Tag: tackle

Lions add beef to offensive line

Riley Reiff is moving from Right Tackle to left tackle in order to fill the spot vacated by the now retired Jeff  Backus.  Reiff has added 10 pounds to his normally 305 pound frame and is tipping the scales at 315 pounds on his six foot six frame.

“Riley’s doing great,” offensive coordinator Scott Linehan said during minicamp, according to the Lions’ site. “When we drafted him that was a role we envisioned for him. He’s done a great job there, and he’s making progress every day.  I hope he keeps making those steps every day of practice come training camp. We feel really, really confident in his ability to do a great job for us.”

The Lions open the pre-season at home against the New York Jets August 9th. Be sure to get your tickets soon!

Lions face a crisis point


Chris McCosky/ The Detroit News

Allen Park— What’s done is done. If you are the Lions, nothing good can come from looking back and trying to rationalize the penalties, the turnovers or the absurd meltdown by defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh on Thursday.

All of it is indefensible.

“They can say what they want about us,” coach Jim Schwartz said after the 27-15 loss to the Packers.

Oh, they have. The Lions, by their own actions, have turned perception into reality. And until they provide evidence to the contrary, they are what the rest of the country has been saying they are — a reckless, undisciplined football team.

There is ample talent on both sides of the ball, but until they can collectively get their emotions properly harnessed, until they prove they can play big in the big moments, they can’t be considered legitimate playoff contenders.

At this point, even though they are still in the chase at 7-4, how can you consider them anything but a long shot to get a wildcard spot?

The losses are to arguably the four best teams they have played — the 49ers, Falcons, Bears and Packers. That cannot be dismissed. They are 2-4 since starting 5-0. They have lost three of their last four at home. They are melting down as the stakes get higher.

The season and their reputation are certainly salvageable, but this is a crisis point for the Lions. They will have a chance at redemption, a chance to re-stake their claim on a wild-card spot, a week from Sunday in New Orleans.

They will have the national stage again — NBC “Sunday Night Football.” They have an opportunity to show they are a quality team, not a collection of talented thugs.

But you have to wonder if too much damage already has been done — to their reputation and to their roster.

The Lions may have to play against the Saints’ high-powered offense without two key defensive starters: Suh and safety Louis Delmas.

Expect Suh to be suspended for his untimely unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and ejection in the third quarter Thursday.

Delmas injured his knee in the first quarter and said via Twitter he could miss the next couple of games.

In addition, the Lions on Friday put starting running back Jahvid Best (concussion) on injured reserve; he’s done for the season. Kevin Smith, who took over the starting spot on Thursday, is questionable with a high ankle sprain.

Cornerback Chris Houston left the game with a knee injury.

Schwartz has a lot of fires to put out before he can even begin working on the team’s emotional balance. But it has to start with Suh. Even if the league doesn’t suspend him — the consensus is they will — Schwartz needs to.

Schwartz has had Suh’s back to a fault, up until now. If he doesn’t take a drastic step to get Suh’s temper under control, he runs the risk of doing long-term damage to one of the franchise’s biggest assets.

He punished right tackle Gosder Cherilus for a lesser offense in the season opener, not playing him in Week 2 after he took a late personal foul penalty. He would be hard-pressed explaining to his team the double-standard if he didn’t sit Suh for at least a game — playoff chase or not.

“I know Suh. I’ve talked to him several times,” former running back Marshall Faulk told NFL.com. “The person and the player that we see at times, there’s a disconnect. Something’s going on and he needs to get to the very bottom of it to find out what it is that, when someone is getting the best of him, angry Suh comes out.”

Somebody needs to show Suh how to restrain angry Suh. The league will take first crack at it.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Friday that Suh’s stomping on the arm of Packers offensive guard Evan Dietrich-Smith was likely to be reviewed for possible disciplinary action.

“We have said nothing about a timetable but we have said this — plays from Week 12 to be reviewed for potential discipline will be done so under our normal procedures after the completion of all games,” Aiello wrote in an email.

Tuesday is the day, typically, that the reviews are done.

Suh has been fined three times already in his young career, so he would be considered a repeat offender. Former Tennessee Titan Albert Haynesworth was suspended for five games back in 2006.

Earlier this season, Minnesota’s Brian Robison was fined and not suspended for kicking Packers offensive lineman T.J. Lang in the groin.

Expect Suh to get a one- or two-game suspension from the league, which Suh and the Lions should graciously accept and then start making reparation.

Let the rest of football nation take their shots and make their judgments. There’s no defense to the accusations right now. It’s circle-the-wagons time. The Lions have five weeks to be the team we all thought they were through the first five weeks — the team with the dynamic offense led by a smart, strong-armed quarterback and a violently aggressive, though law-abiding, defense.

They are 7-4 with games at New Orleans, at Oakland and at Green Bay, and home games against San Diego and Minnesota.

If they can regain their balance, physically and mentally, and manage two or three more wins without any more incidents, they will have the last laugh on their critics.

