Lions News

[whatever_gong82]

Chiefs run offense vs. Lions run defense


Statistically, the Chiefs were a bottom-half-of-the-NFL rushing offense last year at 115.9 yards per game, but they were effective rushing when they put the ball on the ground, averaging more yards per attempt (4.72) than the Lions (4.54).

Isiah Pacheco won the starting job last season as a seventh-round pick because of his physical rushing style and appears healthy after missing much of the preseason with a shoulder injury. Jerrick McKinnon is Kansas City’s change-of-pace back and Clyde Edwards-Helaire should see time as the No. 3. Like the Lions, the Chiefs have one of the best offensive lines in the NFL.

The Lions made a change at nose tackle, with Benito Jones beating out Isaiah Buggs for the starting job, but mostly return the same front seven they had last year. Charles Harris is back from injury at outside linebacker, and he’s top-notching as an edge run defender. The Lions need Derrick Barnes to build on his strong preseason if he starts at linebacker in the middle of the defense. Edge: Chiefs



Chiefs pass offense vs. Lions pass defense

Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn called Mahomes “a special player” who is “going to wear a gold jacket at some point,” and it’s not an exaggeration to say he’s the best quarterback in the NFL. A two-time MVP, Mahomes can be magical on the field. He throws receivers open from a variety of arm angles, extends plays in the pocket with his feet and has an uncanny connection with Kelce at tight end.

The Chiefs don’t have any superstars at receiver, but the unit plays up because of who is throwing the ball. Skyy Moore could take a major leap in his second season given his connection with Mahomes, and Kadarius Toney showed big-play ability in his limited time with the Chiefs last season after coming over in a trade with the New York Giants. Toney is expected to play Thursday after missing time in camp with a knee injury, and Marquez Valdez-Scantling had a career-high 42 catches last season in his first year with the Chiefs.


The Lions overhauled their secondary this offseason and they expect the group to be a strength this fall. Cam Sutton and Jerry Jacobs will start at cornerback, with C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Kerby Joseph at safety and Brian Branch in the slot. There are a lot of playmakers in the back end, but it will be incumbent upon Aidan Hutchinson, Alim McNeill and Josh Paschal to get contained pressure on Mahomes or he will pick the Lions apart. Edge: Chiefs


Special teams

The Lions have fielded one of the NFL’s best special teams units for two years running under Dave Fipp, and given the improved talent on the roster, that’s not likely to change this fall. Three starting-caliber linebackers, Barnes, Jack Campbell and Malcolm Rodriguez, will play key roles on the coverage units and Raymond is one of the best punt returners in the NFL. The Lions do have a question at kicker, where Riley Patterson won the job with a mediocre camp. Field goals beyond 50 yards are a roll of the dice, but Fipp and Campbell love to gamble on fourth down and with trick special teams plays, especially in big games, so that might not be a huge issue Thursday.


The Chiefs finished last in Rick Gosselin’s special teams rankings last season — the Lions were sixth — in large part because they lost five fumbles on returns and dealt with injuries to kicker Harrison Butker. Butker is healthy now, Richie James should stabilize the return positions, and Kansas City still has top-notch talent for its cover units and one of the league’s most respect coordinators in Dave Toub. Punter Tommy Townsend was the best punter in the NFL last year. Edge: Chiefs


Prediction

The Lions have had Sept. 7 circled on their calendar since they found out they drew the defending champs in the NFL’s kickoff game in May. As Anzalone said Monday, “It’s a great stage” and big proving ground “for a lot of us.” The Lions believe they stack up well with the Chiefs. They caught a break with Jones’ holdout, and they haven’t hid from the fact that Thursday is a chance to announce their presence as a legitimate Super Bowl contender to the entire league.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Lions pull the upset, but I’m not predicting it. Mahomes is out-of-this-world good, Arrowhead is one of the best homefield advantages in football, and the environment will be electric for the banner-raising ceremony the Chiefs never really had after their last Super Bowl because of COVID-19. Defending champs have won four of their past five openers and Kansas City has won eight straight in Week 1, five by double digits. Pick: Chiefs 31, Lions 27

[whatever_gong82]

This article is from the latest USA TODAY:


The Lions might be ... good?

Hype puts Detroit in rare territory

Jarrett Bell

Columnist USA TODAY

ALLEN PARK, Mich. – You know there’s some serious Motor City fever in the air when your basic Detroit Lions offensive lineman – often an anonymous guy who covers for the marquee stars and draws the most attention when a ref throws a flag – can’t go to the grocery store anymore without sparking a buzz.

This is a slice of reality for Jonah Jackson – Jonah who? – that says much about how hype and great expectations are now part of the Leos’ equation as the left guard heads into his fourth NFL season.

“You know what’s funny? I’ve been catching a little traction recently,” Jackson told USA TODAY Sports after a training camp practice last month. “For the first three years, I could go anywhere, and it was, ‘Oh, that’s just a big guy.’ But I was actually in Busch’s (Fresh Food Market) the other day getting some vegetables and it was, ‘Is that Jonah Jackson?’

“I’m not used to it. I’m a little timid about it. But it’s pretty cool. People love their football out here. They are diehard. We’ve got to give them something to root for.”

The Lions haven’t won a playoff game since the 1991 campaign – that’s 31 seasons – but are the talk of the town nonetheless because of their potential.

Quick, make room on the bandwagon. Detroit, which opens on a national stage at Kansas City in the NFL’s kickoff game on Thursday (8:20 EDT, NBC), is the sexy pick to win the NFC North crown after finishing 9-8 last season.

Hey, 9-8, which came after a 1-6 start, marked the first winning campaign since 2017. That’s like some kind of hit in these parts. And boy has that sold. The Lions have sold all of their season tickets for the first time since Ford Field opened in 2002.

“It was bumping before the season tickets sold out,” Jackson said. “Now I can only imagine what it’s going to be like. Hopefully, I can get my family in there.”

Wake me up now! The Lions are supposed to be … good?



This has nothing to do with the decades of futility for the franchise and everything to do with the squad that general manager Brad Holmes and coach Dan Campbell have assembled for the here and now. Unless this hype represents some major mirage, these are not your uncle’s Lions.

There’s a quarterback, Jared Goff, who threw just one pick in his final 11 games last season and has a Super Bowl appearance on his resume. He throws to one of the NFL’s top young receivers, Amon-Ra St. Brown. The aforementioned O-line, which includes premium talents in Penei Sewell and Frank Ragnow, happens to be one of the best in the league. Defensive end Aidan Hutchinson heads into his second season as a centerpiece, while the secondary added a special player in nickel back C.J. Gardner- Johnson.

Part of the challenge is for the talented team to live up to the hype – or definitely not to succumb to the expectations.

Either way, the spotlight will be intense. The Lions are slated for four

prime-time games this season, which is even more striking when considering that in the previous five seasons they had an NFL-low five prime-time appearances, and none last year.

Ready or not? Let Campbell, the edgy, emotional coach, shed light on the message he shared with his team about the mindset needed to handle this newfound status.

“I told them from Day 1, when we first arrived in camp,” Campbell told USA TODAY Sports, “ ‘Man, don’t buy into all the noise that’s out there and all these predictions. Don’t listen to that.’

“Because it’s all the same noise in a positive way that we were getting negatively when we were 1-6 last year: ‘We weren’t good enough. Your coach sucks. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. The quarterback can’t. ’We have to block that stuff out. That’s not reality. The reality is not what they’re saying now, and the reality wasn’t what they were saying when we were 1-6. We’re in the gray, man. Just live in the moment.”



