Who the Lions could have joint practices with this summer and where they'll likely be

The Detroit Lions like preseason games, but they love joint practices more. For Lions head coach Dan Campbell, he sees the reps that the Lions get with joint practices as live game-like reps for the starters, and the preseason is more so a chance for some of the younger guys and bubble players to get live reps. 

“Another reason we do these (joint practices) is that I feel like you’ve got two great days of work, banked a lot of reps, and so I don’t see us playing these starters this week. I don't’ see it,” Campbell told Stoney and Jansen on 97.1 The Ticket in 2023. “We’re going to sit that core group again, and let some of these young guys go. There may be a few select rookies we don’t play. We’ll see where we’re at there as well. But I think that’s the benefit of having this (joint practice session). We have over 40 reps yesterday.”

Last year, the Lions had a pretty memorable joint practice session with the New York Giants, and there was quite a bit of fighting. So much that the league fined both teams multiple times. Campbell really credited New York after the season for showing the Lions how hard they would have to work. 

"I felt like the biggest adjustment for us was training camp out at New York, you know, that was the first real taste of, you know, kind of the perception. And, you know, I thought the Giants man, they practiced hard, they brought it, you know, it was a lot of energy, a lot of juice. And I thought that was good for us to get that, and it's like now, you know what it's going to be like all season, and we've handled it. I mean, we handle it well. We know we're going to get everybody's best shot."

At the league meetings in early April, Campbell said the Lions were looking to have joint practices again this summer, but didn't want to bring up who he was thinking about for fear that he would jinx it. 

Now that we know what the Lions' preseason schedule looks like, there are some obvious choices here for Detroit. The first is that it seems pretty unlikely that they'll go with the Chargers ahead of their Hall of Fame game. That's a really fast turnaround. Plus, the Chargers have a really easy joint practice situation with the Rams being right there. 

They could potentially go to Atlanta and spar with them ahead of their preseason game, but the teams that make the most sense are the Miami Dolphins and the Houston Texans. Both teams love to do joint practices. Last year, the Dolphins did three of them with the Falcons, Buccaneers, and Commanders. The Texans had one with the Rams. 

It just makes the most sense to do those in consecutive weeks because both games are at Ford Field, and those guys are going to be here anyway. They did a similar thing in 2023 with the Giants and Jaguars. 

That means Lions fans are probably going to get a chance to see these joint practices, whereas last year they were in New Jersey, and it was harder. We'll see when they announce them, but again, these are the two that make the most amount of sense.