Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams were on the practice field this week, talking about the NFL’s shift toward more shell coverage on defense, something the Detroit Lions have run into often this year as teams try to limit their big plays.
Defenses are playing scared, they said, to which Lions defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard responded, “I’d be scared of y’all, too.”
“The big thing now, it’s a consensus around the league if you look at it, most touchdown drives, there is an explosive pass play on the drive,” Sheppard said. “‘It’s a real thing, guys,’ [I told them.] And they go, ‘But we got Jahmyr Gibbs.’ This is just a funny story I’m giving y’all because it’s relative to what you’re asking. And I said, ‘Go ahead, Gibbs, you can run for
150, but we’re not going to let Jameson Williams have a 75-yard touchdown on one play.’ So it’s kind of a [philosophical] thing about what’s important to you.”
The Lions have followed the NFL trend in Sheppard’s second season as coordinator, playing a significantly higher percentage of zone defense than they did in his first year calling plays last year.
According to TruMedia, the Lions have played zone coverage on 76.9% of their defensive snaps through three weeks, the 14th-highest rate in the league, and rank third in Cover 3 percentage at 47.7%.
Last year, the Lions played zone coverage 63.1% of the time, fourth lowest in the league, and played Cover 3 just 30.8% of the time.
Long a proponent of playing physical man-to-man coverage, Sheppard said his philosophical shift is part of an overall desire to limit big plays after his offseason self-study revealed the Lions gave up 105 explosive gains – passes of 17-plus yards and runs of 12-plus yards – in 2025.
“What’s important to us coming out of self-scout is trying to dim down some of these explosive plays, primarily in the pass game,” Sheppard said. “You feel like having more of a shell feel to our defense will kind of talk the quarterbacks into more underneath passing games where we can rally and hit versus the ball just chunking 40 yards down the field.”
While the change hasn’t had its desired effect yet – the Lions have allowed 30 explosive plays in the season’s first three weeks – there’s no reason to think the Lions will shift their defensive approach again.
They lead the NFL in pressure rate without blitzing (46.5%), according to SumerSports, and they’ve forced four takeaways in three games (and had an interception called back on penalty and two more forced fumbles they didn’t recover), which Sheppard said was another part of his desire to play more zone.
“It’s hard for a cover player, as you guys very well may know – some of the elite ones may do it, but it’s hard to have kind of interceptions, plays on the football in man coverage with your back turned, kind of in phase, running, chasing all the time versus seeing it, being able to break and drive on throws and things like that,” Sheppard said. “So absolutely it has a lot to do with trying to bring the ball back as a defense.”
Man or zone, the Lions defense will be challenged again this week by a Carolina Panthers offense that’s as good as any in the NFL at creating explosive gains.
The Panthers lead the NFL in passing, are tied for the league lead with 13 pass plays of 20-plus yards and are tied for fifth in scoring at 29.7 points per game.
The Lions allowed seven explosive plays last week against the New York Jets, which was a significant decline from the 23 they allowed the first two weeks but still not good enough for Sheppard.
“We feel like we need to cut that in half again going into this week,” Sheppard said. “Certain things that we emphasized during the week showed up on game day, so those are the positive, those are the things to take away from it. But I stood in front of the room and I told them, ‘There's no more victories in this thing.’ And what I mean by that, we won the game, but on our side of the ball, let's not start to measure this off of what we did last week and what we did. No, we have a certain standard for the way we want to play here, a certain output that we want to put out there defensively each week, so let's try to get closer to that bar this week versus chasing what we did in the first two weeks.”
Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: In the zone? Lions defense looks different this year, and for good reason
