With less than a week away from the start of the 2022 regular season, the Detroit Lions made the unfortunate announcement that they were placing RG Halapoulivaati Vaitai (back) on injured reserve, which means he will have to miss at least the first four weeks.
On Wednesday, Lions head coach Dan Campbell spoke to the media and he said that as of now, it does not appear as if Vaitai will need surgery on his back and that it should not be season-ending.
“No,” Campbell said. “I mean, it could, I don’t know. But right now, we’re taking it day-by-day, week-by-week.”
Dan Campbell give 3 options to replace Halapoulivaati Vaitai
Following the injury, I wrote an article explaining that replacing Halapoulivaati Vaitai with Tommy Kraemer is a no-brainer, though Kraemer was not at practice on Wednesday so it will be interesting to see if he is listed on the initial injury report, which will be released later this afternoon.
Campbell talked a bit about Kraemer during today’s presser.
“What I like about Tommy is you know exactly what you’re going to get,” Campbell said. “We know exactly who the player is, what he is. He’s a consistent player. He grew through the spring and through training camp. So he makes the most of what he has, he’s pretty dependable and he’s smart.”
Campbell brought up the following three options to replace Vaitai.
- C Frank Ragnow to RG and backup Evan Brown to C
- RT Penei Sewell to RG and backup Matt Nelson to RT
- LG Jonah Jackson to RG and backup Logan Stenberg LG
“We’re exploring everything,” Campbell said. “We’re going to give a couple of different looks to guys today, (Kraemer) being one of them. We may shuffle some things up but we’ll come up with the best combination that we feel like is going to give us the best chance to win.”
Nation, how do you think the Detroit Lions should replace Halapoulivaati Vaitai?
