The players are different and the reasons are too, but the Detroit Lions have a story to pay attention to that's pretty similar to something that happened last year.
Isaiah Buggs had a bad camp and preseason last summer and everyone saw it. Benito Jones had passed him up on the depth chart and he just struggled to get back in front of him. Buggs was benched for the first game of the season as a punishment for something that we never fully got the reason for, but he never really came back after that either. He wound up actually playing in just seven games and was cut.
It was hard for Lions fans to understand why this was happening since he was a big part of the Lions defensive line in 2022, but fact was that he had shown to simply be not that good of a player.
Now in 2024 the Lions could be doing the same thing again with James Houston. Houston had a breakout season in 2022, but his 8-5 sacks really hid the fact that he wasn't out there a lot and when he was, there was some struggle.
The team had embarked on a project to make him a SAM linebacker earlier that year and this summer the team finally gave up on that project after it was clear it just wasn't working out. Dan Campbell had a quote that summer that just really stuck with us some time around that decision.
"The more you can do, if he can play the SAM linebacker, or certainly a backup linebacker, and he can rush as a defensive end, and he can play some some special teams, well, he's a lock to go to the game. Like there is no question. But if you're a one trick pony and you're okay at that, but you really can't do this, and you're not really playing special teams, then, you know, what do we do with it? You know, then he's just a backup that's not going to the game. We're gonna hope that you know, well you got him if somebody gets hurt, and then it's, is that good enough? So it's just, it's always going to be that way. The more you can do your value goes up."
The Lions really went back and forth on whether or not they were going to keep him on the 53-man roster this summer and they chose to do so. But then on Sunday night he was a healthy scratch in the first game of the season. That's not a good look.
Plus we saw the guys ahead of him on the depth chart play better. That's just another strike against him. When teams start feeling liek they don't need you on the field, that is a bad sign.
Again, same situation. It's hard for Lions fans to understand because those 8.5 sacks are just locked in your head and it's easy to ignore the bad stuff, but at the end of the day there have been struggles.
It's not over until it's over though. Houston could always get active in Week 2 and go off. Good play always fixes everything, but right now it's hard to see it happening and at some point the Lions may feel that his roster spot would be better suited for a player they feel can play right now.
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