With roster cuts exactly one week away, Lions general manager Brad Holmes and head coach Dan Campbell have some tough decisions ahead of them when trimming down from 90 players in training camp to an initial 53 to start the regular season.
Campbell has talked multiple times about how the more a player can do, the better his chances are of making the roster. Nothing embodies that better on this football team than the secondary.
This Lions' defense has a ton of players with position versatility, from Brian Branch being able to play nickel corner and safety and Amik Robertson being able to play both cornerback spots at a high level. There are multiple players that include Rock Ya-Sin, Avonte Maddox, and Erick Hallett II in the secondary with the ability to play outside corner, nickel and safety, and they have shown to be playmakers in practice and the preseason doing all three.
"The more versatile that we are - you could say that across the roster, but - the backend, it allows you to do more things," head coach Dan Campbell said this week. "And now you can truly take the best guys that you feel are going to help you on gameday, you get them there because of special teams or, 'Hey man, this guy can play safety, nickel, he can play the outside corner, he can play the dime linebacker if we need him.'
"It allows you to bring the best to gameday and now all three phases, you can mix and match and you're not worried about, 'This guy can only go in to do this job, then this guy can only go in to do this job,' and now pretty soon you're just like - it just gets hard."