The Detroit Lions have announced that they have placed fullback Nick Bawden on injured reserve with a knee injury. This is the second season in a row where Bawden’s season has ended prematurely due to a knee injury.
Bawden’s rookie season was also cut short after he tore his ACL in mini-camp and was placed on injured reserve.
Coming out of this year’s training camp, expectations were high for Bawden as offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell found new and creative ways to use him in the game plan. As the regular season rolled around, much of those creative plays were subdued and in 10 games Bawden only had four catches for 17 yards.
Of course, he did do this:
The Lions backfield has been injured all season and losing their fullback will surely have implications on an already struggling run game.
On Tuesday the Lions worked out four fullbacks — Derrick Coleman, Tommy Bohannon, Tre Madden, and Aaron Ripkowski, per Adam Caplan — but did not sign any at this time.
One in-house option to replace is rookie tight end Isaac Nauta who is currently on the Lions practice squad. Nauta played some H-Back in college and even took snaps at fullback for the Lions in the offseason. It wouldn’t be overly surprising to see the Lions work with Nauta as the fullback in practice this week, then promote him to the active roster later in the week (the Lions typically make these moves on Saturday).
