Normally, Dan Campbell might be thinking about Chris Jones in his sleep -- and not sleeping well. But with the Chiefs star defensive tackle unlikely to play much, if at all, against the Lions in next Thursday's season opener as he continues to hold out for a new deal, Campbell isn't fretting whether or not Jones is on the field.
"I’m not monitoring it," Campbell said Friday on 97.1 The Ticket. "It doesn’t matter. He’s either there or he’s not. And if he is, he plays 15 plays, they’re all on third down and we’ll be ready. Otherwise he’s not there and we just keep going. That's out of our control."
Coming off an All-Pro season in which he had 15.5 sacks, Jones is the sort of player who can wreck an offensive game plan. But he sat out all of training camp in his bid for a new contract and was placed on the reserve/did not report list when the Chiefs finalized their roster this week. The team is holding out hope that Jones will be in uniform next Thursday -- "Hopefully he's in the lineup and he's ready to go," said GM Brett Veach -- but his workload would be far lighter than his normal allotment of 50-60 snaps.
"Either way," quarterback Jared Goff said this week, "we’ll have a plan. He’s a hell of a player who does a lot of great things for them."
"They've got plenty of ammo over there defensively," said Campbell. "I know what kind of player he is when he’s in there, but he’s the last thing I’m worried about right now. Until he’s in the building, it’s not a concern."
The main concern for the Lions, said Campbell, is taking care of the football and winning the turnover battle. If they do that, he likes their chances of beating the defending Super Bowl champs.
"We can't have turnovers and we need takeaways," he said. "That, to me, is where it starts. That’s the objective here. When you eliminate turnovers and you can find a way to get takeaways, your odds go way up of winning the game. And that’s what we have to do.
"We have to eliminate penalties as well. We’re going to have some penalties just from playing physically. Those come with the game. I’m talking about the pre-snap penalties, the boneheaded plays, the personal fouls, the false starts. Those things we can’t do, they can’t show up. You keep the penalties in check and you get some takeaways, things will look pretty good for you."
The Lions' biggest challenge, of course, is slowing down Patrick Mahomes and the most dangerous offense in football. Part of that relies on their own offense limiting Mahomes' chances. And part of that relies on Goff, who played much better last season at home (109.3 rating) than on the road (87.4), and his offensive line operating smoothly in one of the loudest environments in the NFL. Arrowhead Stadium will be a cauldron of noise next Thursday.
"We'll work that, and we've been working it," said Campbell. "A big portion of it is the communication, the get-off, the silent count up front, especially with your O-line. We're fortunate to have an O-line that's been together for a while now. There's a lot of continuity. With silent count, as long as you trust your center and everything's on time, you're pretty good, especially at the tackle position. So I feel really good about that. I think it all starts there.
"And then it's just about getting in a rhythm. To have explosives, you need a run game, because that's where those explosives come from, is play-action pass. We need to be able to run it enough to keep them honest, and that'll go a long way with it."