Lions’ Young to be benched this week

11/20/2012
ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALLEN PARK, Mich. — The Detroit Lions are bench­ing wide re­ceiver Titus Young this week af­ter what coach Jim Schwartz called "un­ac­cept­able" be­hav­ior dur­ing Sun­day's loss to Green Bay.

Schwartz did not char­ac­ter­ize the move as a sus­pen­sion, but he said Young was sent home from the team's prac­tice fa­cil­ity Mon­day and will be in­ac­tive for Detroit's game against Hous­ton on Thanks­giv­ing. The coach did not say what Young spe­cif­i­cally did wrong.

"When you play a team sport, you need to put team be­fore your­self," Schwartz said. "There's no room for self­ish be­hav­ior."

Young, a sec­ond-year re­ceiver out of Boise State, has 33 catches for 383 yards and four touch­downs this sea­son. He caught one pass for 24 yards Sun­day.

Young was in­volved in an al­ter­ca­tion with team­mate Louis Del­mas last off­sea­son. When he was in col­lege, he missed most of the 2008 sea­son for dis­ci­plin­ary rea­sons.

"That is ground that we've al­ready cov­ered, and I thought that we would be past this, but we ha­ven't been," Schwartz said. "His be­hav­ior on Sun­day was un­ac­cept­able, and it hurt the team, par­tic­u­larly on of­fense."

The Lions lost 24-20 to Green Bay, fall­ing to 4-6.

With their play­off hopes dwin­dling, they face Hous­ton (9-1) on Thurs­day. The Tex­ans en­ter the game tied for the NFL's best record.

At times, Young has looked like an ideal com­ple­ment to star re­ceiver Calvin John­son. Young caught nine passes for 100 yards against Se­at­tle last month, in­clud­ing the win­ning touch­down in the fi­nal minute.

But now he's fac­ing an­other set­back.

"Coach felt it nec­es­sary, and I ob­vi­ously sup­port our head coach," quar­ter­back Mat­thew Staf­ford said. "I sup­port our play­ers too. I want the best for ev­ery­body out here."

Schwartz said he doubts Young will prac­tice today.