DETROIT -- When Justin Jackson caught a short touchdown pass to pull the Lions within a score late in the fourth quarter, the Lions had four players on the field who opened this season on practice squads. That includes Jackson himself.
They still managed to score 45 points.
Yet the Lions still lost to Seattle on Sunday, because their defense was gutted for another 48. Now head coach Dan Campbell is considering changes to coaching, to scheme, to personnel, to almost everything besides defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn.
“Yeah, we’re going to look at everything,” Campbell said. “We’re going to look at it all, top to bottom.”
And that includes coaching?
“I’m going to look at everything,” Campbell said.
Campbell has shown a quick trigger with his coordinators before, taking away the playcalling from then-offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn when Detroit ranked among the worst offenses in the league after eight games last season. Lynn was fired after that campaign, and Ben Johnson was promoted to the position, a series of decisions that has led Detroit to become the highest-scoring team in football.
Yet the Lions are just 1-3 because of a defense that is giving up even more. Detroit has now allowed 141 points in the first month of the season. Only 16 teams have ever allowed more going back to at least 1940.
Just 21 games into a total rebuild, the defense remains very much a work in progress. Still, basic competency should be expected by now, and the Lions are falling short of that low bar. But Campbell doesn’t seem to be plotting a takeover of the defense, instead offering a passionate defense of Glenn.
“Look, AG’s a damn good coach, all right?” Campbell said. “This is the same thing I told the team: The worst thing we can do is start pointing fingers at each other and, ‘You did this. We didn’t do this. We put up the ...’ We can’t do that, man. We can’t let anybody pull us apart, because as dismal as it is right now, we’re not as far away as it feels. But until we do something about it, quit talking about it, doesn’t matter. We can rob ourselves and we can say we’re going to be better, but until we actually do it and make a commitment, (it won’t matter).
“We’ve got to coach better, and they’ve got to take it on their shoulders, man. They need some accountability, and they need -- our captains and our vets -- they need to say, ‘Hey, enough is enough.’ And what are they going to do about it? Like, what are we going to do about it as well? So, I mean, we’re all in the same boat together and we’ve got to clean it up. But I know this: We can’t go in panic mode, because it’s the worst thing you can do.”
The Lions opened the season with the youngest roster in the league, and that’s especially true on defense. They started rookies at every level on Sunday against Seattle, with third-round pick Kerby Joseph stepping into the safety job that was vacated by injured captain Tracy Walker.
Joseph hadn’t played a defensive snap all year, but won a competition over JuJu Hughes and Ifeatu Melifonwu -- two more young players -- during the practice week. Then he immediately was beaten for Seattle’s first touchdown of the day, a 17-yard catch by Will Dissly, before blowing an assignment on another, a 2-yard TD by Noah Fant.
That’s a tough way to make your debut. Then again, it’s not like Seattle is some offensive juggernaut either. After shipping star quarterback Russell Wilson to Denver in the offseason, the Seahawks entered the weekend with the fifth-worst offense and the fourth-worst scoring offense in the league. They were averaging just 15.7 points per game.
Against Detroit, they didn’t punt -- not even once -- a franchise first for them.
Quarterback Geno Smith was especially good. He passed for 320 yards, the fourth-best day of his career, while posting the fourth-highest passer rating of his career (132.6). He also ran for 51 yards, eclipsing a career high he had set all the way back in 2013. He accounted for three touchdowns overall, which nearly matched his season total coming into the weekend (four).
The Lions were beaten repeatedly in got-to-have-it situations, including on a third-and-16 where running back Rashaad Penny blasted through the heart of the defense for a 34-yard touchdown. The defense also couldn’t get off the field on a pair of third downs late in the fourth quarter, which stifled their comeback bid.
Now the Lions are going back to the drawing board.
“We’ll look at everything we need to,” Campbell said. “To the scheme, to our personnel, and we’ll find the best fit and whatever we feel like’s going to give us the best chance, and the best chance in three or four weeks too.”
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