Allen Park — Less than two full hours after Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell said Alim McNeill was beginning to look like his old self, the Lions defensive tackle left Friday’s training camp practice with a neck injury.
McNeill, who was hoping to have a bounce-back season after he was hampered by a lingering knee injury in 2025, will now briefly put his comeback on pause. He left practice early in the day after a team period.
Rookie linebacker Jimmy Rolder also left Friday’s practice with a leg injury. The immediate outlooks for Rolder and McNeill are unknown.
McNeill missed the first half of last season recovering from a torn ACL that ended his 2024 campaign. In McNeill’s first game back, he registered five pressures, per Pro Football Focus, and looked like he was going to pick up exactly where he left off. But McNeill did not regularly reach those heights throughout the season; in his last three games, he registered a combined zero pressures on 77 pass-rush snaps.
“I know we’re only two days in…but he does look better,” Campbell said of McNeill on Friday morning. “He looks like he’s back to what he was. He’s healthy. And, I told you, he would never say anything about it. He never did last year. But, when we went back and watched clip after clip, back to back, to back, to back, to back, to back of all the season. When you start going through all of these, he was favoring the leg a little bit.
“I don’t think he even realized it.”
The Lions were counting on McNeill to help revitalize a pass rush that was inconsistent last season.
“Mack is very important,” noting that his return to form “is going to be huge.”
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Alim McNeill, rookie linebacker leave Lions practice with injuries
Reporting by Nolan Bianchi, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Nolan Bianchi, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
