Lions try to stay positive after losing Aidan Hutchinson to broken leg

Sport

Lions try to stay positive after losing Aidan Hutchinson to broken leg

2024-10-15 06:29 Last Updated At：06:30

DETROIT (AP) — The Detroit Lions should have been in a celebratory mood on Monday.

After all, they had just beaten the Dallas Cowboys 47-9, their most dominant performance of the Dan Campbell era. Fox broadcaster Tom Brady said he believed they were the best team in the NFC.

Instead, they are dealing with the broken leg suffered by star defensive end Aidan Hutchinson. Hutchinson, the league's best pass rusher this season, remained in the Dallas area on Monday to have surgery to repair his fractured tibia and fibula.

“The surgery went great — it is all good news — but man, Hutch is a captain for us, a highly productive player and a great teammate who does everything the right way,” Campbell said. “So, look, it hurts. It hurts to lose somebody like that — not only the player, but the person.”

The expected recovery time is 4 to 6 months, which would have Hutchinson ready to go for training camp in 2025. However, Campbell isn't quite ready to write off his 2024 season.

“I would never count Hutch out,” he said. “Yeah, it is probably a long road ahead, but I would never say he can't do it. If anyone can make it back, it's him.”

Even if Hutchinson makes it back in January, the Lions have to find a way to replace his pass rush for the next 12 games. The easy answer is to trade for someone like Raiders star Maxx Crosby, but Campbell doesn't expect general manager Brad Holmes to rush into anything.

“(Injuries) come up every year, and Brad is always looking for ways to get better,” he said. “Is there someone out there who can potentially help us? At what cost? It has to be right — everything has to be right. Honestly, I believe in the guys that are here.

“We're looking and we're evaluating.”

Quarterback Jared Goff followed up his perfect game against Seattle with another spectacular performance against the Cowboys. In the two games, Goff has completed 36 of 43 passes (83.7%) for five touchdowns and no interceptions — plus a touchdown catch against the Seahawks. And the Lions combined to score 89 points.

Despite their best efforts, the Lions couldn't get any of their offensive linemen into the end zone on Sunday. Still stinging from having Taylor Decker's 2-point conversion last season at Dallas called back due to a disputed penalty, offensive coordinator Ben Johnson called a pass to Decker, a hook and lateral from Amon-Ra St. Brown to Penai Sewell and a screen pass to lineman Dan Skipper. Decker couldn't hold on in the end zone, Sewell's catch was called back due to another penalty, and backup quarterback Hendon Hooker got sacked before he could get the ball to Skipper.

CB Terrion Arnold, Detroit's first-round pick in 2024, had been plagued all season by penalties. Against the Cowboys, he wasn't flagged and helped hold CeeDee Lamb to seven catches for 89 yards on 14 targets.

On the same drive that Hutchinson was injured, CB Carlton Davis left the game with a head injury. Davis, though, passed through the concussion protocol and will be able to practice this week.

251 — The total yards gained by Dallas. In Lions' 42-29 win over Seattle, the defense gave up 516 yards and it appeared Detroit's secondary was going to be a significant problem. It didn't look that way against the Cowboys.

Find a way to get past the Hutchinson injury and beat the undefeated Vikings on the road.

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

Death toll in attack on Christmas market in Germany rises to 5 and more than 200 injured

2024-12-21 20:17 Last Updated At：20:21

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned both the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and wounding at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany since 2006, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The state governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose to five from a previous figure of two and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them "are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God's mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There were still no answers Saturday as to what motivated the man to drive his black BMW into a crowd in the eastern German city.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. He has also voiced support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Haseloff said Friday that authorities believed the man acted alone.

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market. Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

Aboubakr reported from Cairo and Gera from Warsaw, Poland. Geir Moulson contributed from Berlin.