Throughout the offseason, SB Nation will host surveys for NFL fans, sponsored by the folks over at FanDuel Sportsbook. For Pride of Detroit, we are tasked with fielding questions from Detroit Lions fans, and this week’s question asks fans to look ahead to the Lions’ first preseason game: an August 13th, Thursday night matchup against the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Lions have made it known that they are getting back to basics this offseason, and we’ve seen that play out through the first week of training
camp. With the Lions’ preseason matchup with the Bengals just over one week away, it’s fair to wonder if they’ll continue this trend of returning to traditional methods, specifically with playing their starters in the preseason.
For the past several years, the Lions have participated in joint practices and have deemed that exposure enough for their starters to rest during their preseason games. However, with this return-to-basics approach and no joint practices on the docket, could we see the starters play in the preseason, and if so, how much should they play?
At the start of training camp, coach Dan Campbell was asked about this topic, and he was non-committal with his response, indicating he would need more time to see where the team was at:
“I would like to, but there again, this thing moves as we get through these practices. What do we look like? Who needs work? Do they need to play together? Are there players that aren’t getting enough intensity in practice? And the only way to get them there is they have to play preseason games or we got to go live. So, we’ll work around that stuff. Right now I would like to, but we’ll see how it goes.”
While a lot has changed over the past week, it’s still unclear how Campbell’s perspective has changed. But we also want to know what fans think on this topic. Should the Lions play their starters? How much would you prefer? How much is too much? Make sure you vote in the poll in THE FEED, and let us know in the comment section of this article (or the FEED post), and we’ll check the responses.
And with that, it’s time to vote. Make sure to vote in the survey below, share your feedback, and check back with Pride of Detroit later in the week for the results.
