“Back to business” and “R&R—Redemption & Respect”—two of the Detroit Lions’ biggest mantras this offseason—remain all talk.
Two games is an incredibly small sample size, and a short-road game serving as a stadium opener was far from ideal, but nothing about the start of the 2026 season has resembled the stretch from the second half of 2022 through the 2024 season. Dating back to the 45-31 2024 home playoff upset at the hands of the Washington Commanders, the Lions are 10-10 over their last 20 games across
the past 20 months. They still haven’t separated themselves from the disappointing 2025 team that preceded them.
Playing arguably the best football player on the planet, in his kingdom, as he opens the new battle arena they built for him, in a rowdy road environment, on short rest, after going to overtime the previous week, turns out not to be an easy task.
Still, the Lions need to start following through on the repeated talk of cleaning things up, making adjustments, and improving.
It’s incredibly early in a long season, though. While we wait for the respect and redemption to begin, let’s check in on the Lions’ Week 2 stock report—with plenty of football runway remaining.
Stock down: Dan Campbell, HC
The traveling Detroit Lions were the less-prepared team from the jump, getting pulverized early and looking nowhere near primetime-ready. Falling behind 21-0 that quickly is unacceptable for a team with the Lions’ lofty ambitions.
So, it turns out it wasn’t only Tyler Shough and Chris Olave who had the Lions’ defense’s number. Josh Allen continued to have his way with Campbell’s defense in what became one of the worst defensive performances of Campbell’s tenure.
The entire team was slow to start and ill-prepared, but the defense is particularly concerning. Through two games, that unit appears to be in its worst shape since Campbell inherited the talent-deficient defense left behind by Matt Patricia.
That’s noteworthy because Campbell spent much of training camp praising his experienced, heady group of veteran defensive backs, who have performed poorly to start the season. More broadly, Campbell has consistently backed his defensive players and coaching staff, including at the NFL Scouting Combine:
“I think Shep did a good job, and I think he learned a lot and I think he grew a ton. I love the staff that’s around him, I really do, man. We’ve just got to tighten the screws on a few things.”
“We’ve already been through the cutup. Like, ‘Man, if we could go back, maybe we would play a little bit more of this or a little less of this.’ I think there’s a lot of clarity in some things. … What can we do better? What do the players — what can they do better? How complex is this, really? Is it out of their wheelhouse? [Are we] asking somebody to do something they cannot do?”
Everything leads to the top. The poor defensive performance and the defensive staff’s lack of preparation ultimately fall on Campbell’s shoulders. It’s on him to make sure his staff is correcting mistakes, tightening up fundamentals, putting players in positions that fit their abilities, and continuing to develop the talent on this defense.
Stock down: Kelvin Sheppard, DC
Through eight quarters, no one in the Detroit Lions organization has been more disappointing than the second-year coordinator, and his unit currently looks like the worst-organized defense in football.
The issues against the Bills ran the full gamut: scrambles, coverage mishaps, wide-open receivers, blitzes that couldn’t get home, third-down woes, red-zone ineptitude, poor angles in run support, read-option struggles, explosive runs, trailing in man coverage, soft zones, free releases, and bad eyes.
Really, nothing the defense did went right. Allen recorded his fourth career game with at least three passing touchdowns and two rushing touchdowns. It was just the 24th such game by a quarterback in NFL history, and Kordell Stewart is the only other quarterback to accomplish the feat more than once. The Bills piled up 34 first downs and 41 points on their first 65 offensive plays alone.
The Lions’ defenders were put in constant conflict, struggling with the positions they were put in and the responsibilities of their assignments. The most disturbing part of Sheppard’s defense Thursday night—and really his entire tenure as a play caller—has been an inability to adapt. When opponents have identified weaknesses and started exploiting them, Sheppard and his staff have failed to find answers for their players. He can rarely find a counterpunch after his defense has been smacked in the mouth.
The defense now has 10 days to address its woes before taking on Jets QB Geno Smith, who has consistently shredded the Lions in the past. That begins a stretch of three games that appeared manageable all offseason and now represents an opportunity for this defense to figure out what it can actually do successfully before the bye week and the divisional schedule picks up. Perhaps they outsmarted themselves, and it’s time to simplify things.
All offseason, offenses led by Smith, Bryce Young, and Jacoby Brissett looked like the cupcake portion of the schedule. Now, it’s hard to say with any confidence that this Lions defense will be able to contain any of them.
It’s time for Sheppard and his staff to step up, find answers, and make meaningful corrections. Otherwise, the questions about this defense—and the people responsible for it—are only going to get louder.
Stock down: Jack Campbell, LB
Lions green-dot captain and All-Pro linebacker Jack Campbell was highly critical—and emotional—about his performance postgame in the visitors’ locker room in Buffalo, taking responsibility for letting the offense and his teammates down with his struggles.
