Just before the regular season started, the Lions created $35 million in salary cap space by restructuring the contracts of wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown and tackle Penei Sewell. What they’ll do with that cap space remains to be seen.
Lions head coach Dan Campbell was asked today if the Lions will make a major acquisition, such as trading for an All-Pro player this season, and he downplayed that possibility.
“I don’t see that. I would say this, though: It gives us options. Whether that be our own guys or — it just gives us flexibility,” Campbell said. “There’s a lot that can happen.”
The Lions may have no such plans now, but as the trade deadline approaches, it’s easy to see them making an aggressive move if they think there’s one available player who could put them over the top as Super Bowl contenders. Or it may be that the Lions will use some of that cap space to extend some of their younger, lower-paid players.
Teams can carry over unused cap space to the following season, so the Lions could decide not to spend the money and increase their cap space next year instead. As Campbell knows, it’s good to have options.
Lions Clips
Lions running back Isiah Pacheco started the season on injured reserve, and he won’t be on the field any time soon.
Pacheco had back surgery and is out for the foreseeable future, Lions head coach Dan Campbell said today.
“It’s gonna be a while. It’s gonna be a while. I really can’t — it’ll be a significant amount of time,” Campbell said of Pacheco’s recovery.
Ian Rapoport reported that Pacheco could be back in December.
The Lions could use some more depth at running back, as Jahmyr Gibbs had a huge workload on Sunday and can’t realistically be expected to get that many carries every week. The Lions’ No. 2 running back, Sione Vaki, struggled in pass protection on Sunday, and Campbell described him as “inconsistent.”
But there doesn’t appear to be any hope that Pacheco will be coming back soon to give Gibbs some relief. The backup running back situation in Detroit is still an open question.
Bills wide receiver DJ Moore had quite the debut with his new team on Sunday, catching five passes for 100 yards and a touchdown. He also drew a 46-yard interference penalty in the end zone.
“This is a preview,” Moore said, via Tim Graham of TheAthletic.com. “It can only get better from here.”
It was Moore’s first 100-yard game since Nov. 24, 2024, with the Bears against the Vikings, although he needed overtime to get there. His last 100-yard regulation game happened Oct. 6, 2024, against the Panthers.
He limped off on the final drive and was in the sideline medical tent twice. He said once was to get “stretched out,” and the second time was to make sure he was OK. Moore returned to the game, and he is not on the Bills’ injury report Monday.
The Bills did not practice Monday but had to issue an estimated injury report with Thursday’s game against the Lions looming.
They list inside linebacker Terrel Bernard (calf), running back Ty Johnson (hamstring) and defensive lineman T.J. Sanders (knee) as limited.
Safety Cole Bishop (knee/groin), outside linebacker Bradley Chubb (thumb) and defensive back Jordan Hancock (quad) as full participants.
The Lions will have a quick turnaround from Sunday’s overtime win over the Saints to Thursday’s road game in Baltimore and they issued their first injury report for that game on Monday.
The team did not actually hold a practice, so the report is only an estimate that left guard Christian Mahogany and right tackle Blake Miller would have been out of practice. Mahogany injured his hip early in Sunday’s game, but Miller, who is listed with a knee issue, played every snap in the 31-30 win.
Ben Bartch replaced Mahogany after competing with him for the job this summer.
Center Juice Scruggs (knee) would have been a limited participant and cornerback Christian Izien (groin) would have been a full participant.
When the Saints scored a touchdown against the Lions with 1:34 remaining in overtime on Sunday, they could have kicked the extra point to tie the game, then hoped that either their defense could get the ball back so they could win, or at least hold the Lions’ offense to preserve a tie. Instead, Saints head coach Kellen Moore decided to go for two, and end the game right there, one way or the other.
The way it ended was the Saints lost: Tyler Shough’s two-point conversion pass was incomplete out the back of the end zone, and the Saints walked off the field 0-1. After the game, Moore said he thinks he made the right call.
“There was 1:34 left. That’s a really talented offense. We had a chance to go win the football game,” Moore said. “I really viewed it as we’re going for two there to win the game, if we have a chance.”
The Saints also decided to kick off at the start of overtime, thinking they’d rather get the ball second and know what they have to do. Deciding to kick at the start of overtime played into the decision to go for two at the end of overtime: Because the Saints had the second possession, Moore knew what his team had to do, and what his team had to do was score a two-point conversion. It didn’t work, but Moore still thinks it was the right call.
Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs had a career-high 29 carries for 156 yards and two touchdowns on Sunday, and he added five catches for 30 yards. That’s an enormous workload for any player, but Lions coach Dan Campbell said after the game that Gibbs could do even more.
“I thought it was a very promising Week 1,” Campbell said. “Certainly, we know what Gibbs is, what he’s capable of, and he’s still not there yet. And I mean that in a good way.”
What more could Gibbs do? Campbell said that on a day when Gibbs’ longest run was 21 yards, he’s capable of breaking some much longer runs than that.
