The Lions will play the Kansas City Chiefs in London on Sunday at 9:30 a.m. on FOX.
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On Monday, Detroit Lions head coach Jim Caldwell made the announcement that offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi and offensive line coaches Jeremiah Washburn and Terry Heffernan had been relieved of their jobs. All said they expected immediate improvement with the promotion of 31-year-old Cooter, a protege of coach Jim Caldwell who spent the past two years as quarterback Matthew Stafford’s position coach.
Point spread: The Chiefs opened as three-point favorites; the total was 47 early in the week, according to sportsbooks monitored by Odds Shark.
Detroit was vanquished by the streaking Minnesota Vikings, 28-19, last Sunday at the Ford Field to bring them back down to their losing form after an impressive 37-34 victory over the Bears in Week 6. He’s a brilliant guy and he knows football. “He can connect with the players and we’re going to enjoy playing for him”, Bell said. And he said Cooter’s intelligence and detailed understanding with Stafford was making the sudden switch smooth. Sometimes you’ve got to bench a player, sometimes you’ve got to move a few guys around. Sometimes you’ve got to do something different because, obviously, what you’re doing is not working.
Tight end Eric Ebron said Cooter has not made any dramatic changes to the way the Lions have approached their business, but that players have to get used to nuances in the way Cooter runs his offensive meetings. “He’s going to feed off Matt”. But this season, with no winless team to be the clear leader, our odds now list eight teams with at least a 5 percent chance of landing the No. 1 pick in the 2016 National Football League draft, with another two teams between 3 and 5 percent.
“The NFL is a insane league. A lot of things look good on paper, but until you get out there and start playing, it’s a lot of shocks, a lot of surprises”, said defensive end Jason Jones. We evaluate all the time, so we look at every single thing, every avenue in trying to get better.
Last season, Johnson didn’t play for the Lions in Week 8 against the Falcons in London as he recovered from a high ankle sprain.
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Rashean Mathis has been around the National Football League long enough to know when change is near. “We go play, so we’ve got to go out there and play”. “We just want to dominate from the first snap Sunday”.
