The Detroit Lions managed to emerge victorious despite five interceptions from quarterback Jared Goff. Although the statistical profile indicates a tough game for Goff, defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn came away impressed with his resilience.

In fact, Glenn mentioned Goff as one of his standouts from Sunday’s game.

“Man, for him to go through what he did and to be able to take this team under his wing and run the ball and score the touchdowns that we needed, and make the critical plays that we needed to give us a chance to win it . the game was outstanding,” Glenn said. “He didn’t blink. That’s the one thing that showed more than anything else, the leadership, the toughness, the ability to put a team on his back and win a game was outstanding to see. So much credit to our quarterback.”

Glenn also indicated that he has grown in a number of areas as a defensive coordinator. Among the most important things to his development that he has done is meet with offensive coordinators and college coaches to discuss plans.

“Being able to understand offensive coordinators has helped me a lot,” Glenn explained. “I’ve spent a lot of time over the years, and since 2021, I’ll be visiting offensive coordinators and talking to them about how they look at the game and how they prepare for a game. And it’s opened my eyes to how to prepare for a match.”

“And the other thing is, man, I’m always eager to learn. And there’s a number of college coaches that I’ve visited from a defensive perspective,” Glenn continued. “Just to understand their thought process of the game. There are some concepts that they have that I’ll never use, but it’s good to sit there and listen to them and understand why they use them, because at some point, maybe I can use it .There’s a lot of information that I’ve gathered over the years to help me not only become a better defensive coordinator, and that might be understanding the offense, special teams across the board.

Offense focused on being explosive

The Lions struggled with turnovers against Houston and have struggled to be explosive in recent weeks. They were able to score 52 points against Tennessee after being gifted with several short fields, then they scored 24 points against the Packers in the elements. They managed 26 points against the Texans despite five turnovers.

As a result, the Lions are focusing on developing their offensive efficiency in the coming weeks. Quarterback Jared Goff have the eyes that the device is more explosive.

“Yeah, I think so, and I think the last three games are an indication of that,” Goff said. “I think the Tennessee game was kind of an outlier, but when we weren’t in the red zone, we were I didn’t really move the ball down the field and then Green Bay, just conditions and whatnot, we couldn’t be as explosive like we wanted, and then obviously last week wasn’t as explosive as we wanted. So, yeah, getting it back on track, I think he’s absolutely right and that starts this week for us.”

Ben Johnson has learned and grown from relationships with Lions coaches

Glenn wasn’t the only coordinator to talk about the importance of collaboration on Thursday. Ben Johnson explained that he has been able to learn a lot from working with Glenn and the rest of the coaching staff to develop his own personal approach to the game.

“Every year in spring and camp, they’ve changed philosophies a little bit over the last three years,” Johnson explained. “A natural progression of who he has on his side of the ball, you could kind of tell early in camp that they were going to be really potent this year. And schematically, I think it’s probably less overall, first and second down, even For the third is more the details of situational football. You learn more from each other than anything else.”

A major element of this has been meetings that the staff hold every week to better approach game management. In these meetings, trainers such as Johnson and Glenn can bounce ideas off each other.

“We sit in these game management meetings with Coach Campbell almost every week and see things from around the league that are going on, and we can kind of spit the ball back and forth,” Johnson said. “Hey, what would we do if we were in this two-minute exercise with this situation?” “AG, what would you think about your call?” So there’s a lot of banter back and forth, and I think it’s really you grow as a coach, is to be put in those kinds of places that, if you don’t challenge yourself and and ask yourself the hard questions, wouldn’t normally come about.”

Remarkable

The Lions are currently favored by 14.5 points over the Jaguars per SI Sportsbook, the largest point spread in the NFL this season. It’s the second time the Lions have been favored by double digits this season, joining their Week 8 matchup against the Tennessee Titans.

Detroit fans were also excited to see the television assignments for this week, as popular broadcaster Kevin Harlan will be the play-by-play broadcaster for Sunday’s game.

Odds are updated regularly and may change.

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