ALLEN PARK, Mich. (AP) — Penei Sewell has been All-Pro three times and selected to the Pro Bowl four times during his first five seasons, putting him in elite company with just three Hall of Famers.
The Detroit Lions are switching Sewell's position this season, setting him apart from Anthony Munoz, Tony Boselli and Joe Thomas.
The trio of former all-time greats are the only other offensive tackles to be first-team All-Pro at least three times and named to the Pro Bowl four times or more in their first five years in the league — and they were left tackles throughout their NFL careers.
Detroit is making the move to replace Taylor Decker while putting first-round pick Blake Miller or newly acquired veteran Larry Borom at Sewell's previous spot at right tackle.
Lions coach Dan Campbell expects a seamless transition for the 6-foot-5, 335-pound Sewell.
“It’ll be like riding a bike for him,” Campbell said Friday before the team's workout. “Will there be things he’ll have to learn? Yeah, of course there will be. But I mean, he has played left. That’s muscle memory. He played a lot of left in college and for us for those in ’21.”
Detroit drafted Sewell out of Oregon, where he was an award-winning left tackle, with the No. 7 pick five years ago.
Sewell started the first eight games of his career in 2021 at left tackle because Decker was injured, making him the youngest left tackle to start an NFL game at 20 years old.
The Lions shifted him to right tackle midway through his rookie year and he stayed there for the last four-plus seasons, other than a short stint during the 2023 season when Decker was hurt again.
“Sewell can do it all,” Campbell said.
Decker asked for his release during the offseason, ending a 10-year run as the team’s starting left tackle after announcing he was coming back instead of retiring. The Lions addressed the void by taking Miller out of Clemson with the No. 17 pick last month.
Sewell, who is in the first season of a four-year, $112 million contract, has proven to be quite a pick for Detroit.
He earned first-team, All-Pro honors the last three years and Pro Bowl recognition four straight times. Sewell has started 83 times in the regular season, plus four playoff games, in five years to help the long-suffering franchise become a respected team in the league.
Campbell said Sewell is athletic enough to play guard or even tight end, but switching sides for an offensive lineman can be challenging.
Players who have made the move say it's like driving a car with the opposite foot or shaving with their other hand. The footwork is different as is the hand-and-eye coordination required on each side.
“When you switch, you have a different leg up front,” Sewell has said. “So you have to push off a different leg every time. You have to train this leg that’s been back the whole time and catching to now pushing.”
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Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell talks with the media before an NFL football practice in Allen Park, Mich., Friday, May 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana lawmakers passed a new congressional map Friday designed to help Republicans pick up a seat while eliminating one of the state's two majority-Black House districts, both of which are represented by Democrats.
Approval of the new House map came a month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s current map as an illegal racial gerrymander, weakening the landmark 1965 federal Voting Rights Act. That decision intensified a national redistricting battle fueled by President Donald Trump’s efforts to protect the Republicans’ slim House majority in the midterm elections. Louisiana is one of several Southern states now redrawing their maps to help Republicans.
Louisiana Republicans had considered drawing a map giving the party a shot at winning all six of the state’s U.S. House seats. But that would have required adding more Black voters to Republican-held districts, potentially backfiring with GOP losses.
The map approved Friday in a 28-10 state Senate vote reflected Republican arguments that a 5-1 map is safer for the GOP and better protects U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson from facing a difficult reelection. Republicans currently hold four of Louisiana's six congressional seats.
A half-hour Senate debate revolved around Democrats contending that the proposed map is racially gerrymandered to squeeze more Black voters — who tend to be registered Democrats — into a single district.
The bill's sponsor, Republican state Sen. Jay Morris, repeatedly insisted that party affiliation, not race, drove district boundaries.
“I purposely put more Democrats into District 2 to make the remaining districts better performing for Republicans,” Morris said at one point.
Morris said he told the map demographers to avoid including any data on race or including those statistics in information shared with lawmakers before the vote.
Democratic state Sen. Sam Jenkins told Morris, “I think it’s a racially gerrymandered district that's going to get us into a lot of trouble here."
“Agree to disagree,” Morris told Jenkins.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry is expected to sign the new map into law.
Louisiana is currently using a court-ordered map drawn in 2024 to comply with the Voting Rights Act by including a second district with a majority-Black population.
That map, however, was challenged in court, and the Supreme Court responded on April 30 by striking it down as an illegal racial gerrymander.
Landry postponed the state’s U.S. House primary, scheduled for May 16, until later this summer to allow time for Republican lawmakers to draw and pass a new map.
The proposed map redraws Democratic U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields' district, clustering it around predominantly white communities in the Baton Rouge area and southern Louisiana. It also adds part of Baton Rouge to a heavily Democratic, majority-Black district based in New Orleans currently represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Troy Carter.
More lawsuits were expected over the new map.
Democrats say the proposed map could draw a lawsuit over racial gerrymandering. Meanwhile, the plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision criticized the Legislature's map earlier this week for leaving a majority-Black district in place.
“From the beginning of the process, I said we’re building a house on a broken foundation — now it feels more like quicksand,” Democratic state Sen. Royce Duplessis said during floor debate. “I’m really, really troubled by the fact that we’re going to continue to lead the charge in this race to the bottom.”
In the weeks following the Supreme Court’s decision, several other Republican-controlled Southern states have seized upon a weakened federal Voting Rights Act to try to redraw their own congressional districts.
So far, Republicans are winning the redistricting contest. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they will win a narrowly divided U.S. House in November. Republicans think they could gain as many as 15 seats from their redistricting efforts so far, while Democrats think they could gain six seats from new districts in California and Utah.
Florida’s Legislature passed new congressional districts just hours after the ruling, completing a redrawing that was in the works in anticipation of the decision. It could yield Republicans as many as four additional seats in the midterm elections.
Tennessee adopted new U.S. House districts a week after the ruling, carving up a majority-Black district based in Memphis in a Republican attempt to win an additional seat.
In Alabama, Republicans are attempting to pick up another seat by redrawing two districts where Black residents compose a majority or close to it. Democrats hold both seats, and the proposal is mired in a court battle.
South Carolina’s Senate, meanwhile, decided against redistricting, despite pressure from Trump.
Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Mary Anne Mushatt, of the League of Women Voters and the Orleans Parish Democratic Committee, right, hugs Rep. Tammy T. Phelps, D-District 3, after a redistricting plan to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district, in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, was passed by the House in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, May 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
A person opposed to the redistricting plan reacts as she leaves the Louisiana House chambers after the plan to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district, in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, was passed in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, May 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Louisiana Rep. Gerald Beaullieu, IV, R-Dist 48, speaks prior to a Louisiana House vote on a redistricting plan to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Louisiana Rep. Kyle M. Green, Jr., D-Dist 83, speaks prior to a Louisiana House vote on a redistricting plan to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Louisiana Reps. Adrian Fisher, D-Dist 16, left, Chad Michael Boyer, R-Dist 46, and C. Travis Johnson, D-Dist 21, right, recite the pledge of allegiance prior to a house vote on a redistricting plan to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
