Lions Seeking to Improve in Three Key Areas
Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell spent a portion of the bye week learning about his team and examining areas the team can improve at and execute better.
Speaking for the first time ahead of the team's Week 10 contest against the Los Angeles Chargers, Detroit's third-year head coach revealed three key areas he would like to see improved over the course of the final nine games of the regular season.
"I think the obvious is sort of the turnover-takeaway ratio. We need to be better on both sides. Red zone, both sides. And, there's a number of reasons behind that which I'm not going to get into," said Campbell. "And then third-quarter production or lack thereof. We can be better on both sides.
"I think those are the three things that we kind of came away with," Campbell continued. "There's other areas, but those were the big ones collectively as a team. I know that for special teams, we've got to get (Kalif Raymond) 'Lif' going. We're so close. We've been close. But, man, we are. You know, we're one block away. We're just, you know, we're close. But, we've got to start breaking some of these with him on the return game."
Last season, Detroit's offense was among the best at converting in the red zone.
This season, there has been a clear drop-off in execution on both sides of the football in the red zone.
Currently, the Lions' offense is 24th in the league in red-zone touchdown percentage at 48.2 percent. The defense, meanwhile, is 26th in red-zone touchdown percentage at 65.4 percent.
When asked to elaborate, Campbell expressed that a fair amount of self-induced errors have been costly.
"I think we need to do better on third down. But, some of that is because second down isn't good, right? You're getting some of these long situations defensively. It's really on both sides," said Campbell. "They're self-induced, and so that's the tough part of it. But, it's also an encouraging part.
"We can clean all these things up. So, we'll certainly be able to convert or making them manageable conversions. We get them in third- and-long defensively -- you can't, we can't allow them to to do it. There's a couple of things that have shown up and it really is. Whether it's a turnover or it's a penalty on offense, like a holding or it's a DPI or something. Those have kind of bit us a little bit there. So, those are all things we can clean up."
Alleviating errors will certainly go a long way for a football team that is seeking to earn home-field advantage throughout the postseason.
On multiple occasions, Campbell has expressed his desire to have his football team playing and executing its best by the time December rolls around.
"I would say we have not played our best football collectively, offense, defense and special teams," Campbell indicated.
The first test comes against a Chargers team that will be featured this week on Monday Night Football against the New York Jets.
"So, we got to play a clean game. You know, we've got to come out with no turnovers. We need to get our takeaways back," Campbell said. "We talked about red zone and those things. We need a fast start."
