The Lions lost a receiver to an injury at practice this week and they moved to replace him on the roster on Thursday.
The team announced the signing of Kyre Duplessis to the 90-man roster. The news comes shortly after Lions head coach Dan Campbell announced that fifth-round pick Kendrick Law will miss the season with a torn ACL.
Duplessis is an undrafted free agent who played at Delaware in 2025. He spent four seasons at Coastal Carolina before transferring and recording 60 catches for 824 yards and five touchdowns.
The new Lion will vie for a spot on the depth chart that also features Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams, Isaac TeSlaa, Cedrick Wilson, and Greg Dortch.
Lions Clips
Lions rookie wideout Kendrick Law will have to wait until 2027 to make his NFL debut.
Head coach Dan Campbell said at a Thursday press conference that Law tore his ACL during a practice this week. Law will miss the entire season as a result of the injury.
The Lions selected Law in the fifth round of this year’s draft. He had 53 catches for 540 yards and three touchdowns at Kentucky last season. Law spent three seasons at Alabama before transferring within the SEC.
Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams, Isaac TeSlaa, Cedrick Wilson, and Greg Dortch are the top remaining wideouts in Detroit.
Former Dolphins General Manager Chris Grier has found a new job in Detroit.
Grier has joined the Lions’ front office as a personnel executive, according to Adam Schefter.
The 56-year-old Grier had spent a decade as the Dolphins’ GM before he was fired last season, the day after a Thursday Night Football loss to the Ravens dropped the Dolphins to 2-7. In all, Grier spent 25 years with the Dolphins, rising up their scouting department before becoming GM. Before that he was a scout for the Patriots.
Grier will work for Lions General Manager Brad Holmes, who is heading into his sixth season leading the front office in Detroit.
Veteran tight end Anthony Firkser has found a new team.
The Commanders announced that they have signed Firkser to their 90-man roster on Tuesday. They waived wide receiver Ja’Corey Brooks in a corresponding move.
Firkser had eight catches for 53 yards in seven games with the Lions last season. He also played two games for the Lions in 2023 and split the 2024 season between the Jets and the Chiefs. He had nine catches for 100 yards in 11 games for the Falcons in 2022.
Firkser spent his first four NFL seasons with the Titans and had 106 catches for 1,107 yards and five touchdowns.
Brooks signed with Washington as an undrafted free agent in 2025 and spent the season on the practice squad.
With the Lions moving on from Taylor Decker earlier this offseason, Penei Sewell is now set to move over to left tackle for the 2026 season.
While he’s primarily played right tackle in the league, Sewell is not a stranger to the left side, having played on that side in college. He’s also made some spot starts for Detroit at the position over his first five pro seasons.
Late last week, head coach Dan Campbell said Sewell has handled the full-time transition well so far.
“[H]e’s been working it even being back home before we started [the] offseason [program], once I gave him the words,” Campbell said in his press conference, via transcript from the team. “So, it’ll be like riding a bike for him. Will it be things he’ll have to learn? Yeah, of course there will be. But I mean he has played left. That’s muscle memory.
“He played a lot of left in college and for us for those in ’21, those first few games. And he still took reps at left even over the last five years, so that’ll be seamless. That’ll be seamless. Sewell can do it all.”
Since Detroit made him the No. 7 overall pick in the 2021 draft, Sewell has started all 83 games he’s played. He’s been an AP first-team All-Pro in each of the last three seasons and a Pro Bowler for each of the last four.
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 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.
