Detroit Lions first-round pick Tyleik Williams has seen his playing time take a significant dip since the return of Alim McNeill in Week 7. The rookie defensive tackle averaged 30.5 defensive snaps per game over the first six weeks of the season. His playing time over the last three games?<\/p>\n
Obviously, the return of McNeill has a big reason to do with Williams\u2019 decrease in snaps, but it is a bit curious as to why he\u2019s repping behind backup nose tackle Roy Lopez, who has out-snapped him in each of the last two games (14 and 12 snaps, respectively).<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, during his weekly radio appearance on 97.1 The Ticket, Campbell explained why Williams hasn\u2019t gotten a lot of playing time thus far.<\/p>\n
\u201cTyleik\u2019s just a young guy, continuing to get better, growing. There\u2019s just a little inconsistency at times, but that\u2019s not out of the norm,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cCorrect it, get a little bit better, and move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Complicating Williams\u2019 inconsistent play is Detroit\u2019s impressive depth chart. DJ Reader, McNeill, and Lopez are reliable players who, according to Campbell, are playing at a high level right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hard thing for him\u2014which is a good thing for all of us\u2014is Mac\u2019s playing good, Reader\u2019s playing good, Lopez is playing good. So, \u2018Hey man, you\u2019ve got some good players in front of you right now.\u2019 So all he needs to do is elevate his game, and then he\u2019ll be in front of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some may disagree with Campbell\u2019s assessment of the defensive line room. Against the Commanders, Reader and McNeill combined for zero pressures (per PFF) and just three tackles. But it\u2019s hard to deny how well Lopez is playing. For the second day in a row, Campbell praised Lopez for his five-tackle, 0.5-sack performance against Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s an outstanding role player for us. We he comes in, we don\u2019t miss a beat,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cHe can lift the point of attack. He\u2019s one of those guys, man, he plays with leverage, he\u2019s stout, he\u2019s strong, he\u2019s explosive, but then he can run the line of scrimmage, too now. So you want to run outside zone on him, he can get knocked back, and\u2014man, that was evident the other day. He was in the backfield two or three different times . He\u2019s one of the reasons we had some of these TFLs. \u201d<\/p>\n
So, in short, Williams simply needs to raise his level of play. In nine games, including six starts, Williams has just six tackles, one tackle for loss, and three pass breakups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Detroit Lions first-round pick Tyleik Williams has seen his playing time take a significant dip since the return…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":372045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[27705,27706,1232,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-372044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-detroit-lions-news","9":"tag-detroit-lions-quotes","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115532342768622726","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}