There was a lot of injury news, so make sure you\u2019re caught up on all of that here.<\/a><\/p>\nThe Lions offense ran several bubble screens, normal screens, and tosses in this section. Clearly, they are trying to get their playmakers the ball in their hands with a bunch of open space. And with an athletic group of offensive linemen, they can often get blockers downfield in a hurry to take out some linebackers and defensive backs.<\/p>\n
Malcolm Rodriguez vs. Devin White heats up<\/p>\n
There is clearly a competition brewing for the starting WILL linebacker role alongside Jack Campbell and Derrick Barnes. Rodriguez and White have been sharing first- and second-team reps for the past week or so, and on Tuesday they often shared the field at the same time alongside Campbell in three linebacker sets. Additionally, with Trevor Nowaske leaving practice early, both seemed to get double the reps with the second team. It feels like the staff is intentionally trying to douse both with reps to see who wins.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez had a nice sideline-to-sideline pursuit on a toss play, while White shined more later in practice.<\/p>\n
Bartch has had trouble staying on the field, leading to him falling out of the starting left guard competition. But on Tuesday, he reminded media why the Lions were hopeful of him. He delivered one of the most punishing downfield blocks in camp, plowing over White on a screen play.<\/p>\n
Bartch is unlikely to take the starting job away from Christian Mahogany, but if he can put together a strong week of camp, a good preseason finale, and stay on the field, it\u2019s possible that the position battle continues into the season.<\/p>\n
Early in practice, Vaki got chewed out after failing to finish a run. But in the next set of 11-on-11s, he flashed some of his offensive potential on back-to-back plays. On the first, he absorbed a huge hit from a blitzing Jack Campbell, but he regrouped himself, squared up, and kept Campbell at bay. The pocket stayed clear and Jared Goff connected with a wide-open Amon-Ra St. Brown for 20+ yards.<\/p>\n
On the second play, Vaki found the soft spot in the zone between Campbell and White for a conversion on third-and-5ish. After the sequence, Vaki got a ton of love from running backs coach Tashard Choice.<\/p>\n
Jameson Williams screen is dangerous<\/p>\n
Without getting into too many details, let\u2019s just say that if the Lions can run the kind of WR screen they did in Tuesday\u2019s practice, Jameson Williams is a danger for a house call. That\u2019s exactly what he did on this play, and while it looked for a second like D.J. Reed may catch him, Jamo\u2019s speed is just different.<\/p>\n
Interior offensive line starts to settle in<\/p>\n
While the offensive line has to work on chemistry more than anything, I thought the 1-on-1 performance from Detroit\u2019s projected interior offensive linemen was highly encouraging. Mahogany managed the strength of Alim McNeill on his rep, Juice Scruggs absolutely swallowed Tyleik Williams, and Tate Ratledge put Skyler Gill-Howard on the ground.<\/p>\n
Then, when they were working on defending stunts, Mahogany and Penei Sewell easily took care of Aidan Hutchinson and McNeill in back-to-back reps. It was more of a split between Blake Miller\/Ratledge vs. Gill-Howard\/DJ Wonnum, but I would still tip the scales in the offensive line\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n
About a week ago, Lions coach Dan Campbell noted how Lacy\u2014and Levi Onwuzurike\u2014were likely the two strongest players on the defensive line. On Wednesday, Lacy showed that by just slowly and steadily shoving Larry Borom into the pocket.<\/p>\n
Aidan Hutchinson vs. Penei Sewell is cinema<\/p>\n
Hutchinson kicked off the rep with his nasty spin move, getting inside of Sewell for the sack. When the two lined up a second time, Hutchinson decided to just give him pure power, and the defensive end was able to get Sewell pretty far back into the pocket. However, Sewell eventually found his anchor, and I gave him the slight win.<\/p>\n