Even so, the moment may not be fully appreciated without the context of the past. Especially for the long-suffering fans. No, the current Lions players had nothing to do with the “Millen Man March” in 2005, when fans protested and called for the firing of then-GM Matt Millen. None of them were born in 1958, when the “Curse of Bobby Layne” is said to have begun. They weren’t around after the great Barry Sanders retired following the 1998 season and the franchise posted one winning season over the next 12 years – a stretch that included 10 consecutive losing seasons and an embarrassing 0-16 finish in 2008.

“Let’s change the narrative,” Campbell said. “That’s the challenge of it all. Let’s start our own legacy.”

Campbell, beginning his third season on his first head coaching job, gets it from another perspective. He was here for that infamous 2008 campaign. He saw it with his own eyes and felt it with his own bumps and bruises. A former tight end who played 11 seasons in the NFL, Campbell spent three injury marred years with the Lions after joining the team as a free agent in 2006.

“You heard it from afar, over and over: Detroit, they just cannot win,” Campbell said. “It’s dysfunctional. The heartbreak. They finally get into the playoffs, then bad luck. The Bobby Layne Curse.”

Campbell still came as a free agent, hoping that things could turn around under coach Rod Marinelli and new offensive coordinator Mike Martz.

“I wanted to be on the team that changed the whole narrative,” Campbell said. “Well, it didn’t work out. But actually being here in the community, you got a good handle on what it was like. But I also know this: That first game out here in 2006, we played Seattle and the place was booming. You could tell the fans here were dying for a winner. That always stuck with me.

“So, the thought of being able to come back as a coach to change the whole narrative, I felt like we need to embrace this.”



Like his coach, veteran receiver Marvin Jones Jr. is also back in Detroit for a second tour of duty. Jones played five seasons with the Lions (2016-20). He, too, can vouch for the passion of the fans. Yet he also senses a difference when considering this sudden status on the NFL relevance map.

“It tells you that we are noticed,” Jones said. “It’s exciting to be in that type of light. Yeah, we want everybody to see who we are, and see what we see out here on the practice field every day. We just have to go out and do what we can do.”

In other words, it’s about time to prove what the fuss is all about.

[whatever_gong82]

Believe It! The Lions Know What They’re Doing

(Note: This is one of the 4 free SI articles I can print this month.)

Detroit is not built on hype. Rather, it’s built on the most solid foundation the Lions have had in decades, which is why they were scheduled in the NFL opener Thursday night against the Chiefs.

MICHAEL ROSENBERG

SEP 6, 2023


When the NFL set its opening-night matchup, it did what Jameson Williams did not: It wagered on the Lions. Kansas City earned the right to host Thursday’s game by winning Super Bowl LVII. The Lions earned the league’s belief that they could make a game of it.

Well, we’ll see. Kansas City is a 6.5-point favorite. Since Patrick Mahomes became the starter, Kansas City is 17–3 in the first four games of the season. Only one of those losses came at home. But the league believes for reasons that go beyond this matchup.

The Lions … this is still kind of hard to believe … know what they’re doing.


In an odd way, Williams, the Lions second-year receiver, reinforces the point. He won’t play in the opener. He was suspended for six games for gambling on non-NFL games at work, as the league enforced its silly gambling credo: “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t bet here.” He could yet become a star, but injuries, the suspension, and some drops have raised the real possibility that trading up to choose him with the 12th pick in 2022 was a mistake.

Every organization makes mistakes. The best ones shake them off. Lions general manager Brad Holmes and head coach Dan Campbell have done such a good job of building and developing depth that they can survive the misses.

“When we first got here, those two were clear: This is the type of player we want, the type of guys we want,’” Holmes’s deputy, Ray Agnew, said last week. “I’ve been places where it doesn’t happen that way, and it’s tough to deal with.”



Detroit used to be one of those places. But now Lions fans are excited in a way that most fan bases can’t fully appreciate. It’s not just because this year’s team should be good. The Lions have had good teams before. It certainly isn’t because Lions fans expect to win the Super Bowl; there are at least a half-dozen teams that are more likely to win it, and anyway, an essential part of being a Lions fan is never expecting to win the Super Bowl.

No, fans are excited because for the first time in most of their lifetimes, the Lions are operating like the best teams in the NFL. There is more substance than style. Decisions don’t always work out, but they always seem to make sense. Philosophy trumps agendas, but it does not stifle creativity.

“Every draft pick is very intentional,” Holmes said last week. “It’s not just about finding a talented guy. They’re team guys, they’re locker-room guys, they fit us.”




But it’s also not just about finding team guys who fit the locker room. Do that, and you end up with a hard-nosed 4–13 team.

The Lions went from 1–6 to 9–8 last year, finishing with a Sunday Night Football win in Green Bay that ended Aaron Rodgers’s Packers career. It was a storybook finish that did not feel like a storybook at all. There was nothing fluky about it. They went 3–1 against teams that made the playoffs.

When Campbell was hired, the fear was that he would be old school to a fault: insisting that grit wins football games, ignoring analytics and new ideas, convincing himself that conservative was the same as being wise. Instead, he has proven himself adept at the toughest balance for any coach: being adaptable while maintaining a core philosophy.

The Lions are as tough and relentless as Campbell promised they would be. The offensive line mauls people. But Campbell hired an inventive offensive coordinator, Ben Johnson, who is one of the league’s top coaching candidates, and trusts him to make bold calls.




When Jared Goff struggled to connect with Campbell’s first offensive coordinator, Anthony Lynn, it would have been easy for Campbell to pin it on Goff. Campbell and Lynn were good friends. One of the NFL’s best offensive coaches, Sean McVay, had given up on Goff a few months earlier. Instead, Campbell fired Lynn, took over play-calling himself, and then hired Johnson. They have helped Goff become the best version of himself—somewhere between game manager and star—by trusting him exactly the right amount. Goff finished last season by throwing 324 passes without an interception, to which Campbell says: That streak will end, but so what?

“You can create a little fear if you’re not careful,” Campbell said. “There will be interceptions this year. That’s the nature of the game. We don’t want to coach out of fear.”


Campbell and Holmes became extremely popular in Detroit because they were willing to be unpopular. They stuck with Goff when he looked lost. The fan base gladly would have brought back running back Jamaal Williams this year; the Lions let him go and signed younger David Montgomery to replace him. They then used their two first-round picks on running back Jahmyr Gibbs (after trading down) and linebacker Jack Campbell. Draft experts did not love the choices. The Lions don’t care. If they think a player can be productive for them, they want him.

“We’re not acquiring talent,” Campbell said. “We’re acquiring football players.”

In two years, Campbell has shown so many of the qualities that make for a great coach—and make a great coach so hard to find. He has a coordinator’s understanding of schemes but doesn’t micromanage. He embraces hard conversations and tough decisions. He owns mistakes and seems unaffected by criticism.



He will go to Kansas City confident that whatever happens in the game, he will go home with the same kind of team he brings there.

“We won’t sacrifice our identity for anything,” Campbell said. “We’re a pretty resilient group. That’s where it all starts.”

Holmes and Agnew admitted they were surprised by all the Lions hype this offseason. After all, the team didn’t even make the playoffs last year. But the team is not built on hype. It is built on the most solid foundation the Lions have had in decades.

[whatever_gong82]

Mitch Albom: Detroit Lions' big show opens tonight. Is it hype or hope that's driving it?

Mitch Albom

Detroit Free Press

Tonight, we learn how stupid we are.

Or how smart.

Tonight, hype meets hit. Giddiness meets gridiron.

Tonight, once again, Detroit is Charlie Brown running to the football, staring at Lucy’s fingers, wondering if she yanks it away at the last moment.

