Speaker 0: Hey, everyone. Jefferson here with your daily DLP. It is Wednesday, May 20. Welcome to the middle of the week, hump day. Got a couple of some of those been rattling around, and we're gonna focus today's show on something that's come up in conversations I've had with folks both online and offline. You can still actually talk to people offline. It's kinda fun. It's nice. I was hanging out the other day with, my friends, watching track meet, and a couple of them asked me independently what my biggest worry about the twenty twenty six lions was. Then I did a radio show a few days ago in Cleveland, and the host asked me the same thing. I thought, since everybody seems to be asking about that, I should probably have a good answer. And, look, if you know me at all, if you've watched the show over the years, you know that my biggest fear every year I just have an existential dread of injuries, catastrophic injuries. And, unfortunately, that has come true in each of the last two seasons, and that has really bothered me. And that remains my biggest fear, existential dread of injuries. I'm hopeful that this year will change. And presuming that it does, that the starting secondary will each play at least 12 games together, that Aidan Hutchinson's gonna play a full season, that Jared Goff is gonna play a full season. Amon Ra maybe misses one game. Penay misses maybe one game. Gibbs is out there for most of the season. Like, the key players are ready to play for an entire year if that glorious situation arises, hope that it does, what would be my biggest fear then? The greatest fear for the 2026 Detroit Lions. And I have a few candidates. Cornerback play is one, and it's not that I think that they're gonna be bad. But the DG Reed that we saw after the hamstring injury, the Terryon Arnold that we saw here and there, I thought he improved a lot last year, but there's still some room to climb there. Roger McCreery coming in. I like him. Like what I saw from him in Tennessee. He's a new piece. Keith Abney, love the draft pick, but the NFL deemed that he was a fifth round draft pick. Are we all collectively, you know, fluffing him up a little bit too much because he reminds so much of Amiek Robertson And the consensus draft boards, which have their pluses and minuses, all thought that he was in tremendous value. He went a 100 pixelier than expected, roughly, because you still have to be able to cover. And with the safeties injury dread I wanna put the safety warriors with the injury dread because I think if they're healthy, I think Kirby is gonna be great. Again, I think he's got a chip on his shoulder. I think he's got something to prove there. Branch comes back after Germany. Week 11, week 12. Okay. I'm good there. Actually, I think they did a pretty good job in filling in with Christian Isian. Chuck Clark, veteran. Have a little bit of a concern that Chuck's done, that his his past year is is he's past his prime, but, you know, Thomas Harper played well last year. He did. Avante Maddox is back. Like, they've got enough bodies there that are they'll be functional. But the combination of the quarterbacks and the safeties coverage, specifically downfield coverage, that is a definite concern for me. I do think that the pass rush can mitigate it, though. I do have some worries about the pass rush. I like DJ One'em. I love that addition. Honestly, I think it's a very smart, shrewd, savvy addition by Brad Holmes for Kevin Shepherd's defense. And I think Derek Moore's gonna do well too. Hutch is Hutch. All pro. My bigger worry with the defensive front is, I guess, depth, but more to the point, how is it gonna come together? Like, Aleem, Tylik, good players. Levi, fingers crossed that he's healthy. Solid rotational piece. But how's that what is the rotation going to consist of? Are they gonna be playing with no nose tackle? You know, playing the old the old, Romeo Cornell way, the his style of defense, which is a riff on the the Bo Parcells defense where you have two, three techniques and no nose tackle. And that can work if those guys are Richard Seymour and Vince Wilfork. I don't think we have that yet. Maybe we do. It's not out of the realm of possibility, but, yeah, I think I need to see how the defensive front with the line and the linebackers, some combination of the six or seven players that will be there, how that all gels together. Because there are a lot of moving pieces and parts there, both personnel wise and schematically, and I do wonder how that's gonna fit together. And there is some concern there that it's not going to. Not a lot, but, yeah, I I have some concerns about that. Go to offense. Interior offensive line. You know, Ben Solek brought this up the other day, and I'd and it by the way, Ben was fantastic. Did a great job. Just fire hose of information there. That's Ben's style. By the way, Ben's like that off off camera too. We've we've had dinner together before, and I like to talk, and I didn't get to talk much. And it was kinda fun kinda fun to be that in that role sometimes. But he brought up the fact that Cade Mays might not work, that Tate Rallidge might not be that guy without Penny Sewell next to him. Who knows what's going on at left guard? I like Christian Mahogany. I'd like to help Christian Mahogany for the early season last year. I think people do forget he was pretty good early, and then he got hurt. And when he came back, he wasn't the same either, similar to DJ Reed. But how that all gels with Pena moving to the left side, we we're gonna have four new starters potentially across that line depending on what happens to left guard. Three and a half, anyways. We'll call we'll call Mahogany half starter. That's there look. There's as much as we like the personnel collectively, and I think we all do, I'm a big Blake Miller fan. But they but they will be great in left left tackle. I don't have a lot of worries about that. But it's a five man unit that has to come together. And they do play some defenses early that can challenge them. We don't talk a lot about the Saints and their defense, but they they've got some guys. They do. I think that's a well coached team week one. Not gonna be easy. Minnesota, Chicago, Green Bay. As much as we don't like to talk about the division