As an ode to our good friend Kent Lee Platte, who officially resigned from Pride of Detroit on Wednesday after getting a great chance with Pro Football Network, I thought I would honor him by returning his amazing stock reports from training camp. Of course, I’m not nearly as amazingly detailed yet detailed as Kent, so I will not give you a report for all 80 players on the team. But it’s a good time to reflect on what we learned from the first two days of refresher practice, and this seemed as good of a method as any to do so.
So here are five players slowing down, and four players going downhill.
It was not clear if the Lions would give their third round a real chance at a starting lineup, given the shortened offseason, but the former Ohio State guard has so far been locked into practice in the first-team reps. The fact that they also give him duties for backup centers shows just how much trust they have in him. He has proven them so far alone, and looks both comfortable at both interior positions.
We are nowhere in panic mode with the Lions’ third overall pick, but if you’re hoping for reports of an interception one day before the Lions rookie cornerback, it’s been a disappointing start for you. It’s a big step from college to the pros, and even players with as clean of a tape as Okudah will have some growing pain. But this quote from Desmond Trufant strikes me:
“This position will make a play about you at some point, but how do you react to it? Will you come back and make another play or will you just keep rolling it? “
The next few weeks of Okudah’s career could be significant. If he jumps back and shows why the Lions have taken him so high, he will probably grab this starting role from Amani Oruwariye. If he lets early fights on his head, the Lions might have to wait a bit to show him.
Keeping in mind the rookie theme here, Swift looks forward to taking the starting running track out of the gate. Not only did he make an impression on camp, but as our very own Justin Simon remarked on Thursday, things are not looking particularly good for Kerryon Johnson. Even getting one day of maintenance days in padded practices may not be great for Johnson, as it shows the team’s lack of confidence to keep him healthy.
This had to be a Bryout season from Bryant, after injuring most of his rookie season stall. Instead, he is the only remaining player who has not even managed to continue with conditioning drills himself, as he remains on the Physically Unable to Perform list. Losing after disbanding basically all of the training camp last year is a big hit for the edge defender, and it looks like the Lions may have found their starting jack linebacker with Christian Jones.
Bryant needs to get back on the field, and he needs to get there quickly.
If there were any doubts about Hockenson’s ankle, they are now fairly calm again. Although he says he still feels it, he also says he is at 100 percent. And if his playing on the field is any indication, it does not limit him in any way.
Hockenson has not been dominant on camp through two practices, but he pulled at least one touchdown into what I saw, caught a nice one-handed grip during a non-padded practice, and came in search of hella buff. The hype of Year 2 is up again.
In stock: Amani Oruwariye
The Lions’ fifth cornerback of the fifth round of 2019 came into play as the starting cornerback of the team against Trufant, which is already a major achievement for the player of the second year. Not only is he currently for Okudah on the depth map, but he is also ahead of veteran cornerback Darryl Roberts.
Oruwariye looked comfortable, though spectacular, during Tuesday’s practice. I did not see any major plays made by Oruwariye, but he did not give up either.
While Jackson shone, Stenberg has proven he can be a long-term project for Detroit. The fourth-round Lions pick picked up a significant number of reps at backup center on Tuesday, and he sent out at least two snaps. I also saw him blowing backwards on a rep.
Sure, this is all new to Stenberg. He has little to no experience at center, so it will obviously take some time. Any expectation that Stenberg would sometimes earn a starting job sometime during his rookie season would have to be tempered after two practices.
I missed Reeves-Maybin’s enormous day 1 of practice, but based on Matt Patricia’s comments, it was a monster day. Patricia is not one to dog his own players publicly, but he is also typically pretty suppressed with his praise. That was not the case with Reeves-Maybin on Monday.
“He has made great strides for us, I would say, let’s go back to the end of last season. I think one of the things he could really do at the end of the season was kind of go and take command of the defense, get the calls, communicate, turn around and admit the crime, make sure we pick up the tight end call, look at the set of the backfield, go into runstunts, then go into the cover and identify all that. There’s a lot that takes for a linebacker, and I think he made enormous strides at the beginning of the year to the end of the year with that from the mental point of view of the game.
Really, going into camp right now, and it’s apparently on a limited basis, but just to start with special teams, we obviously have the change in some things special teams wise and actually from some basic technical things we do that he has handled enormously. It has been really great to see how he does some footwork that we do, and that we can really use and learn that.
He just keeps growing as a player and I would say one of the things that’s great, and this is moving in defense – the game just seems to carry a bit for him. It does not seem that there are too many people to move and then the game goes on too fast. I see that he just recognizes a lot more and that he is playing with a lot more patience at the moment. ”
At this point, I can even consider him from the ooster injury.
It turned out that Scarbrough came into the fray after colliding with Reeves-Maybin on a one-on-one rep during Tuesday’s practice. For the rest of the day, he did not appear to be doing much.
An injury during training camp can be devastating, and that may be especially the case for Scarbrough, who now has real competition in the power back position after Lions signed Jonathan Williams earlier this week. Williams went on to pound into the rock of the 1-yard line later in practice during a “live” drill with a full contract.
Although Scarbrough is a huge fan favorite after a promotional season in 2019, Williams should be seen as legitimate competition. He even had a pretty impressive 2019 season, rushing for 100 yards in back-to-back games for the Colts.