Tonight, NFL football begins. And rarely in any of our lifetimes has the expectation for our local team reached such a fever pitch. Experts have the Lions winning their division. Some go as far as one or two playoff wins. Some even put the Detroit Lions in the Super ----.

No. I’m not saying it.


Let’s get through Game 1, OK? Let’s get through the NFL season opener, the loneliest and only-est game on the planet, tonight, in Kansas City, against the Super Bowl champion Chiefs.

Few expect the Lions to win. But some do. Some are actually counting on it. Some say an upset tonight will be the catalyst to a year of long-awaited glory.


And so, on this morning of great expectations, let us paraphrase Lord Tennyson: Ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to figure out if they’re nuts.


It can only be Jared!


I’ll tell you this much. The Lions are only going as far as Jared Goff takes them. Period. End of sentence. Which, if you’re going to be more analyst than cheerleader, is the first strange thing about this summer’s hype.


While experts keep lauding the Lions’ grit, attitude and coaching, few go crazy about Goff. ESPN didn’t have him in its top 10 this year. No one gushes about his upside the way they do with Jalen Hurts, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow or others.


Recently, his own coach, Dan Campbell, said the Lions don’t need Goff “to be a Hall of Fame quarterback” this year.

Well, yeah, they kind of do.

At least if a Super Bowl is their goal.

And isn’t that the goal of all contending teams? Take a look at the quarterbacks that have won it recently. Patrick Mahomes. Tom Brady. Peyton Manning. Even Matthew Stafford, who may not be heading to the Hall of Fame, had that kind of season the year he won it all, with a QB rating of 102.9, about 12 points higher than his career average.


Quarterbacks make or break you. You can win a few games without them being stellar. You won’t win championships.

So it starts and ends with Goff, and what do we really know of him? His first season here, when the Lions won three games, he was hit and miss, often souring good starts with fourth-quarter letdowns. His second season, over the first seven games, he threw 12 touchdowns and six interceptions, and had one game, the 29-0 loss to New England, where his QB rating was 8.4.



But after that, he was on fire. A machine. Efficient, Accurate. Unflappable. Threw 17 touchdowns and one interception. Amazing. The Lions won eight of their last 10, and, even though they missed the playoffs, the fuse was lit. Enthusiasm soared.

But Jared will have to be “Second Half Goff” all season this year. Or all this talk will be a lot of hot air.

“Adversity strikes at any time,” Goff recently told ESPN. “You like to think you’re coming out of it now, but who knows? You could fall right back into it.”


Leave it to the quarterback himself to say what fans are not.



Are we sure this is for real?


So what are the reasons to be more positive than negative? Several. The Lions have an excellent offensive line and Goff, given time, can pick you apart. His passer rating was fifth in the league last year when NOT being pressured. He’s grown more comfortable with the innovative Ben Johnson as his coordinator. And he knows he’s often likely to get four downs to convert drives, given the way Campbell coaches, which boosts the comfort of any quarterback.

But what about what surrounds him? He’s got one great and reliable target in Amon-Ra St. Brown. After that? It’s not exactly Showtime. He no longer has a T.J. Hockenson. (Quick! Name the Lions starting tight end! If you said “Charlie Sanders” you must put down your pencil.)

Marvin Jones is an older version of the man who left Detroit a few years ago. Khalif Raymond and Josh Reynolds are a lot more heralded in Detroit than elsewhere. And the most promising young receiver, Jameson Williams, is suspended for six games.



The running game, meanwhile, has earned breathless enthusiasm around here, but realistically, newly acquired David Montgomery is a solid 850-yard-per-season back, and nobody knows how rookie Jahmyr Gibbs will fare. Could be great. Could take time. Hype for the rushing attack is inappropriate.

Hope is more fitting.

So it comes back to Goff. No surprise. The teams that win big these days have quarterbacks that make things happen. Goff can do that from the pocket. But he’s not Mahomes, Hurts or Aaron Rodgers out of it.



No longer Mr. Rodgers' neighborhood


Speaking of Rodgers, how much of the Detroit goosebumps comes from the fact that the long-haired, over-fared leaping gnome is now playing with the Jets? Is he really gone? We’ve gotten so used to finishing behind Green Bay that 2023 feels like walking in on the first day of school and learning the bully has moved to another state.

But we’re not the only ones. Minnesota, which actually won the division last year after going 13-4, sees no Rodgers as a highway to another title. A newspaper in Minneapolis just predicted it. And Yahoo! Sports just picked the Packers to win the NFC North with a 10-7 record, with Rodgers’ replacement, Jordan Love, leading the way.



In other words, if you go to other cities, they like their chances, too. We’re not the only town that gets hyped up.

And then there’s the Detroit defense. And this, folks, will be how you determine how changed the 2023 Lions really are. Goff can be terrific, and the running game can shine, but if the Lions keep having to score 30 points to beat their opponents, it’ll be a long haul. The defense ranked near the bottom in many categories last year. That’s why the Lions brass went out and changed it. Signed a bunch of free agents.

On paper, they look much better.

Paper doesn’t play games.


Hey, it could happen


So there. Now that we’ve let a little air out of the balloon, let’s tie it back up. Let’s see how it flies. There’s nothing wrong with healthy enthusiasm. And there’s reason for that. Almost everyone agrees that Campbell and Brad Holmes have improved the team in ways that haven’t been seen in a long time around here.


After Kansas City, the Lions have home games against Seattle, Atlanta and Carolina, and road games at Tampa Bay and Green Bay. All those teams are predicted to do no better and likely worse than Detroit. Win the games they should win, and even with a loss tonight, the Lions could well be 5-1.

But blow a few games, turn the ball over at the wrong time, miss a critical field goal, or suffer injuries at a key position, and the air doesn’t just start leaking from the balloon, it makes a whooshing sound and begins to spiral.

We’ve seen it happen. We’re tired of seeing it happen. Tonight, we start to learn if 2023 will really be a new year, or one in which we’ll wish we’d kept our mouths shut.

Hype? Hope? Or “HELP!”? No going back now. Here comes Lucy, holding the football. Close your eyes. Take a breath. And say to yourself:

What could possibly go wrong?


Don’t answer that.

Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.

[whatever_gong82]

This is a long article, so I'm breaking it into perhaps 4, maybe 5 or 6 parts.


Fueled by doubt and hate, C.J. Gardner-Johnson ready to 'bring a championship to Detroit'


Dave Birkett

Detroit Free Press


As free agency heated up this spring and his phone stayed quiet, C.J. Gardner-Johnson found himself in a dark place, wondering not if he was done with football but if football was done with him.

Gardner-Johnson tied for the NFL lead with six interceptions last season despite missing five games with a lacerated kidney. He returned to help the Philadelphia Eagles reach the Super Bowl, and it was during practice in the buildup to that game that Gardner-Johnson said someone in the Eagles front office — he declined to say who — told him they wouldn’t be bringing him back in 2023.

“(My) DB coach even know why I was pissed off that whole week,” Gardner-Johnson told the Free Press in the first of two sit-down interviews this summer. “I got the front office telling me they’re not going to pay me. And I’m not trying to think about money, I’m just trying to think about ball, but when you just throw a subliminal out of nowhere … ‘Play your hardest, we’re not going to pay you.’ … Well, all right, what does that come from?”


The Eagles lost to the Kansas City Chiefs, 38-35, in a championship game for the ages, and Gardner-Johnson spent most of the next month hunkered down in his Philadelphia-area home.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported the Eagles made Gardner-Johnson a multi-year offer early in free agency that he turned down, but Gardner-Johnson insists he never got a real offer from the team.



