The Detroit Lions won’t know who they face in the divisional round until Sunday or Monday night. And they plan to take advantage of their earned rest and recovery opportunity with the first-round bye.
Dan Campbell described the team’s mentality for this week as leaving the engine in idle. The Lions head coach said that was one of the lessons he learned when getting the first-round bye while still with the New Orleans Saints in 2018.
“So, you don’t want to turn it off, but let’s just leave it in idle ...,” Campbell said. “Thursday, we’ll practice. It won’t be in pads, but it will be end-of-game situations, probably an hour just to stay in flow and little things that we need, little detail work that we can get, and that’s for the guys that we know can go out there and move and work.
“Then after that, giving them three days off and then they’ll be back in Monday. And by then, hopefully, we know the opponent, and we’ll be ready to go.”
Campbell said he’ll spend the next two days working on things he wants to improve. But even the Lions head coach is looking to spend time with family for three days, “and sit back for a minute and charge back up and be ready to go.”
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Another lesson learned from Campbell’s time as a player and a coach is to avoid preparing for an opponent you might not face.
The Lions won’t see the Philadelphia Eagles or Tampa Bay Buccaneers until the NFC title game. They know that much.
For the divisional round, they will host the lowest remaining seed of the (No. 7) Green Bay Packers, (No. 6) Washington Commanders, (No. 5) Minnesota Vikings or (No. 4) Los Angeles Rams.
If each home team wins this weekend, the Lions would again host the Rams. But the Vikings-Rams play on Monday Night Football, so the Lions might not know who they’ll face until early next week.
If the Packers win, they will come to Detroit, simple as that. If the Commanders and the Eagles win, then Washington would be the divisional-round matchup. But if the two favorites win Sunday’s wild-card games, the Lions will wait for the winner of Vikings-Rams.
Detroit swept the Packers and Vikings this year. They also beat the Rams in overtime in the season opener, not to mention in last year’s wild-card round. However, they have not faced rookie Jayden Daniels and the Commanders.
“You do leg work on another opponent, and then you find out it’s not that opponent, and so I would rather -- I don’t want to do that to the coaches,” Campbell said. “So, my plan is to give them off three days this weekend, refresh, get your sleep, get your rest. We’re going to know hopefully by Sunday night, and then we come in, and we’ll know the opponent.
“Then we are full force on that, full game plan. We’ll know who we face. We’ve really faced all of these teams with the exception of -- as far as this one coming up -- Washington, so they would be the one that we -- and we’ll work on breakdowns, we’ll have those, and then we’ll go from there. I hate the thought of doing work on somebody you might not even play.”
Another boost of the bye week is that coordinators Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn can start the head-coaching interview process during some downtime rather than while intensely preparing for the wild-card round.
Johnson and Glenn will handle their virtual interviews from Thursday to Saturday this week.
The offensive coordinator has received interview requests from the Chicago Bears, New England Patriots and Jacksonville Jaguars. Glenn has received requests from the New Orleans Saints, New York Jets, Bears and Jaguars.
“I mean, this time last year, they’re trying to do it (interviews), we didn’t have a bye or anything, and so you’re trying to get things -- they’re trying to figure out ways to fit this in, and you’d love to have the opportunity to go to the next thing, but you also have an obligation with the team you’re with,” Campbell said. “That’s impossible. That’s an impossible task. Whereas this (year), we put this game to bed, we have the players in today (Tuesday), we don’t know who we’re playing yet, it’s time to kind of rest, relax.
“For now, a little bit of that focus for those guys can go to, ‘OK, here’s the interviews that I’m getting ready for, let me look at their rosters, let me figure out what’s going on over at those other teams, who I can call, who I can --’ I just think that it’s really good for everybody.”
