The Detroit Lions start the season with a second straight NFC North opponent as they welcome the Chicago Bears to Ford Field today for their regular season home opener. After dropping their Week 1 contest against the Green Bay Packers, it's imperative the Lions play better football in all three phases to avoid a 0-2 start to the season.
"We're going to win this game, we have to," Lions head coach Dan Campbell said this week. "We've got to find a way to clean things up and do what we've got to do and they're going to try to do the same thing. It's like that every week."
1. O-LINE BOUNCE BACK
When speaking to reporters this week, several of Detroit's offensive linemen admitted last week's performance in Green Bay wasn't up to the standard that's been set in that room over the last few years and the issues have been addressed and fixed.
Detroit averaged just 2.1 yards per carry, and quarterback Jared Goff was sacked four times and hit nine times total against the Packers. The biggest improvement must come in the run game. Everything starts with the run in offensive coordinator John Morton's scheme. It opens up the play action and some of the deep shots, and when an offense becomes one-dimensional, it's much easier to scheme them up.
"It's being addressed, it's being fixed," Morton said this week of some of the missed assignments and communication issues that plagued Detroit Week 1. "Again, taking some of these plays out where there's not a lot of communication, going on the road, we know we didn't do a lot of shifting and things like that, so it's going to be fixed."