Detroit Lions place Trey Flowers on short-term IR

The Detroit Lions will be without their best defensive player for next few weeks. Head coach Matt Patricia announced on Monday afternoon that defensive end Trey Flowers has been placed on injured reserve, meaning the veteran defender will miss at least the next three games on Detroit’s schedule.

It’s not abundantly clear exactly what Flowers’ injury was, as he was not given an in-game designation after his fourth quarter injury occurred. But it appeared trainers were tending to his upper body at Ford Field on Sunday. A couple weeks ago, Flowers was dealing with a wrist injury, but Patricia said during his Monday press conference that this was a new injury that occured on Sunday.

“This is actually a new injury from the game yesterday,” Patricia confirmed.

Through eight games this season, Flowers has a modest statline, just 22 tackles and 2.0 sacks. However, his impact on the field was all over the place, from dropping into coverage, to holding the edge on run plays, and timely pressures on the quarterback. Just a couple weeks ago, Patricia marveled at just how well he was playing.

“Trey is someone that shows up every single week and does stuff that you’re just like – it’s almost clinic-like, teaching,” he said after the Jaguars game. “Phenomenal play on the edge.”

The good news for Detroit is that they have a big reinforcement coming in this week. Everson Griffen will join the team after the Lions traded for him last week. Though Detroit probably didn’t anticipate putting Griffen in a big role right away, they may be forced to with Flowers’ injury.

As for Detroit’s other injury situations, Patricia was vague about the status of wide receiver Kenny Golladay. He didn’t refute nor confirm the report from NFL Network suggesting he will miss this week’s game against the Vikings and could be headed for IR himself.

“I would say it’s day-by-day, and week-by-week. I would say that is true,” Patricia said. “Obviously, everybody’s a bit sore today from the game yesterday. It was a physical game. Today, obviously, guys are going through their medical checks and then we’ll see how it looks tomorrow, and see how it looks at the end of the week, really.”