“I’ve been sitting for four weeks now. Just raising the upper body. Squatting. So, in a way, I feel like I just got out of the offseason. I’m feeling really, really terrific. I don’t feel it when I’m wearing this (brace), therefore it’s a great situation. But I’m feeling great. Really revitalized. During the first two weeks, all I could do was sleep and eat. I got my sleep and whatnot from those previous trips back, so I’m good. Very good.”
And the knee brace McNeill mentions is difficult to overlook.McNeill said he’ll have to wear it in games for the foreseeable future, but it’s not a problem because it’s tailored to his knee and situation.
“Obviously, I believe it exists. But, honestly, I don’t,” McNeill said in the locker room on Wednesday. “I didn’t think twice about it when I was on the field.” It doesn’t prevent me from getting in and out of my cuts, or from bending or doing other things.”
McNeill’s return ahead of the postseason is not to be dismissed. When he suffered a knee injury in New Orleans, the third-year interior defender was playing some of the finest ball at his position in the league. McNeill was creating pressure and getting home at a career-high rate, and he was receiving league-wide recognition for his outstanding play.
“Yeah, it’ll be good,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said. “It’ll be great to have him back. And I know he’s looking forward to it just as much as we are, so he’s excited, and he’ll be back here for us soon. And, yes, he’s excited, so I think it’ll be fine.
“This time of year, for him, it’s always going to feel like Game 1 again.” He’ll be fresh, with fresh legs and a fresh enthusiasm about him, so that’s good.”
McNeill was ranked sixth among inside defenders with enough snaps to qualify by Pro Football Focus at the time of his injury. He has 31 tackles, six for loss, nine quarterback hits, one forced fumble, and a career-high five sacks and 33 pressures through 12 games.
Those 33 middle pressures remain second on the team, trailing Aidan Hutchinson’s 93 by a country mile. Those five sacks rank second on the team despite missing a month of action, if anyone needs any more proof of how desperately this defense needs McNeill back.
“I just want to win this next game, go to the playoffs, and win the Super Bowl,” McNeill said of his stats and leadership. “I don’t care if I had 14 sacks or none, so.” But I had no idea that was where it was. But, to be honest, I expect Aidan to run away with it. He’s about to turn it up a notch. To be honest, seeing him do that would be a lot of pleasure.”
And as McNeill said that, Hutchinson walked by in the locker room, and said:
It’s also worth noting that much has changed for the Lions in the previous month. They’ve erased some generational demons by winning their first division championship in 30 years and will host their first playoff game in the same amount of time.
McNeill said he wasn’t sweating missing out on that moment in Minnesota because he knew the team would get that done. And while he wasn’t on the road that day, McNeill still celebrated and did some yelling by himself in his home on Christmas Even after the game.
“It was just me. I was just in there screaming,” McNeill said. “Gets no better than that. We got the dub. Iffy (Melifonwu) got the little pick, and I was lit. I was lit. It was just me screaming.”
There have also been some changes on the defensive line. Isaiah Buggs and Bruce Irvin are out, and Tyson Alualu has entered the defensive line rotation. Alualu played more than half the defensive snaps against the Dallas Cowboys last weekend, so McNeill has a new running mate.
And Alualu has seen a little bit of everything as a 14-year veteran and former first-round pick. He’s played nearly 200 games in his career, including a recent taste of the postseason while playing some of the best ball of his career with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“Doing it with Tyson is going to be really easy, because he’s been here — He’s been in the league forever,” McNeill said. “He’s been in the league forever. You know, he’s teaching me and I’m learning new things from him every second of every day that I’ve been back. It shouldn’t be hard.
“Just little small details or whatever as far as maybe alignment or how to play a certain block assignment. Because he’s seen it all. And he’s seen it way longer than I have. It could really be anything. Something like at practice today, I just asked him what he thought about this block or this alignment or something like that. Just little stuff like that, and it helps me a lot.”
