This week, Chicago Bears coach Ben Johnson is back in town, and many around Detroit are wondering if the former Detroit Lions coordinator may have any trick plays up his sleeve for his former team.
Lions coach Dan Campbell, who has spent the last four years alongside Johnson, doesn’t seem particularly worried about the potential of getting burned by a trick play this Sunday.
“You’ll practice one or two things, you do it for every opponent. But, I don’t really care about trick plays,” Campbell said Wednesday. “Let’s just handle the meat and potatoes of an offense, a defense, what we think they’re going to hang their hat on, and let’s stop that first. Let’s worry about that, let’s make sure we’re all on point, and we’ll handle the other stuff with our rules. You have to have proper eyes, man, we give you those rules for a reason. And look, they may hit us on one, that’s alright. That happens, you get back in the huddle and let’s go to the next play.”
The point is clear: Detroit’s defense needs to be better down-to-down, and if Chicago pulls out a bag of tricks, you just hope that the defense continues to play by each individual’s responsibilities on each play and maintains eye discipline—something they’re always teaching.
The Lions defense is looking for a bounce-back performance after allowing the Packers to put up 27 points and quarterback Jordan Love to finish with a 128.6 passer rating in Week 1. Detroit was strong at defending the run—allowing just 3.1 yards per carry, but their pass rush and coverage disappointed.
Focusing on improving that is the priority this week, because, per Campbell, nothing good comes of spending too much time worrying about the occasional trick play.
“You can’t sit there and paralyze yourself with, ‘What if? What if? What if?’” Campbell said. “The most important thing is you’ll get in trouble if you don’t handle the nuts and bolts of an offense. If you can’t stop the run, we bleed out explosives, then that’s where you can get in trouble. So, I’m not worried about the other stuff.”
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