The Cade Mays news for the Detroit Lions on Monday was brutal. There’s no other way to put it. It sucks. The Lions lost their top free agent signing at a position where they desperately needed someone to come in and be the guy, and the immediate reaction from fans was predictable: why can’t this team stay healthy?

I get it. I really do. But I think a lot of what’s happening here is a frequency illusion. You notice it more than you’ve ever noticed it before because it’s something that has happened a lot in the last two years. You get this idea that it’s only happening to the Lions. That was one of the big takeaways from fans on Monday. “Why does this only happen to us?”

But it’s not just a Lions thing. The Saints just lost their starting center. The Commanders just lost their starting left tackle, both for the season. Both of them are done. Other teams are losing guys at a rapid rate. This is just part of the game.

The violence narrative has flipped

Lions fans have been rallying around this idea for years that Detroit is too violent at practice during training camp, too intense during this time period. It’s weird how it changed, because if you go back to 2021 and 2022 when we started to learn this is how the Lions practice, fans loved it. Could not get enough of it. They ate it up. There’s a famous Hard Knocks speech by Dan Campbell that fans absolutely loved.

Then it turned into, “No, this is the problem. This is the only problem.” 49ers linebacker Fred Warner goes on Amon-Ra St. Brown’s podcast and talks about how the Lions need to stop doing that. Lions fans latched onto it, and now it’s this idea that all the injuries come from training camp or are attached to it in some way because they’re going too intense.

Maybe there’s some truth to that. Maybe not. I remember thinking there was something to it as well. Then last year I talked to the Bone and Joint Institute of Tennessee’s director of rehabilitation services, Dave Kempfert, who also used to play for the Jacksonville Jaguars, about it. I asked him if the Lions are going too hard, if that’s why all these injuries are happening. He disputed that idea.

“If you’re not used to all that bruising, sudden starts, stops, and cutting, taking on collisions, learning how to get up at full speed, it makes a difference in how you perform. There are limits to how often you want to do it. But I think you have to prepare your body for those things,” Kempfert said.

That changed my entire outlook on this whole thing. You don’t want to just go out there and take it easy and do nothing. But you also don’t want to be hitting nonstop all the time.

This is the least violent Lions training camp of the Dan Campbell era

The point I’m trying to get to here is the Lions may be feeling the same way some of their fans have been feeling. I know it’s hard for every fan to get out to training camp and see what’s going on, but this year, the Lions are not the same team they were in 2024, 2023, 2022, or 2021 when it comes to practicing during training camp.

This has been the least violent training camp I have seen covering this team during the Dan Campbell era. It used to be hit, hit, and more hit. Hitting in individual drills. Hit and take to the ground during team drills. Hit and take to the ground everywhere. Do not stop hitting each other.

It’s not like that anymore. There’s still some hitting in team drills, but it’s minimal. Very little actual take-to-the-ground tackling. Don’t get me wrong, it’s happening. I saw Devin White lay a crazy hit on Brock Wright on Monday, hit him so hard he flew out of bounds. You’re still going to see some of that stuff. But you’re only going to see it in certain sections. There isn’t much hitting in the 7-on-7s. There isn’t much hitting in the 1-on-1s. There isn’t much hitting in individual drills. It’s just not what it was.

So when injuries come out of camp this summer, and fans go back to the same well about the violence at training camp, that’s just not what’s happening. Injuries happen. It is impossible to have a completely uninjured team. There is no such thing as a team that goes through an entire training camp, regular season, or playoffs without a single injury. It cannot be done.

Detroit is better prepared this time

The good news is the Lions were significantly more prepared this season for something like this than they were last season when Frank Ragnow abruptly retired. Last year the Lions had no plan. It was Graham Glasgow and hope for the best. Now they have Juice Scruggs, who has actually played well at center, and they have Seth McLaughlin, the Rimington Award winner at Ohio State in 2024. That’s the best center in college football. The only reason he went undrafted is because he had a ruptured Achilles, which he seems to have recovered from. Detroit is in a much better spot than before.

I know some fans want to be mad. They want to know which defensive lineman chopped Mays. But it doesn’t matter because the defensive lineman was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing, trying to get to the quarterback. If he had chopped some center during a game, you’d be cheering him on. He made a move, and it was a freak injury. There’s no way to avoid them. This is just where it’s at right now.

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