Campbell has not gotten off on the right foot this season, and those unexpected struggles were put under a microscope against the MVP-caliber, superhuman talent of Josh Allen and Joe Brady’s offense.
Campbell struggled mightily in two areas. He was repeatedly sucked into blocks and unable to fight through or elude them, particularly against the Bills’ tight ends, while also looking lost or a step slow at times in coverage. He also missed a few opportunities to bring down Allen and James Cook.
Campbell’s two-game performance has been incredibly uncharacteristic, arguably his roughest stretch since his rookie season in 2023. Still, there are endless reasons to believe he’ll bounce back and return to playing like one of the best linebackers in football.
Stock up: Jared Goff, QB
If you want reassurance that it’s a long season and the Lions still have promising NFC North title and Super Bowl-contending capabilities, look no further than Jared Goff’s performance over the final three quarters, picking apart the Bills’ defense with precision.
Goff still doesn’t get the credit he deserves, despite dialing in for an impressive 327 passing yards, four touchdowns, a 130.0 passer rating, and 19 passing first downs (tied for seventh most of his career).
He did all of this while routinely facing obvious passing situations behind three backup offensive linemen, leading to a 45.5% pressure rate and four sacks, yet still finding ways to succeed despite the ill-equipped protection.
Goff did it all: maneuvering the pocket and pump-faking to avoid crisis before finding Jahmyr Gibbs or Sione Vaki on checkdowns; firing tight-window throws over the middle to Gibbs and Sam LaPorta; using precision to squeak the ball to Gibbs in the end zone; and dropping timing-and-anticipation dimes to Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams, and even Isaac TeSlaa along the sideline.
His connection with St. Brown outside the numbers, rather than relying exclusively on their usual bread-and-butter work over the middle, was particularly promising.
Goff playing like that while Buffalo’s defensive front infested his pocket due to the underperforming backups on the offensive line—and doing it with this cast of playmakers around him—is the biggest reason for hope that the Lions can bust out a winning streak before their bye week and put this embarrassment behind them.
Stock down: Devin White & Chuck Clark
There’s a reason White is on his fifth team in four seasons and couldn’t carve out a role on the Texans’ defense two years ago. There’s also a reason Clark is on his third team in three seasons and was only a part-time starter for the Steelers last year.
Both can still be useful coming downhill at times, and Clark is supposedly a good communicator, but at this point, their alleged positive playmaking in those areas doesn’t appear to offset the negatives.
Too often against the Bills, they were liabilities in space—slow-moving statues stuck in the mud. Their age and deteriorating athleticism, combined with some slow processing and hesitation from White, particularly against play action, don’t allow them to cover the necessary depth or ground. At times against Buffalo, their ineffective movement skills made it feel like the Lions’ defense was playing 11-on-9.
Avonte Maddox also had his share of struggles before his season-ending injury. The hope is that none of these veterans will struggle this much against other opponents, with Buffalo’s offense representing one of their toughest matchups, but that isn’t satisfactory.
In the safety room, the best possible solution while waiting out Brian Branch’s return—and possibly Kerby Joseph’s—is to kick Christian Izien back from nickel to handle more safety reps and continue giving Thomas Harper more opportunities. Harper struggled against Buffalo as well, but he has range and a higher ceiling. Relying on the veterans’ floor when the miscommunication issues remain defeats the point.
At linebacker, it’s similarly baffling that White is outsnapping Malcolm Rodriguez by such a significant margin, 33 to 15 on Thursday night. Rodriguez should offer more consistent play, and if he can’t beat White out, then it’s time to get Jimmy Rolder rolling as the third linebacker and WILL. At least there’s room for growth there.
White and Clark on this defense feel much more like Bruce Irvin, David Long Jr., Kwon Alexander, Jamal Adams, Ben Niemann, Dean Marlowe, Jalen Mills, Tre Flowers, or Tyson Alualu band-aid signings than players filling plus roles for a defense expected to ascend as the season wears on.
Stock down: Larry Borom & Ben Bartch
The two offseason investments might’ve been Detroit’s two worst players on either side of the football. Borom never looked this out of sorts in any of his 11 starts with the Miami Dolphins last season, while Bartch never played this poorly across four starts with the San Francisco 49ers over the last two seasons.
Borom had his hands full with Gregory Rousseau, giving up at least eight pressures to him alone, while Bartch was getting bodied by Deone Walker and had poor pass-protection reps against DeWayne Carter, Michael Hoecht, and Bradley Chubb. There was minimal pocket integrity for Goff to rely on given the struggles of both linemen.
As an extra cherry on top: Borom was flagged for a hold and two false starts in the hostile road environment.
