Alex Anzalone said "it didn't really hurt." Then he caught himself: "I mean, it’s all relative. My pain threshold is probably different than a normal person, but it’s kind of just an odd feeling."
Odd, for most people, is a bout of lightheadedness. Maybe a case of jelly legs. General fatigue. For Anzalone, odd is the feeling of his thumb sliding in and out of its normal position in his hand, like a tooth hanging by a thread.
Anzalone dislocated his left thumb late in the Lions' loss to the Packers on Thanksgiving and missed last week's win over the Saints -- his wife had also just given birth to their second child -- but is hoping to play Sunday when Detroit visits Chicago after having the thumb reset with a screw. He doesn't remember exactly when the injury happened, just the feeling of a finger sort of floating in his glove.
"Honestly, I don’t even remember the play," he said. "I just remember looking at my thumb and it kept sliding in and out. They put it back in and then it’d come out. So, got a screw in it, good to go."
Anzalone was a full participant at Wednesday's practice, a good sign for his availability Sunday. The Lions' top linebacker, who's having the best season of his career, said it's "mostly just pain tolerance" that will dictate whether or not he can play. It pained him to miss last week's game against his former team, especially when he peeked at Twitter during commercial breaks and saw Detroit's defense drawing taking a public beating.
"Excited to go back to work. We’re definitely motivated as a defense to get going here and start playing good football," Anzalone said. "It’s just, we hear the outside noise to a certain extent and we definitely want to prove those people wrong."
To be clear, Anzalone gets it. The Lions defense has slipped after a strong start to the season. It yielded several big plays against the Saints, who scored on all four of their trips to the red zone and nearly erased a 24-7 halftime deficit. Detroit has fallen to 14th in the NFL in yards against, 23rd in points against and 30th in the red zone. The criticism the defense received last week, said Anzalone, is "not necessarily that wrong."
"We have to limit points as a defense, that’s the no. 1 stat. And then obviously the red zone has to improve," he said. "And these next five games going into the playoffs is when it has to happen. We have to come together as a unit and figure out a way to get it done."
Anzalone, the leader of the defense and one of the captains of a 9-3 team, said the Lions are in "a race to improve every day because you never know if this is our opportunity to make a run at it. And that’s the urgency that needs to be had."