Lions defensive tackle Alim McNeill didn’t make his first appearance of the 2025 season until October and making a full return from his 2024 torn ACL took longer than that.
McNeill suffered the injury late in the 2024 season and returned to the lineup in Week 7 last year. McNeill had 14 tackles and a sack in 10 starts, which was less impactful than his pre-injury contributions to the defense.
McNeill said last Friday that he never felt 100 percent after coming back to action last year, but is now feeling back to being the player he was prior to hurting his knee.
“It’s just how the body works. It takes time for stuff to come back a little bit,” McNeill said, via the team’s website. “Some stuff was just not there no matter how hard I tried to do certain stuff, it just wasn’t there yet. It’s here now.”
McNeill had 57 tackles, 13 tackles for loss, 17 quarterback hits and 8.5 sacks in the 27 games before his injury. A return to that level of play would be just what the Lions need up front on defense as they try to plot their way back to the playoffs in 2026.
Lions Clips
Lions defensive end Aidan Hutchinson was asked at Organized Team Activities if he has aspirations to be the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year for the 2026 season, and he confirmed that he wants to be recognized as the best.
“Do I have aspirations for Defensive Player of the Year? Yeah, the mentality is always that, for sure,” Hutchinson said.
In 2024, Hutchinson was the betting favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year before his season ended with a gruesome leg injury. In 2025, Hutchinson says, he was happy to show he could get back on the field, and to sign a long-term contract extension with the Lions.
“I’m really happy with last year, with what I did with a lot going on, whether that be contract, whether that be expectation from people seeing me break my leg, there was a lot of stuff that happened last year,” Hutchinson said. “To have the production I had, I’m really happy with how last year went, and this year, I got to have a full offseason to train and get my body right.”
Organized Team Activities in the NFL are non-contact practices. So Lions coach Dan Campbell says they’re not much of a way to evaluate a football player.
Asked by a reporter which players had stood out in OTAs, Campbell scoffed at the idea that a player could do anything meaningful to stand out at this time of year. Campbell said that when players put on the pads and hit each other in training camp he’ll have a better idea of whether they’re the kinds of players he wants on his roster.
“A lt of guys have done really well for two days in pajamas,” Campbell said. “I’m done with the hype of a pajama party in May. . . . We’ll find out in training camp who’s who. This will be the most competition we’ve had. Top-tier competition. This will be good, across the board.”
Campbell said the players fighting for a roster spot will need to do that fighting in training camp.
“Nobody’s gonna win a job in the spring,” Campbell said. “I’m not hyping anybody up. Not in May.”
Lions head coach Dan Campbell gave an update on three veterans coming off of injuries during a Friday press conference.
Campbell said that safety Brian Branch, safety Kerby Joseph, and tight end Sam LaPorta are “all improving,” but none of them are taking part in practices at this point. Campbell went on to say that the team is not feeling any urgency to see them on the practice field before their offseason program wraps up next month.
“That’s not the priority,” Campbell said at a press conference. “It’s not worth all that anyway. . . . The most important thing is continue to let them improve, rehab, all that. They’re in meetings, they’re getting the mental side of this.”
Branch tore his Achilles in December, Joseph missed the final 11 games with a knee injury and LaPorta had back surgery in November. Campbell said LaPorta has done some walkthrough/jogthrough work and it sounds unlikely that any member of the trio will be doing more than that in the near future.
The Lions didn’t exercise their option on linebacker Jack Campbell’s contract for the 2027 season, but they said the move didn’t change their desire to keep Campbell in Detroit for the long term.
Words met action last week when Campbell signed a four-year, $81 million extension with the team. That deal reflects Campbell’s value to the Lions and it fit with Campbell’s desire to be a member of the team “no matter what.”
“Let’s be realistic here, like, I already have more than enough. So, for me, it was more about the principle of I just want to be in the elite category, because I feel like I’m an elite linebacker and that’s the way [Lions GM] Brad [Holmes] saw it and that’s the way everyone upstairs saw it . . . I feel like, for me, I don’t need to be the highest paid,” Campbell said, via Eric Woodyard of ESPN.com. “Even though the guys around the league would probably appreciate that because it bumps up everything. So, I’m sorry to them. But I just feel like for me, I knew what I wanted in this. I want to help the team in any way possible. Just to continue to keep the core together so, I mean, at the end of the day, I feel like it was fair for the team and I’m more than happy with everything that they blessed me with.”
Campbell isn’t the highest-paid linebacker in the league, but there’s not much of a gap between him and 49ers star Fred Warner. Warner’s deal averages $21 million per year, which is just ahead of where Campbell now ranks in the pecking order. It seems unlikely that anyone is going to be too upset about how those things stack up, so the deal feels like a winner across the board.
Lions quarterback Teddy Bridgewater took a break from playing in 2023 to become the coach at his former Miami high school. In 2024, Bridgewater stepped down after revealing that he had used his own money to cover expenses for his players — transportation, recovery, and pre-game meals.
