Dan Campbell believes the Lions face 'hard decision' on James Houston

As the Lions wrap the preseason and move onto the difficult task of whittling the roster down from 90 to 53 plays by Tuesday afternoon, one of the biggest decisions involves the fate of EDGE James Houston. Based on what head coach Dan Campbell said after the Lions’ preseason win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, it’s not going to be an easy choice with the pass rush specialist.

Houston is indeed a difficult decision. From failing to make the team as a 6th-round rookie two years ago to emerging as an astonishing sack machine in the final six games of that 2022 season after being called up from the practice squad, Houston has proven enigmatic. That was certainly true in 2023, when he started training camp as the starting DE opposite Aidan Hutchinson but played his way down to working with the third-team defense by the second preseason contest.

Then he got hurt in Week 2 while playing special teams, not an area of strength for Houston to begin with. The ankle injury effectively wiped out the rest of his season. This summer, he’s battled different injuries, including a recent knee issue that kept him out for over a week. The Lions tried to move the 6-foot-1, 245-pounder to a SAM backer role in each of the last two offseasons, but it never took. Houston is grossly undersized for what the Lions desire at defensive end, but the attempts to broaden his positional range didn’t work in their eyes.

In the preseason finale against the Steelers, Houston showed why he’s still got a chance. He bagged one sack on a great play that showed his quickness, closing burst and a welcome dose of positional discipline,

Despite that impressive play, Houston is not safely on the Lions’ 53-man roster. Campbell made that clear in his postgame press conference.

Here’s the full answer from Campbell when asked about Houston:

“That’s a good question because we really didn’t have him a lot of camp. He was hurt, so we didn’t get to see him at Kansas City this week. So, he’s probably had maybe half of training camp, if that, somewhere in there. So, you still have to go off the totality of what it is. We understand he’s a year-three player that – we have to take the body of work that is taking place in practice against our very good tackles. We got two of the best tackles in the League that he has to go against.

You take those and then you take a little bit of what you say today, ‘OK, well what does the health look like? Can he still move? Is it.’ But, I think, look, that’s going to be a hard decision for (Lions GM) Brad (Holmes) and myself, you know it is, one way or another. That’s kind of what you are asking, ‘Is it enough?’ It’s hard to say that right now. This will be a lot of the things that we hash out between the two of us, the coaching staff, all of it. Like, we got to make sure we’re seeing it clearly.”

Houston is on the roster bubble; that much is clear. Whether that bubble pops appears undecided as of yet.