Some 30 minutes after the Lions beat the Buccaneers on Monday Night Football, Alim McNeill was sitting in his stall by the showers in the back of the home locker room in Ford Field, still sweating and still smiling. Fatigue never felt so good. These are the moments he missed. This is the sort of night that steered him through all those long days. Twinkle Toes, as Dan Campbell once called him, had a twinkle in his eye.
"Mac, his presence was big early," Campbell said after the Lions sent an NFC message in a suffocation of the Bucs. "And he's not even in great football shape yet."
McNeill said he got stronger during rehab from his torn ACL. He said he felt it in practice the last few weeks. Then he showed it on national TV. On his second snap of the season, McNeill drove center Graham Barton backward and forced Baker Mayfield off his spot, creating a sack for Jack Campbell. It helped Detroit's defense get a three and out on its first series for the first time this season, something that coordinator Kelvin Sheppard has been begging for.
On the Bucs' next drive, McNeill bullied Barton again, this time getting into the chest of the former first-round pick and plowing him into Mayfield's lap. The pressure forced Mayfield to throw high and wide to Mike Evans, leading to another three and out.
When he went down 10 months ago, McNeill told himself he would "come back even better." To come back the same, he said, "would defeat the point of working out." He didn't want to simply rehabilitate his knee. He wanted to "transform my body." He wound up getting significantly stronger in his upper body and his core, and more explosive in his lower half. McNeill's arms look chiseled. He's still 310 pounds.
McNeill doesn't hesitate at the line. Nor did he think twice when asked where he felt his added muscle Monday night: "On my rushes."
"No disrespect to anybody, but I had some bull-rushes today that I probably have never had before," he said. "It was just straight strength today. I really felt it in my legs. I was getting off the ball. And granted, I had fresh legs, too, it was my first game, but I really felt a lot stronger out there today."
The Bucs can certainly attest. Mayfield arrived in Detroit with MVP talk and left having played his worst game of the season. He never got comfortable enough against the Lions' front seven to attack a badly-wounded secondary. As Todd Bowles noted, "They kept him in the pocket and they got pressure from within, so that’s important." Tampa struggled to block McNeill straight up, while dedicating extra attention for most of the night to Aidan Hutchinson. And McNeill still caused problems when doubled.
Facing 3rd and 3 on their third drive, the Bucs stuck Barton and guard Ben Bredeson on McNeill, who pushed them backward a couple yards before throwing up his big right hand to swat down Mayfield's pass. McNeill signaled incomplete, and the crowd roared when his name was announced for the first time over the stadium loudspeakers. Mac is back, and the Lions are back in the win column.
"That felt good. It felt really, really good," McNeill said. "It was just good to be out there, to be honest, just playing football. And then I’m out there in front of all the fans, I forgot how that felt. Watching the games on the sideline when I was out, it was just like watching it like it was on TV. But being in it, it’s so much different. That joy is what I was deprived of. I forgot how much I really, really, really love this game."
He almost sighed as he said it, in weary satisfaction. He sounded whole. The Lions' defensive front looked whole, on a night it needed to be at its best. On another third down later in the second quarter, McNeill bulldozed Barton and helped force Mayfield into the arms of Derrick Barnes for a sack. To Barnes, who knows the grind of returning from a major knee injury, "it looks like he’s never been hurt."
"His energy throughout the whole week and into today was insane," Barnes said. "It feels so good to continue to get guys back. He’s a guy that you need to have out there on the field. He’s such a big playmaker, such a huge part of this defense."
Campbell planned to play McNeill 20 to 25 snaps. McNeill laughed and said, "Blew that out of the water. I probably had double that." In the end, Campbell couldn't keep him off the field. McNeill wound up playing 40 snaps, most of them in pass-rushing situations. And while he acknowledged he needs "to get a little more wind back," which might've taken its toll as the game wore on, "it really felt like how a game would feel when I was regularly in the fold, in the mix."
"You could just feel what he looked like in practice is what he looked like here," said Campbell. "His ability to get an edge, push the pocket, I just thought he was a force in there. It was great to have him back. He makes guys around him play better, and I thought those guys played off of each other, Hutch, that gives him more of a wingman with Al-Quadin Muhammad and those guys. It’s just good to have him back."
It was fitting that McNeill's return came in front of a national audience. While his star shines locally, it feels like he's about to announce himself to the rest of the league, if he hasn't done so already. He was one of the 10 best players at his position last season at the time of his injury, per PFF, and he looks poised to take another leap this year. It wasn't just physical Monday night. McNeill said that "mentally, I felt a lot stronger, too." He found himself reading plays before they happened, having watched so much football during his time away.
"I’m on year five now," he said, "so just experience."
"He’s a super dominant player," said Barnes. "We all see it. From the outside looking in, it’s unbelievable. We see the work he puts in each and every day, how we works on his craft, how he lifts in the weight room. That's a guy that -- man, the sky’s the limit for him. He’s one of the best in the league, in my opinion. He can do everything, from pass rush to play the run to take on double teams. When you have a guy like that, man, it’s unbelievable. It creates a lot for the defense."
The Buccaneers came to Detroit with the best record in the NFC. They had scored at least 20 points in each of their first six games. The Lions held them to single digits, as well as season lows in yards (251) and yards per play (3.8). It was a total team effort, with one unheralded player after another answering the bell in the backend. Up front, 'Buttercup,' as Campbell also likes to call him, was back in business.
McNeill was happily exhausted by the end of the night. Mayfield and the Bucs were visibly frustrated. He threw 50 passes and their offense hardly went anywhere. McNeill meant no disrespect -- "Baker's a hooper," he said -- "but we could feel that. I could see it on his face a little bit" toward the end of the game.
"I mean, he had to be frustrated when they only had nine points," McNeill said.
The Lions were missing four major pieces in the secondary Monday night. They also got one back in the trenches. That loss to the Chiefs is in the rearview. The rest of McNeill's season lies ahead.