Saturday’s humbling preseason loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars highlighted the lack of quality, proven depth across several position groups for the Detroit Lions. The team sat its starters and a few key reserves against the Jaguars and got crushed, 25-7.
The Lions offense, in particular, was overmatched by the defensive reserves of the Jaguars. Detroit managed to gain just 131 net yards and attained only nine first downs.
As an entity, the Lions offense was weak and ineffective. There were some individuals who had decent days, but two position groups in particular — the line and the receivers — proved somewhere between inadequate and inept on Saturday.
After the game, head coach Dan Campbell acknowledged that the team’s depth at wide receiver and offensive line was going under the game film microscope to see if moves need to be made.
“Yeah, I mean we’re working through it,” Campbell said after the game. ” We’re working through it and there again, we’ll look at this tape and find the guys we can rely on and listen, you just never know. (Lions GM) Brad (Holmes) and his crew, they’re looking at everything. And it’s not just our own squad, they’re looking at 31 other teams too, so we’re always evaluating.”
With roster cutdowns looming soon, Holmes and his pro personnel department will get the opportunity to acquire players who get waived by other teams or who are in peril of not making it. They tried this earlier in the offseason by trading for Jets WR Denzel Mims, but that didn’t pan out.
Campbell continued,
“We’re always looking and look, we’re going to take the positives out of this game and learn. But we’re also going to find the negatives and what can be done about them, or it is what it is.”
The free agent market for offensive linemen is barren and also highly competitive. A quick watch of some other preseason games and social media reactions indicates that O-line depth is a league-wide issue, not just a Detroit problem.
Wide receiver can be a different story, however. There are some proven veterans still available to try and buy a handful of games before Jameson Williams returns from his suspension. Guys like Jarvis Landry, Sammy Watkins, Rashard Higgins or T.Y. Hilton come to mind, though none have been consistent impact players lately.
The Lions did bring in a lower-rung wideout in Jason Moore after waiving Mims. That seems to be the level of receiver help they’re looking for–a deep reserve with one or two notable attributes that might be useful in a pinch. Acquiring someone else like that won’t do much to ameliorate the fans who watched the wideouts struggle to get open quickly or reliably catch the ball against the Jaguars, however.
