Lions DT Alim McNeill on his excitement from returning from injury
McNeill hasn’t played since suffering an ACL injury in 2024 and is gearing up to make his return for the Detroit Lions on Monday night.
- Jahmyr Gibbs led the Lions’ offense with 218 total yards in a 24-9 victory over Tampa Bay.
- Detroit’s defense, featuring many backups and new players, held the Buccaneers to just nine points.
- Players like Erick Hallett, Arthur Maulet, and Nick Whiteside stepped up to fill in for injured defensive starters.
Any gambler will tell you, just because you have a huge pile of chips doesn’t mean you’re going home with money. It only counts when you cash them in.
Here were the Detroit Lions on Monday, Oct. 20, before a raucous, thunderous, but nervous Ford Field crowd, piling up stats like so many winning hands, over 150 yards in the first quarter alone.
But one drive ended in a fumble. Another on a fourth down. And as halftime approached, Detroit was dominating the game but ekeing out the points, 7-0. The football demons were whispering. “Don’t let Tampa Bay hang around. That’s why they’re 5-1. Baker Mayfield will come back and kill you.”
Well, you can’t kill what you can’t catch. And when Jahmyr Gibbs took a first down handoff and cut through a hole the size of the federal deficit, nobody was catching him.
“All I saw was (Lions) jerseys,” Gibbs would say of that play, after his team’s eventual 24-9 victory, “and I was like, ‘Oh, (expletive). Just run straight.”
Running straight is not a problem – not if, like Gibbs, you are fuel-injected. He raced 78 yards for a touchdown, the longest run of his NFL career, and the fans could exhale.
Before the night was done, Gibbs would account for 218 yards of offense, with three times as many rushing yards (136) as the entire Tampa Bay team combined and more receiving yards (82) than any Tampa Bay pass catcher.
Football is a team game, and the Lions won as a team, but memory tends to isolate heroes, and Gibbs was the offensive standout of this affair. And given his age (23) and talent (boundless), it won’t be the last time.
“I feel like I got the best seat in the house,” quarterback Jared Goff said when asked about his backfield teammate, “just to like see him hit the hole and then just like take off. I don’t know how many safeties in the league who could catch him. As soon as he gets there, it’s over. He’s gone.”
Like a cool breeze.
Chip, cashed.
Deal the Lions in
Which brings us to the defense, supposedly the Lions’ Achilles heel coming in. Detroit had lost its entire starting cornerback lineup, plus their top backups, and their two best safeties (Kerby Joseph and Brian Branch) were out for injury and bad behavior. The assumption was that Mayfield would have a field day picking on the secondary, which was really the thirdary, the fourthdary, in in a few cases, the who-are-you-again-dary?
So, the chips were stacked in Tampa’s favor. But you still have to deal the cards. And what do you know? If Detroit’s offense on Monday night could be summed up by one guy, then its defense was the sum of a couple of guys you know well – a returning Alim McNeill, Aidan Hutchinson, Amik Robertson and the linebackers – plus a swarm of never-heard-of-thems on the back end. They arrived wearing Brian Branch jerseys, a tribute to their missing teammate, but also a demonstration of the kind of camaraderie this team has.
And once the game started, what was supposed to be a wild-west shootout (the over-under was 53) instead came down to defenses, and the Lions defense often came down to newbies, castaways, and roster bouncers.
You know what? They did great. Or as coach Dan Campbell put it, “It wasn’t too big for them.”
Even if it should have been.
Get out your scorecard, folks. Follow along. Here was a guy named Erick Hallett – who? – a sixth-round draft pick last year by Jacksonville who never played a regular season down until Monday night, and he finished with a team-high eight tackles at safety, six of them solo.
Here was a guy named Arthur Maulet, an undrafted free agent who has played with New Orleans, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Houston and the New York Jets, lacing them up for the first time with Detroit and producing the most-determined interception you will ever see: He jammed his arm into the grip of Tampa Bay’s Cade Orton and simply wouldn’t let go, until the ball – and much of Orton’s bicep – was in his possession.
Here was another undrafted kid named Nick Whiteside, out of Auburn Hills and Saginaw Valley State, who four months ago was playing with the St. Louis Battlehawks in the UFL. And he was out there Monday night breaking up a two-point conversion try and knocking down another end zone pass late in the game on Tampa’s last gasp drive.
Standing by his locker after the game, Whiteside grew momentarily sentimental when asked if he wondered if this moment would ever come.
“Yeah, for sure. Just last year, being in the league and not making the most of my opportunity, waiting the whole NFL season, working out with teams, not sticking, continuing to work, continuing to talk to God every day….
“It’s crazy. I keep telling my family, my teammates, growing up in Michigan, watching the Lions play, being out of the game for a whole year then coming here and not doing enough to stick around, then being brought back?”
Crazy. Yeah. You could say that. Then again, holding Tampa Bay, considered by many experts to be the best team in football, to just nine points, when your defense is supposed to be a MASH unit?
If that’s not crazy, what does the word mean?
Chips, cashed.
Lions’ unexpected performances
These are the Lions under Dan Campbell. They don’t lose back-to-back games. They rise to the occasion. His staff creates game plans that bend and twist to the personnel available. On this night, it was just about making sure the new guys did what they were supposed to and allowed their more experienced teammates to have their backs.
“I’ve said it before,” Campbell explained. “You get in there, you don’t have to be perfect, just challenge and compete and we will help you. The guys around you will help you, and we’ll play with three units.”
And one will pick up the other. So on a night when Goff, often the superstar, had an interception, a fumble, and four sacks, and Jake Bates, the sturdy and steady kicker, missed one field goal and hit the uprights with another, and David Montgomery, the ramrod running back. would only gain 21 yards on 13 carries, here was Gibbs to carry the day.
No problem.
And on a night when the defensive backfield was supposed to stumble, bumble and bleed out early, it kept intact, taking just a few scrapes and scratches, and standing tall on a final drive by Mayfield and company, who kept punching the wall but could never break through it.
As a result, the 4-2 Lions rose to 5-2 and took their place amongst the NFC leaders, and now they get a bye week and a chance to heal. “The good news is that we are going to start to get a lot of players back,” Campbell said.
The even better news is that when those players are out – as others will inevitably be again – Campbell and his staff can cajole a performance out of backups like they did Monday night. Those are the kind of chips you cash in for big wins. You know what we just witnessed Monday night? A well-played hand, that’s what.
Or, as McNeill announced to the crowd after the win, “A typical Monday night for us in Detroit.” Been a long time since we could say that with a straight face. We can now.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom on x.com.
