Here’s a breakdown of everything I saw from the Detroit Lions’ sixth OTA practice on Thursday.
Like they did last week, the Lions opened up with a lengthy walkthrough session of about 30 minutes—which was about half of practice. Then they broke for individual/positional drills. There was a short period for special teams (kickoffs), and practice closed out with a very brief situational drill.
Because there was no full-speed 7-0n-7 session, I will not be providing many performance observations. Hard to stand out or impress when 90 percent of practice is run at 60 percent speed or lower.
Lions coach Dan Campbell said not to read into where each player is repping, be it the “starter” field or the “reserves” field. With all due respect to Campbell, that’s nearly all I can observe at this point. And as long as we can all be grown-ups and admit that this is a fluid situation, it’s okay to at least identify where things stand in early June.
On Thursday, here’s what I found interesting about where some players were repping:
LT: Giovanni Manu
LG: Miles Frazier
C: Seth McLaughlin
RG: Mason Miller
RT: Colby Sorsdal
During the situational drill, the second-team offensive line looked a little different:
LT: Devin Cochran
LG: Michael Niese
C: Seth McLaughlin
RG: Mason Miller
RT: Blake Miller
The Lions ran their first situational drill that we’ve seen this offseason, and it was a fairly simple situation:
Down 1 point, 14 seconds to go from the opponent’s 48-yard line. No timeouts left.
The first-team offense ran a draw play to Gibbs up the middle for a 5-yard gain. The offense quickly scrambled to the line and spiked the ball with five seconds left. That left Jake Bates to attempt a 61-yard field goal, which he missed wide right.
The second team, led by Teddy Bridgewater, was even less successful. The veteran quarterback essentially threw the ball away on back-to-back plays, draining the clock all the way down to one second. Detroit opted to push the field goal attempt up anyway, and Bates drilled a kick somewhere between 50-60 yards (it was impossible to tell from the end zone).
