Through two games this season, opposing quarterbacks have thrown to a receiver covered by Detroit Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold 16 times. They have completed 11 passes for 176 yards and one touchdown for a passing-efficiency rating of 126.0.
For players who have been targeted at least 16 times in coverage through the first two weeks of the NFL season, only one has yielded a higher passing-efficiency rating than Arnold.
“I feel great about TA,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said about Arnold on Saturday. “Here’s what I love: Listen, he goes to work, man, and he does not lack confidence. He acknowledges, like, ‘Hey, man, I can be better, and I will be better.’ And he goes out there and works at it in practice. It’s like anybody else, man, any other player at any other position. It just happens to be those guys get on an island a lot. It’s like your quarterback, right? And everybody sees it.
“But there’s plenty of things that go on that not everybody sees where we need guys to be better, and you just continue to work at it in practice and they do get better. So I’m not worried about TA.”
Arnold is looking for better play as the season progresses.
“I hold myself to a high standard,” Arnold said, “and I know that my teammates hold me to a high standard, and my main thing is just going out there and trying to be the same every day and every game and just continuing to grow.”
Arnold started 15 regular-season games and one playoff contest as a first-round rookie last season. The former Alabama defensive back formed the cornerback tandem with former Auburn standout Carlton Davis in 2024. Davis left for the New England Patriots in free agency during the offseason, and Detroit signed D.J. Reed to take his place for 2025.
“I would just say it’s early,” Arnold said. “Like, I was even talking to (defensive-backs coach Deshea Townsend), like, just getting used to playing with each other. And then like when we go out there and make mistakes, our coach reiterates it – like, you have to go out there as a DB and you have to make your opponent beat you.
“Like, in the NFL, it’s a lot of shifts, a lot of motions, a lot of stacks and a lot of eye candy just to try to get you off your game. And when you really break down the tape, a lot of times we were getting beat by alignment or just communication, so when we go out there, we want to line up and really make other guys beat us.”
Detroit plays the Baltimore Ravens at 7:15 p.m. CDT Monday at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. ABC and ESPN will televise the game.
Campbell said the Lions need to keep Ravens running back Derrick Henry from gashing their defense, and that will take support from Detroit’s cornerbacks.
“It’s going to take everybody,” Campbell said. “Very important, and really, look, everybody has got a load on them. But the corners, man, you got to play sticky coverage, you got to commit to the run, so you guys got to win your one-on- ones, but also there’ll be times where you got to trigger in the run game, too. We’re going to ask you to hold down some of this in the pass game, but you also got to be ready to come up and fill on Henry. We cannot let him get going. You give him a head of steam and he finds a crease, he’s dangerous.
“So we’re going to ask a lot of those guys, and they know the task ahead. But, listen, that’s why those guys are here. It’s why we drafted, it’s why we acquired the guys we have from Reed to freaking Amik (Robertson) to TA. I can keep going across the board. That’s why they’re here.”
Arnold has 12 tackles this season after making 60 as a rookie. He had three missed tackles last season and hasn’t had any this season.
“If you have a secondary that doesn’t tackle, you can kind of measure how tough the team is,” Arnold said. “So when me and DJ go out there, and even Amik, we just pride ourselves on saying, ‘Hey, man, it’s not going to be us.’ Like, we’re not going to show up on tape as the team that won’t put our nose in there or we don’t want to just show up as a team that looks soft physically. …
“I mean even at Alabama, just playing in the SEC, like, that’s one of the things that the SEC prides itself on is playing big-boy, physical football, whether that’s 21 personnel, 23G, like just downhill running. And the corners have to tackle.”
