With firm grasp on the scheme, Lions' Betts shifting focus to higher-level thinking in new defensive role
It doesn’t matter whether you played at a D-II school, in the UFL or the CFL, if you’re the best at what you do in one of those smaller bonds, there’s a natural intrigue about whether a skill set and the production can carry over to the highest levels of football.
That’s the plane of existence where Mathieu Betts exists. A year after dominating the CFL, racking up 18.0 sacks and earning the league’s most outstanding defensive player award, he’s back in an NFL training camp for the first time in five years, trying to prove at 29 years old he belongs.
And if any team was going to give him a fair shot at figuring it out, it was going to the Detroit Lions. Under current leadership, the team is loyal and patient with the talent it brings in, from the top of the depth chart to the final guy on the 90-man offseason roster. Almost universally, if you give maximum effort and do things the right way, you’ll get every chance to showcase your ability to contribute and earn a job.
Frankly, Betts isn’t there yet. His effort has lived up to its reputation, but the pass-rush production has yet to show up on the practice field, at least anywhere closer to the menace he was for British Columbia last year.