Lions expect improvements with both defense and offense ahead of hosting Seahawks

There was good and bad seen on the road in Minnesota in the Lions’ second loss of the year to the Vikings. Aside from the game being in reach and ending on a controversial decision by Dan Campbell, improvements are expected to be made specifically on defense.

Aaron Glenn definitely sees the positives of his unit, but with learning will come better execution. He said he talks to the players a lot because as a coach, he knows he needs to put his players in positions to be successful.

“We’re playing some really good football early, some really good football,” said Glenn. “Issue is, man, our ability to finish, our ability to execute during crunch time, and that’s one of the things that I talked about last week. With our ability to understand what’s it take to win games and not lose games, and with the youth that we have, those are some of the things we’ve got to continue to learn.”

One of the glaring areas of improvements from the Vikings loss is finding the balance between physicality and penalties with CB Amani Oruwariye.

“Welcome to the NFL, life of a corner,” said Glenn. “And the way they were calling it, and they were calling every little thing that he was doing. It seemed like he was bullseye that game, and the thing that you have to do is make sure you get yourself back up. Man, go back the next week and be just as aggressive, but just understand where your hands at, alright? If your hands are up high, they see that, and I think a lot of that was just the technique that he was doing that week. We talked to him quite a bit about that, and he worked on that yesterday. And that’s something he’s got to continue to work on, and listen, I have full confidence in Amani. He’s a guy that can get the ball back for us, and we expect him to do those things this week.”

On the other side of the ball, the Lions offense is still producing at a high level in comparison to the rest of the league, but the challenge now will be operating at that level without your key pieces. Both D’Andre Swift and Amon-Ra St. Brown are injured and both are offensive leaders for Detroit. Ben Johnson offered the usual “next man up” mentality.

“Everybody in the building whether it’s active or practice squad, they all have things that they do well or else they wouldn’t be here,” said Johnson. “So, that’s kind of – over the course of the week we’re trying to hone in, ‘Hey, how can we get this guy here against this guy to do this?’ That’s been within the course of the game, sure yeah a guy goes down and if we do have to tweak a few things. That happened this game, that happened this past game where a guy – maybe a formation needs to change, so we move a guy to different spot and the other guy does it. Those are things that we adjust with.”

One thing no missing with Ben Johnson is the confidence he has in other guys to step up in the receiver role, specifically speaking about WRs Kalif Raymond and Quintez Cephus.

“We know what they’re capable of, and we’ll be ready to put them in the right positions,” said Johnson. “I know Q’s ready. He’s answered the bell before the past few years since he’s been a rookie. Leaf’s the same way, and so if we need to dive deeper into those guys, they’ll answer the bell.”