Throughout the entire Detroit Lions offseason, they have offered hints that some potentially significant changes could be coming to the defense in 2026. Sometimes these hints have been more blatant—like defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard outright saying that they plan to play more nickel this upcoming season. Other clues have been more subtle, like the roster decisions they’ve made and the kind of players they’ve acquired.
Our good friend “Between The Numbers” Anthony used the latest breadcrumb—Tyleik
Williams saying he’s lost 50 pounds in the last five weeks—to put together all of the clues from the offseason and offer his best guess as to what Detroit’s defense may look like and what they’re trying to accomplish with those changes.
Anthony does a good job reading between the lines of quotes from Lions coaches, uses film to display his points, and I believe he comes to a very reasonable conclusion about the Lions defense in 2026. And it all stems from the duo of Williams and Alim McNeill.
“When you have two highly instinctive, interchangeable players on the interior, it opens up different schematic opportunities and presents different problems for the offensive line,” Anthony wrote.
I don’t want to spoil the entire article. It’s worth your time. Read the entire thing over on his Substack, which is unlocked for all.
On to the rest of today’s Notes:
- Over on The Feed, I thought this was an interesting observation from commenter Contrapastan: Every NFC North team has two divisional games before the Lions play their first.
- Never thought I’d be sharing this type of podcast clip on a football website, but these sisters knew years ago that Jared Goff was going to be something special:
- More training camp preview content from the local beat: Detroit News has five players with most to gain in camp, and DetroitLions.com has five players to watch.
- One of the best videos the Lions have put out this offseason: editing player photos then asking them if they can post them to social media:
- Shawn Windsor of the Detroit Free Press has an interesting column on Dan Campbell. The Lions coach sounds a little different this year. He believes that’s intentional.
- I joined our friends at Roar of the Lions UK to talk about Kerby Joseph and preview training camp:
