The Lions are 2-2, in large part because the defense isn\u2019t good enough. Everyone knows that, including defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has to be real change,\u201d Sheppard told reporters on Thursday. \u201cThere has to be real evidence of change, whether that\u2019s personnel-driven, whether that\u2019s some things \u2014 whatever the case is, something has to change. Because coming out of training camp, this is far from where we thought we would be at and should be at, and I still do, standing here before you after a four-game sample size. So these things will get corrected. But within doing all that, during doom and gloom, it\u2019s easy to point at everybody, but also within this, \u2018Let\u2019s go. Let\u2019s go.\u2019 Because I do feel like we\u2019re right there at this wall right now. And banging on this wall, and I said there\u2019s gonna be a group of men that bust this M-Fer down. And some guys [are] probably gonna be with us, and some aren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheppard said the defensive line is playing well, but that the rest of the defense isn\u2019t taking advantage of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told the D-line, it\u2019s a disservice what we\u2019ve been doing to you all,\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. They generated pressure all night on the quarterback. But as you saw, the quarterback was able to get the ball out with the quick release and get it completed, far too many times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheppard said it\u2019s \u201cultra-disrespectful\u201d to say the offense is carry the defense. But isn\u2019t that what\u2019s happening?<\/p>\n
He\u2019s excited about the potential impact of the return of safety Brian Branch (who could be back by Sunday), but Sheppard is exasperated by little things, like players lining up in the wrong spots.<\/p>\n
Sheppard believes this can be rectified with one thing: Violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cViolence overcomes a lot of things,\u201d Sheppard said. \u201cViolence overcomes deficiencies. Violence overcomes mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the numbers don\u2019t lie. The Lions have the worst defense in the league, with 423.8 yards allowed per game. That\u2019s more than 30 yards per game more than the No. 31 team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lions are 2-2, in large part because the defense isn\u2019t good enough. Everyone knows that, including defensive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-875805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875805","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=875805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}