A handful of NFL teams reached out to C.J. Moore as he nursed his way back from a training camp ankle injury. In mid-October, Moore even briefly signed with the Houston Texans practice squad.
But as Moore sorted through his options waiting for his injury settlement to clear with the Detroit Lions, he told his agent multiple times Detroit was where he wanted to be.
“Everybody was like, ‘Ah, man, you got opportunities to go somewhere else,’ and I did,” Moore said Sunday after the Lions defeated the Minnesota Vikings, 34-23, at Ford Field. “I said, no. I literally was telling my agent I want to come back to Detroit because I know the type of confidence we have in this locker room and I was like, I’ve been here when we’ve lost, I said I’m going to be here when we win.”
With five wins in their past six games, the Lions (6-7) are one of the hottest teams in the NFL heading into their showdown this week with the New York Jets.
They’ve surged into wild-card contention with four games left in the regular season, and in the process have given Moore and many of the team’s longest-tenured veterans a chance to experience something that almost did not seem possible during their time in Detroit – a playoff chase.
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Moore, one of the Lions’ top special teams players since he entered the league as an undrafted free agent in 2019, never won more than five games in his first three seasons with the Lions.
Frank Ragnow, one of two holdovers from the Lions’ 2018 draft class (along with safety Tracy Walker, who’s out for the season with a torn Achilles tendon), has never finished anywhere but last place in the NFC North.
Taylor Decker, a 2016 first-round pick and the Lions’ longest-tenured player, has one playoff appearance on his resume, when he was a rookie.
“All that hard work for all these years, I’ve never had six wins in one season and I’ve been here four years, so this is special,” Moore said. “Literally, so special.”
Moore felt the Lions turning a corner last season, when they won three of their final six games after an 0-10-1 start, and credited Lions coach Dan Campbell and his staff for instilling a belief in the locker room that they were on the right path even during hard times.
“The faith and the belief they have in us and just what we’re building here, Coach Dan and (general manager) Brad (Holmes), they’re building something so special and it’s something that I want to be a part of,” Moore said. “That’s really why I came back.”
The Lions have one of the league’s most explosive offenses. Jared Goff is playing the best football of his career and they’re the only NFL team to score 30 or more points in seven games this season.
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Their defense has found its bearings after a rough start. The four rookies who start – Aidan Hutchinson, Josh Paschal, Kerby Joseph and Malcolm Rodriguez – have improved steadily since they entered the lineup, and the Lions are allowing just 20.3 points over their past six games.
They have a special teams unit (and risk-willing coach) who try to steal a possession (and usually succeed) what seems like every game.
But Campbell said Monday the Lions’ veteran core − and specifically several players who have experienced heartache with the organization − is as big a reason as any why they’re winning now.
“Probably the biggest part of that are guys like Decker and Ragnow, (Jarrad Davis) being back, (Jason) Cabinda,” Campbell said. “Some of these guys that have been here, C.J. Moore, Romeo (Okwara), that have kind of been through a number of things, but, man, they’ve been steady rocks. Frank plays with stuff every week, man, and guts it out. Sometimes you lose sight of them because you don’t ever want to take them for granted, but they play at such a high level week in and week out but they’re a huge part of our success.”
Decker and Ragnow are key pieces of the Lions’ best unit, a mostly homegrown offensive line that has fueled their scoring success. Jonah Jackson, a third-round pick in 2020, and right tackle Penei Sewell, a first-rounder last season, also have been mainstays on the front.
Moore and Cabinda, who originally joined the Lions as a practice squad player in 2019, are two of the team’s best special teams players; Moore had the 42-yard run on a fake punt last week against the Vikings that turned momentum the Lions’ way early in the second half.
Davis, a 2017 first-round pick, re-signed with the Lions this offseason after one year with the Jets, and came back to the team’s practice squad after he was released at the end of training camp. And Okwara, a 2018 waiver claim, played 25 snaps in his first game of the season last week in his return from a torn Achilles tendon.
The Lions have other veterans in key leadership positions, some more important to their on-field success. Goff is in his seventh NFL season after spending five years with the Los Angeles Rams, and leading rusher Jamaal Williams and leading tackler Alex Anzalone are both in Year 6 (and Year 2 with the Lions).
But Campbell said the holdovers from Lions regimes past have been essential to his team’s success this fall, and he feels especially indebted to them.
“I know they’re all kind of similar,” Campbell said. “But Decker’s one of the guys I think about because he really is, he’s the player who’s been around him the longest and he saw some early success and then it, there was some rough times and now to be able to just kind of have some hope back. That’s probably the best way to say it. I know he’s having fun, but he’s very much invested in this team, man. He’s all in. But that’s one of the guys you want to win for. I mean, you want to help him get there. But we appreciate it, man. He’s putting in the work, he’s all in and he’s a true pro.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.