The Lions are hurting for Aidan Hutchinson.
"It's hard, it really is," Jared Goff said Tuesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "Hutch is as important to our team as anybody. The guy he is, the teammate he is, the type of player is, obviously the year he was having was helping us tremendously, so you’re never going to be able to replace him, you can’t.
"But having guys step up in his place and make plays and do their own thing is what’s going to be most important moving forward."
That means defensive linemen like Alim McNeill, Levi Onwuzurike and Josh Paschal, three players to whom Dan Campbell has pointed in the wake of Hutchinson's injury. It also includes players in the secondary like Kerby Joseph, Brian Branch and rookie Terrion Arnold.
Arnold, who had the best game of his young career in the Lions' beatdown of the Cowboys, took to X on Monday to dedicate the rest of this season to Hutchinson after the Lions' co-captain underwent successful surgery for a fractured tibia and fibula.
"The rest of this season is for you bro we got you," Arnold said. "Heal up fast."
Hutchinson is facing a recovery time of four to six months, though Campbell didn't put it past him to return sooner than that: "If anybody could make it back, it'd be him."
Goff said "it sucks that he has to go through this, but if I know him as well as I think I do, he’s going to come back even stronger and be even better."