Don't let the 315-pound frame fool you. Alim McNeill is one of the better athletes on the Lions' roster, a nimble defensive tackle who played linebacker and running back in high school and also starred on the baseball diamond. So if the Lions need a fullback this season, well, No. 54 just might get the call.
"Look, Mac can do it," Dan Campbell said Wednesday during minicamp. "It’s just a matter of, do you want to do that?"
The Lions experimented with linebacker Malcolm Rodriguez at fullback last season, with Jason Cabinda sidelined for most of the year with a knee injury. Rodriguez got 20 snaps on offense and even caught a pass for a first down, while Cabinda, Detroit's former fullback, was not re-signed.
Campbell and Ben Johnson are always coming up with creative ways to move the football, and "we like a fullback if it makes sense and it’s somebody we know can help us at that position and can dictate to the defense," Campbell said.
"That’s really what you’re trying to do. It kind of forces the defense into a look that you want usually. But we’re not going to force it either," he said. "Like, right now, Rodrigo’s at the linebacker position competing, we’ve got a stable full of tight ends that we’re working with a little bit, so it could be one of those guys, it could be Alim McNeill when the time comes."
McNeill would surely be up for it. But concerning such an important player on defense, Campbell said the Lions would have to be wary of, "How many plays did he just play on this last drive? Was this a 10-play drive? Has he got his energy back to run out there at fullback? We’ve talked about it for a while, so you never know, we could throw him in there.”
It's hard to know for sure how seriously Campbell is considering this, so take it with a grain of salt. And when it comes to integrating a fullback in general, he reiterated that the Lions aren't "going to force it and we’re not going to go out and start scouring rosters and saying, ‘Let’s go find a fullback.’ If the right guy shows up or our right guy is here, we’ll figure it out. If not, then we’ll use a tight end.”