“Look, I wish Hooker – and I know he does – would’ve had a better outing, but you have to take it with a grain of salt,” Campbell said. “It’s not like he was playing with our first O-Line out there, or first-team skill position, all of that. So you take that all into account as well. I thought he was prepared. I thought he was ready. Looked pretty calm, just circumstances didn’t work out today, that’s all.”

Among players who made a favorable impression Saturday, Jacob Saylors returned from an ankle injury to rush for 32 yards on nine carries and added a team-high three catches for 27 yards. Loren Strickland and Trevor Nowaske tied for the team-lead with nine tackles. And Tyson Russell picked off a bobbled pass for the Lions’ first interception of the preseason.

“I feel good,” Nowaske said. “I mean going into today that was the biggest thing. I know I’ve had a good camp and I just wanted to kind of close it out with a bang and I feel like I did that. And I felt like, yeah, there was some big plays out there. Obviously, we didn’t get the job done but I definitely feel like from an individual standpoint I did all right.”

Nowaske said he’s excited for what lies ahead in the regular season, and so is Campbell.

“I love where our team’s at,” Campbell said. “We just finished basically six weeks, five weeks of true work on the grass and we’ve gotten better and better every week on both sides of the ball. I feel like we’ve really progressed. We’ve gotten two different looks from other teams, too, Miami and Houston this week. And I just think we’ve gotten a variety of work, I think we’ve tested each other, I think we’ve grown from it and I think we’re going to be ready to go. I’m fired up right now, so we’re going to be good.”