The Detroit Lions are now in the interim from their interim head coach, as Darrell Bevell is unable to coach Saturday’s game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers due to COVID-19 protocols, sources told ESPN on Thursday.
Sources said the Lions will put Robert Prince, wide receivers coach, in the role of head coach, handing over the duties of playcalling to quarterback coach Sean Ryan, who has not been a playcaller at any level in his career.
Prince, who has never been a head coach, was offensive coordinator at Fort Lewis College (1994-95), Japan’s X League (1996-97), Portland State (1999-2000) and Boise State (2012-13). He was the passing game coordinator at Colorado in 2010.
He has been with the Lions since 2014, brought in by former coach Jim Caldwell.
The lions still have big problems to solve defensively. Coordinator Cory Undlin and all three coaches from the primary position – coach Bo Davis, linebackers coach Ty McKenzie and coach Steve Gregory – were kept away from the facility on Wednesday due to close contacts due to COVID-19.
“This was something we had to plan,” Bevell said Wednesday. “So there are contingency plans, and every time something happens, we adjust it. I still think we are collecting more information.”
On Monday, linebacker Anthony Pittman and a coach both tested positive for COVID-19. The NFL and the Lions then went on to trace close contacts and destroyed most of the defensive staff.
Bevell said on Wednesday that he believed some of this happened as a result of a trip to the team’s most recent game, in Tennessee – Nashville has one of the highest rates of new cases of COVID-19 in the country – but he’s not sure how his player and coach have contracted the virus.
On Wednesday, Bevell would not “confirm or deny” a report from the Detroit Free Press that one defensive assistant was not always wearing his contact tracking tracker and another held a meeting in his office.
‘We will not go into the details of all this. It goes back to contact tracking, ”Bevell said. “If you end up getting a positive test it’s probably what happened to us that it was probably the perfect storm, in terms of when you have an away game and someone tests positive on Monday they go back 48 hours.
“In a travel situation, you have the plane, you have the hotel, you have the buses, you have the smaller changing rooms in out-of-the-way places. So there are a lot of things to dig into and a lot of information about that. We’re still working through all of this. away. “
ESPN’s Adam Schefter contributed to this report.