Dan Campbell isn’t ready to blow up his defense, but he is making it clear the Detroit Lions can’t keep showing up with the kind of football they played in a 32-26 loss to the Carolina Panthers.
After Sunday night’s defeat dropped Detroit to 2-2, Campbell said he would keep second-year defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard in place. But on Tuesday, the Lions head coach also made it obvious that changes are coming as Detroit gets ready for a Week 5 trip to face the 1-3 Arizona Cardinals on Oct. 11.
Per Will Burchfield of Audacy, Campbell told 97.1 The Ticket that the defense is "a work in progress" and that he's "going to give some other guys an opportunity" to impress.
Still, Campbell drew a hard line on where this team stands.
"But we’re not going to accept mediocrity," Campbell explained. "That’s not what we’re doing here. We've got too many guys playing at a high level, and we’re going to raise the floor on this team."
The numbers behind the frustration are ugly. ESPN stats had the Lions ending Week 4 ranked last in the league in passing yards allowed per game at 304.0, last in total yards allowed at 423.8 per game and 31st in points allowed at 31.8 per contest.
There’s also the obvious reality that general manager Brad Holmes would like to add help to the secondary, though it was still unclear as of Tuesday morning whether Detroit was close to landing a major trade target.
Campbell said the problems go beyond one side of the ball.
"Our discipline is not good enough across the board. We’re playing very average football right now, and that’s everywhere," Campbell said of the Lions.
"That’s everywhere. That’s not just defense.
We gotta pick up the slack on offense and special teams right now. That’ll alleviate a lot of our defensive issues.
It’s certainly going to help. And that’s what I’m tasked with, man.
I’m about freaking solving problems. I’m going after this thing, man.
We’re not going to be mediocre. I don’t accept that."
The calls for change have already started to build. Colton Pouncy of The Athletic is among those who have said since Sunday night that "there’s reason to question the job security of defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard and this staff."
Campbell’s answer on Tuesday was direct.
"I understand all that from afar, when you look at it, and you look at the numbers," Campbell said about outsiders calling for Sheppard to be fired. "But I believe in Kelvin Sheppard, and I believe we got a lot of meat on the bone with this defense right now.
We’re going to continue to tweak. We got more things that we can do with what we have here.
There’s different calls."
For now, the Lions are still favored, with DraftKings Sportsbook listing them as 4.5-point road favorites over the Cardinals early Tuesday afternoon. But if Detroit heads into its Week 6 bye sitting at 2-3 after another rough defensive outing in Arizona, the pressure around Sheppard and this staff figures to get even louder.
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