Dan Campbell didn’t waste much time making the message clear after the Lions’ 32-26 loss to the Panthers: the standard is not moving, even if some pieces around it might.
Detroit dropped to 2-2 on Sunday night, and while Campbell confirmed he is not moving on from second-year defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard, he also signaled that changes are coming as the Lions turn their attention to a Week 5 trip to the 1-3 Arizona Cardinals on Oct. 11.
Per Will Burchfield of Audacy, Campbell said during a Tuesday appearance on 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.
"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 concern are hard to ignore. ESPN stats had the Lions sitting last in the league after Week 4 in passing yards allowed per game at 304.0, last in total yards allowed at 423.8 per contest and 31st in points allowed at 31.8 per game.
Campbell made it clear he sees the problem as bigger than one side of the ball. Brad Holmes has been linked to possible help for the secondary, but as of Tuesday morning it was still unclear whether Detroit was close to landing a major addition.
"Our discipline is not good enough across the board. We’re playing very average football right now, and that’s everywhere," Campbell said.
"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 outside noise around Sheppard has only grown since Sunday night. Colton Pouncy of The Athletic is among those who have said that "there’s reason to question the job security of defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard and this staff."
Campbell pushed back on that line of thinking, at least for now.
"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."
DraftKings Sportsbook had the Lions as 4.5-point road favorites over the Cardinals as of early Tuesday afternoon. But if Detroit heads into its Week 6 bye sitting at 2-3 after another rough defensive showing in Arizona, the pressure around Sheppard’s future figures to keep building.
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