The Detroit Lions completed the seventh day of their 2019 training camp and the most notable depth chart change of the day was fifth-round rookie cornerback Amani Oruwariye being exposed to first-team reps.
Oruwariye getting 1st team reps
Oruwariye began the day with the first-team but was rotating drills and series with Teez Tabor. It’s unclear if Tabor had an injury that he was dealing with as he participated the majority of the day but was held out of the 2-minute drills at the end of practice and was not seen post-practice and may have left the field early.
Regardless of a Tabor injury or not, Oruwariye’s rise up the depth chart has been very impressive. In the spring camps, Oruwariye began on the third team and has steadily seen his stock rise, passing Andre Chachere, Mike Ford, Marcus Cooper (and maybe Tabor) on the depth chart in the past seven practices.
In drills today, Oruwariye looked very comfortable running stride for stride with Marvin Jones but when he faced off against Kenny Golladay he lost (as almost ever defensive back does to Golladay in drills) twice.
When team drills opened up, Oruwariye continued to pace with Jones, but it wasn’t long before the savvy vet took the rookie to task on a double move where it looked like the rookie was expecting safety help.
To his credit, he quickly left the loss to Jones behind when facing off against Golladay two series later and that session ended with Oruwariye using speed and length to position himself in front of the receiver and make a back of the end zone diving interception.
“I just saw his split, being a little tighter,” Oruwariye told the media after practice. “So, I just played with my proper leverage and just worked on the technique that (defensive backs) coach (Brian) Stewart teaches me and just came down with the play.”
Oruwariye is beginning to show signs that he could very well be the steal of the draft that many analysts labeled him.
The rest of the defensive rookies
Jahlani Tavai continues to have a strong camp and looks like a clear starter moving forward, even when Christian Jones begins participating again.
Right now, Will Harris doesn’t look ready to be trusted in one-on-one coverage situations. Harris did get some situational exposure to the first team — taking the slot safety role and shifting Tracy Walker to single-high — but he is still very much still a work in progress.
Austin Bryant is still unable to practice due to injury but he is moving well in training sessions.
PJ Johnson continues to get second-team reps at nose tackle, behind John Atkins, with Damon Harrison and Darius Kilgo not practicing. He has more positional range than Atkins but needs more seasoning before he will get an expanded look.
Offense
After a few rough practices, Jermaine Kearse had arguably his best day at camp, landing on Lions Wire’s own Jeff Risdon’s three standouts from Thursday’s practice.
Kenny Golladay started camp a bit on the quiet side, but in Week 2, he has been nearly uncoverable. In addition to getting wins over Oruwariye in one-on-one drills, he also saw wins over Tabor and Melvin.
I have suggested the battle for the fifth wide receiver spot could come done to Travis Fulgham versus Andy Jones. Fulgham has been the better receiver while Jones has been more consistent on special teams. Both made very nice intelligence plays today, showing sideline awareness and ball location.
The last two practices saw the original starting offensive line getting reps together, leading me to believe they had finally settled on a starting five. Then coach Matt Patricia pulled Leo Corso not so fast move on me and switched things back up again.
Joe Dahl and Oday Aboushi were back to getting first-team reps, while Graham Glasgow and Luke Bowanko rotated between center and right guard on the second-team. This switch occurred mostly at the beginning of practice and by the time they got to team reps they opted to keep Bowanko in the middle. After getting some snaps at left guard yesterday, then at right guard today, it appears the Lions are cross-training Bowanko to test his overall range.
2-minute drill
The Lions offense spent a lot of time in the second half of today’s practice working on their two-minute offense. The first session ended with a Marvin Jones touchdown. The second finished the same way (the double move on Oruwariye mentioned about), with another touchdown score by No. 11.
Things declined after that. The third session ended with a field goal from roughly 43-yards. The fourth resulted in the Oruwariye interception mentioned previously, and the fifth session was downright ugly by the offense and concluded with a turnover on downs.
Additionally, the offense also incurred false start/illegal snaps penalties by the offensive line that saw Dahl, Ragnow and Bowanko running laps.
Nothing was overly shocking from these 11-on-11s, there were penalties and overthrows that happen a lot in training camp but the positive here is, three of these sessions ended with stellar plays.
Special teams
Nick Bawden continues to get instructions on how to be a long snapper from Don Muhlbach. It’s worth noting that as a former quarterback he should be relatively capable of throwing a spiral but it was more of the same today with some improvement but a lot of inaccurate snaps.
Miles Killebrew and Charles Washington still look like the teams best special teams players but it’s going to be hard for this team to keep a special teams only player. The other side of this coin is, based on who the Lions are utilizing on kickoff coverage versus my 53-man roster stack projection, the numbers don’t line up.
I only have nine of the 20 players being used on the current two-deep rotation in my projection. Meaning, I may need to I need to clear at least one more spot on my projection for a player who excels on special teams.
