Amon-Ra St. Brown, D'Andre Swift Will Likely Miss Seahawks Game

Amon-Ra St. Brown will miss his first NFL career game, and the team will be without its top two offensive weapons.

The Detroit Lions will be without running back D’Andre Swift and wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown for their Week 4 matchup with the Seattle Seahawks. 

Head coach Dan Campbell announced the news Friday at his pre-practice media session. 

The running back was diagnosed with a shoulder sprain suffered in a Week 3 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, and had been dealing with an ankle injury since the season opener. Swift told MLive that he re-aggravated the ankle issue in Week 3.

Meanwhile, St. Brown suffered an ankle injury in the Week 3 loss. He has been the team’s leading receiver through three games, catching 23 passes for 253 yards and three touchdowns.

“I would say he’s out,” Campbell said Friday. “Looks like he’s out.”

In St. Brown’s absence, the Lions will be counting on receivers Josh Reynolds and DJ Chark. Campbell expects numerous players to step up.

“Listen, man, that’s what it’s all about,” Campbell said. “Next man up. We’ve still got Hock, we’ve got Chark, we’ve got (Kalif Raymond), we’ve got Cephus. We’ve got Jamaal and we’ve got this O-line, and we’ve got a quarterback who can throw it.”

Swift’s status had been in doubt since Campbell said Wednesday that he would need to show “significant improvement” to get on the field in Sunday’s game.

"He's not looking good, either," Campbell said. "I would say he's probably out, as well."

The injuries mean that the Lions will be taking the field Sunday without two of their top playmakers.

“Yeah, I think it’s a -- I mean, there’s two separate ways to look at it,” said offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. “One is going into the game week, (Lions head) coach (Dan Campbell) tries to clarify early, and then each day updates who might be available. Because once again, that’s our biggest job as coaches is trying to put those guys in position to do what they do best, and each guy’s different. Everybody in the building, whether it’s active or practice squad, they all have things that they do well or else they wouldn’t be here. So, that’s kind of -- over the course of the week, we’re trying to hone in, ‘Hey, how can we get this guy here against this guy to do this?’ Then, within the course of the game, sure, yeah, a guy goes down and we do have to tweak a few things.

“That happened this game, that happened this past game where a guy -- maybe a formation needs to change, so we move a guy to different spot and the other guy does it. Those are things that we adjust with. And, we talk about it, we kind of think about that Friday night, Saturday during the day. Those are the scenarios, the contingency plans that we always prepare for. It’s not -- there is no hay in the barn for us over the course of the week. The Fridays, the Saturdays, we’re still sifting through, ‘Hey, they could do this. We need to do that. This could happen. We need to do this.’ That’s part of being a coach in the NFL.”

In three games this season, Swift has carried the ball 23 times for 231 yards and one score.

In his absence, Jamaal Williams will be the starting running back. Craig Reynolds and Justin Jackson will be the primary backups in the backfield.