Sports blog information from USA TODAY.
Terrion Arnold downgraded by Lions, will miss Week 12 against the Colts
The Lions will be without starting CB Terrion Arnold for Sunday’s game against the Indianapolis Colts. Arnold was downgraded by the team’s medical staff and ruled out for Week 12.
Arnold suffered a groin injury during Thursday’s practice. He was initially ruled as questionable for the game.
Fellow rookie CB Ennis Rakestraw is also out with a hamstring issue suffered in practice on Friday. Kindle Vildor and Khalil Dorsey will move up the depth chart.
One key question for the Lions against the Colts in Week
The Colts offensive line will be out three starters:
The Lions front-seven is missing these players from the start of the season:
At the LB position, the Lions will rely heavily on former 1st-rounder, 2nd-year player Jack Campbell and 3rd-year player Malcolm Rodriguez. Both played ≥ 90% of snaps last game when Alex Anzalone fractured his forearm. Keeping those two healthy may be crucial until Anzalone returns in about six weeks.
With QB Anthony Richardson posing a powerful, fast rushing threat, can the Lions contain him without Anzalone, their fastest LB? The Lions secondary, which includes two excellent safeties (Brian Branch, Kerby Joseph), may be called on to fill the speed void.
At the DE position, the Lions added Za’Darius Smith in a trade two weeks ago and he played 77% of snaps last game. Josh Paschal starts at the other DE spot and played 88% of snaps. Rotating in will be James Houston and Levi Onwuzurike.
At DT, the Lions rely on Alim McNeill (83% snaps last game) and DJ Reader (58% snaps). Pat O’Connor and 6th-round rookie Mekhi Wingo will rotate in.
Pressuring the passer has been a concern for the Lions since the loss of Hutchinson. Can the Lions defensive line win against the Colts offensive line and get quick pressures on the 2nd-year QB who is still finding his bearings?
The Detroit Lions lose rookie CB Ennis Rakestraw for Week 12 with late-week hamstring injury
There was a surprising and unfortunate addition to the Detroit Lions injury list for Week 12. After being a full participant all week until Friday, rookie cornerback Ennis Rakestraw was ruled out of Sunday’s game against the Indianapolis Colts with a hamstring injury.
It’s a new occurrence of an old injury bug that has bitten Rakestraw since before he joined the Lions as a second-round pick in April. He missed time over the summer with a hamstring injury and dealt with several injury issues throughout his college career at Missouri.
Rakestraw plays more on special teams than on Detroit’s defense, so it’s not a significant loss for the Lions against the Colts. However, with starter Carlton Davis already dealing with a broken thumb, it’s still concerning. Davis, like Rakestraw this week and Taylor Decker in Week 10, suffered his injury in practice during the week heading into Detroit’s Week 11 matchup with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The Week 12 broadcast map shows FOX still thinks Dallas is a major draw and that nobody outside of locals wants to watch the Detroit Lions
The Detroit Lions are the best team in the NFC in 2024. Entering Week 12, the Lions are 9-1, own the best point differential in the league and have become a major draw around the country. The Dallas Cowboys are 3-7, have the third-worst point differential and haven’t been fun to watch outside of wideout CeeDee Lamb being temporarily blinded by a concentrated sunbeam as he tried to catch a pass inside their indoor stadium. Oh yeah, the Lions beat the Cowboys so soundly (47-6) that some affiliates switched off that Week 6 game in the third quarter.
Those facts seem to be lost on FOX, based on the broadcast maps (courtesy 506 Sports) that show how little of the country will get to watch the Lions play the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday. Unless you live in Michigan, Indiana, western Ohio or (weirdly) Tampa, you don’t get the Lions.
Instead, the Cowboys and Washington Commanders are your early broadcast game on the local FOX affiliate. That’s the game FOX chose to anoint as worthy of its top-billed announcing crew of Joe Davis and Greg Olsen, and it will go out to nearly all of the country.
The markets in green get the Lions-Colts, with Kenny Albert and Jonathan Vilma on the call. Blue areas are what should be a good NFC North matchup between the Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears. The red areas–nearly all of the top media markets–get the quick-fading Cowboys, who are 10.5-point road underdogs against the 7-4 Commanders.
To be fair, Washington is a fun, emerging team with a bright young QB in Jayden Daniels. But we’re going to guess the FOX execs making the decision to force-feed terrible Cowboys football on the masses didn’t pick that game so folks could watch Washington…
Recently signed LB Ezekiel Turner earns Lions’ special teams coach Dave Fipp’s trust in replacing injured Jalen Reeves-Maybin
During the Detroit Lions’ 52-6 blowout win over the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 11, fans might have noticed No. 47 in Honolulu Blue racing all over the field on special teams. That was Ezekiel Turner, signed to the active roster after a stint on the Lions’ practice squad.