Special teams \u2014 gunners vs. jammers<\/p>\n
As always, Vaki stood out as a big winner from these reps, beating Jacob Saylors pretty handily with a nice re-anchor as a jammer, freeing the return man for a nice rushing lane.<\/p>\n
In perhaps the biggest upset of the day, I had rookie defensive back Keith Abney winning both of his reps (as a gunner and jammer) against special teams ace Khalil Dorsey. I\u2019m not accustomed to seeing Dorsey lose a single rep, let alone back-to-backs.<\/p>\n
Lucky Jackson, who is fighting for a reserve receiver role, also won both of his reps\u2026 against struggling cornerback Ennis Rakestraw.<\/p>\n
The Lions ran three situational drills. Here are the results of each:<\/p>\n
Situation 1 (first teamers): <\/p>\n
Tied 20-2051 seconds leftOffense has the ball on its own 40-yard line3 timeouts<\/p>\n
The offense gained just 18 yards on six plays, but it was enough to get Jake Bates to try a 60-yard field goal, and he nailed it for the win.<\/p>\n
Situation 2 (second teamers): <\/p>\n
Tied 20-2051 seconds leftOffense has the ball on its own 40-yard line3 timeouts<\/p>\n
A big 21-yard pickup by Tay Martin immediately put the offense in scoring position, and Bates drilled a 47-yard field goal to win.<\/p>\n
Situation 3 (first teamers):<\/p>\n
Offense down 21-30Starting on the opponent\u2019s 18-yard line3:31 left3 timeouts<\/p>\n
It took a while, but the first-team offense scored on a 1-yard Jared Goff QB sneak. After the second-team offense was forced into a three-and-out on three straight runs, the offense got the ball back down 2 points with 1:42 left on their own 16-yard line. Two Aidan Hutchinson sacks later, a pass slipped through Jahmyr Gibbs\u2019 hands for a game-sealing interception by D.J. Reed.<\/p>\n
Now, some takeaways from these drives:<\/p>\n
Ya-Sin started these drills with a nice pass breakup on a wheel route to St. Brown. Then he forced the incomplete pass to Isaac TeSlaa (as seen above) on third down to force the 60-yard field goal attempt. But his best work was done in the red zone against St. Brown. He blanketed the veteran receiver on a post route and gave him hell on another\u2014but was called for defensive pass interference. For the entire day, I had Ya-Sin with a sack and\/or pressure and three pass breakups\u2014and I didn\u2019t even watch 7-on-7s.<\/p>\n
Aidan Hutchinson calls game<\/p>\n
I already alluded to it, but Hutchinson logged two sacks during team drills, probably should\u2019ve been credited with another, and had a pocket collapsing pressure that forced an incomplete pass. This is coming against both Miller and Sewell.<\/p>\n
Skyler Gill-Howard with plenty of first-team work<\/p>\n
On top of repping against starters in one-on-ones, rookie defensive tackle Skyler Gill-Howard saw a ton of work with the first-team defense during end-of-game drills, as Detroit clearly trusts him in a pass-rushing role right now. Admittedly, he wasn\u2019t nearly as disruptive as he has been against second-teamers, but it\u2019s still encouraging to see him get that work.<\/p>\n
Jake Bates\u2019 day:Makes: 34, 40, 44; 39, 44; 60, 47, XPMisses: 49, 49 (again\u2026 I think)Keith Abney got nearly all of the first-team nickel reps with Christian Izien sidelined. I thought it was one of his best practices, with strong red zone coverage against St. Brown, as well. He forced an incompletion on one play, then followed it up by keeping St. Brown short of the goal line on a 1-yard completion.Altmyer is still consistently repping as the backup quarterback, and Josh Dobbs got zero situational drill time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Entering the Detroit Lions\u2019 final week of training camp, practices are more important than ever. It\u2019s one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[2131,2130,349,99],"class_list":["post-826167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-detroit-lions-analysis","tag-detroit-lions-training-camp","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826167","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=826167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}