Detroit Lions lose CBs Terrion Arnold and Khalil Dorsey to long-term injuries

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Allen Park — Last season, it was the front seven. This year, it’s the Detroit Lions’ secondary that’s being decimated by a series of significant injuries.

A week after losing cornerback DJ Reed for at least a month with a significant hamstring strain, Lions coach Dan Campbell announced the team’s other starter, Terrion Arnold, will be out for a long stretch with the shoulder injury that knocked him from each of the past two games.

“Unfortunately, he’s going to be out for a while,” Campbell said. “He’s going to be out for a long time.”

Asked if the injury is season-ending, Campbell wasn’t ready to go that far, but also didn’t dismiss the possibility.

Now, like a year ago, the Lions are left to patchwork a position group, which also lost Ennis Rakestraw for the season during training camp. That starts with Amik Robertson, who got the start in place of Reed on Sunday and recorded his first interception since joining the Lions ahead of the 2024 season.

The other outside options include Rock-Ya Sin and practice squad members Tre Flowers and Nick Whiteside.

Noticeably absent from that list is Khalil Dorsey, who suffered a wrist injury in practice last week and will also be out “a while,” according to Campbell.

“You just tweak a couple of things, and the front’s got to get there a little quicker,” Campbell said. And our DBs, man, get up there and challenge, compete. We’ll adjust, we’ll adapt, and we move on.

“…Our guys know that,” Campbell said. “They know what it is. Look, I’ve mentioned this before, this train doesn’t stop for anybody. It doesn’t matter who it is or what it is, we’ve got to go. Nobody cares. Nobody’s going to feel sorry for you. You’re putting your best 22 out there — offense, defense, and special teams, by the way, and you’ve got to find a way to win the game. You use all three phases to do it, and we will use all three phases to do it.”

Campbell said the team will tweak its schematics as necessary to compensate for its injury situation, but there’s no intention of abandoning the preferred usage of man-to-man coverage.

“I mean, some of that depends on what happens tonight (with next week’s opponent, Kansas City),” Campbell said. “We’ll see how they come out of that game. We’re going to do what’s best for us, and everything aligns together between the coverage and the rush.

“We don’t want to go away from playing man-to-man,” Campbell continued. “I mean, that’s what we do here. It’s part of our DNA, you know? Do we alter some things? Yeah, we could alter some things. We’re going to help our personnel the best that we can. We always do that, for every game.”

Ya-Sin, a former second-round pick, has been a journeyman in recent years. Detroit is his fifth stop in five seasons. However, he quickly revealed himself to be a good scheme and culture fit during the offseason. He played 29 snaps against the Bengals, confirming what the team believed they had in the veteran.

“Look, here’s what you love about Rock, man, he plays fearless, he’s not afraid, he doesn’t care who he’s going against, he’s aggressive, he’ll challenge,” Campbell said. “He challenges at the release point and he challenges at the catch point. He’ll run up, he’ll tackle, he’ll hit, and that’s all you can ask for. That’s all we’re looking for here.”

As for Flowers, the 6-foot-3, 203-pounder was thrust into action on Sunday, despite signing with the team’s practice squad four days earlier. He’ll almost certainly get promoted to the active roster this week.

“He’s played in this league, he’s got size, he’s got length, and he’s played a little bit of (special) teams, too,” Campbell said. “We were kind of going to let him get his legs under him, but we had to get him going with where we were at with Dorsey.

“We’ll move on, man, it’s the next guy up, next man up as always.”