As free agency opened with tepid interest from a handful of suitors — the Detroit Lions, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Baltimore Ravens, with whom former Eagles defensive backs coach Dennard Wilson had taken a job as an assistant — Gardner-Johnson went into seclusion.

He stayed inside. He stopped answering his mother’s phone calls. And when he did talk to his mom or his marketing manager, Clinton Reyes, the conversation ended in tears.

Discarded by his second NFL team in seven months despite being, by most accounts, one of the best young safeties in the league, Gardner-Johnson stewed in a mix of raw emotion.



Confusion. Anger. Betrayal. Abandonment. Distrust. Doubt. Uncertainty.

If no one wanted him after the best season of his career, maybe no one wanted him at all.

“How that picture’s black and white right now,” Gardner-Johnson said, pointing to an old photograph of Billy Sims hanging on a wall in the Lions’ Allen Park practice facility. “That’s how shit looked to me. That shit was no color to my life at that point. It was just, get to the highest point, get knocked down, and everybody said, you ain’t shit and you ain’t done nothing, your name ain’t gonna hold weight, you’re sorry, you troublemaker. Can’t put it together 'cause you can’t figure out where you went wrong. For real, I never went wrong, I just ain’t played the position long enough for them to respect me.”



More than four days into free agency — an eternity for frontline players in the NFL — and nearly a week after the negotiating period began, Gardner-Johnson signed a one-year deal with the Lions worth up to $8 million.

It was hardly the windfall he hoped for, and exactly the kind of humbling some fans felt he deserved.


But for the baddest, brashest, most misunderstood player in the NFL, it was the tank of propane he needed to fuel the fire that has long coursed through his veins.

“What has Chauncey Gardner-Johnson done to affect front offices, affect fans besides play football?” Gardner-Johnson asked. “Like, I’m tired of the narrative that’s untrue. The reason I didn’t get paid in Nola was because I’m a passionate guy, I said that. The reason I didn’t get paid in Philly was because they wanted to see me play safety another year. That’s respectable, but it’s not respectable because, shit, it’s football, bro. I’m on some shit like, I’m just tired of trying to prove people wrong.”

continued..

[whatever_gong82]

Like mother, like son




Raised by a single mother the first five years of his life, Gardner-Johnson has inherited many of his mom’s personality traits.

Del Johnson played basketball and ran track growing up in Cocoa, Florida, where she won way more than she lost. She was tough and athletic, fiercely competitive and not shy about letting her opponents know how good she was.

“I’m small,” Johnson said. “I’m 5-4, 135 pounds soaking wet. I didn’t mind getting in your chest and saying how I felt, speaking my mind, because one of two things are going to happen. … You’re going to shut me up and beat me or I’m going to beat you and still talk crap.”


Johnson said she was raised by drug-addicted parents and was physically, sexually and mentally abused at an early age.

She grew up in child welfare, has gone on to become a successful businesswoman and published a book about her experiences. The trauma she endured as a child heightened her survival instincts and lowered her tolerance for strife.


She has not talked to her older sister, someone she revered growing up, since 2016 because of a family dispute, or her younger sister since 2012. She once went nearly two years without speaking to Gardner-Johnson, even blocking him on her phone because of an argument she said turned disrespectful.

“I don’t deal with a lot of people so if I let you in my space, you have earned that space,” she said. “But if you cross me, I will never talk to you again. And that’s (C.J.). So he is every bit of me.”

Gardner-Johnson was a star athlete as a youth, running track, playing AAU basketball and shining on the football field. He won 100- and 200-meter state championships in track as a senior at Cocoa High, after losing badly his junior year and sobbing all the way through the 2½-hour ride home. He promised his mom in the car that day, “I’m going back next year and I’m winning.”



Gardner-Johnson began playing football at 4 years old and quickly fell in love with the game. When his younger brother, Brandon, collapsed on the field and had to be taken to the hospital one day — Brandon was diagnosed with a rare condition called Chiari Malformation and has since undergone six brain surgeries — Gardner-Johnson, unfazed, stayed to play in his game.


“I don’t know if my brother was dead or alive, that’s how much I love football,” he said. “They left the little league field to take my little brother to go bring him back to life, damn near, and I stayed out there to play football and win the game. I scored seven touchdowns in little league that day. I remember that day. Tore their ass up.”

Primarily a quarterback and running back in little league, Gardner-Johnson moved to defense in middle school when he didn’t make his league’s weight limit to carry the ball. He ran stadium steps in his underwear and wrapped himself in a garbage bag to try and drop the few pounds he needed to play a skill position. When that didn’t work, his coach put a green stripe on his helmet and made him a defensive lineman.


When players on another team taunted Gardner-Johnson, calling him, “Fat (expletive),” Gardner-Johnson took it out on them. He laid a player out with a hard tackle, then stood over the player talking trash.


“That’s when he realized he could hit people and talk crap and not get in trouble,” Johnson said. “He’s always been very super-competitive, so he would talk crap to you even when he was on a softball mound. He would talk crap to you when you were going across the monkey bars.”




Show some respect



One of the NFL’s premier trash-talkers, Gardner-Johnson got more than his gift of gab from his mom.

Johnson has worked with troubled youth most of her adult life and currently owns two group homes in central Florida, Del B Angels, that house six girls each, aged 12-17. Before getting into foster care, she provided respite care for at-risk youth, hosting kids at her house when they needed time away from their parents or guardians.

Gardner-Johnson bonded with many of the youth that made their way through his doors. Some of the kids came to his football games and track meets, and he begged his mother not to let them leave.


Their experiences and insecurities rubbed off on him and shaped the lens through which he views the world.

“My momma would go and help kids that’s not mentally there or attitude’s not there, and just it stuck with me,” Gardner-Johnson said. “I think that’s the problem. I adapted so many personalities from being (around) all those type of kids that people don’t understand.”



Seeing his mom’s outreach rubbed off on Gardner-Johnson in a positive way, too.

Though his charitable work has largely gone unnoticed in the NFL, he took foster kids on shopping sprees in New Orleans and footed the $40,000 bill to buy his old high school rings when it won a Florida state championship last year. In Detroit, he made two donations this spring to fund new football equipment at Detroit Cass Tech and Detroit King high schools and he’s been a regular in the office of Moe Pearson, the Lions' manager of player and alumni relations, begging for opportunities to work with local youth.

In the coming weeks, he plans to host a bike and bookbag giveaway for inner-city Detroit kids.



Gardner-Johnson said his two biggest goals with the Lions were to be voted a team captain and win the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, the NFL’s tribute to community service.


Though he was not named a captain this week, both goals center around the one thing he has chased most of his life and is still in search of — respect.

“Don’t say, ‘Oh, I’m just a shit talker,’” Gardner-Johnson said. “Nah. At least promote something I’m doing good. Like I got so many articles out right now, I’m the oddball, I’m gonna get cut, or I’m gonna this. (Expletive) y’all. You feel me?”

continued...

[whatever_gong82]

Tragedy strikes



As a kid, Gardner-Johnson loved watching "SpongeBob SquarePants," devoured fruit snacks and sucked his thumb.

He still has an innocence to him in some ways, expressing disbelief at the business side of football, though he knows how cutthroat it can be.

But he lost his naivete years ago, along with his best friend in life.



On May 15, 2012, Tonya Thomas, a Florida mother, killed her four children, shooting them 18 times before turning the gun on herself. Gardner-Johnson and Thomas’ oldest son, Jaxs, one of the victims, started daycare together when they were 3. They ran track together and played on the same basketball and football teams, and Jaxs stayed at Gardner-Johnson’s house for days before the murders. Johnson still has a pair of Jaxs’ shoes and a baggie of his clothes from the days-long sleepover at her house in C.J.’s room.

