Three games in an 11-day span around the Thanksgiving Day game isn't anything new for the Detroit Lions. But this year, the injury bug was almost crushing as multiple players missed at least one of those games or exited one of them injured.
A longer gap between Week 14 against the Green Bay Packers and Week 15 against the Buffalo Bills is automatically going to be helpful to the Lions getting injured players back healthy. Head coach Dan Campbell was cautiously optimistic about the laundry list of injured players when he spoke to reporters on Monday.
Speaking to reporters again before Wednesday's practice, Campbell outlined where defensive lineman Levi Onwuzurike, Alim McNeill, Josh Paschal and DJ Reader are in terms of when they'd practice this week.
"Levi’s gonna be down but he’s gonna practice tomorrow", Campbell said. "That’s not a negative. Mac will be out there today. Paschal may run around, we’ll see what he’s got. And then Reader, if anything comes down it’ll be tomorrow.”
Onwuzurike (hamstring), Paschal (knee) and Reader (shoulder) missed the game against the Packers. McNeill entered concussion protocol against Green Bay, then was cleared to return before being ruled out at halftime.
Taylor Decker, who has missed the last two games due to a knee injury, was a notable omission from Campbell's comments about injured players on Wednesday. But during the portion of practice open to the media, the Lions' left tackle was seen practicing. Reader was seen working off to the side with trainers, but for the first time in a while (if not all season) all 53 players on the active roster were dressed and at practice.
Here's the Lions' practice report for Wednesday (FP=Full participant, LP=Limited participant, NP=Non-participant).
After Campbell said he wouldn't practice on Wednesday, Onwuzurike was listed as a limited participant. Paschal was also listed as limited, which felt expected based on Campbell's pre-practice comments. Reader, also as expected based on reporter observations he was working off to the side, was listed as not practicing.
But McNeill and Decker were full participants. And perhaps most importantly, there were no surprise additions to the practice report on Wednesday as the Lions started on-field preparation for the Bills.