It’s a beautiful Sunday morning here in West Michigan. As I drink the first pot of today’s coffee and get ready to watch the Wimbledon men’s final, I had a few random thoughts about the Detroit Lions.
The team reports for training camp this week, and practices will be underway at this time next week. Here’s what is on my Lions mind today.
On the Lions current cap room
The Lions currently rank near the top of the league in available 2023 salary cap funds. Detroit currently has a little over $22.9 million in cap room, the fifth-most in the league.
GM Brad Holmes and COO Mike Disner have carefully created all this cap room with some reworked contracts and void years. While there is some fan expectation that the team will use the relative bounty of cap space to add more pieces to the team, I really doubt that happens.
Instead, the money will go to keeping the current core roster intact. The most pressing usage would be extending Pro Bowl left guard Jonah Jackson, a pending free agent after the 2023 season. Wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown will be among many other Lions with the potential to earn new contracts after the 2023 campaign, and that’s where I strongly expect the remainder of the cap room to go. The Lions are poised to roll over the surplus to bolster the cap figure when it’s needed to pay players like St. Brown, Penei Sewell and Jared Goff–if the Lions opt to extend their Pro Bowl quarterback following 2023.
The mental challenge of going from hunter to hunted
I’m a pretty big follower of the tennis world. What happened in the Wimbledon’s women’s final on Saturday spotlighted one of the intangible challenges facing the Lions in 2023.
Ons Jabeur was the heavy favorite to win the title. Jabeur is a very popular player, a feel-good story of coming from Tunisia and breaking barriers as an African. But she’s never won a major. When given a golden opportunity to capture the glory, Jabeur wilted badly.
Facing unseeded Marketa Vondrousova, Jabeur played tight. She made errors she hadn’t made throughout the rest of the fortnight in London. Astute commentators noted how uncomfortable and tense she looked as she entered centre court, and she never got over the heightened expectations.
The Lions are the betting favorites to win the NFC North, something they’ve never done before. They’re emerging as one of the national preseason darlings, too. The mindset change required to handle the shift from being predator to prey is hard to pinpoint, but it’s very real. How well Dan Campbell can help his Lions team navigate the sea change will help determine if Detroit is more Novak Djokovic or Ons Jabeur.
Projecting Brian Branch's rookie year
I was a very happy camper when the Lions drafted Alabama DB Brian Branch in the second round of the 2023 NFL draft. He was a player I would happily have selected at No. 18.
Now that the Lions have Branch, the question turns to how they will initially use the versatile defender. And it’s a good dilemma to have.
Branch won’t usurp C.J. Gardner-Johnson as the primary slot defender. That’s the role where Branch was at his best at Alabama, but Gardner-Johnson might be the NFL’s top player in that spot.
He also doesn’t figure to win a starting job over playmaking Kerby Joseph or steady Tracy Walker at the safety spots. Branch has a higher ceiling than either player, but Joseph’s impressive rookie season will make him very difficult to keep off the field. Walker is the team’s defensive leader and was their best all-around player in 2020-2021 before his Achilles injury.
Branch did play some outside CB for the Crimson Tide early on. Yet the Lions have not given any indication of having Branch make that move, not even with outside CBs Emmanuel Moseley and Jerry Jacobs sitting out minicamp with injuries.
It looks like Branch might be a super-sub as a rookie, the first guy off the bench to replace any of the safety spots. He should be a staple of the dime package and special teams, too. Don’t misconstrue the lack of an immediate starting role for Branch as a disappointment. The team certainly won’t see it that way.
On how the Lions weather the Jameson Williams suspension
One of the hot topics of Lion conversation is how the offense will manage the six-game suspension of starting wide receiver Jameson Williams.
I see and hear a lot of theories. One of the most popular is that the offense will feature more of rookies Sam LaPorta and Jahmyr Gibbs in the passing game. I understand that sentiment and I do think they’re both going to get a lot of targets, but I don’t see OC Ben Johnson fundamentally altering the offense for just six games.
Williams fills a very specific role with his deep speed. The Lions will use that on the outside and from the slot to help dictate coverages and exploit matchups. Johnson has already shown in minicamp that Williams’ dimension of deep speed helps set up LaPorta at TE, Gibbs out of the backfield, Amon-Ra St. Brown in the slot and not vice-versa.
It’s a lot more prudent to ride out the storm by using speedy (but tiny) Kalif Raymond in that Williams role instead of creating a different base, fundamental passing scheme. It might not work as well, and it certainly won’t make fantasy football analysts happy, but my current expectation is that the Lions won’t want to make a big midseason alteration to accommodate Williams’ return.
Underrated camp battle
We’ll be cranking out an abundance of camp previews in the coming days, but there is one pending positional battle that gets the spotlight here:
Tight ends
Rookie Sam LaPorta is clearly safe. I expect him to play the most snaps this year, though he might not technically “start” — at least in the early going. Second-year James Mitchell saw considerable action in OTAs and minicamp and looked good. His ability to play inline and block in the run game should keep him on the field a fair amount, too.
Which leaves the other holdovers, Brock Wright and Shane Zylstra. Wright has done a great job becoming the best Brock Wright he can be. He played more than capably as the top TE following the T.J. Hockenson trade last year. But he’s more of a jack-of-all-trades type.
Zylstra is a receiving specialist, and he showed late last season he can be a capable one of those. Zylstra saw a lot of action in the slot and red zone in minicamp. A lot.
The decision might not come down to skill as much as the Lions’ preference to have a more versatile option in Wright or a more specialized, higher-end receiving option in Zylstra. Or they could keep them both and cut back at another position, be it a fifth LB or phasing out Jason Cabinda’s FB role. I don’t expect that Cabinda contingency to happen, but you’d better believe the Lions will consider it.
