D'Andre Swift barely practiced last week as he nursed an injured ankle, and barely played on Sunday compared to normal. He still changed the game in the Lions' win over the Commanders.
"He was dealing with a lot," Lions running backs coach Duce Staley said on Friday. "For him to be able to block that (out) and move on and go out there and make some of the special plays he did, says a lot about him."
This is the Duce Effect. Staley challenged Swift to fight through injuries this season after the Lions' most explosive player lost four games last year to a sprained shoulder, and Swift has taken Staley's words to heart. He took the field with a sprained ankle in Week 2 and turned seven touches into 87 yards and a highlight-reel touchdown where that bad ankle must have been barking. Didn't matter: there's some dog in Swift.
There was tons of dog in Staley. Still is, if you watch him bark at defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn during practice. Staley was one of the toughest runners of his era during a 10-year career that crested in a Super Bowl ring at Ford Field. And he's been the toughest coach on Swift since joining Dan Campbell's staff last offseason, also as Detroit's assistant head coach. Swift responds because Staley commands his respect.
"Oh, he responded," Staley said of Swift's performance in Week 2. "Like I said before, he understands that his 80 percent is a lot better than other people’s 80 percent. And once he gets that understanding in his head, he can move forward with some of these little minor injuries.”
Seeking their first win of the season, the Lions used Swift when they needed him. He only got five carries, but one of those went for 50 yards -- and would have gone for a touchdown, said Swift, had he been at full health. He only made two catches, but one of them turned into the biggest play of the game when Swift went from his stomach to the end zone and left a sea of tacklers in his wake. He played the second fewest snaps of his career, and still emerged as one of the stars of the game.
Staley sets a high bar, especially for Swift. He isn't easily impressed. When Swift hit the deck after twisting to catch a third-down pass from Jared Goff and found himself 20 yards from the end zone, Staley flashed back to a play from last year -- he thinks in the Rams game -- when he said Swift "fell down, got back up and didn’t go score." He scored this time to put the Lions up 29-15 in the third quarter and snuff out Washington's comeback.
"That’s the first thing I said to him, I was like, ‘Man, you remember, this is like déjà vu. It happened.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, you know.’ But he gets into his little celebration mode," Staley said, "so I try to leave him alone."
The play was a snapshot of Swift's transcendent talent. He explodes out of his cuts like few other running backs -- few other players -- in the NFL. Even on a bum ankle, even on a play where the opposition did almost everything right, Swift had defenders lunging at air. Staley calls it 'burst.' Afterward, he switched on his headset and said to Campbell, "Did you see that? We’ve been working on that drill.”
Swift will limited again on Sunday against the Vikings. And likely for a few more weeks to come. Ankle injuries are hard to shake. So is the pain that comes with them -- "but he'll fight through it," said Staley.
Early in his third season, Swift is the back the Lions have been looking for.
As for Staley?
“I’m still looking," he said with a smile. "I’m still looking. I’m hard on him, man, and I will be.”
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