Gardner-Johnson declined to talk about Jaxs’ death, but “he still struggles with that,” his mom said.

“Because the morning that Jaxs was killed, C.J. and I dropped him off the night before,” she said. “So he still holds onto, ‘Mom, what if he would have just stayed another night?’ ”


Gardner-Johnson lost another friend to an accidental shooting growing up and this offseason one of his closest friends from the music industry was killed. Asked about that death this summer, Gardner-Johnson teared up, paused 10 seconds and wiped his eyes.

“That’s why I don’t think I’ll ever put (music) down, like I don’t put football down until they tell me to,” he said. “This is the truth, I won’t put music down until I make a million dollars in it. My brother was close, until he died. My brother was real close till he died.”


Gardner-Johnson, who raps under the name SOG Ceedy, has been involved with music almost as long as he has played football. He started singing in the youth choir at his church when he was 6, and his mother recalls teachers sending notes home complaining about Gardner-Johnson making beats at his desk with a pencil.



Like football, rap is an outlet, and a place to let his alter ego fly.

“I got like two different people living in me, football and life,” Gardner-Johnson said. “Life, I’m just chilling. Football, that’s a whole different person. People call me Ceedy on the football field, or Ducey. In life, they call me C.J. or Chauncey.”



‘I ain’t no (expletive) robot’



Alex Goins, who coached Gardner-Johnson for most of his youth football career and is now a city councilmember in Cocoa, compared Johnson and his alter egos to Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders’ and his on-field persona Primetime.

“I remember one interview he had where he said, ‘Do you want to talk to Deion or do you want to talk to Prime? The question you’re asking me, which one do you want, cause I got two different people,’ ” Goins said. “And that’s Chauncey. He’s able to be Chauncey, C.J., Duce. He’s able to be those people and depending on what you want, you got to be careful what you wish for.”


Gardner-Johnson finished high school with a 3.7 grade-point average and his pick of colleges. He went to Florida, played three seasons and declared early for the NFL draft a month before his 21st birthday.

He thought he’d be a first- or second-round pick after intercepting nine passes in 37 college games; instead, he didn’t come off the board until pick No. 105, in the fourth round.

Johnson considered that a sign from God. Maybe her son wasn’t mature enough to handle the fame and riches that came with being a first-round pick; the NFL, after all, was his first job. By dropping in the draft and going to New Orleans, he would be humbled and get to reunite with Drew Brees and Aaron Glenn, a quarterback and coach he first met on the seven-on-seven and recruiting circuits in high school.

Gardner-Johnson didn’t see it that way and seethed.

“That’s some bullshit,” he said this summer. “I got drafted fourth round cause my character. Never been on the ESPN ticker, never been in trouble, never had a DUI, never had a felony, never had no assault. Never no misconduct. Not even no team issues, I just get like this bad rap.”




What scouts missed, he said, is the same thing NFL teams have missed for years.

“They’re scared of guys who love football,” he said. “The league want people who robots. I ain’t no (expletive) robot. Like, I’m going to do this shit the professional way that I know how to get shit done and I’m going to respect people who do it and that’s why I never got in no trouble. And I’m not saying that’s cause I’m slick, no. I’m sneaky, nah. I walk the line how a professional football player’s supposed to walk the line. I don’t step out that line.”

Gardner-Johnson emerged as one of the best slot cornerbacks in the NFL in his three seasons in New Orleans, when he built a reputation for luring other players across that line. His infectious energy endeared him to Glenn, then the Saints secondary coach and now the Lions’ defensive coordinator, and his incessant needling of Tom Brady made him a favorite of Saints fans.

But last summer, Gardner-Johnson staged a hold-in — sitting out practices while spending training camp with the team — looking for a new contract. The Saints, unwilling to meet his contractual demands, traded him to the Eagles for multiple late-round draft picks.

Gardner-Johnson said one Saints coach — again, he declined to name the coach — told him he couldn’t cut it as a safety before the team sent him home from the building to work out a trade.

"New Orleans did me dirty," he said.

continued..

[whatever_gong82]

‘Keep it pushing’



As real as he is, Gardner-Johnson’s in-your-face style is off-putting to some. But Glenn, who once benched Gardner-Johnson for not running a coverage when he coached him at the Nike’s The Opening recruiting showcase, swears by the defensive back he helped lure to Detroit.

“I know what he brings to the table, I know where his heart’s at and I know how much he loves football and I know how much he loves winning, so those things stand out to me first and foremost,” Glenn said. “He really endears himself to his teammates, even though he can be a little challenging, and the reason why, because he challenges his teammates. Man, no one wants to win more than that guy, and I’ve been around a lot of them. But that one, no one wants to win more than him.”


Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone, who played with Gardner-Johnson at Florida and in New Orleans, called Gardner-Johnson “my little bro,” describing him as “a good dude” who “means well” and is “just about ball.”

“I’ve seen fights, but I’m not going to (talk about that),” Anzalone said. “I think (Saints receiver) Mike Thomas got suspended for a game (for starting a fight with Gardner-Johnson in practice). He didn’t start it, he just finished it. … It’s a certain way of doing things. It’s not for everyone. It’s for him. It works.”

But playing with such passion — letting teams into his space, to use his mother’s terms — has amplified the hurt he feels when things have fallen apart.

Johnson said C.J. called her the day he was traded to Philadelphia “and just started crying.”

It didn’t take long for Gardner-Johnson to get over the trade and embrace his new city and new team. He dyed the tips of his dreadlocks Eagles green, moved to safety full-time and played well enough that he thought he’d get a long-term deal where he wanted to stay in Philadelphia.

When that didn’t happen, Gardner-Johnson phoned his mom again and said, “I’m done. … I failed.”


“(Expletive) Philly,” Gardner-Johnson said. “It ain’t (expletive) the fans, it ain’t (expletive) the players. I don’t give a shit about the front office, how they run that shit.”

Because of the way things ended with the Saints and Eagles, Gardner-Johnson has a complex view of his current situation and his future in Detroit.

He’s playing safety for the second straight season, back with a coordinator he trusts in Glenn and part of a secondary he said is better than the one he thrived in last season. The Lions are set up for a playoff run that he’ll surely be a big part of, but Gardner-Johnson is dubious that whatever he does will be enough to convince the Lions to sign him long-term.

“Man, truthfully to be honest with you, bro, and I don’t care if this go in the media or not, I feel like, truthfully I feel like they’re just using me for what they want me for,” he said. “I mean, regardless of playing and all this shit, I just feel like every team just want to use me for who I am, so I get under people’s skin and just let me go next year when they don’t make it. Like, that’s a scary feeling.”

Playing on a one-year deal, Gardner-Johnson said he is in “the same position I was in last year,” a mercenary subject to the whims of the team with no long-term security for him and his three kids, the most important people in his life.

He’s open to staying in Detroit if that’s how things work out, but cognizant of the fact “there’s a couple guys that need to get paid before me.” Jared Goff, Jonah Jackson, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Penei Sewell and Jerry Jacobs are among the Lions starters in line for possible new contracts or extensions in the next 12 months.

“I’m gonna bring a championship to Detroit and I’m gonna get the (expletive) on,” he said. “That’s the only thing they want you for. So I’m going to do my job and bring me a championship. As long as I’m here, I’m going to try to bring one and I’m going to go.”

With 31 other NFL teams, there are plenty of places to go if need be, though after all he's been through and done, Gardner-Johnson's plans are bigger than that.

“Man, listen, my life, there’s a lot of shit that’s moving around in it, but my main focus is bringing a championship here and get the (expletive) on,” he said. “And get the (expletive) on don’t necessarily mean leave Detroit, just like, keep it pushing. There’s more out there.”

