The Detroit Lions announced on Friday afternoon that veteran defensive lineman Pat O\u2019Connor has been placed on injured reserve.<\/p>\n
The news comes after O\u2019Connor missed last week\u2019s game against the Washington Commanders with a knee injury. It appeared he was progressing after practicing on Wednesday this week. However, he was absent from both Thursday\u2019s and Friday\u2019s practices, suggesting a setback.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor\u2019s role in the Lions\u2019 defense had waned in recent weeks. As someone who could play both the interior and outside of the defensive line, O\u2019Connor has been valuable depth. But Detroit has leaned more on Tyler Lacy on the edge, and a combination of Alim McNeill, Tyleik Williams, Roy Lopez, and DJ Reader on the inside. Prior to his injury, O\u2019Connor had been averaging just 7.5 defensive snaps over his past four games. That said, he has been a quiet fixture on special teams. He\u2019s had at least 15 special teams snaps in seven Lions games this year, and has even gotten a few shoutouts from the coaching staff for his work on that unit.<\/p>\n
With the Lions nearing the return of Josh Paschal from injured reserve, they should be able to absorb the loss of O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n
Now on IR, O\u2019Connor must miss at least the next four games of the Lions\u2019 season. That makes him eligible to return in Week 15 against the Los Angeles Rams.<\/p>\n
The Lions now have an open spot on their 53-man roster. With several players eligible to be active for Sunday night\u2019s game against the Philadelphia Eagles, expect that spot to be filled soon. Miles Frazier, Marcus Davenport, D.J. Reed, and Malcolm Rodriguez are all questionable for the game and would require an activation to the 53-man roster. However, Rodriguez is the most likely of the bunch to actually make an appearance this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit Lions announced on Friday afternoon that veteran defensive lineman Pat O\u2019Connor has been placed on injured…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":380455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[49994,27705,49993,1232,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-380454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-detroit-lions-injury-report","9":"tag-detroit-lions-news","10":"tag-detroit-lions-transactions","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115553112231822504","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380454","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=380454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}