Lions rank in the top-10 of just about every pass rushing metric you can think of,<\/a> and Sheppard believes they are playing very stout run defense up the middle of the line, as well.<\/p>\n\u201cThe way that Tyleik Williams and Alim McNeill is playing B-to-B gap, teams rarely run the ball there and we have identified that now,\u201d Sheppard said. \u201cAnd then having a disruptive edge in Aidan Hutchinson and now complementary pieces opposite him with (Derrick Moore) DMo and (DJ) Wonnum. We have to feed off of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, they haven\u2019t as of yet. Despite the pressure and decent interior run defense, the Lions back seven has had too many mental errors and lackluster play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told them and I told the D-line, \u2018It\u2019s a disservice what we\u2019ve been doing to you all,\u2019\u201d Sheppard said. \u201cI truly feel like this is the best D-line we\u2019ve had in my six-year tenure here since I got here in 2021. And we haven\u2019t been complementing it well enough on the back end to see the benefits of it and be outright beneficiaries is what they should be with what the D-line is doing, especially Sunday night. They assaulted the pocket all night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheppard is standing by his scheme, his blitzes<\/p>\n
Despite the early game struggles, Sheppard made it clear he is standing by the core beliefs of the current defensive system. More over, he is sure that things will only get worse if they abandon their beliefs and start back at square one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a certain way we say we\u2019re going to play,\u201d Sheppard said. \u201cNow, do you tweak things here and there? Alright, you\u2019re seeing different concepts. They\u2019re attacking you differently. They\u2019re doing\u2014yeah, that\u2019s football. But to just outright bring in a new playbook every week because the last one didn\u2019t go right. That, to me, leads to ultimate dysfunction and the dam completely breaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheppard was also asked about the team\u2019s ineffective blitzes. Last Sunday, Carolina quarterback Bryce Young completed 9-of-11 passes for 95 yards and a touchdown (per NFL Pro) against the blitz. However, Sheppard maintains they were the right calls in the right situations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose calls were the right calls. Those calls were the right calls, and I\u2019ll leave it at that.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked a follow up about the disconnect between the right call and the lack of execution, Sheppard denied providing details.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are private conversations that we have that I\u2019m going to keep in-house. Those calls were the right calls.\u201d<\/p>\n
As coach Dan Campbell has talked about in recent weeks, the Lions suffer from a problem of not being in the right place at the right time, and that has led to teammates overcompensating for each other and a lack of trust. So how do you fix that?<\/p>\n
\u201cI told the guys this, \u2018We\u2019ve got to make sure the guys you don\u2019t trust aren\u2019t out there or you guys get it corrected and you get it corrected in a hurry,\u2019\u201d Sheppard said. \u201cBecause we don\u2019t want to start doing that and guys feeling like they have got to carry the weight for another guy out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s insulted by the suggestion the offense needs to carry the defense<\/p>\n
This week, coach Dan Campbell has several times talked about how the offense needs to be better, and some have taken that as a suggestion that he holds them to a higher standard than the defense. Despite averaging 29.8 points per game (fifth-most), Campbell expects even more out of the unit. Is that because he knows the team needs to carry the 32nd-ranked defense?<\/p>\n
Behind the scenes, that may be true, but Sheppard was insulted by the insinuation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a three-phase team here and I firmly believe that. And I\u2019m going to stand strong in that belief,\u201d Sheppard said. \u201cI think that\u2019s ultra disrespectful to my unit to say somebody has to carry us. We\u2019re going to do our one-third here. Hell or high water. Point blank period.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Normally during a game week, I like to provide takeaways from all three Detroit Lions coordinator media sessions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[4992,4993,99],"class_list":["post-875697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-detroit-lions-news","tag-detroit-lions-quotes","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875697","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=875697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}