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

[whatever_gong82]

No Detroit Lions WR has caught more passes in his first 2 seasons than Amon-Ra St Brown

(Another subscriber only article for the Forum!!)

Ryan Ford

Detroit Free Press

The 2021 NFL draft had the potential to go down as one of the most pass-happy classes in league history, with four pass-catchers — Kyle Pitts (a tight end), Ja’Marr Chase, Jaylen Waddle and DeVonta Smith (the reigning Heisman Trophy winner!) — going in the top 10 picks.

But it’s a fourth-round pick who’s proving to be the gem of the class, at least in the eyes of the Detroit Lions: Amon-Ra St. Brown, the 112th overall pick and the 17th WR drafted in 2021, is rewriting the Lions’ record books over his first two seasons. And that’s despite just six catches over his first three games. But his fourth game saw him snag six passes for 70 yards, and his march toward history was on its way. Here’s how St. Brown’s two-season totals compare to the rest of the franchise’s wideouts, as well as the NFL’s greatest:


Receptions


Franchise rank: through two seasons: 1st.

Among the Lions: No Detroit player has caught more passes in his first two seasons combined than St. Brown, with 196, and it’s not even close; Calvin Johnson had 70 fewer in 2007-08. In fact, St. Brown could go without a catch this season and still own the Lions’ record for most catches over the first three seasons, as Johnson added 67 in his third season to get to 193. (Also, a shoutout to James Jones, who hauled in 123 passes in his first two seasons as a fullback with the Lions in 1983-84. He also completed three of seven pass attempts under coach Monte Clark.)

Against the NFL: St. Brown has to settle for a tie for first in NFL history, with Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson in2020-21 and New Orleans’ Michael Thomas in 2016-17. Jefferson raised the bar a bit in his third season last year, however, with 128 catches for a three-season total of 324; that topped Thomas’ three-season record by three catches.


Yards

Franchise rank through two seasons: 2nd


Among the Lions: Despite his lead in catches, St. Brown comes in 14 yards behind Megatron in Lions history. They’re both well ahead of No. 3 on the franchise leaderboard, Germain Crowell, who had 1,802 yards receiving in 1998-99. If St. Brown can come close to duplicating his 2022 total of 1,161 yards though, he’ll zip by Johnson, who had 3,071 yards over his first three seasons; St. Brown needs just 999 yards to take the lead. (He might want to start building up a cushion vs. Johnson, as the Hall of Famer went off in Years 5-6, with 3,645 yards in 2011-12.)

Against the NFL: Even with breaking the 1,000-yard barrier last season, St. Brown came up well short in yards; his two-year sum ranks just 28th, 943 yards less than Justin Jefferson’s 3,016 (which is nearly 300 better than Odell Beckham Jr.’s No. 2 total of 2,755 yards). Still, St. Brown has some decent company, with more yards in his first two seasons than Hall of Famers such as Isaac Bruce (2,053) and James Lofton (1,786).


Receiving touchdowns

Franchise rank through two seasons: 6th.


Among the Lions: St. Brown’s steady production — five TDs as a rookie, then six last season — leaves him in sixth place in franchise history, well off the franchise mark of 16 shared by, yep, Calvin Johnson and Roy Williams (2004-05). St. Brown probably doesn’t have a shot at taking the franchise lead in his third season, either; Cloyce Box, who had 15 TDs in 1949-50, exploded for 15 in 1952 alone to grab a seven-touchdown lead against the rest of the franchise’s receivers. (He caught just two more the rest of his career with the Lions — but that was just two years.)



Against the NFL: St. Brown ranks just 166th here. Surprisingly though, this is one mark that Justin Jefferson doesn’t have. He ranks 25th with 17 TDs — one more than Hall of Famer Jerry Rice (1985-86), but 12 fewer than the 29 Bill Groman caught for the Houston Oilers in 1960-61, the early years of the AFL. (Though, if you’re a strict NFL’er, then Randy Moss holds the first-two-seasons mark with 28 TDs from 1998-99.)


First-down receptions

Franchise rank through two seasons: 1st.

Among the Lions: No Detroit receiver has been better at moving them, well, “Forward Down the Field” than St. Brown (though pro-football-reference’s database only goes back to 1993). His 116 catches for first down smoke Calvin Johnson’s 90 and are 53 more than the No. 3 receiver on the list, Kenny Golladay (73 from 2017-18). Unlike his receptions total, St. Brown will need at least a few first downs this season to stay ahead of the pack; Johnson has the highest three-season total, at 136, followed by Roy Williams at 131.


Against the NFL: Again, we’re only covering 30 seasons or so, but St. Brown stacks up pretty well here; he’s fifth, and not that far off the leaders — Justin Jefferson and Michael Thomas, at 133. OBJ’s here, too, at 126, and then St. Brown’s 2021 draftmate, Jaylen Waddle, checks in with 119 first downs for the Dolphins. (Jefferson is alone in first place for the three-season total, by the way, with 213.)

[whatever_gong82]

NFL execs rank NFC teams: Big belief in Eagles, 49ers and yes, the Lions




By Mike Sando

After exploring NFL executives’ projections for AFC teams Wednesday, we turn our attention to that other conference, where the path to the Super Bowl appears far less treacherous.

Six execs from a wide range of roles — general manager, assistant GM, pro personnel, contracts/salary cap and analytics/strategy — ranked every NFC team on the condition of anonymity for competitive reasons.

They agreed on two things: The Philadelphia Eagles should be ranked No. 1, and the NFC is not even close to the AFC in quality.

How many NFC teams could plausibly reach the Super Bowl?

“Oh, man,” one exec said, “the answer is either five or like 12.”

On to the rankings we go. They reflect the median of the six votes for each team, with average vote breaking ties.


Here's what they said about the Detroit Lions:


3. Detroit Lions

Votes: 3-9-3-4-4-3 | Avg: 4.33 | Median: 3.5

The Lions jump nine spots from where execs had them entering last season.

“That is how shallow the NFC is,” one exec said. “Detroit is as good as any of them and is a team on the rise. They could be better than Dallas, better than San Francisco. We will know by midseason.”

The Lions’ ability to keep offensive coordinator Ben Johnson was a key variable.

“I love the way Detroit coaches,” another exec said. “I love their offensive coordinator. They are a little bit like Philly. They coach with purpose. They set things up. They have a plan. They are aggressive.”

[whatever_gong82]

Enter a national perspective from the Washington Post.


The Detroit Lions enter this season with hope and … why are you wincing?




Perspective by Jerry Brewer

Columnist

September 7, 2023 at 5:51 a.m. EDT

As the Detroit Lions enter a season with unfamiliar hype, the optimism isn’t always accompanied by anticipation — more like trepidation. Beneath all the legitimate reasons to finally trust this woebegone franchise, the past lurks so menacingly that you can’t resist fearing the Lions might upset the football gods and be forced to rehire Matt Patricia as punishment.

For the Lions, hype doesn’t inspire an exploration of the possibilities. They’ve had so many lows that any trace of a high makes you wonder whether they have the perspective and humility to handle it. The preseason began with the fearless Dan Campbell, who will never live down his kneecap-biting introduction two years ago, admitting as much.

“The thing that’s going to worry you is the hype train,” the coach said as the team prepared for his third season. “This thing is just taking off, and it’s out of control right now.”


For the past six weeks, Campbell has tried to condition the Lions to remain the hard-charging squad that won eight of its final 10 games last season to arrive at perhaps the most anticipated campaign in team history. The Lions aren’t just well-regarded. They are fun and well-regarded, so much so that the NFL chose Detroit to visit Kansas City, Mo., and challenge the defending champion Chiefs on Thursday night to open the season.



