The first quarter of the season is in the books for the Detroit Lions, and they head to their bye week with an opportunity to get healthy and self-evaluate in hopes of learning something that can make them a better football team moving forward.
Linebacker Jarrad Davis was asked Monday to evaluate the first quarter of the season, and he had an interesting analogy for Detroit's first four games.
"We're kind of like a newly seeded plant in a way," Davis said. "We are starting to blossom a little bit, but we have to keep watering, we have to keep giving ourselves that light, we have to keep just making sure that we pay attention to the things that are going to help us grow and get better."
Detroit played to a 2-1-1 record, and there was some good and some bad mixed in there. Detroit's one loss on the year came against the 4-0 Kansas City Chiefs last Sunday – a Chiefs team most think is a Super Bowl contender. Kansas City needed a late touchdown drive, including a 4th and 8 conversion, to secure the come-from-behind victory.
The Lions beat the Los Angeles Chargers at home and the Philadelphia Eagles on the road, two playoff teams from last year.
The one real blip in the record is blowing an 18-point fourth-quarter lead in Arizona Week 1 to finish with a tie against a Cardinals team that's lost their last three games since.
The bye week appears to be coming at a good time for Detroit with a number of key players battling injury. Getting healthy and continuing to grow are two keys Davis says are vital for this team over the next week.
"I mean, the bye week is huge," he said. "It's just a time to really recalibrate, get your feet back underneath you, get your legs right, your body right. Coming out, we have to make sure we take this bye week and use it for what it is, come out and fire on all cylinders."
Detroit comes out of the bye with two straight division games against Green Bay and Minnesota. The Packers game is on the road at Lambeau Field on Monday Night Football.
The bye week affords Detroit players and coaches the opportunity to look back at the first four games and study any trends with how the first four opponents played them. It's a chance to self-evaluate the good and the bad, with a focus on the bad football that was played at times through the first four games in hopes of limiting it moving forward.
"We've done well in some of those situations and we've done not so well in others," head coach Matt Patricia said. "We can build off of that. We really are just working to eliminate the bad football – keep trying to get to good football, consistent football."