“We were this close to breaking three or four more of these, breaking them wide open,” Campbell said. “A shoestring away, just a little longer block at the second level. I mean, we were close, and we’re going to get that cleaned up, and he’s going to get better. Week 1, yeah, I like where he’s at. I’m glad he’s here.”
Campbell is not looking for Gibbs to get 29 carries a game for 17 games. That would be 493 carries for the season, which would be the second-most in NFL history. But Campbell said he’s happy to keep feeding Gibbs the rock.
“Do I want to set records with how many carries? No, that’s not something I want to do, but when you look at a guy and you think he’s in good shape, he had a really good camp, he’s in the best shape I’ve seen since I’ve been here,” Campbell said.
Gibbs will have to be in good shape for the workload the Lions are giving him.
On Sunday in Detroit, an apparent Jared Goff fumble that was picked up and returned for a Saints touchdown was overturned on replay. Lions head coach Dan Campbell was pleasantly surprised.
Campbell admitted after the game that while watching the play, he thought Goff fumbled. He didn’t realize until the officials explained it to him that Goff starting his throwing motion made it an incomplete pass, even though the ball traveled backward after it was knocked out of Goff’s hand.
“I’ll take that one. I’ll be the first to say, I thought we lost that one. The arm was going forward, it had a forward motion, that was how they saw it. We got one. We’ll take that,” Campbell said.
The replay ruling was correct, but counterintuitive: It would seem that when a quarterback throws the ball backward, that makes it a backward pass. Under NFL rules, however, if the quarterback has started a forward throwing motion, it’s a forward pass even if a defender hits the quarterback mid-throw to send the ball backward. That was a rule many people learned for the first time on Sunday. Including Campbell.
Sunday’s game between the Saints and Lions included a dash of first-half controversy that kept New Orleans from scoring what would have been their first touchdown of the game.
Detroit quarterback Jared Goff dropped back to throw. Saints defensive end Chase Young hit Goff while he was winding up to throw. The pass came out backward. The Saints recovered and scored.
The ruling on the field was overturned.
After the game, which the Lions won 31-30 in overtime, NFL V.P. of instant replay Mark Butterworth addressed the decision in a pool report with Ben Raven of MLive.com.
“If the defender contacts the passer prior to the passer starting the throwing motion, then it can be ruled as a backward pass. Because Goff already started his throwing motion and then the defender contacted him, it is therefore a forward pass.”
Butterworth explained that the “determining factor” is whether the passer begins his throwing motion before contact from the defender. “The throwing motion starts as he begins to bring the ball up as a part of his windup and then the defender’s contact made the pass go backwards,” Butterworth said.
It’s confusing, because the pass went backward. And, in theory, it could lead to a nutty result. If, for example, a hit on the quarterback spins him around after he begins his throwing motion and the ball goes directly backward, it’s still a forward pass.
The rule is different from the question of whether the quarterback fumbles before his arm moves forward. In this case, the quarterback’s arm moves forward but, because he was hit after he began the windup, the backward movement of the ball is still a forward pass.
Some have pointed to the nutty two-point play in last year’s Rams-Seahawks game as a contradictory outcome. Seattle quarterback Sam Darnold threw the ball backward. But he wasn’t hit while throwing the ball.
If Darnold had been hit, it would have been a forward pass.
Again, that’s the rule. It may seem strange, but it’s the rule.
The Lions and Saints played an epic Week 1 game that couldn’t be decided in 60 minutes, but after each team scored an overtime touchdown, Detroit ultimately prevailed.
Saints quarterback Tyler Shough’s two-point conversion pass was incomplete out the back of the end zone on the final play of overtime, and the Lions survived 31-30.
For most of the game, it looked like the Lions would win easily: Detroit led 21-0 in the third quarter and seemed poised to cruise to an easy win. Instead, the Lions choked the lead away and easily could have lost in regulation: Saints kicker Daniel Carlson lined up for a game-winning field goal as time expired in the fourth quarter, but his 62-yard attempt missed.
There were some positives for the Lions: Jahmyr Gibbs, whom the Lions made the highest-paid running back in the NFL last month, delivered in a big way, with 156 yards rushing and two touchdowns. And Aidan Hutchinson sacked Shough twice. But for the Lions, the big question coming out of the game is why they couldn’t put the Saints away when they should have.
For the Saints, it was a heartbreaking loss but a sign that Shough is starting to grow within Kellen Moore’s offense. The heavily favored Lions won, but the Saints have to feel good about the way they fought until the end.
Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs became the highest-paid running back in the NFL last month, and he’s doing his best to show he’s worth the money.
It’s still the first quarter of Week One, and Gibbs already has nine carries for 47 yards, plus a one-yard touchdown that gave the Lions a 7-0 lead over the Saints. Gibbs is the sixth player in NFL history to score 50 touchdowns within his first 50 games.
Gibbs is looking good early on, and so is Lions tight end Sam LaPorta, who has caught both passes Jared Goff has thrown to him, for 27 yards.
The Saints’ offense has had one possession, on which they gained one first down before punting. They’re going to need to do more than that to keep up with this Lions offense.