This is much different from adhering to Thanksgiving tradition and force-feeding the lowly Lions to a captive national television audience in November. This is the league anointing them one of its most compelling teams. It shouldn’t be a surprise, except for the franchise’s reputation. When we last saw the Lions, they went to Green Bay on a Sunday night and concluded the 2022 regular season by outlasting the Packers and triggering the departure of the great Aaron Rodgers, a legendary tormentor of Detroit. The Packers needed to win to make the playoffs, and the Lions were playing solely for pride. And that was enough. The lasting memory elevated the perception of the Lions, lifting them from a promising team that got hot when the stakes were low to a burgeoning force with a flashy offensive scheme and the kneecap-nibbling mind-set of a contender.

And here they are now, with a chance to make a deeper impression. Detroit fits the profile of a team on the rise. In 2021, Campbell’s first season, the Lions went 3-13-1. They started 1-6 a year ago before recovering to finish 9-8. They fashioned a top-five offense last season, with coordinator Ben Johnson designing plays that made football nerds swoon and restoring the stardom of quarterback Jared Goff, who turned back the clock to his productive Los Angeles Rams days.



Wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown is a star, and like a poor man’s version of the Chiefs, Detroit found ways to be effective in Johnson’s system without dynamic secondary receiving options. Goff spread the ball around, making the simple plays and trusting his teammates. The running game was similarly solid. It enabled Detroit to have some success despite a defense that ranked last in yards allowed.

In the NFL, it’s not difficult for most teams to advance from terrible to mediocre. The hardest step is the one Detroit must take this season. As a popular pick to win an NFC North in transition, the Lions are expected to open a window of contention. They enter this year on a six-season playoff drought. They have made the postseason just three times this century. They rarely have been decent with much consistency since Barry Sanders dazzled and Coach Wayne Fontes led them to four playoff appearances in a five-year span in the 1990s.



The previous time the Lions had something going, they fired Jim Caldwell after he posted three winning seasons in four years because former general manager Bob Quinn and Lions ownership “wanted to take this team to the next level.” Then they hired Patricia and face-planted back into the sewer.

If Campbell can lead Detroit to a division title, it would be its first since 1993. Yet for as daunting as it seems, Campbell embraces the challenge. He worries about hype, but only because he wants to use it as motivation for his team to put in the work and earn a new status.

“I don’t feel weight,” he told reporters. “I feel wind under my freakin’ wings, man.”

“Truthfully?” a reporter wondered.



“Truthfully,” the 47-year-old former tight end said, muscles bulging as he leaned against a lectern. “Absolutely, absolutely. I love this, man. This is outstanding. I love our fans. They feel it like we feel it. This is not a burden. This is not pressure. This is not weight. This gives me inspiration. That’s what it does for me.”



Campbell has grown from seeming cartoonish in his first news conference to a respected young coach. He is, by far, the most entertaining coach in a league of corporate and circumspect men who would rather blow into a whistle than say anything insightful to the media. Campbell is a normal dude and an underrated CEO. He hired a great coaching staff, led by Johnson and defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, to complement him. He inherited a team with a losing mentality and fostered belief in the locker room. Now, he must stay ahead of the panic, which won’t be easy with Detroit playing Kansas City and the Seattle Seahawks, two playoff teams, to start the season.


On paper, Detroit seems capable of handling the expectations. The Lions still seem thin on talent at the skill positions, but their quality might make up for any concerns about depth. They added Jahmyr Gibbs, the No. 12 pick of the April draft, as a multidimensional player in their backfield after moving on from running backs Jamaal Williams and D’Andre Swift. If Johnson uses him correctly, Gibbs profiles as a hybrid running back/wide receiver.


But while the fascination is with Detroit’s offense, the defense must improve if the team hopes to contend. The Lions have added significant talent at linebacker and defensive back, which could help them become better than a defense that either gives up the big play or creates big plays of its own with sacks and takeaways. Glenn has the passion and teaching instincts to build a competent unit around defensive end Aidan Hutchinson. Now, he must do so.



For the Lions, the upside is tremendous. But they know, until they prove themselves, the fear will remain. There are two sides to hype, and they inspire different questions. For most teams, you wonder: “Are they for real?” For others, you can’t get past “What could go wrong?”


Over 94 feeble seasons, Detroit has seen its fleeting moments of upside get drowned out by the fear. Maybe this time, though, the Lions can live in possibility.

[whatever_gong82]

And finally, an article from the Athletic. I'm going to be offline probably until gametime tonight everyone. I hope everyone enjoyed these articles.


How will Lions, long the underdog, handle the ‘hype train’ in 2023?






By Colton Pouncy

Sep 7, 2023



Lions, by nature, are ambush predators. They’re careful and calculated when stalking their prey. They prefer the element of surprise. They’re willing to play the long game, inching closer and closer, waiting for their moment. When in range of their desired target, they pounce.


Much like how the Detroit Lions snuck up on the NFL last year.


The Lions weren’t on anybody’s radar in 2022. When the NFL released its initial schedule for the season, the Lions were the only team without a prime-time game. They weren’t a visible threat, coming off a 3-13-1 season and then getting off to a 1-6 start. It was part of a larger plan that required patience and growth. But when they were finally ready, they pounced.



However, that was then and this is now. These Lions won’t be sneaking up on anyone. In an NFC North that’s wide open, the Lions could soon be the hunted.

How they handle the newfound hype, starting with Thursday’s opener against the Kansas City Chiefs, is on the minds of those in power.

“The thing that is going to worry you is the hype train,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said at the start of training camp. “This thing has just taken off and is out of control right now.”


This is, admittedly, new territory for the franchise. The Green Bay Packers have run this division for so long, uplifted by the play of back-to-back Hall of Fame quarterbacks. Along the way, the Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears have taken turns rising atop the division.




The Lions, meanwhile, went 9-8 last season, missed the playoffs for the sixth year in a row and haven’t won their division since 1993. Only five players on the team were alive the last time that happened.

So while Lions players and coaches hear and appreciate the love from onlookers, you’ll have to excuse them if they don’t quite understand it.

“I’m just happy for the fans and for the city of Detroit, because they deserve that. They deserve excitement. They deserve hope, so that’s really good,” Lions GM Brad Holmes said. “For us, let’s call it the ‘hype train’ … it was a little surprising to me this past offseason just because we didn’t make the playoffs. Loved how we ended the season, but I didn’t think it (the hype) would be to this magnitude.”



“The so-called ‘hype train’ is — I don’t know,” quarterback Jared Goff said. “I think it’s funny to me that, like, you go 9-8, you don’t make the playoffs and now you’re all of a sudden a favorite. Of course we’ve got good players, we’ve got good coaches, we’ve got a good team, but we haven’t done anything and we have a lot of work to do.”

The buzz surrounding the Lions has almost as much to do with the landscape around them as it does the team in place. Detroit plays in a division that is, on paper, there for the taking. This is perhaps the most wide-open the NFC North has been in some time.


The Bears are coming off a 3-14 season, losers of 10 straight on their way to the NFL’s worst record. Perhaps more than any team in the division, the Bears are set up for improvement. They added wide receiver DJ Moore, linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, offensive lineman Darnell Wright and others this offseason. Third-year QB Justin Fields has more weapons than he’s had before. But the Bears are still in rebuild mode — much like the Lions this time a year ago.


