With the Detroit Lions coming off their bye week, the team’s coordinators are entering the final stretch of the season with a new perspective on the team. Both John Morton and Kelvin Sheppard admitted
they spent much of the bye self-scouting the team—evaluating both their own tendencies and areas of struggle.
On Thursday, both provided some insight into their findings and how they plan to adjust moving forward.
Offensive coordinator John Morton
“I failed” Jameson Williams
This offseason, Morton proclaimed that Jameson Williams was in for another breakout season and professed his love for the deep ball. Through seven games, neither of those things has materialized. Williams sits at just 17 catches for 289 yards—well below his pace from last year—and the Lions are averaging just 15.7 yards per game on passes of 20+ air yards (29th in the NFL).
While Morton lamented the ways defenses are covering the team—often taking the deep shots away with cover-two shells—he also took responsibility for not getting Williams the ball enough. He even said he went directly to the fourth-year receiver to apologize.
“I’m going to do a better job with that. But there has been opportunities where it just didn’t happen. It’s not like we aren’t going to try to target him. So, that was the biggest thing. So, I looked at everything, and I failed him. That’s what I told him,” Morton said.
So what does he plan on doing? Well, with teams often drawing extra attention to Amon-Ra St. Brown, but still staying in those cover-two shells, he’s going to have to dig deep into his bag.
“That’s my job during the bye week, because I stayed here. And that was my job, and third down, to really study that. And just create how to get him open,” Morton said. “Because there’s a lot of, especially on third down, they’re doubling (St. Brown) Saint, they’re doubling him, there’s a lot of stuff that’s going on. So, I have to be creative. I have to go in the archives to try to get these guys open better.”
Third-down defense
Like coach Dan Campbell said earlier in the week, Morton attributed the team’s third-down struggles (37.6%, 22nd) to a myriad of issues: protection, poor play call, and poor execution. Morton said he went back to last year’s tape and watched every single third down. He found that the concepts he’s running are the same, but he needs to polish them up.
“In my mind, that’s kind of the stuff I’ve been doing. I want to run the same type of concepts, and I’ve got to dress it up with formations here and there and find ways to get guys off,” Morton said.
Defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard
In addition to these quotes, Sheppard addressed speculation about his interest in the LSU job. That story is here.
Bye week changes
With time to self-scout during the bye week, Sheppard admitted he found some concerning things. For one, he said there were some tendencies—none of which he was going to disclose—that they leaned a little too much on through seven games.
“We found some things there where we lean heavier in some areas where, going into the year, we kind of didn’t want to, and things like that. So, we’ve made changes to that already,” Sheppard said.
He also pointed to two situations in which they’ve performed poorly: red zone and third-and-long defense.
In the red zone, the Lions are allowing a touchdown on 63.6% of red zone drives, ranking them 23rd in the league.
“When you allow teams down there, it’s huge that you limit points in those situations,” Sheppard said. “Call them kind of the four-point plays as far as when teams are in that seven-point striking distance and you only give up a field goal. So, we’ve definitely got to uptick there.”
As for third-and-longs—a problem that also persists on offense—the defense has allowed conversions on 21.1% of third-and-longs (11 or more yards). That ranks 25th in the league.
To help fix some of the issues on those downs, Sheppard is leaning on defensive backs coach Deshea Townsend.
“He looked at that and kind of pointed to a couple of things that we could do differently there as well to kind of make sure that we’re improving and kind of thriving when we get teams in that third-and-long situation,” Sheppard said.
Hutch snap count
Aidan Hutchinson has currently played in 92.2% of the Lions’ defensive snaps, far higher than any other defensive lineman in football. Maxx Crosby is second at 87.7%, George Karlafitis (81.4%), and Chris Jones (80.7%) are the only other players who cross the 80% threshold.
While some coaches may be concerned with the high rate of play, Sheppard says Hutchinson’s motor is rare.
“He’s a tremendous athlete, superior athlete. And not by God-gifted talent, I’m talking about by hard work and dedication. And he’s conditioned his mind, his body to do that,” Sheppard said.
He also admitted it’s tough to pull him off the field, even if they wanted.
“I want you to come down there and try to tell Hutch to leave the field, and I want you to see how those interactions take place,” Sheppard said.
And, because it’s a great line—even though Sheppard is joking—I have to include this all-time line about Hutchinson after signing his extension on Wednesday:
“We just gave him half the building, so he needs to play 95 percent.”
Special teams coordinator Dave Fipp
Why the Lions are always kicking off to the right
Earlier this week, Tom Bliss, a data scientist for the NFL, posted a heat map of where each team is kicking off. A look at the Lions reveals a pretty strict pattern: Detroit is almost always kicking off to the right.
Fipp was asked about this phenomenon, and the answer is quite simple. Jake Bates is good at kicking that ball, and it puts the ball near their coverage playmakers, who are players with size, not speed.
“(Bates) probably hits his best ball there,” Fipp said. “A lot of what we do, I mean, you’ve got to build it around the players that you have. We don’t have as much speed as some teams have, we’ve got a lot of size. And so, we’ve got guys like (Tyrus) Wheat, (Pat) O’Connor, and some of these guys, so we can put the ball down on top of those guys. You don’t really want to put those guys out in space.”
Fipp admits there’s a downside to such a consistent strategy. The return team knows where the ball is going most of the time and can put their best returner there. Still, he believes the repetitiveness of the strategy also gives his team an advantage in improving upon a consistent play.
Not worried about Jake Bates’ long misses
Jake Bates is just 2-of-5 on field goals of 50 yards or longer this season after missing just two all year in 2024 (6-of-8). When asked if there was anything Bates needed to change moving forward, Fipp downplayed the issue. He quickly noted that Bates has not missed any field goal 49 yards or shorter, including a perfect 27-of-27 record on extra points.
“I feel really good about what he’s doing, where he’s at. I have a lot of confidence in him,” Fipp said. “But yeah, he hasn’t made all of the long kicks that we would love for him to make. Can he hit that at a higher percentage? For sure. Will that be something to work on? Yeah, no doubt. I do think that to a head coach, the most important thing is when you’re sending your kicker out there, you want to know on a makeable kick, that he’s going to make it.”
