The Detroit Lions' defensive concerns went from bad to worse in Week 4. Already having entered Sunday's matchup against the Carolina Panthers ranked at the bottom of most defensive metrics, the Lions failed to show any signs of improvement. If anything, they delivered their worst defensive performance of the season, giving up 445 yards and 32 points to a mediocre, short-handed team.
Understandably, defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard is receiving the lion's share of criticism. But head coach Dan Campbell refused to talk about Sheppard's job security after the loss.
When asked whether and when he would consider a change at defensive coordinator, Campbell said, "I'm not talking about all that, man. I'm talking about getting better right now with what we got and that's what we're going do. We're going to find a way to get better with what we got, per Lions on SI's John Maakaron.
On the one hand, it's understandable that Campbell doesn't want to throw Sheppard under the bus publicly. There is little reason to discuss these things in front of the media.
On the other hand, Campbell's answers week in and week out have been the same tired platitudes. At some point, Lions fans deserve more than cliché coachspeak, especially after you allow more yards through four weeks than the 0-16 Lions in 2008.
Dan Campbell needs to stop with coachspeak and solve the Lions' defensive woes
In his opening statement after the game, Campbell said that they had the opportunities to win the game, and added, "Our defense came up with a stop and we had the ball with about two minutes left to go win the game and we just couldn't get it done."
How many times have Lions fans heard this type of statement? How many times has Campbell praised the defense for a play towards the end of the game and said they still had a chance to win the game?
This shouldn't fool anyone. The defense didn't give the Lions a chance to win this game. Detroit could still have won because the offense can still be very potent, but that has nothing to do with what Sheppard's unit did.
The main problem here is that Campbell isn't even identifying what the problem is. He was asked whether the Lions have the right personnel on defense.
He responded with, "I'm not even going to worry about all that. My job is to get these guys going, man...We're four games in. There again, we just have to find a way to get better. I thought we would play better than we did last week and as a whole we didn't."
To a question about how he can feel confident in the team's ability to get better on defense, Campbell said that there are other things that they could do and added, "It's all a work in progress. You just keep working through it and find a way to improve. We didn't today. It wasn't good enough."
Detroit hasn't had an above-average defense in terms of yards allowed in the Dan Campbell era. They have consistently been a bottom-half defensive unit. It has never been as bad as this season, but there is no proven track record of defensive competence for the fanbase to feel good about their chances of improving.
So, it's difficult to trust Campbell and Sheppard to have the magic formula to fix things. It's not even clear that the coaching staff knows what the problem is, which should be the biggest area of concern going forward.
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