Lions confident run game, communication will improve

In Week 1 against the Green Bay Packers, the Detroit Lions rushed for just 2.1 yards per carry on 22 rushes. Out of the 61 games under coach Dan Campbell in which they rushed at least 20 times in a game, that was the Lions’ second-worst output by yards per carry. The only performance worse was in 2023 against the Buccaneers (22 carries, 40 yards), when the Lions were without Jahmyr Gibbs and lost David Montgomery to injury around halftime.

Needless to say, the Lions are committed to turning things around when it comes to running the football. The ground game has been essential to the offense’s success, and the struggles from the newly patched offensive line were obvious against the Packers. But coach Dan Campbell is confident they will turn things around, and quickly.

“We’re going to address it head-on,” Campbell said. “We talked about it in walkthrough. The focus, the footwork, the little things. And we’re going to make sure we establish that today, day one, in practice and that we’re on point with our footwork, head placement, all the little things. We’re ID’d correctly, we’re coming off the ball. Or if not, we’ll do it again and we’ll get it right, we’ll get it right, we’ll get it right. And we are going to be much better. We will be much better.”

The problem last week was two-fold: the Lions struggled to communicate effectively on the offensive line (more on that here), and there were also fundamental breakdowns. Left tackle Taylor Decker provided a little more insight into the communication issues.

“It was miscommunication or guys not getting the communication, and then based on that, the execution wasn’t there, because there were times where guys were running different plays,” Decker said. “There were times where guys didn’t hear calls that they need to that were changed on the fly. There’s really no excuse for that. All of the stadiums are going to be loud, we’ve got to play on the road, and we can just work on improving from there.”

Some were quick to blame Detroit’s two young guards: second-year left guard Christian Mahogany and rookie right guard Tate Ratledge. Decker wasn’t buying it, noting that everyone on the offensive line had lapses in communication errors. He pointed to the highly criticized play in which rookie guard Tate Ratledge left Packers defensive tackle Colby Wooden unblocked, forcing running back David Montgomery to beat him one-on-one to avoid a safety.

“I ran the same play that Tate was running,” Decker said. “Everybody else, the other three, ran a different play.”

Quarterback Jared Goff took culpability, too. And while the noise at Lambeau Field made it more difficult, Goff believes the issues went beyond that—and they’re already confident those issues will be fixed by Sunday.

“I’ve got to communicate better and take a little bit of stress off of those guys from a communication aspect […] Very often we’ll have two or three plays that are called in my headset, that are called in the huddle and making sure that we all know which one of those two or three that we’re going to run,” Goff said.

“It should be cured on the road. If we were on the road (this week), I’d say it’d be cured, as well. But yeah, certainly at home you can hear a little bit better, but I don’t think—that wasn’t why we had miscommunication. It’s just straight miscommunication, and it’s inexcusable.”

Obviously, part of the communication is on center Graham Glasgow, who is replacing retired All-Pro Frank Ragnow. Decker noted that some of what the Packers did in terms of timing of their motion threw off Glasgow’s calls.

“They were moving the front when the center’s head’s between his legs, a lot,” Decker said. “And that makes it harder for us to communicate because Graham’s looking between his legs, he needs to bump MIKE (linebacker) points and stuff like that, so I will give them credit. But again, that doesn’t mean that we’re not supposed to be able to get it right before the ball is snapped.”

The Lions have clearly diagnosed the problem from last week’s failures. Now it’s just a matter of whether they can get it fixed on the field in time for Sunday.

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