foes, they all have defensive fronts and or styles that can rough up an inexperienced ungelled offensive line. And we know from watching Jared Goff over the past few years that when his protection isn't great, when the run game is getting you to third and seven, second and nine, there could be some struggles. So that is probably my biggest fear with the offense, is that offensive line. And it's not it's not that there's, like, a lack of personal options. They could wind up being very, very good, and I kind of actually expect that. But I've watched no football over the years to know that you can't accept it as a given, but I do like the options. Gonna be a very fun training camp to watch that battle play out and watch them come together against what looks like a very good defensive front. I do believe it's gonna be a good defensive front too. Again, can't take it for granted, though. Can't can't take it as a given. Have some concerns about special teams, honestly, that reared their head last year, and there's been a lot of turnover. Grant Steward is gone. I know a lot of you are like, hallelujah. We won't have to worry about him running back kicks anymore. Like, that experiment ended it it was it a thing? It's good. They tried it. Didn't work. But a lot of the a lot of the depth players that are around and working on that on those units, punt specifically blocking on punt returns and kick returns. It wasn't great last year. It's gotta come together. New return man. Leaf is gone. He's in Chicago. We have no shortage of options between Greg Dortch, Sione Vaki. There there's been some talk that Terry and Arnold can wind up running back kicks. They're they're they have certainly options for returns, but you can't give away yards. You can't give away field position. Can't have penalties. And I do have some concerns that the special teams will be a hindrance. Not worried necessarily about the specialists themselves. Bates, Fox, Hogan Hatton. I think we're good there. I think we're very good there. Bates is gonna miss a kicker too. It happens. They're kickers. They make 80 to 82%. He's a good one, folks. Not worried about him. Don't need to replace him. Actually, I do wonder if the lines are gonna bring in camp, like, not competition, but but, like, a camp leg just to get a look at somebody to see if they wanna keep them on a practice squad, have them on speed dial if there's an injury. Some teams like to do that, some teams don't. I kinda like that they do. The as much as the lions use the jugs machine to to launch balls to, you know, not have fox punting all the time, not have baits kicking all the time, okay. Like, I'm not super worried about the rest, but I do I I'd like to have backup plans. We've talked about this on the show before. I like insurance. I'm one of those weirdos. I don't mind paying for it as long as I feel like I'm getting some value for it. And that's true with depth on the team too. As far as coaching, because this was brought up to me by one of my friends. Hi, Jeff. Thanks for watching. Good question too. Drew Petzing. What's my what's my concern level with Drew Petzing as an offensive coordinator with this team and this personnel? And I would say it's very low. Some of that is because I I know Petzing. I've covered him in Cleveland. I've watched him do very good things with a very you know, peculiar set of personnel. He wasn't the OC there. Gotta keep that in mind. But I watched him work well with Baker Mayfield as a quarterback, Watched him develop David Njoku into a very good tight end. Wouldn't have minded having Chief in in Detroit. He's a good player. Very good blocker. It's weird that the narrative sticks around on him that he can't block. That was it's not 2021 anymore, folks. The guy learned. It's how he well, he was a a price free agent, why he's has earned a lot of money over the years. Because Drew Petzing instilled in him how to block. Now spin that forward. Sam Laporte is already a decent blocker. I think he can be taken to a next level. I really do. I'm excited about that, but he's gotta be healthy too. So to answer the question once and for all, yes, existential dread about injuries is still the biggest concern and always will be every year. Honestly, it doesn't matter what team I would be covering for that either. If you don't have your starting personnel in place for the majority of the season, you're just not gonna be that good. It's unrealistic to expect wide receiver four to replace wide receiver one. Oh, that does cycle me back, though. One of the things that happened last year that I hope that Dan Campbell has learned from is when guys went down, they did next man up. And we've talked about this before. Next man up is a great slogan. It's a terrible strategy. If you don't adapt your game scheme to the players you've got, you're screwed. When Sam Laporta and Brock Wright went down last season, And they asked random dude off the street, go be Sam Laporta. You go be Brock Wright. We're not adjusting the offense at all to what you offer relative to them. Yeah. That's a problem. That bothered me a lot last year, and I hope that they have learned from that. And one of my worries is that they haven't learned from that. And that that that was much more of an offensive thing than a defensive thing. And, again, maybe that's the whole John Morton, Dan Campbell control enchilada of doom that just sucked last year. I don't think it's gonna be an issue with passing, but I'm not gonna say I'm not gonna worry about it either. So that's that. We, we're supposed to do a guest today. We had to postpone recording yesterday. We are gonna record later today. Fingers crossed everything goes well. So we'll get that on Thursday. Tentatively have a live show for Thursday evening with Chris. Hopefully, that works out. I'm gonna be, I will be on the huge show on Thursday from three to six. We're doing it live remote. So, hopefully, I get home in time to be able to do that sort of thing. But, yeah. What's your biggest fear? Biggest worry about the lions? By the way, biggest fear outside of football. I am mortified of driving under stopped trains on a train trestle and clowns. Fuck clowns. That's right. We'll end the show with that. Jeff Riston signing out. Be good to one another, everybody.