For Detroit's defense, a bad start just got worse. The Lions entered Sunday night allowing the most points per game and most passing yards per game in the NFL -- and then topped themselves in both categories in a disappointing loss to the Panthers.
How much longer can Dan Campbell allow this before considering a change at defensive coordinator?
"I’m not talking about all that, man. I’m talking about getting better, right now, with what we’ve got, and that’s what we’re going to do," Campbell said after the Lions' 32-26 loss. "We’re going to find a way to get better with what we’ve got."
Kelvin Sheppard's defense should get a boost from the return of Brian Branch, who's slated to make his season debut this month. He's been badly missed in the secondary. But Branch alone won't fix this. The Lions' struggles on defense run much deeper than that. Bryce Young made it look easy Sunday night when he threw for 329 yards and two touchdowns, connecting time and time again with receiver Tet McMillan.
The Panthers went up and down the field for most of the game Sunday night, catching the Lions off-guard with lots of run-pass option looks early in the game. By the time the Lions adjusted in the second half, "then the issue was the run got us and we started bleeding yards there."
"That’s the one thing we couldn’t let happen, we couldn’t start giving up those run yards because now you’re opening up everything for them," said Campbell. "But I think even bigger is we got no takeaways. We have to get takeaways, we just have to, and we got nothin'."
Panthers running back Chuba Hubbard piled up 122 yards and two touchdowns on 20 carries.
Asked what gives him confidence in Sheppard to get the defense right, Campbell hinted at some schematic changes in the weeks ahead: "Well, there’s other things that we can do. We’ve tweaked a little bit every week here and there’s still some things that we can try that we haven’t yet, to try to settle some things down and see if we can help. Look, it’s a work in progress, man. You just keep working through it and find a way to improve, we didn’t today. It wasn’t good enough."
The next step, said Campbell, is to "exhaust everything here, let’s exhaust everything we have."
Campbell has made midseason changes to his coaching staff before, including just last season when he stripped former OC John Morton of play-calling duties and dismissed him at the end of the season. Campbell did the same with former OC Anthony Lynn in Campbell's first season with Detroit, and fired former defensive backs coach Aubrey Pleasant early in the 2022 season. He's tight with Sheppard, but that hasn't stopped him from making tough calls in the past.
"Dude, I’m gonna always do what’s right by this team, what I truly believe is the best thing and the right thing to do," he said. "I’m always gonna do that, man, that’s the most important thing, is what’s right for the players and what gives us the best opportunity to win."
On top of Branch, the secondary is also clearly missing Kerby Joseph. The corners aren't nearly good enough to survive the absence of two All Pro-caliber safeties, as we saw again on Monday night. That explains why the Lions were "very much in" on the Joey Porter Jr. sweepstakes before the star corner wound up in Dallas.
"We got guys in the backend that can cover, that can hit. We gotta pull this thing together and find the right combination of coverage vs pressure and job responsibility, putting guys in the right spot to do what they do," Campbell said. "This is a work in progress, we’re four games in, and there again, we just gotta find a way to get better, I thought we would play better than we did last week, and as a whole we didn't."
