhaul.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see drastic change,\u201d Sheppard said. \u201cWhat I see and what I\u2019ve learned in my first year on the job of calling defenses is something that me and [head coach] Dan [Campbell] talk about every day. You start off the year . . . I wanted to have top defense in this category, top this, top that, top that. And you get caught in these statistical things that means nothing if you\u2019re not winning football games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis league is about adaptability and you can have a system all you want, but it\u2019s whatever dictates that week is necessary to win the football game.\u201d<\/p>\n
They didn\u2019t win nearly enough. And the defensive performance reflects it.<\/p>\n
As noted by Birkett, the Lions are tied for 22nd in points allowed per game, with 24.8. They\u2019re 18th in total defense and 20th in takeaways. In 2024, the Lions finished in the top 10 in scoring, rushing defense, and takeaways.<\/p>\n
The biggest takeaway for the Lions in 2025 is that they weren\u2019t good enough. They have the talent, on both sides of the ball. But it didn\u2019t show up often enough. Win or lose on Sunday at the Bears, the Lions have work to do \u2014 drastic or otherwise \u2014 to get back to where they were a year ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lions have fallen quickly in 2025, with quadruple the losses they had in 2024. But as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-383268","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383268","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=383268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}