Detroit Lions Mailbag: Is Taylor Decker’s contract saying something about the future?
Answering questions on Taylor Decker, David Montgomery, and more
The Detroit Lions had a rough night on Sunday, but now it’s time to move on and start thinking about Monday night against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. We will move on right after we answer these questions.
Which running back is getting the opening drive against the Buccaneers?
The hard part here is that the Lions will never tell us that. Every time Campbell is asked about Gibbs and Montgomery, he’s pretty tight-lipped about it. What we can tell you is that for six straight weeks, it’s been Jahmyr Gibbs every single time.
Do what you will with that information, but please do not bet the mortgage on it.
Why was the defensive game plan so bad against the Chiefs?
With the injuries at the corner, the Lions had to go more zone defense than ever before. That pushed the safeties down to try to stop the explosives, but when you do that, you tend to put everything on your linebackers. These guys are usually in coverage on tight ends.
In this case, they had to stop receivers and running backs all night, and they just don’t have the speed for it. There weren’t any explosives from the Chiefs. They had one play over 20 yards, but they dinked and dunked the Lions to death. There was just no stopping it.
Where is David Montgomery?
I’m going to let Dan Campbell take this one. Go ahead, Dan. (This is from his presser on Tuesday.)
“Well, I think that’s something that I always try to look at. We certainly don’t want him – either one of them getting too much. But I know that it’s a little more tilted towards Jah right now. And a lot of that comes in the two-minute reps that we get. Now, the other day we only had six of them, but a lot of times that’s where that goes because he’s normally in on that, and that can skew it. But I don’t feel like we’ve gotten Jah too much in a game yet necessarily.
“I think he had 36 or 37 snaps the other night. And so, I feel pretty good. But as far as balancing them out, I would like to balance them out. I would. I would like to give David some more. Find a place to get him a few more. And we were hoping we were going to be able to do that in the second half, some more the other day, and it’s just kind of the way the game went. We didn’t convert on a couple of those series. We get in fourth-and-10s, and that took away some of the runs and play-passes, and then we were in a different type of game at that point.”
Is this the end for Taylor Decker and the Lions?
At this time, it feels like that will be entirely up to Decker on whether he wants to keep playing or not. Yes, the Lions do have an out in his contract after this season, but one, it’s hard to see the Lions releasing their long-time left tackle, who they love and who has consistently played well for them. Two, the out isn’t that big of an out. The Lions would still owe him somewhere in the ballpark of $10 million. That’s a lot of money.
My guess is that Decker isn’t going anywhere for at least another year. Unless the Lions win the Super Bowl in February. All bets are off at that point.
Do the Lions need a Tim Patrick type?
I think they are, but the good news is that they have that guy — his name is Isaac TeSlaa. Much like Amon-Ra St. Brown, the Lions are taking their time with TeSlaa in his rookie year.
You might not remember it now, but St. Brown didn’t get going till about Week 8 in his rookie year. So, any week now, we should probably start seeing more and more of TeSlaa. He just needs to broaden the route tree a bit.
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What exaclty happened on Sunday night?
