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Here’s an excerpt. It’s about 1/4 of the article:
ALLEN PARK – Detroit Lions defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard disagreed with the idea that Terrion Arnold’s release was a “setback” for his defense when he spoke to reporters on Sunday.
Arnold, who was picked by the Lions in the first round of the 2024 draft, was released by the team after two seasons. This came after a June pretrial hearing on kidnapping and robbery charges related to a February incident in Tampa. Arnold was arrested and faces eight felony charges: four for kidnapping and four for armed robbery, including conspiracy charges.
If convicted, he could spend life in prison. Tampa police identified Arnold as the main conspirator, according to the state attorney’s office.
“Listen, I’m not going to say it was a setback, so to say, because to me, honestly, that’s disrespectful to the guys that’s still in this locker room,” Sheppard said. “What I’ll say is Terrion Arnold had number one cornerback potential, but it was still untapped. You know what I mean? And I’ll leave it at that.”
Sheppard is right. Arnold DID have #1 CB potential but he hasn’t come close to reaching his ceiling yet. He wasn’t guaranteed to get there even if he stayed with the Lions.
Rock Ya Sin outplayed Arnold in 2025.
I would prefer to have Arnold and have him earn/lose a starting spot in 2026 but I’m fine cutting a guy who is not in a position to focus on his career versus focusing on not going to jail.
I don’t expect Shepp to say any different. He’s right. TA had lots of potential. He was a starting caliber CB who could have been better. It’s a shame. Moving on though
While i agree with everything stated.
Im OKAY with the DBs. Not stoked. But okay.
If they felt TA was just okay.
And knew Kerby And Branch are injured. Why not add more good DBs?
Izien and Clark are fine. Nothing great. Would have liked to see 1 more good DB.
But still not as worried about DBs vs DL.
From all accounts, it sounds like Nick Whiteside is seizing the opportunity and playing well so far in practice… Hopefully he becomes a diamond in the rough and continues his upward trajectory. He surprised a lot of us last season.
Dozens of unheralded CBs keep emerging in the league; maybe we’ll get lucky with Whiteside now, too. I’m not overly worried, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the CBs were a liability again.
Yep! The potential was there, but, in game play? There was no noticeable drop off from Arnold to Rock.
wasn’t Whiteside cut ?
I strongly suspect that the play of the front seven Wil massively help the cornerbacks
At a minimum, they’ll be much better than they were last year… As a ceiling, they could be very, very good. When we had Suh/Fairley/Ansah/Jones, I can’t even remember who the cornerbacks were… But they didn’t appear to be anything special
While I recognized, this defensive line isn’t the same as that one… It’s gonna lean that direction, and that principal will apply
Also, I hope they get back to blitzing with branch
He is so good at timing those blitzes… And he’s amazing and tackling too.
It seemed like there was a noticeable drop in PI penalties. But that’s just an impression, I didn’t actually count them.
I’ve made that comment, too. Arnold was known as “handsy”. Rightly or wrongly. I saw quite a few chickenshit calls, but, technically…yeah.