Allen Park — Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell would prefer his words weren’t as prophetic as they ended up being, but he clearly had a pretty good idea how the Philadelphia Eagles would attack his team’s defense.
In the teams’ matchup last season, the Eagles ran wild, rushing for 236 yards and four touchdowns. So absent proof the Lions had figured out the recipe for slowing that ground game, Campbell anticipated more of the same in this year’s season opener.
“If I’m them, I’m doing the same thing,” Campbell said last week. “We’re going to come back and attack you the same way and see if you’ve fixed any of your problems. Now, they’ll have a couple of tweaks here and there, but I mean, I would fully expect them to come in and see if we’ve fixed our problems.”
And that’s exactly what the Eagles did, with the same degree of success, in Sunday’s 38-35 victory. This time, they rushed for 216 yards and another four touchdowns.
After reviewing the film from the repeat performance, Campbell acknowledged the classic pitfalls of inconsistent gap responsibility, poor tackling and missed assignments, all of which are quickly magnified when attempting to defend a dual-threat quarterback eager to take advantage of all the above.
“First of all, we can’t stop our feet on the guy,” Campbell said. “And it doesn’t matter that he’s the quarterback; you have to finish on the quarterback. If he’s running with the football, you can’t worry about, ‘Is he going down? Is he not? How is he going to run this?’ Treat him like a running back.”
Campbell also noted he has to do a better job hammering home the individual responsibilities for each play, since many breakdowns occur when one defender tries to do too much, ultimately pulling them out of position.
The coach pointed to last year’s game against Baltimore as proof of concept, when the Lions held the Baltimore Ravens, with an equally lethal dual-threat QB, to 116 rushing yards.
“Our guys are watching it right now and they’re seeing everything that we talked about and preached, and man, just do your job,” Campbell said. “Literally, just the trust and just hone in on your assignment. …I have to do a better job of getting them prepared and better looks for that. I’ve got to do a better job of fabricating a quarterback that can give them that. We did a couple of things, but it wasn’t enough, in my opinion. That falls on me.”
Players understand the principle of doing no more than their job, but when things are moving in real time, and seemingly nothing is going right on defense, it can be easy to lose focus on discipline, according to Detroit defensive end Austin Bryant.
“It can be hard sometimes, especially in a game like that, where we need somebody to make a play; we need some type of spark,” Bryant said. “Guys maybe will reach sometimes to be that spark or make that play, but at the end of the day, you don’t want to do anything you haven’t practiced before.”
Fortunately for the Lions, it should be several weeks before they face another quarterback with anything close to the mobility of Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts.
And that’s welcome news for Bryant and the Lions’ revamped defensive front, which failed to corral Hurts even once in the opener.
“We definitely like a statue back there, someone who is going to sit still and let us pin our ears back and rush, but that wasn’t the case this week,” Bryant said. “(When Hurts) feels pressure, he’s out of there. So it’s tough. It’s tough playing against a kid like that. Got a lot of respect for him, and he got the better hand on Sunday.”
jdrogers@detroitnes.com
Twitter: @Justin_Rogers