With the Detroit Lions playing their final preseason game on Saturday against the Pittsburgh Steelers, the team is now turning its attention to cutdown day, which falls on Tuesday.
One player who is apparently not on safe footing is edge rusher James Houston, the team's former sixth-round pick who had an impressive rookie campaign but is coming off a sophomore season that saw him play in just two games due to injury.
Houston has missed more time this offseason due to injury, but he did manage to finish the preseason strong with one sack. Despite that, keeping him on the initial 53-man roster is going to be a "hard decision," says head coach Dan Campbell.
“That’s a good question because we really didn’t have him a lot of camp," Campbell said of Houston after the preseason finale. "He was hurt, so we didn’t get to see him at Kansas City this week. So, he’s probably had maybe half of training camp, if that, somewhere in there. So, you still have to go off the totality of what it is. We understand he’s a year-three player that – we have to take the body of work that is taking place in practice against our very good tackles. We got two of the best tackles in the League that he has to go against.
"You take those and then you take a little bit of what you say today, ‘OK, well what does the health look like? Can he still move? Is it.’ But, I think, look, that’s going to be a hard decision for Brad (Holmes) and myself, you know it is, one way or another. That’s kind of what you are asking, ‘Is it enough?’ It’s hard to say that right now. This will be a lot of the things that we hash out between the two of us, the coaching staff, all of it. Like, we got to make sure we’re seeing it clearly.”
The problem for Houston is that he's a one-trick pony. He's at his best when rushing off the edge, but he doesn't offer much more than that because of his struggles when playing the run and dropping into coverage.
The Lions tried to expand Houston's role by giving him a look as the SAM linebacker, but as Campbell indicated recently, that didn't work out.
Detroit will have a few more days before they have to make a decision about Houston, but as of right now things aren't looking great for him, especially with the emergence of guys like Isaac Ukwu and Mitchell Agude.
