ALLEN PARK -- Dan Campbell and the Detroit Lions are emphasizing rest and time away as they embark on the bye week.
Campbell and his coaching staff will head home on Tuesday night, with some specific tasks to work on at their own leisure over the next five days. And the players won’t practice this week, with everyone getting a chance to catch their breath.
But as the Lions coach said, the work doesn’t stop, and there are still some fixes and answers he wants to see.
“I think it’s important that they get away,“ Campbell said on Tuesday. ”I do, man. This’ll be the last chance we get a little bit of time to -- no different than the players. There are things I’m going to do, I’m going to continue to work through. I’ll do some things at home. But some of that -- work’s never done. So, we keep going. Where can we improve and get a little bit better in areas, and set our players up in certain areas to have a little more success, across the board?
“So, that’ll be the bye.”
The Lions are right where they want to be heading into the week away. Detroit is 5-2, fresh off a big win against a fellow NFC contender, and about to get some pieces back over the next month.
They will return with a 10-game stretch to the finish line, starting with the Minnesota Vikings before hitting the road for back-to-back games against the Washington Commanders and Philadelphia Eagles.
Detroit’s defense is riding hot after its patchwork secondary and ferocious pass rush put the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a blender on Monday night. And the offense, despite some inconsistencies along the way, remains one of the league’s most explosive and star-studded units.
“Things we’re going to clean up and easily correctable, will be corrected,” the Lions coach said. “We’ve got good guys in that room, and they’re prideful, and we’ll be better.
“And we’re 5-2 at the bye, and when we come back, we’ve got to continue to improve. We’ve got to evolve and improve, and we’re in a race to improve, quite frankly, with everybody else, particularly those in our division.”
They are right on the heels of the 4-1-1 Green Bay Packers in the NFC North and conference standings.
For the third straight year, though, the Lions enter their bye after a Monday Night Football appearance. That means they lose an extra day to work with on the back end, requiring Campbell and his staff to make a decision on what to do with the roster.
In the end, players would need to recover from the game, and then by the time that happened, they would already be a couple of days deep into the bye.
When asked about the challenges of getting a shorter bye week than most, Campbell went back to this week being about rest and recovery.
“I think it just makes it hard to do anything,” Campbell explained. “Because by the time you get some of these guys recovered, even if you want to gain some reps for the young guys, a lot of them, to really be able to go out and practice, you still need a couple of days to recover. By the time you do that, it’s kind of not worth it. I’d rather give them off and let them refresh. I think it’s important.”
If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our [User Agreement](https://www.advancelocal.com/advancelocalUserAgreement/user-agreement.html) and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our [Privacy Policy.](https://www.advancelocal.com/advancelocalUserAgreement/privacy-policy.html)