Turner had a very impressive game on coverage units in Ford Field. The lightweight LB (he’s listed at 214 pounds) technically made his Detroit debut against Houston, facing the team he began the 2024 campaign with in Week 10 as a practice squad elevation. He only played on special teams against the Texans, but Turner snuck in a few defensive reps against the Jaguars after being signed to Detroit’s 53-man roster.
The 28-year-old Turner spent his first six NFL seasons playing primarily special teams for the Arizona Cardinals. He was effectively the Arizona version of longtime Lions special teams stalwart and reserve LB Jalen Reeves-Maybin.
As special teams coordinator Dave Fipp explained, Turner was a very natural and obvious player to get into the lineup when Reeves-Maybin went down with an injury. The veteran Reeves-Maybin was placed on I.R. ahead of Week 10 with a neck injury.
“He really has a very similar game to Jalen Reeves-Maybin and they both play personal protector, they’ve actually both played in the same punt system,” Fipp told reporters. “Us and Arizona kind of use the same terminology, system, very similar in that regard.”
The similarities extend beyond just the vernacular, and that has helped Fipp integrate Turner quickly into Reeves-Maybin’s important shoes on special teams.
“They are also very aggressive with the fakes and all that stuff, so he has experience doing all that for them,” Fipp stated. “Just the way he covers, the way he plays the game is very similar to Jalen Reeves-Maybin, so it was like just a natural slide in and fit. So, it was an easy decision for us. He’s super smart and intelligent. I’ve got a lot of confidence and faith and trust in him already, in a very short period of time. The special teams coach from Arizona (Jeff Rodgers) sent me a text message and said, ‘I don’t know if I trust another guy more than I trust him,’ and that’s a guy I respect quite a bit.”
With Alex Anzalone now out, Turner could get called upon for more defensive work in Week 12.
Lions swap practice squad safeties, add Detroit-area native Kaevon Merriweather and release Erick Hallett
In a minor move at the bottom of the roster, the Detroit Lions made a swap of safeties on the team’s practice squad.
On the incoming side, Detroit added Kaevon Merriweather to the practice squad. Erick Hallett has now been released from Detroit.
Merriweather has extensive NFL experience on special teams in his two seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He led the Buccaneers in special teams tackles as an undrafted rookie in 2023. The Detroit-area native (graduated from Belleville HS) was a college teammate of Lions tight end Sam LaPorta at Iowa. With Ifeatu Melifonwu spending at least four more weeks on injured reserve, the Lions still have a pressing need for safety depth.
Goff is among the league leaders in many statistical categories, but he only cares about two of them
Jared Goff is in the midst of a fantastic season statistically. The Lions quarterback is putting up incredible numbers across the statistical spectrum.
In Detroit’s Week 11 romp over Jacksonville, Goff became the first quarterback in NFL history to post two games with at least 400 passing yards, 4 TDs, and a perfect passer rating. He tied Dan Marino for the most games in the first nine seasons with at least 350 passing yards with his 412 against the Jaguars.
The stats are outstanding, but Goff chooses to focus on just a narrow couple of metrics when he evaluates his game. Yards and TDs are great, but that’s not what Goff worries about.
“Yeah, I think I’m definitely aware of completion percentage and sacks,” Goff told reporters this week. “Those are the two that really matter to me. The other stuff’s fun too, obviously the bigger numbers, but if my completion percentage is high and I’m not taking sacks, then we’re in pretty good shape.”
Goff currently ranks second in completion percentage at 73.0 percent, just behind Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa. He leads the NFL in yards per attempt at 9.2, which makes the high completion percentage all the more impressive. The sack rate of 6.25 percent is in the middle of the NFL pack, though Goff has been sacked just once in the last three games.
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Lions coach Dan Campbell sees Malcolm Rodriguez and Jack Campbell taking on bigger roles with Alex Anzalone’s injury
As the season continues, the Lions defense seems to be getting thinner and thinner amid injuries. The trend continued last week when linebacker Alex Anzalone broke his forearm against the Jaguars; he will be out 6-8 weeks.
The Lions now have to fill a hole at linebacker, and Dan Campbell calls upon Malcolm Rodriguez.
“Yeah, it’s very important. I mean, he really does become somewhat the next man up,” Campbell said.
