Lions TE Eric Ebron hurts lower right leg during practice

Detroit Lions starting tight end Eric Ebron was carted off the practice field Saturday after suffering an injury to his lower right leg.

It’s hard to draw a ton of conclusion from those tweets, but Ebron remains fairly upbeat about his situation.

He was in definite pain but even more Ebron seemed distraught that he was hurt.

The Lions, who held Ebron out of practice Friday with an undisclosed injury, are extremely thin at tight end with a just over a month left in the preseason. He had 47 catches for 537 yards and five touchdowns previous year. Quinn had previously said by the third season he typically knows what to expect out of a tight end.

Brandon Pettigrew, a part-time starter past year, is on the physically unable to perform list recovering from the torn ACL he suffered last December, and backup Tim Wright was lost to a season-ending torn ACL earlier this spring.

But after today’s injury in camp, if it does turn out to be an Achilles, it looks like he will be out for the season. The Lions have veteran Matthew Mulligan and undrafted rookie Cole Wick as the next two tight ends.

Still, he did double his production previous year to 47 catches for 537 yards and five touchdown – which blows away the 26 combined catches from the other five healthy tight ends.

Mulligan said it was “devastating”, to see a teammate go down with an injury in practice. “As a group, we all have to step up and try to fill that void”.

So if he misses any time, this is going to be a setback for an offense that has never been a consistent threat under Jim Caldwell.

The Lions may have to use more formations with three or four receivers and one of them will not be Johnson.

“I just dove and someone landed on top of me”, Jones said. “Hopefully he’s back and ready to go and he’s in good shape”.