And while Bridgewater seems to be done, at least for now, with coaching, Florida has addressed the problem his situation highlighted.
Via Andy Villamarzo of On3.com, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the so-called “Teddy Bridgewater Act” into law on Friday.
The law allows middle-school and high-school head coaches to spend up to $15,000 of their own funds to support student-athletes with food, transportation and recovery services.
The Florida Senate had passed the measure in February. As noted at the time, the law potentially opens Pandora’s box. How will anyone accurately track expenditures? And what’s to stop the coach from becoming the conduit for boosters to funnel more than $15,000 to players?
Regardless, Florida has acknowledged the fact that there’s no harm in letting football coaches help their players. The question becomes whether the limit will be respected, or whether it will be abused in the name of chasing wins.
The Lions announced earlier in the day that they have signed linebacker Jack Campbell to a four-year extension. Now, details of the deal have emerged.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that the extension is worth $81 million, with $51.5 million guaranteed. Campbell’s $20.25 million annual average ranks second for an off-ball linebacker behind only Fred Warner, whose deal with the 49ers pays him $21 million a season.
Campbell is now under contract through 2030.
The Lions declined the fifth-year option for the 2027 season that would have paid Campbell $21.925 million.
Campbell, the No. 18 overall pick in 2023, has appeared in 51 games with 46 starts.
In 2025, Campbell earned All-Pro honors for the first time after totaling 176 tackles, nine tackles for loss, five sacks, four passes defensed, three forced fumbles and two fumble recoveries.
The Lions did not exercise linebacker Jack Campbell’s fifth-year option before the deadline earlier this month.
But the team is nevertheless keeping him around for years to come.
Detroit announced on Thursday that the club has signed Campbell to a four-year contract extension through the 2030 season.
Other terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed.
Campbell, the No. 18 overall pick of the 2023 draft, has become one of the top players on Detroit’s defense. He’s appeared in all 51 games for which he’s been eligible with 46 starts.
In 2025, Campbell became an AP first-team All-Pro for the first time, recording 176 total tackles with nine tackles for loss, 5.0 sacks, four passes defensed, three forced fumbles, and two fumble recoveries.
Campbell has tallied 19 total TFLs with 8.5 sacks, 13 QB hits, 10 passes defensed, and four forced fumbles in his career.
The Lions signed free agent wide receiver Cedrick Wilson, the team announced Wednesday.
The team also signed Greg Dortch earlier this offseason for depth purposes.
Wilson, 30, spent last season with the Dolphins, appearing in 10 games with five starts. He caught five passes for 44 yards, while seeing action on 206 offensive snaps and 21 on special teams.
Wilson entered the NFL as a sixth-round pick of the Cowboys in 2018, and he spent four seasons in Dallas. In 2021, he caught 45 passes for 602 yards and six touchdowns. That prompted the Dolphins to sign Wilson to a three-year, $22.1 million deal.
He has never had even a 300-yard season in his eight seasons.
In his career, Wilson has 126 receptions for 1,524 yards and 12 touchdowns.
On September 17, the legendary Al Michaels will call the first game at yet another stadium, when the Bills christen their new home against the Lions. It will be the tenth time Michaels has cut the ribbon on a new venue.
“This was a game Amazon really pushed for because it would be so cool to open a stadium, and it’s also another Zelig moment for me,” Michaels told Richard Deitsch of Sports Business Journal. “In my career at NBC and at Disney, I did the regular season opener in Foxboro [Gillette Stadium]. It was John Madden and I and that was our first game together. We opened up the Linc in Philadelphia. We did the first game in Dallas at Jerry World. I did the first game when they refurbished Soldier Field in Chicago. I did the first regular season game at Levi’s Stadium. And Chris Collinsworth and I opened up SoFi Stadium in 2020, the pandemic year. It was Dallas at the Rams with no fans.”
There will be plenty of fans in the building for the first true Thursday night game of 2026. (Unless hantavirus becomes a thing. Or Ebola.)
“We know how passionate that fan base is in Buffalo and they’ve been able to weather through, in a manner of speaking, all of those years at what used to be Rich Stadium,” Michaels said. “There’s going to be a tremendous buzz going on in that community. I mean, the renderings look beautiful. So that is going to be a fantastic night in Buffalo.”
Michaels also worked the first games at the current stadiums in Atlanta, Minnesota, and Indianapolis.
After finishing the last season of his three-year contract with Prime Video, Michaels and Amazon decided to keep it going for 2025 and, now, for 2026.
“It’s tough to walk away,” Michaels said. “But I do know one thing: If I walk away, I’m going to do it the way John Madden did it and just say, ‘It’s time.’ I don’t need any sort of tour or whatever.”
Frankly, it doesn’t feel like football season has started until I hear Al’s voice. And football season will never feel the same, for me and many others, once Al decides to walk away.
