It turns out defense still wins championships. The Lions missed the playoffs last season with the NFL's fourth-ranked scoring offense and 22nd-ranked scoring defense. Meanwhile, the NFL's top five defenses made the playoffs, with the No. 1 defense beating No. 4 in the Super Bowl as the Seahawks defeated the Patriots.
After his first season running Detroit's defense, Kelvin Sheppard said he took a look around the league to see what worked for the stingiest units in the NFL -- and what might be adoptable for the Lions. Here's one thing: Detroit plans to play more nickel this year, an area where the Seahawks thrived last season.
"You can say what you want, you’re not worried about other people — BS," Sheppard said Tuesday on Fox 2 Detroit. "You want to know what the people at the highest level within your career are doing. So I stepped back and I pulled the top five defenses. But what you also gotta do is understand who you are, and who they are. We can’t go play a certain style that some of these teams play, whether that be the personnel, complementary football and what we’re trying to do here knowing the offense that we have, so on and so forth.
"There are things I looked at. I looked at Seattle, I looked at Houston, I looked at Jacksonville. A lot of these teams that ranked high, whether that be turnover category, total defense, or whatever, but limiting points is the goal here. And what did they do? And if something that’s applicable to us was there, we apply it. I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t kind of pick and prong in some things that felt like what we do within our core principles. We apply it, and I think it’s going to make us better."
The Lions played base defense far more frequently than any team in the NFL last season, built around the linebacker trio of Jack Campbell, Derrick Barnes and Alex Anzalone. It didn't really work, especially when injuries piled up in the secondary. Now Anzalone is gone and the Lions don't have a clear replacement for him as a coverage linebacker. That could actually be a good thing, if the Lions embrace more nickel.
The Seahawks deployed nickel at one of the highest rates in the NFL last season, leaning heavily on rookie safety Nick Emmanwori -- "That freak from South Carolina," Sheppard said at the combine -- to play multiple roles on defense. Amik Robertson was supposed to the Lions' nickel, but wound up playing much more on the outside amid injuries to starting corners Terrion Arnold and D.J. Reed. Robertson, another free agent departure, could be replaced this season by rookie Keith Abney, a fifth-round pick considered one of the steals of the draft.
Roger McCreary and Christian Izien will vie for time at that spot as well.
Sheppard was talking about Detroit's added depth at safety Tuesday, "with the uncertainty in my man Kerby Joseph and Brian Branch," both of whom are coming off injuries, when he pivoted to "the nickel position, a critical position within the defense, wanting to expand upon how much volume we use the nickel, and who is that going to be? It was Amik Robertson the last two years, so who is that going to be? It’s a lot of guys that’s in flux, but a guy that’s kind of popped to me early, Roger McCreary has come in and done a great job."
Is this why the Lions won't win a Super Bowl? pic.twitter.com/ULzTLXIEtN
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The NFL's top five defenses last season were Seattle, Houston, Denver, New England, Philadelphia. (Jacksonville ranked eighth, and second in takeaways.) One thing they all had in common? Elite cornerbacks: Devon Witherspoon for the Seahawks, Derek Stingley Jr. for the Texans, Patrick Surtain II for the Broncos, Christian Gonzalez for the Patriots, Quinyon Mitchell for the Eagles. Whether the Lions have a player of that stature is a major question. They've invested $48 million in Reed and a first-round pick in Arnold, but neither one played close to that level last season.
Dan Campbell said at the NFL meetings this offseason that after doing a deep-dive with Sheppard on last year's defense, the Lions have adjusted the framework of the unit to make it more flexible: "The way Shep's done it, which I love, is we've given ourselves options. The gist of it is that the Lions have built out three different packages from which their defense can operate depending on the personnel at their disposal.
"It's still the same install, but now we've got the pieces to put where we want whether that's a nickel, it's an end, it's a big end, it's a linebacker," Campbell said. "So we're kind of flexible here."
The onus will ultimately be on Sheppard to put his players in the right spots to succeed, and on the players to execute. He said his biggest challenge in year one as a coordinator was learning to adjust his defense on the fly, in response to the opposing offense.
"People say, how do you know you’re ready for a job? You never know, you gotta go do it. And then within doing it, you learn," Sheppard said. "It’s like going in and somebody told you, you have to have a heart procedure done next week. Do you want the guy to do it who this is first year doing it or this is his 10th year doing it? I think you’ll take the 10 years. It’s just time on task. He’s had those mishaps in procedures — I hope not, but it happens. But that’s kind of what I compare it to.
"You go through those ebbs and flows, you feel it in-game, being able to adapt and adjust, I think that’s the biggest thing, having the ability to adapt and adjust within the ebbs and flows of a season. You start out playing high, playing a certain way, well, teams are going to adjust, and what are you going to do? ... It’s my job as a coach to make sure I’m putting these players in optimal positions at all times."
