Dan Campbell made it clear the Lions’ decision on Christian Mahogany had nothing to do with anything complicated. Mahogany didn’t get on the field in Sunday’s game because he broke team rules, and Campbell said the move opened the door for Miles Frazier to play.
“Well, that was just team rules,” he said, via The Athletic. “It was really that simple.
Miles deserved his opportunity, and he got it. And it doesn’t mean it stays that way, but that was the way it was going to be today.
”
Campbell doubled down on that point, stressing that the standard applies across the roster.
“ That’s team rules, that’s what that is,” he said. “ All right, so, it really is as simple as that.
We have 70 guys, 69-70 guys, and they’re all - we’re all - expected to do it right, and when one doesn’t, that’s just the way it goes. It doesn’t mean this is a done deal, it’s just - he deserved that.
Frazier deserved the opportunity to play.”
The Lions coach also said Mahogany still has a path back into the lineup this week.
“ Yeah, listen, we’re good, ” Campbell said of the situation. “ I mean, I talked to him this morning, so the ball’s in his court. ”
In Green Bay, the Packers’ offense put on a show in a 45-point outburst against the Patriots, and the numbers backed up what the eye test said: this group looks like it has found another gear. The Packers set a record for the most points the Patriots have allowed at Gillette Stadium, and the big-play machine kept humming all afternoon.
Christian Watson and Matthew Golden were at the center of it. Both receivers topped 100 yards, and together they accounted for 335 of Jordan Love’s 372 passing yards. Each one also found the end zone, and Watson said the game felt like everything the Packers had been building toward finally showed up on Sunday.
“It kind of just felt like we continued to string along the big plays. It kind of just confirmed it for us that we were getting all of the looks that we were expecting to get,” Watson said via Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer.
“And then on those plays, when we called a shot, we got the perfect look. So, I mean, honestly, it just ended up playing out exactly how we thought it would in almost every situation.
So obviously that’s big time for Matt, when he’s calling the plays. Obviously, it’s big time for us just having ran that play, against the perfect, the ideal look, throughout the week, and then, obviously, the non-ideal looks, too.
But just seeing exactly what we expected to see is big time.”
Watson and Golden now sit near the top of the league in receiving production, with Watson at No. 3 and Golden at No. 4. Watson has 879 yards, while Golden has 783, and LaFleur pointed to their ability to stay on the field together as a major reason the Packers’ passing game has taken off.
“Their availability is everything, because not many people can do what they can do,” LaFleur said. “So it’s a f-ing two-headed monster right now.
You gotta pick a poison. And they just complement each other, and they can do anything.”
For the Vikings, Carson Wentz was blunt about how rough his own outing felt, a performance that eventually helped push the team toward a deadline trade for Kirk Cousins, who returns to the organization that once had him.
“I haven’t had many starts over the last couple of years in general, but this one felt pretty terrible,” Wentz said, via NFL.com. “To go kind of lay an egg, personally, the way I struggled early, especially with our defense playing as good as they’ve been all year, honestly.
They did it again tonight, and we just didn’t help them out. I didn’t help them out.
It’s hard to put my finger on the why. It was tough sledding for us, and I didn’t help the cause by any means,” Wentz added.
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