This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Good Morning Football is a production of the NFL in partnership with IHeart Radio.

Yeah. Hey, hey, hey. Oh, yeah.

Good morning football.

Yeah, good morning football.

Live in New York City, Wednesday, August 23rd, Jamie Erdog, Kyle Brandt, Peter Schrager, Jason McCordy, your usual cast of characters.

But that is because we're, what, 13 days away, 15, 17, 17 number away days from kickoff. 15. 15. So close. Peter, what are you most looking forward to? I feel like we've been walking through the desert for 40 days and 40 nights trying to get to this point. So 13 sounds amazing. Biblical. That was it. Not bad. It's been a biblical off season of talking about, you know, Jaguars running backs and Titans, tight ends. We're almost in regular season. Let's go. Let's do it. But Peter, when it becomes a regular season, then you get yourself to say, Jemir Gibbs, I always knew what I was talking about. You talk about Jemir Gibbs? Let's do it. Let's do it. Time for the Lee Block. The Lions are getting ready for their preseason finale against the Panthers on Friday night. Dan Campbell, head coach was asked yesterday about the depth behind the starters in Detroit.

Depth, a great thing to have when there's 18 weeks of football.

Given that this team could be playing postseason football, which is a beautiful thing to say about the Lions, here's what he had to say.

Depth is what gets you the rough spots, you know, when you get those injuries. We know it's a long season. And so to have quality depth in certain areas, really, you'd love it in all of them. But to have it in certain areas, gives you flexibility. At the end of the day, no matter what happens, everybody's got holes. I mean, even when we had a pretty damn good roster at New Orleans for a number of years and we still had holes.

And so it's never going to be perfect, but we're so much farther along than we were two years ago.

And that's great for them because the hype has backed up the fact that people believe that their roster is greatly improved over the past couple of seasons.

And the media, well, the media, they certainly have scheduled makers on notice and they think the Lions could take off. Their showcase kickoff game against the Chiefs is circled Thursday night. So what's the biggest factor for the Lions? Actually living up to the hype this season, Peter. How was it going to solidify? Kyle had a great soliloquy last week about Uncle Lenny being this guy that we call the Lions Uncle Lenny. Explain your Uncle Lenny before I get in because... Uncle Lenny is this old relative you've had for years and years and years and he's part of the family, but he goes through a lot of hard times for year after year after year. He can't get his life together. He can't get his relationships, his finances, his credit, his attire, his hygiene, everything. It's been a mess.

But then, like, last year, Lenny showed up and he was shaved and he had a suit and he had a date.

And he was like, he looked good. You're like, Lenny, look at you. And the Detroit Lions, us, they're Uncle Lenny.

We love them and we support them. So this is that Thanksgiving where Lenny shows up and has the suit and has the new date and actually brought something to the dinner table.

And that's how we feel right now. We're so proud of the Lions and we're so proud Uncle Lenny that not only are they one of the teams that everyone's talking about, the NFL schedule maker said of all the players, the teams that we can play against the Chiefs on our opening night, our showcase game. We are choosing you. Not like every Thanksgiving where we're burdened with you as the early game. We're choosing the lions to open the season. And I'm in on the lions.

I think the lions are going to be great this year. I really do. I think the Lions in a wide open NFC can compete not only for the division but for the conference. They just need their defense to stop someone. And they did at the end of the season, but it was epic in the beginning of the season. As a whole, this was the Lions defense last year. We could talk about Monra, and we could talk about Gibbs, and we could talk about the addition of Montgomery. If you don't stop anybody, they ain't going anywhere. Lions' defense did pick it up at the end of the season, and they had to make changes on the personnel of the coaching staff. They let go of Aubrey Pleasant. Things started changing on the back end.

But this defense that's run by Aaron Glenn,

it is a man-to-man defense in a passing game that I don't know.

Is this going to be a defense that's going to stop teams week in and week out?

...