Even if they don’t make the playoffs, they will still be considered a team on the rise. But if this goes completely off the rails these last five weeks, then, say it with me — it’s the same old dysfunctional Lions.

chris.mccosky@detnews.com

(313) 222-1489

Matthew Stafford, Lions outmuscle Bucs to win opener


Lions 27, Buccaneers 20

Chris McCosky/ The Detroit News

Tampa, Fla. — It’s probably a good sign for the Lions they started the season on the road, against a team with playoff aspirations and were almost apologizing for not beating them worse than they did.

“We were very lucky to win this game,” coach Jim Schwartz said, after the Lions held on to beat the Buccaneers 27-20 at Raymond James Stadium on Sunday.

Lucky?

The Lions scored on five of their first seven possessions and finished with 431 total yards. Quarterback Matthew Stafford had the second-most productive performance of his career, completing 24 of 33 passes for 305 yards and three touchdowns.

His 36-yard touchdown pass to Calvin Johnson on fourth-and-2 in the second quarter was laser precise. He threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to tight end Tony Scheffler and the eventual winner, a 1-yarder to Johnson.

Johnson had six catches for 88 yards, secured an onside kick and was on the field in the prevent defense on the last play of the game.

Lucky?

The defense didn’t allow the Bucs a first down in the first and third quarters. Until the middle of the fourth quarter, after the Lions had built a 27-13, the Bucs had amassed just 209 yards and the only touchdown was a 28-yard interception return off a tipped pass by Aqib Talib.

What did luck have to do with any of that?

“Really, we should have blown them out,” said cornerback Chris Houston, who had seven tackles and limited Bucs big-play receiver Mike Williams to four catches. “There were a couple of plays on offense, the interception return, and a couple of plays we missed on defense — just some mistakes we made that kept them in the game. We need to get back to the film and get those corrected.”

The Lions had the 14-point lead late in the third quarter and seemed content on running out the clock.

“We were in command of the game, so at that point we wanted to control the clock,” said receiver Nate Burleson, who caught five passes for 60 yards and ran a reverse for 20. “There were seven minutes left and I was saying, ‘Let’s get it to four.’ We tried to get it over with, but it was some good execution by them to get in position to tie the game.”

With 1:35 left, Bucs quarterback Josh Freeman hit Williams in the back of the end zone on fourth-and-3 from the 5. Williams caught the ball over cornerback Aaron Berry.

The Bucs went for the onside kick. Schwartz inserted Johnson on the hands team, and Johnson leaped and grabbed the high bounding kick.

The Lions couldn’t move the ball on three running plays, but they forced the Bucs to use their final two timeouts. Had things gone the way they were supposed to, the Bucs would have gotten the ball back deep in their own zone with 30 seconds left.

Instead, the clock was stopped with 1:24 left when Lions right tackle Gosder Cherilus got entangled with a defensive player and was slapped with an unnecessary roughness penalty.

“I don’t consider that about discipline, I consider that stupid,” Schwartz said. “The opponent has no timeouts left and we get a penalty? That’s a situation we talk about and we work on. That’s stupid football, and it almost put us in a situation — the defense should have been in where there were 30 seconds left and they would have to defend two plays.”

As it was, the Bucs had the ball on the 20 with 1:07 left. Freeman moved them to the Lions 42 before the clock expired on a wild play where the Bucs kept fumbling the ball to keep from getting tackled.

Lions safety Louis Delmas banged his hip on the play but said later he wasn’t injured.

“I am not going to discount the value of a win, particularly a win on the road,” Schwartz said. “But we definitely have to play a lot better than we played today. We made too many mistakes that kept Tampa in the game.

“I guess it’s the sign of a good football team that we made those mistakes and still came out with the win. But there are things that happened in this game that are inexcusable and they will not continue.”

At one point in the first quarter, the Lions had a 147-1 edge in total yards and were trailing 10-6. The Bucs first field goal — a 38-yarder by Connor Barth — was set up by a 78-yard kickoff return by Sammie Stroughter.

“We have a darn good kickoff team,” Schwartz said. “But we missed a tackle and the guy hit a gap and all of a sudden they are kicking a field goal.”

Kicker Jason Hanson, who contributed field goals of 23 and 28 yards, booted all of his other kicks to the back of the end zone.

On the Lions’ next possession, Stafford’s pass clanged off the hands of tight end Will Heller right into the waiting arms of Talib.

“You don’t want those mistakes to keep coming back,” Stafford said. “That’s the main thing. You’ve got to fix them, get them ironed out and not make them next week. We are going to need to get started a little earlier on offense.”

The game was played in oppressive 90-degree heat, and players on both sides were cramping up. Stafford didn’t miss a snap, but he limped off a couple of times. Freeman missed two series in the third quarter with cramps. Burleson also missed some time.

“That was the worst I’ve seen,” Burleson said. “I was hydrated, too, and I still cramped.”

But it was an all’s-well-that-ends-well kind of day for the Lions.

“We almost let this get away at the end,” said Johnson. “Had this been another year, who knows? We should have put it away. I didn’t feel like we were going to lose, but it shouldn’t have been as close as we made it to be.”

chrismccosky@detnews.com