Rodriguez, a third-year man out of Oklahoma State, has made a name for himself in Detroit, becoming a fan favorite. So far throughout the season, he has tallied 16 solo tackles and two sacks in seven games after missing time with an injury of his own.
Alongside Rodriquez, Campbell looks to another young linebacker, Jack Campbell, to take on a bigger role as well.
“I mean, he and Jack (Campbell) are going to take on the – Jack’s been playing with Alex in a heavy load, but it’s really Jack and Malcolm. I mean, those are the two that are – they’re going to take on the heaviest load of that whole room,” Campbell said.
It will be interesting to see how the two youngsters step up to the occasion and it is clear that Dan Campbell has high expectations for Rodriguez.
“He’ll be big for us and he’s going to be big the rest of the season, it doesn’t matter who we get back, we’re going to use him. He helps us there on defense and he helps us on special teams,” Campbell said.
Lions vs Colts: Wednesday injury report medical analysis of the practice participation report for both teams
In their last game, the Lions lost Alex Anzalone for a few weeks due to a forearm fracture. Fortunately, the Wednesday report offers no other significant injuries coming out of the Jaguars game (see my postgame report for injury videos).
While the Colts injury report is short, they are hurting along the offensive line with two starters on IR, another starter who missed last game with a knee, and another starter with a new foot injury.
Estimated report since the team only had a walkthrough.
After missing one game with a left AC joint sprain, Dan Campbell stated on Wednesday that LaPorta is “questionable to above… it’s trending the right way”. While the FP is only an estimate, it strongly suggests LaPorta will be playing on Sunday.
Davis broke his left thumb last week in practice and played the entire first half vs the Jaguars in a thumb splint. He was pulled for the second half presumably as a precaution. The FP today confirms that there was no significant aggravation of the thumb and he’ll play vs the Colts.
Robinson hit his head late in the Jaguars game and was slow in getting up. The FP today would mean he was not diagnosed with a concussion and should be available on Sunday.
Zylstra left the Jaguars game late in the fourth quarter. The video did not show anything serious, but a neck listing is always concerning for a spinal issue. The FP today reassures that it’s not spinal and most likely just a soft tissue strain.
Moseley tore his pec in August and opened his 21-day practice window on November 6. Expect him to remain in the practice window through the weekend and moved to the active roster early next week before Thanksgiving.
Having yet to play this year, here is his timeline:
-August 17: Suspected Achilles tendonitis
-September 28: Placed on IR
-November 6: Practice window opened
-November 14: Finger injury showed up on injury report
-November 18: Activated off IR temporarily
-November 19: Back on IR presumably for the finger injury
-December 22: Eligible to return vs Bears
This second-year player suffered a right knee hyperextension on August 24 and has yet to play this year. As expected, he was activated to the roster on Tuesday from his IR practice window. That doesn’t mean he’s going to play this weekend though. It still depends on his overall physical/mental readiness and where the coaches view him on the depth chart.
Estimated report since the team only had a walkthrough.
This starting LT missed last game with an unspecified knee injury. The NP on Wednesday does not bode well for the weekend.
This starting RT has played every game this year but the foot is a new listing. Let’s see if he downgrades or upgrades over the week.
Lewis has not played in the last seven games while on IR. He had his 21-day practice window opened just today which makes it very unlikely he’ll play vs the Lions.
Pittman has been dealing with a back issue for a few weeks. He still played in their last game and should play again on Sunday. He has 35 catches for 412 yards on the year.
Ryan Kelly, starting center, is on IR and has missed the last two games.
Will Fries, starting OG, is on IR and has missed the last six games.
Lions injury update: All players active at Wednesday’s practice ahead of the Week 12 matchup with the Colts
Something very unusual happened at the Detroit Lions practice facility in Allen Park on Wednesday.
Every single player on the active roster practiced. All 53 players, including freshly activated defensive tackle Brodric Martin, were designated as full participants in Wednesday’s session, which was a walkthrough instead of a full contact practice.
Five players did get injury designations along with their full practice notations:
CB Carlton Davis (thumb)
TE Sam LaPorta (shoulder)
CB Emmanuel Moseley (pectoral)
WR Allen Robinson (concussion protocol)
TE Shane Zylstra (neck)
LaPorta missed the Week 11 win over the Jaguars. Davis played the first half with his broken thumb. Robinson and Zylstra suffered their injuries during that Jacksonville game.
Moseley remains on injured reserve. He was designated to return at the same time as Ifeatu Melifonwu, who was activated Monday but then immediately placed on injured reserve once again with a different injury. Moseley’s 21-day activation clock ends next week, after the Lions play the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday.
