One of the bigger surprises during the Detroit Lions’ opening practice of the regular season was the absence of rookie receiver Isaac TeSlaa. With no injury report until Wednesday afternoon, fans and analysts were left to speculate what was going on with Detroit’s third-round pick. But on Wednesday morning, coach Dan Campbell put the mystery to bed, noting that TeSlaa is dealing with an illness that he’s already recovering from.
“He just had a little bug,” Campbell told 97.1 The Ticket. “I think he’ll be alright here. He’s coming in the building today. He’s been in virtual (meetings). I know he feels a lot better, but we’ll see.”
There’s enough wiggle room there for TeSlaa’s status for Week 1 against the Green Bay Packers to still be somewhat up in the air, but obviously it seems like things are trending in a positive direction. Most important of all, TeSlaa’s absence is not injury related and doesn’t appear to threaten anything beyond his status this week.
That’s good news, because the Lions already foresee a role for TeSlaa, even if it just means as a key special teamer on Sunday.
“We’ll find a place for him to where we feel like we can use him,” Campbell said earlier this week. “Certainly special teams we see him playing, too.”
It’s unclear how big of an offensive role TeSlaa will have out of the gate, but last week’s trade of Tim Patrick certainly seems to suggest a faith in TeSlaa’s progress throughout camp.
“He just came in and did his job,” receivers coach Scottie Montgomery said on Tuesday. “What we would see is he would take it from the meeting room to the walkthrough to the individual drills to the practice tape. When he failed in practice, he very rarely failed again in that same detail. That lets us know, first of all, he cares. But it (also) lets us know he’s in his playbook. When you’re in your playbook, you’re going to get the respect of the people in the room. And when your mental errors are low, you get the respect of the people in the room.”
We’ll see just how much progress TeSlaa’s health has made later on Wednesday, when Detroit drops their first injury report of the week. Although it’s worth noting it will be an estimated injury report, because players are off on Wednesday.
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