The Detroit Lions’ new cornerback rotation was not the head coach’s idea or even the defensive coordinator’s. On Thursday, Kelvin Sheppard said it came from Deshea Townsend, the team’s secondary coach and pass game coordinator. “When you’re giving up the rate of pass yards that we were giving up, you got to do something,” Sheppard said. “Me and him have had some long, hard conversations, and they’ve been very beneficial. And it actually started with being his idea.”
The 4-2 Lions are coming off a 20-17 win over the Green Bay Packers, and they host the 6-0 Minnesota Vikings on Sunday. Sheppard, offensive coordinator Drew Petzing and special teams coordinator Dave Fipp each took questions.
“Those are excuses, and those are for losers”
Sheppard said the rotation grew out of what the staff saw from backups in practice, when they were playing as the scout team against Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams. “That’s the unique thing about the culture here. You’re seen,” he said. He said Townsend, who played 12 years in the league, laid out how the corners could rotate and still stay in the flow of the game. “I trusted them the same way I trust all my staff,” Sheppard said. “That’s what leadership is, I believe. Knowing the guys on your staff, their strong suits, and giving them a platform.” He pointed to the sideline as proof that it worked: “The guys that did get roles diminished, look at how they were celebrating for the guy that was in for them.”
He said he came into the building on Monday “with my hair on fire,” but not because he was angry. The defense allowed six explosive plays against Green Bay, and he said half of them came from Detroit’s own mistakes. A reporter noted that three of them came on fourth down. “Those were three of the busts, if I’m being honest with you,” Sheppard said. “The player took accountability towards it, and we’re moving onward and upward.”
When he was asked whether the busts reflected all the moving parts in the secondary, he shut that idea down. “We don’t go down that road. Those are excuses and those are for losers,” he said. “If you get an opportunity, I don’t care if you never got a rep, if you never got it in practice, and we call you off the sideline because you’re the last man that we have, you’re expected to go in there and play at the same level as the guy that’s taking every rep.”
He shared the defense’s three keys from last week: “Don’t let number nine and zero get behind us,” meaning receivers Christian Watson and Matthew Golden, dominate the run game, and force takeaways. Neither receiver reached 60 yards or scored, and Green Bay ran for 60 yards on 19 carries. He said the defense hit all three keys for the second week in a row, but he would not reveal this week’s keys. “I give them to you next week,” he said.
Brian Branch’s first game back
Brian Branch played for the first time since tearing his Achilles tendon last season and intercepted Love on a deep ball. Sheppard said his favorite moment came from safety Chuck Clark on that play. “When he sees BB open his hip, he puts both hands in there,” Sheppard said, raising his arms. “I’ve never seen nothing like that. Like, the play’s over. And just what that does for teammates, the swagger it brings, knowing you have an enforcer who can go cover the number one receiver.”
He also said rookie defensive lineman Derrick Moore is progressing after starting the year with only a handful of snaps a game, and gave credit to defensive line coach Kacy Rodgers. Of safety Kerby Joseph, whose practice window opened this week, he said: “A couple months ago, everybody thought it was over.” He said the team will lean on its medical and performance staff for the timeline. “We’ll do the right thing by Kerby.”
Petzing: no number for Gibbs
A reporter told Petzing that Gibbs is leading the league in touches and is on pace for the most touches by any player since 1984. Asked if he has a limit, Petzing said: “No, not particularly. I think a big part of it is communicating with him and making sure that he feels like he can do it, and he feels good, and if he doesn’t, we’re not going to continue to do it.” Has Gibbs ever complained? “No, he probably wants more,” Petzing said. He added that he wants a bigger role for other backs, “but Jahmyr is a unique player and he changes the game in a way a lot of other guys can’t. So it’s a fine line.”
On Williams, who caught two touchdown passes against Green Bay, Petzing said the receiver’s confidence is not new. “For me, he’s been the same guy since day one,” he said. “I don’t think he gets rattled very easily.” He said center Cade Mays, who started his first game for Detroit after missing five games with a wrist injury, had “some rust to knock off” but made “a really good start.”
Facing Brian Flores
Petzing called the Vikings scheme rare. “He runs a system that I don’t think a lot of people in the NFL run, so it’s not something you see four or five times a season,” he said. “Make things look the same, do different things, bring pressure, drop out, attack protection. He does it all.” He said the hardest part comes when the Vikings show blitz and do not send it: “Those pre-snap looks are identical,” and an offense that kept extra blockers in “all of a sudden you have two or three guys on the route and they have eight guys in coverage.” He also joked that Vikings safety Harrison Smith “started playing football in like the ’50s.”
Sheppard warned his defense not to read too much into Minnesota’s offensive numbers. “They still have what I think is a top two receiver in the league, top three receiver. The other two are in our building, in my opinion,” he said of Justin Jefferson. He listed Jordan Addison, T.J. Hockenson and Aaron Jones, then quarterback Kyler Murray: “If you let him out of that pocket, he can hurt you.”
Fipp on the block that set up the winner
With the game tied at 17 late in the fourth quarter, D.J. Wonnum got a hand on Trey Smack’s 35-yard field goal attempt and it went wide, and Jake Bates later won the game with a 22-yard field goal on the final play. Fipp said a player had told him earlier in the game how much the rushers liked one of the field goal block calls. “They obviously like that one, so let’s go back to it,” he said. “We went back to it and that’s the one that made the difference.” He said the rush got about three yards into the backfield, “which is really kind of the target,” and that Green Bay’s operation “wasn’t the fastest in the league,” which gave his players a little more time.
Fipp also explained the illegal double-team penalty on new returner DeAndre Carter on a fourth-quarter kickoff. The players lined up in the setup zone can double-team, he said, but the deep returners cannot, and Carter ended up blocking a defender just as a teammate came back to finish the same man off. “Penalties hurt us on kickoff return in that game,” Fipp said. “It’s one thing we’ve been very good with, but we were terrible.” He praised Carter’s first game: “You could see his energy and enthusiasm for the game, his love of the game, and I think that stuff’s contagious.”
The Vikings play at the Lions on Sunday, November 1, at 1 p.m. ET, which is 8 p.m. in Cairo.
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