We’re just days away from the Detroit Lions needing to make final cuts. On Thursday, Lions coach Dan Campbell said that he can already think of some of the hard decisions he will have to make.

“…There’ll be tough decisions. I mean, I can think of three right now just off the top of my head, and there’s a couple more than that. It’ll be tough. It’s going to be really, really tough. But that’s, that’s part of the game, you know, that’s, that’s part of this whole process.”

The pressure isn’t on us at all, but after a month of standing on that practice field and watching these guys and the three preseason games so far, we can tell what the hard decisions will be. So here are the three guys we think Campbell is talking about:

Tim Patrick

Coming into training camp, I would have said there was no way this would happen. Then, Isaac TeSlaa impressed over and over again, showing that he can step into the WR3 role immediately. Plus, there’s the rise of Jackson Meeks, who is essentially a younger version of Patrick. All three of these players are of the same type and play the same role. Do you need all three?

You’d love a veteran presence with Patrick, but you also want to have a receiving corps full of players who can do different things. That’s why cutting Patrick and keeping Meeks and Dominic Lovett makes a lot of sense.

Hendon Hooker

It might seem easy to you, but this is a third-round pick that the Lions invested a ton of time in. Nobody in the building wants to be wrong about it. You also get the sense that they want to try one more time to help him get over his mental hurdles. That’s mostly what it is.

He’s a great athlete and is talented, but the mental stuff is hurting him. The Lions now have a few days to figure out if they want to keep or cut him, and it will come down to the wire.

The defensive line

This is a big one. The Lions have a ton of guys to sift through, and they have to figure out who’s been good enough to make the 53-man roster and who hasn’t. For the most part, it’s trying to figure out who will get the spot between Nate Lynn, Isaac Ukwu, Keith Cooper Jr., and Myles Adams.

The Lions have seen stuff from all of them this summer, and maybe they can keep two of them now that Josh Paschal is expected to start the season on the NFI. But, man, 11 or 12 defensive linemen is a lot to keep track of. You just can’t go that high. So this will be a tough choice.

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