T.J. Lang is in concussion protocol

On Wednesday’s initial injury report, T.J. Lang popped up with an “illness” designation that had him limited during practice. Not much was thought of it originally, as illnesses come and go throughout the season.

However, during Thursday’s press conference, Jim Caldwell surprisingly gave an update on his situation. According to the Detroit Lions head coach, Lang is actually now suffering from a concussion and is officially in protocol.

Caldwell wanted to get ahead of some questions about how they treated Lang’s concussion, and addressed those things at the very end of his press conference.

“Sometimes these things don’t manifest themselves between 24 and 72 hours, and this is one of those cases,” Caldwell said. “He’s fine, no issues, all the way up until yesterday. We start practice. And when practice starts, he gets ill. So we take him out of practice, get him inside, and then the doctors don’t come until after we finish with obviously submitting our medical report.”

So to summarize, Lang suffered a concussion during the Packers game, but did not exhibit any symptoms until Wednesday’s practice. He was listed as “illness” on the injury report because that was all the information the team had by the time the team had to submit the injury report. Caldwell insisted that the injury did not happen during Wednesday’s practice. “It’s not anything that happened in practice, or anything of that nature,” Caldwell said.

So with Lang in concussion protocol, and only three days until Detroit’s matchup against the Browns, it looks like the Lions could very well be without one of their best offensive lineman. Detroit did sign Don Barclay a couple weeks ago, and he could be the next in line to replace Lang while he continues through the concussion protocol.

If not Barclay, it would probably be Emmett Cleary. Against the Saints, Cleary started at right guard when Lang missed a game due to a last-minute back injury.