Juice Scruggs also struggled much more than he did in his Week 1 debut, as Hank Fraley’s group was collectively out-executed and outmuscled. The hope is that a quick-turnaround road game represents something close to the worst-case scenario for this makeshift offensive line and that Borom and Bartch can improve.
Still, getting Christian Mahogany and Blake Miller back for Week 3 after the long rest would be far better for an offense that needs its offensive line to become the battleship unit capable of destroying everything in its path and carrying this team to success.
Quick Hits
STOCK UP:
- Tate Ratledge, RG: Ratledge handled his pass-protection reps against the Bills’ interior defenders much better than his fellow offensive linemates while also being a bully in the run game during the first half, before the ground approach shifted mostly to unsuccessful second-down outside zone runs.
- Amon-Ra St. Brown, WR: It took a second to get going, but St. Brown was one of the biggest reasons the Lions made the game remotely competitive, recording the seventh-most receiving yards of his career (142) as a chunk-play magnet for Goff. It was only his third career game with 120-plus receiving yards and at least two receiving touchdowns.
- Tyleik Williams, NT: Williams is starting to stack games as a powerful force at the point of attack, occasionally flashing the athleticism to shoot into the backfield while also providing more pass-rush juice than he displayed last season, with another handful of pressures. He forced an awkward Allen incompletion on one pass-rush win and also disrupted the timing of a screen pass.
- Christian Izien, DB: Looked comfortable operating in the box during a solid Lions debut on only 26 snaps. He made multiple plays stuffing James Cook and looks like a player who needs to see a significant increase in usage.
STOCK DOWN
- Brock Wright & Tyler Conklin, TEs: The Lions’ backups pale in comparison to the skill sets of Bills backup tight ends Dawson Knox and Jackson Hawes, who were blowing open holes in the run game. Aside from Wright’s unfair mismatch on the sack allowed, he continues to be a player who constantly reminds me of Milton Waddams from Office Space, leaving me to ask, “What is it you do here?” Meanwhile, Conklin can’t carve out more than a few reps.
- D.J. Wonnum, DE: Had a few reps where he got washed out and lost contain in run defense without displaying any pass-rush presence. Right now, he’s been a net-negative player opposite Hutchinson.
- Tyler Lacy, DL: Maybe there’s a role for him in short-yardage situations, but he’s not a dynamic player, and his lack of movement skills was exposed against the efficient, high-flying Bills offense. The Lions’ defense would be better served by giving up some of his reps to a potential difference-maker in Ahmed Hassanein.
- Rock Ya-Sin, CB: Ya-Sin is performing like a much more limited, flawed cornerback than he did in the back half of last season or throughout training camp. The off coverage has been a real detriment to his skill set, and consistently losing in the short-to-intermediate areas against Keon Coleman isn’t going to cut it in this division.
STOCK NEUTRAL
- Drew Petzing, OC: Managed the game well despite being down three offensive linemen on a short week, being taken out of his regular game script early, and still schemed up some really impressive passing concepts for Gibbs and St. Brown. The offense needs to start faster, still hasn’t attacked the intermediate middle of the field much, and the run game remains a work in progress after the Lions posted the worst run-stuff rate by any offense in a game this season. Still, Petzing’s offense is the fourth-highest-scoring unit in football through two weeks. Continue evolving beyond tendencies and growing more comfortable, but there’s plenty here to work with.
- Isaac TeSlaa, WR: Better late than never, with his first catch of the season coming on fourth down in the fourth quarter, but he remains a second-year player who hasn’t raised his level of play.
- Penei Sewell, LT: Sewell will be fine at left tackle. The Kirk Herbstreit broadcast commentary was blown out of proportion after one bad rep against Bradley Chubb.
- Aidan Hutchinson, DE: The Lions’ best defender and a game-breaking pass rusher showed up from the first drive, unlike many of his teammates. However, he was exposed at times in run defense. Some of that can be attributed to the defensive front being more active with slants and stunts this season, and adjusting there is a broader point for the entire defense given its issues with gap integrity and how effectively the Bills’ extra-tight-end sets took advantage. Hutchinson did kick butt on the goal-line stop of James Cook and clobbered Dion Dawkins on the eventual Barnes cleanup sack. He also nearly got another sack on his menacing, lumbering hawk-down of Allen on a rollout.
- Derrick Barnes, LB: While he had some initial issues on scramble drills—the entire defense looked unprepared for scramble rules—Barnes was one defender who looked like he belonged against the Bills offense and showed some blitz chops. He ate up D.J. Moore on one end-around. Still too many SAM linebacker reps for my liking.
- D.J. Reed, CB: Had a very strong game in coverage. The one critique is that while he’s generally a strong run supporter for an undersized cornerback, he took a handful of incorrect or passive angles when filling in run support.
