For one quarter anyway, Terrion Arnold was playing up to the hype. He forced an incompletion to Romeo Doubs with tight coverage in the red zone on the Packers' first drive, and broke up another pass to Doubs in the end zone on their second. Sometime during the latter drive, Arnold injured his groin.
He tried to play through it. He realized he really couldn't on the first play of the Packers' third drive when Doubs ran right past him on a post route for a 48-yard gain. Arnold admitted in a candid moment after the Lions' 27-13 loss that the injury prevented him from opening up his stride and running full tilt. He was burned again on the next play for a 17-yard touchdown to Jayden Reed after Arnold was picked by Dontayvion Wicks at the top of Reed's route and couldn't catch up.
The groin turned a promising day for Arnold into a problematic one. He was sidelined for the duration of the second half and will have an MRI on Monday.
"I was having a great game up to that," Arnold said. "But it’s just one of them things where, playing corner, it’s ups and downs."
To a bigger group of reporters, Arnold said the injury wasn't an excuse for the two big plays he allowed in the second quarter. He said he'll "never sit up here and say, 'Man, I wish I could’ve made that play, but my groin,' nah, if I’m out there, I’m out there, I'll own it." But the groin clearly affected Arnold before he was removed from the game.
"It’s one of those things where you just get back to the drawing board and I gotta get in the training room," Arnold said.
Injury aside, Arnold was typically upbeat about the performance of the Lions' secondary despite the final score. If "you look at the tape," he said, Reed's touchdown owed more to the defense falling victim to a play call than to superior playmaking by the offense.
"That play right there, they didn’t beat us, they just picked me," Arnold said. "It’s just the communication, us trusting each other, playing with each other. We have to line up and make other teams beat us. They won, but they didn’t beat us. We made critical errors and I just feel like they showed up ready to play, and we need to start faster than we did."
Arnold looked terrific in training camp practices this summer, like he was poised for a year-two breakout. While he did allow a 16-yard completion to Wicks on third down on the Packers' opening drive -- after Love had all day in the pocket -- Arnold put his growth on display prior to being compromised physically.
He pointed to his pass-breakup on Doubs in the end zone, a play on which he might have been a culprit of pass interference last year, and said, "me turning my head, me trusting my teammates, trusting my leverage ... now I’m a whole different player. So, it’s just a nagging little injury. I’ll get past this and I'm gonna be good."
As for the disappointment of a lopsided loss in the season opener a year after the Lions won 15 games, Arnold said, "Nah, nah, it’s one of them things where you say you’re glad it happened now instead of later."
"First game of the season," he said. "Just go in there, clean up the tape and make the adjustments."