The Detroit Lions may have tipped their hand when it comes to the injury status of left tackle Taylor Decker. The team announced on Saturday afternoon that they are only elevating newly-signed linebacker Monty Rice from the practice squad. That’s notable because the Lions did not add any offensive linemen from the practice squad, when they could have elevated Devin Cochran, Michael Niese, or Dan Skipper (currently injured).
That leaves the Lions with just eight offensive linemen currently eligible to be active on gameday:
- LT Taylor Decker
- LG Christian Mahogany
- C Graham Glasgow
- RG Tate Ratledge
- RT Penei Sewell
- iOL Kingsley Eguakun
- iOl Kayode Awosika
- OT Giovanni Manu
If Decker were to be inactive, that would leave Manu to start at left tackle, and no backups behind him—although Awosika is noted to be Detroit’s emergency offensive tackle. Even so, if Decker were inactive, that would leave only seven active offensive linemen in total. That’s significant because there is a gameday roster rule that if a team has eight offensive linemen active on their roster, they are allowed to have 48 active players on game day instead of the normal 47. The Lions almost always utilize this rule, so it would be a pretty big surprise to see Detroit go into Sunday’s game against the Chicago Bears with only seven active offensive linemen.
On Friday, coach Dan Campbell said Decker had a chance to play despite not practicing all week with a shoulder injury.
“Decker’s played a lot of football. And so, he’ll be ready as long as it feels right,” Campbell said. “But yeah, we feel good right now. And there again, we still have another day here, and we’ll see. So, I can’t give you a definitive yes (he’ll play), but that’s where it’s at.”
We won’t know for sure if Decker will be active until 11:30 a.m. ET on Sunday, when the Lions will declare their Week 2 inactives.
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