Notes: Watch Detroit Lions’ pre-OTA coaching staff media sessions

On Wednesday and Thursday this week, many of the Detroit Lions’ coaches held media sessions to talk about the work they’d done at rookie camp and to offer thoughts on the players in their units. Pride of Detroit has already posted some coverage on offensive line coach Hank Fraley’s session, linebackers coach Mark DeLeone’s session, and defensive line coach Todd Wash’s session. Earlier today, the team posted a highlights video showing clips from some of the calls (including ones we have not yet written about):

On the team’s official site, Mike O’Hara wrote in more detail about defensive backs coach Aubrey Pleasant’s comments to the media. In his call, Pleasant emphasized the interdependency of the pass rush and coverage elements on defense, joking that the best defensive back he’d played with is Aaron Donald. O’Hara’s article has an embedded copy of the 10-minute video, but if you go to the video section of the site there are many such extended recordings (sadly, no Duce Staley):

• Defensive backs coach Aubrey Pleasant (9:58)
• Senior defensive assistant Dom Capers (12:02)
• Linebackers coach Mark DeLeone (4:34)
• Defensive line coach Todd Wash (8:10)
• Tight ends coach Ben Johnson (6:07)
• Quarterbacks coach Mark Brunell (13:38)
• Wide receivers coach Antwaan Randle El (8:44)
• Offensive line coach Hank Fraley (17:51)

While the entire batch is probably too much for most people to watch all the way through (nearly 80 minutes!), it’s good material to tide fans over until we get new information from the upcoming OTAs starting next week.

Now, on to the rest of today’s Notes:

• It turns out Pro Football Focus does in fact know D’Andre Swift exists, and he was a guest on their fantasy podcast with Ian Hartitz:

• Speaking of Pro Football Focus, their top 32 wide receivers article went up and former Lions third-round pick Kenny Golladay was ranked number 19 for the New York Giants.

• Levi Onwuzurike and Penei Sewell were among a number of rookies asked to predict their Madden overall ratings. Sewell definitely knows what’s up:

• Lindsay Miller, Tim Twentyman, and Mike O’Hara from the official team site offered up their picks for important games to watch in the Lions’ 2021 regular season schedule.

• Former Lions running backs coach Kyle Caskey will be joining Ed Orgeron’s staff in the SEC:

• I’d never heard of the Football Analytics YellowPages before, but it is a remarkably comprehensive index of public web resources for football research maintained by the nflfastR Play Index people. Worth browsing the list if you are into the analytics thing: