Dan Campbell gives a sneak peek of the Lions’ game plan to stop Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry, and there are levels to it
It won’t be easy, but it can be done
If you’re a football fan and you’re not watching the Detroit Lions take on the Baltimore Ravens on Monday night, I don’t know what you’re doing with your life. This has Game of the Year possibilities to it. Of course, the Lions would probably like to just go out and handle business easily and swiftly. That’s probably not going to happen.
Lions head coach Dan Campbell talked on Thursday about how this is one of those unpredictable games that could either be a shootout or a low-scoring defensive battle. Both teams have killer offenses, and both teams have defenses that are about the same.
The thing for the Lions is going to be how do you stop Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry? The Lions have two plans.
The Lions’ game plan to stop Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry
The first one is to get the ball on offense and hold onto it as long as they can.
“I want to possess the ball,” Campbell said. “And they do too. They do too, right? I mean, that goes without saying, the longer you have it offensively, and you turn that into seven, then your odds go up that you’re going to win the game.”
Pretty simple stuff, win the time of the possession game and keep the ball out of the hands of their offense. If the Lions can simply hold onto the ball for a long time and score at the end of those long drives, everything else takes care of itself. That’s what you dream of, right? But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. So how do you stop Jackson and Henry? Campbell talked about what he saw on video with the teams that have beaten the Ravens.
“Population of the football, gain tackling, you know, trying to make this guy stop his feet, which is not an easy task. I’m talking about Henry, and then they find a way to get takeaways, you know, those are the common themes. So, like it’s easy to say, it’s not always easy to do. So we know the tests in front of us the tasks that we’re given, and we accept it.”
Population of the football is a pretty easy one to understand. Whovever has the ball, everyone go get that guy. The Lions need to hit Henry with the Jordan rules. Double team, triple team, send all 11 men his way if you have to, but if he has the ball, you have to stop him. Gain tackling means that throwing shoulders at guys isn’t going to work. The Lions have to wrap up and take these guys down. Getting takeaways is also pretty self-explanatory. The good thing is that Henry has already fumbled twice this year. So attack there.
Apart from that, the Lions are getting some intel from the recently signed Malik Cunningham, who was with the Ravens this summer, and they’re also likely to continue to utilize the strategy they’ve been using with Kyle Allen, where they have him simulate the opposing quarterback. It also helps that the Lions have faced two mobile guys in back-to-back weeks. We’ll see what happens Monday night.
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