One would think the Vikings, winners of the NFC North in 2022 with a 13-4 record, would be the team to hunt. But the underlying numbers could reveal a team poised for regression. Those 13 wins were accompanied by a negative point differential. Minnesota got it done by going 11-0 in one-score games, setting an NFL record in the process. Their defense allowed the second-most yards per game (trailing only the Lions) and the third-most points. They’ve since lost key members of that unit, while hoping defensive coordinator Brian Flores is enough to turn things around. It’s possible — if not likely — the Vikings come back down to earth.

The Packers, once the gold standard of the division, are retooling. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers is out; Jordan Love, largely unproven, is in. Even with Rodgers in the fold last season, the Lions were 2-0 versus the Packers, including a win at Lambeau Field in Week 18 that eliminated Green Bay from the playoffs. Coach Matt LaFleur’s bunch has some intriguing young talent on both sides of the ball, but it could take time to get things going again.



That leaves the Lions, a team that has openly stated its desire to compete. Not three years from now. Not next year. Now.


“It’s about raising expectations, you know?” Campbell said at the owners’ meetings in March. “We’ve got to be thinking that way and everything we do has to be with that type of purpose. Our standard has always been about winning, man. You’re trying to win every game, but ultimately, I think to take the next step, man, you’re shooting for the division. Because you do that, you win the division and you get a home game, then the rest takes care of itself. That’s the next part of the process.”

What the Lions have going for them is easy to see. After “taking their medicine” over the years, as Holmes put it last week, the Lions ended the year on an 8-2 run with the NFL’s second-youngest roster. Their stated goals of building a team through the draft and developing a young core are starting to come to fruition.



There are building blocks in Penei Sewell, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Aidan Hutchinson. Levi Onwuzurike, Derrick Barnes, Alim McNeill, Kerby Joseph, Josh Paschal, James Houston and other second- and third-year players are finally starting to break through. Jameson Williams, once his six-game suspension has been served, remains an intriguing talent. The Lions view 2023 first-round pick Jahmyr Gibbs as a dynamic offensive weapon. Holmes has called Jack Campbell a future “anchor” of Detroit’s defense. Tight end Sam LaPorta is the tight end of the present and future, and defensive back Brian Branch is expected to start at nickel as a rookie.

A budding young core was supplemented by free agency. Defensive backs C.J. Gardner-Johnson, Cam Sutton, Emmanuel Moseley highlight a revamped secondary. Running back David Montgomery will share backfield duties with Gibbs, running behind one of the better offensive lines in football. Detroit possesses a versatile edge room and the linebacker depth might be the best it has been in years.

But this bunch — and the front office that assembled it — knows that hype only gets you so far if you don’t keep a hunter’s mentality.

“As a player, you want expectations,” Lions assistant GM Ray Agnew said last week. “You want people to think you’re going to be good. And the reason why we can be comfortable is because of the guys we have on this team. These guys are still hungry. They’re still hungry to prove that they’re great in this league. They’re still hungry to prove that we belong in the conversation. So, I don’t worry about that.”



“None of that matters to us,” left tackle Taylor Decker said. “Because us as professionals, we’re gonna come out here and do our job every day. That’s what we do as professionals — we come out here and we do our work. All that stuff is great, but that doesn’t change what we have to do to come out here and perform. The hype doesn’t make us play any better.”


Thursday, the Lions embark on their season, trying to live up to newfound expectations. Their first opponent is symbolic in many ways. The Chiefs are the NFL’s gold standard. The Lions hope to one day emulate their success, adding some hardware of their own. Thursday’s game will be the ultimate measuring stick, played in front of a national audience that has perhaps prematurely elevated a Detroit team with much to prove.


The Lions are eager to prove them right.

“We’ll still keep the same mindset, that we’ll always be the hunters,” Holmes said. “We’re not succumbing to targets on our back. We’ll always be hunting and aiming for the target.”


Colton Pouncy is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Detroit Lions. He previously covered Michigan State football and basketball for the company, and covered sports for The Tennessean in Nashville prior to joining The Athletic. Follow Colton on Twitter @colton_pouncy

[kayrone]

good stuff, whatever_gong - THANKS!

[ghandi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu5rPPEEX_U

[whatever_gong82]

I'll post the Athletic article(s) and any other national Lions news later today when I have time--I have some errands to run, but they'll be posted by mid-afternoon.



These Detroit Lions announced themselves — and their fans — to the world with a stunner

Jeff Seidel

Detroit Free Press


KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Hello, world.

"Let's go, Lions!"

Here come the Detroit Lions. The new Lions. This was their coming-out party. This was their moment in the spotlight. This was their moment to proclaim: All the hype is real. All the expectations are possible.

This is a new personality, and a new possibility. This is the new Lions. They are young and talented.

"Let's go, Lions!" the fans chanted in Arrowhead Stadium.

On national television, under the bright lights and on the big stage, playing against the defending Super Bowl champions, the kickoff to the entire NFL season, the Lions went into Kansas City and beat the Chiefs, 21-20.


Amazing. Wild.

Just let that sink in.

Yes, the Chiefs played without their best defensive player, Chris Jones (who is in a holdout), as well as their second-most important offensive player, Travis Kelce (who was held out because of a knee injury).


And you know what? I don’t care.

Because they just did it. They just stunned the NFL.

"Let's go, Lions!" fans chanted deep into the night, taking over Arrowhead.

Let’s try to put this win into perspective


Kansas City came into the game 9-1 in openers under coach Andy Reid, including eight straight victories. And the Chiefs had won 16 straight regular-season games against NFC opponents, dating back to 2019.

But the Lions beat them. Stood toe to toe with the champs and knocked them off. Knocked off Patrick Mahomes.


At times, it felt like Mahomes was in a one-man battle against the entire Lions team.

Whenever they needed a first down, Mahomes would dance around and buy time, waiting to throw a ball perfectly. Or just break off a run for a first down. He was the X-factor. And the Y-factor. And the Z-factor. He was everything for the Chiefs.

At halftime, he led the Chiefs in passing — 12-for-17 for 147 yards and two touchdowns — but he also led in rushing — four carries for 27 yards.



“Defensively, we are good,” Campbell said on NBC at halftime. “We gotta contain Mahomes. We are playing pretty good upfront.”

Now, here is the crazy part.

The Lions weren’t perfect. They can get better.


It was just a handful of mistakes, not a long list like in the past.

It was a fumble here, a botched snap there.



A dropped pass here, a drop there.

Not a huge number like in the past — and that’s progress.

But enough to make it hurt.

They fell behind but kept fighting.

In the third quarter, the game was slipping away. The Chiefs had a 14-7 lead. The Lions couldn’t move the ball, couldn’t convert third downs.



And rookie defensive back Brian Branch turned a deflected pass into a pick-six for the Lions.

It was Mahomes' first interception in an opener, after throwing 20 TDs. (Though it wasn’t really his fault.)

Suddenly, there was life for the Lions. And their fans.

“Let’s go, Lions!” fans chanted loud enough to hear.



There was a large group of Lions fans at Arrowhead. Maybe 10,000? The flights to K.C. were jammed and so were the streets. Not overwhelming. But impressive, to say the least.

It was just one of many things I never thought I would see.

Like this one: On Detroit’s second possession of the season, in absolutely horrible field position, the Lions had fourth-and-2 at their own 17. So what did Gambling Dan do? A fake punt of course, and the drive continued on to a touchdown.

Then, there was this: Late in the third quarter, with the game tied 14-14, Lions defensive players were waving their arms, trying to get their fans to be louder.



In freakin’ Arrowhead.

To me, that moment said everything.

And at the end of the game, a massive throng of Lions fans were screaming after this stunning win ... “Let’s go, Lions!”

Amazing. Wild.

Here come the Lions.

This season is gonna be wild.

Contact Jeff Seidel at jseidel@freepress.com or follow him @seideljeff.