ALLEN PARK, Mich. — They’re all out there now. All eight of them.
And amid the growing hoopla about the Lions’ second-half turnaround this season, which figures to reach a fever pitch this Sunday when they host the NFC North-leading Minnesota Vikings at Ford Field, there’s also that storyline that shouldn’t be ignored.
The Lions’ entire rookie class was in uniform Sunday — including first-round pick Jameson Williams, who made his much-anticipated debut coming off January’s ACL injury — for a blowout win at home over Jacksonville. What’s more, those rookies once again made their presence felt, continuing a season-long trend that should give fans more confidence about the future and Detroit's draft-and-develop approach under general manager Brad Holmes and head coach Dan Campbell.
“It’s a sign of growth,” Campbell said Wednesday as the Lions — winners of four of their last five games — returned to the practice field in Allen Park. “You don’t know how it’s always going to work, but you draft these guys for a reason. That’s a credit to Brad, the scouting department, everybody. You’re hopeful and you see something in them, but you don’t know how long it’s going to take. We’ve been fortunate, all those guys have played a hand and contributed for us and had some big roles and production for us.”
Particularly on the defensive side of the ball, where some key injuries admittedly helped accelerate the Lions’ plans this fall. Six of the eight draft picks in the 2022 class were on defense, and three of those rookies — Aidan Hutchinson, Kerby Joseph and Malcolm Rodriguez — are now entrenched starters. Four if you include second-round pick Josh Paschal, who returned to action Sunday after missing the last two games with an injury. (He’d started four games prior to that after beginning the season on the PUP list following offseason surgery for a sports hernia.)
In all, the Lions’ rookies have logged the fourth-most defensive snaps (1,883) of any NFL team this season, ranking behind only Chicago, Houston and Kansas City. And the production is even more impressive than that: Detroit’s rookie class ranks first in the league in sacks (10), total pressures (58) and quarterback hurries (38), and they’re second in tackles for loss (13), interceptions (five) and fumble recoveries (two) entering Week 14.
Hutchinson is the headliner of the group, obviously, as the No. 2 overall pick and a Day 1 starter who has logged the third-most snaps (707) of any NFL defensive lineman this season. Hutchinson, voted the league’s rookie of the month in November, leads all rookies in sacks (six) and he’s the first NFL lineman since Jared Allen in 2010 to do that while also intercepting two passes and recovering a fumble.
Yet that’s almost what we expected, isn’t it? There’s a reason Hutchinson was widely viewed as the safest pick in this year’s draft coming off his dominant senior year at Michigan.
But outside of those in Allen Park, perhaps, who saw this coming from James Houston? On Sunday, the 217th pick in April’s draft became only the third player in franchise history — and the first since Ndamukong Suh a dozen years ago — to record a sack in each of his first two NFL games.
Houston, the sixth-round pick out of Jackson State, spent the first 11 weeks of the season on the Lions' practice squad, occasionally turning heads in pass-rush drills. But his NFL debut in the Lions’ Thanksgiving Day game against Buffalo was something else, as Houston recorded sacks on two of his first three snaps and also recovered a fumble on the Lions’ punt-return unit. The rookie followed that up against Jacksonville with another highlight-reel sack that briefly knocked Trevor Lawrence out of the game.
And now, according to second-year defensive tackle Alim McNeill, “he’s a completely different person. His confidence has shot through the roof. And it’s good, because when he goes out on the field now, he’s thinking nobody can stop him. And that’s the way we want him to think.”
But elsewhere, it’s sort of the opposite. Do, don’t think. That’s the way Joseph sees it — or feels it, really — after starting the last nine games at safety and beginning to establish himself as the ball-hawking playmaker the Lions’ scouts felt he could become in time in the secondary. Tracy Walker’s torn Achilles in Week 3 forced Joseph into the fire before he was fully ready, but 2 ½ months later his coaches will tell you they’re no longer worried about his pre-snap communication or post-snap recognition.
“I’ve been very impressed with Kerby’s growth,” said Brian Duker, the Lions’ secondary coach. "Probably early in there he was leaning on DeShon (Elliott) a lot. But he’s certainly very capable and does a great job of communication now, and you can see his understanding of route concepts and how teams try to attack us has certainly evolved.”
Everyone could see it when he picked off Aaron Rodgers twice in what now feels like a watershed win over Green Bay a month ago. But for Joseph, who’d forced fumbles against Dallas and Miami in the two games prior to that, it's more of a feeling than anything. He says he's starting to pick up on other teams' tendencies during games, and “I’ll get flashbacks, like, ‘Oh, I’ve seen this before,’ or think ‘This looks familiar.'"
“I don’t even know how to explain it,” he added. “I just feel like everything slows down and my fingers start tingling and my body just moves. … Early on, I was reacting. But now it’s more like anticipating.”
And that’s really what this is all about, this youth movement that Holmes and Campbell agreed upon shortly after they were hired in Detroit. It’s one thing to have the second-youngest roster in the NFL, but as Holmes has said more than once, “you’ve got to let them play.”
A year ago, it was Penei Sewell and Amon-Ra St. Brown and McNeill who seized that opportunity.
"But this rookie class is a little bit different," McNeill said. "What’s the word I’m looking for? They were just … well-prepared, I’d say. They came in ready to go, and it shows."
