As the Lions await the eventual return of starting safeties Kerby Joseph and Brian Branch, they continue to see attrition in the secondary. Ahead of Detroit’s Week 3 matchup with the Jets, the team placed safety Thomas Harper on injured reserve. To help fill out the depth of the position, veteran Jalen Mills will be called up as a standard gameday practice squad elevation alongside linebacker Amen Ogbongbemiga.
There has been some recent optimism in the injury updates for Joseph and Branch. However close they are to returning, though, the fact that they started the season on the reserve/physically unable to perform list means they won’t be able to appear in a game until Week 5. With both starters out, the Lions have turned to veterans Chuck Clark and Avonte Maddox on the first-team defense with Harper getting plenty of snaps as a third safety.
Maddox exited Detroit’s Week 2 game early with an injury, and it was announced soon after that he would undergo season-ending foot surgery, robbing the Lions of yet another safety. Harper was the one to take up the mantle next to Clark with Maddox missing from the first-team defense last week, but an ankle injury kept him from practicing at all this week, and now, he’ll join Maddox on IR and will miss at least the next four games of the season.
With Maddox and Harper out, the only healthy players on the 53-man roster with snaps played at safety this year are Clark and Christian Izien. The Lions added Mills to their practice squad on Monday and signed undrafted USC rookie Bishop Fitzgerald off the Steelers’ practice squad the next day. They will join Izien and Clark this Sunday in a secondary that desperately needs bodies.