Tampa Bay Bucs secondary injuries could alter Detroit Lions offensive approach

Detroit Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn was happy with how his group played in last week's win over the Los Angeles Rams .

He liked what they did in the red zone (holding the Rams to two touchdowns on five trips), liked the way they limited big plays (five, by his count) and liked that they were able to stifle the Rams' running game (3.6 yards per carry).

But Glenn said Thursday there are two major improvements he wants to see from his defense in this Sunday's game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

"We’ve got to tackle a lot better than we did, and I understand it’s the first game but there are no excuses for that," Glenn said. "Secondly, there are a lot of opportunities that we had to make some big plays. I’m talking about on the quarterback and on the ball, and we didn’t execute those opportunities so we’ve got to do a better job of that."

The Lions dropped two would-be interceptions and let Matthew Stafford slip away from two sacks last week, and in each case a different one of the Lions' best players was the culprit. Aidan Hutchinson and Marcus Davenport missed sacks, and Carlton Davis and Brian Branch dropped picks.

The Rams failed to score on all four of those drives, so the Lions didn't get burned by their mistakes. But Glenn said it's important they do a better job of finishing going forward.

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"Listen, Hutch had one, Davenport had one, and they were just missed opportunities," he said. "And we put those in that category of big plays. That’s another thing I didn’t even talk about were the big plays. I think we only gave up five in this game, but yeah, we had two interceptions that we should have had also. Those are missed opportunities. But when we get a chance to get our hands on the quarterback, we got to wrap him up and we got to bring him down."

All three Lions coordinators met with reporters Thursday. Here are more highlights from their media sessions:

Drop the base

Nickel defense (five defensive backs on the field) has become the primary defense for most NFL teams, but the Lions played the majority of their snaps in base defense last week.

Glenn said the Lions went bigger on defense — slot cornerback Amik Robertson played 36 of 78 defensive plays — in an effort to limit the Rams' rushing attack, an approach he borrowed from former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick.

"The reason why we did that is we wanted to dictate the game," Glenn said. "There are certain runs that they have that’s tough. You go across the league and watch how they play against these other teams, that are tough to really stop in just true nickel defense.

"So we actually did what we wanted to do and forced this to be a finesse game, for them to pass it. Cause we knew he was going to pass for some yards. I take that from Coach Belichick, make teams left-handed and force them to do something else and we did that."

Guessing game

Preparing for a Todd Bowles defense is always difficult, but that task could be extra challenging for the Lions this week given Tampa's injury woes.

Pro Bowl safety Antoine Winfield is expected to miss Sunday's game with a foot injury, and the Bucs lost three cornerbacks to injury in last week's win over the Washington Commanders: Zyon McCollum is in concussion protocol, Josh Hayes missed practice Wednesday with an ankle injury and Bryce Hall is out for the season.

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"You’re always guessing when it comes to Coach Bowles schematically," Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson said. "He, probably more so than anybody in the league, plays the largest amount of defense. The greatest amount of volume. I mean, just today being third-down day, you look at last year and they played almost every coverage known to man, and different variations of it.

"And so I think in and of itself the scheme is extremely challenging, and then when they combine the good players that they have with that scheme, I said it last year the first time we played them in the regular season and in the postseason, this is a dangerous team. And so we’ll see who they have available here on Sunday but more than anything, we have to handle all the variety of looks that they can present to us, first and second down and third down."

The Lions strayed from the run and leaned heavily on the pass in both games against the Bucs last season, attempting 87 passes against 48 runs.

Asked if the volume of Bowles' defense means he'll have more or less on his call sheet than usual this week, Johnson smiled and said, "I can't give that away."

Sloppy seconds

Lions coach Dan Campbell wasn't overly alarmed by some of the sloppiness his team showed in the passing game last week, but Johnson said Thursday that it being Week 1 was no excuse for his unit's performance.

"Truthfully, I think we’re all disappointed by it," he said. "We’ve been together long enough that, yeah, we all know it’s Game 1 and we knew it wasn’t going to be our best performance of the year but there were still a number of things that popped up that just weren’t us, characteristic of us and how we play. More so than any schematics or anything like that, it was really how we play ball. And so we’ll get those things corrected and hopefully have some better results going forward."

The Lions were 1-for-7 converting on third-and-4 or longer against the Rams, and quarterback Jared Goff threw one interception, almost another, and had some problems with what he termed "operational stuff" that led to pre-snap penalties.

"That’s an emphasis going into this week and where we can improve," Johnson said. "The good news is this, when it came down to crunch time, our guys stepped up."

Jack in the box

Jack Fox had two touchbacks on his four punts last week, but still netted an impressive 47.5 yards per punt — a number that would have been even bigger had Ennis Rakestraw been able to down a punt Fox landed with backspin inside the 5-yard line.

"He is a great player and you kind of get used to just having him out there but as soon as he’s not there, you’ll learn real quick what the difference is," special teams coordinator Dave Fipp said. "And he had a major impact in the game, really the last two times that we played them, and the last couple times that we played Tampa Bay also he’s had very good games for us."

After using Fox on kickoffs most of the past three seasons, the Lions plan to keep Fox away from those duties this year. Rookie Jake Bates handled kickoffs against the Rams, when he had four touchbacks and pinned the Rams inside the 20 on his fifth kickoff, an inadvertent squib.

"I’ve always felt like the kicker should be the guy kicking off," Fipp said. "That’s really his skill set, that’s what he does. It’s very similar to field goal in terms of the style of kick, obviously much different than a punt. But I've also said that it doesn’t really matter, whatever’s the best thing for the football team is what we’re going to do.

"And so in years past, Fox has really just had kind of a bigger leg than those other guys out there, so he put our team in a better situation with him kicking off, and then right now with Bates we obviously — he’s got a big leg also and can kick the ball and place the ball where we want to, so we feel really good about him doing it also. So I would prefer it to be that way in general, just cause it’s more aligned with his skill set. But I would never say never. Put the best player out there."

Dave Birkett is the author of the new book, " Detroit Lions : An Illustrated Timeline." Preorder it now from Reedy Press .

Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com . Follow him on X and Instagram at @davebirkett .

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tampa Bay Bucs secondary injuries could alter Detroit Lions offensive approach