Detroit Lions after injuries: Hope to ‘write our own story’ in face of adversity

Dan Campbell believes the Detroit Lions have the right mixture of coaches and players to handle the adversity stacking up in the last week.

On Wednesday, the coach addressed the team in the morning meeting by laying down the expectations of how the team will respond to its first loss in three months to the Buffalo Bills and losing another crop of defensive starters. Detroit dropped to 12-2 on the season and reached nearly two dozen players placed on injured reserve after losing Alim McNeill, Carlton Davis and Khalil Dorsey.

“I just hit it head-on,” Campbell said. “And tell them what the facts are. This is where we are at, this is how we are viewed right now. And look, nobody writes our story, man.

“We’re the only ones who write our own story. So, we have the pen and there’s a lot of football left and I think we are looking forward to this, to be honest with you.”

 

The Lions fell behind from the start in the 48-42 loss to Buffalo. The Bills opened up a 14-point lead because of early struggles for Detroit on offense and continued to shred through the Lions’ defense as the unit lost contributors.

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Buffalo finished with 559 total yards of offense with no turnovers and only one punt. Detroit mounted a comeback, but it came up short due to not getting enough stops.

“There’s the loss element and then there’s the injury element and so everything gets compacted,” Campbell said. “So you really need to address both and that’s what we did. And one is, we mentioned it.

“We got popped in the mouth and we got to get up off the ground and we gotta go back to work and reposition ourselves to be able to play the next game and learn what happened.”