The Lions' Resurrection and the Dangerous Art of Overlooking Detroit in an NFL Offseason

You know, I have been doing this for a long time now, and there is something that happens every single year in the lead up to an NFL season that fascinates me. Teams that have suffered through a disappointing year, teams that have disappointed their fan bases and their organizations, they become the subject of what I call the "institutional skepticism hangover." The Lions have lived in this space before, my friends. They have been the team that everyone wanted to fade, the team that looked good on paper but surely could not possibly deliver in practice, the team that was just waiting to break your heart one more time. And yet, here we are again, in the offseason before what could be a genuine bounce back campaign in the Motor City, and I am seeing some of the usual suspects ready to lay money against them.

Let me be clear about something before we dive into the substance here. The Lions earned their skepticism. That is not a controversial statement. They went through decades of futility that frankly has no peer in the modern NFL era. Barry Sanders retired in his prime rather than continue playing for that organization. Calvin Johnson walked away while he still had elite years left in the tank. The organizational dysfunction was not just real, it was textbook. But here is what I want you to remember: we are not analyzing the 2008 Lions or the 2015 Lions. We are looking at a franchise that has fundamentally altered its infrastructure, its decision making apparatus, and its philosophy. Ben Johnson left to become a head coach. That tells you everything you need to know about what this organization has built on the offensive side of the ball. That tells you that other people in this league recognize the work being done there.

When I look at the Lions and I consider their win total projections for next season, I have to start with the foundational question: what was wrong with this team this past year? And more importantly, was it really what the surface level tells us? Because here is the thing about NFL seasons that people do not quite understand. Sometimes a team finishes with eight wins and eight losses and it feels like a disappointment, and in a lot of cases it is. But sometimes, particularly with a team that has a legitimate schematic advantage on one side of the ball, those eight wins represent a team that was genuinely close to ten or eleven wins. That is not me being a homer for the Lions. That is me looking at the situational football numbers and understanding what actually went wrong.

The Lions have a quarterback in Jared Goff who, and I know I sound like a broken record on this, but it bears repeating, is playing some of the best football of his career. Goff is not a top five quarterback in this league, and I say that with full respect to his abilities. But Goff is a quarterback who has completely internalized the Ben Johnson system and who has the arm talent and the processing ability to make teams pay when they have insufficient pressure. He does not have the athletic limitations anymore that held him back in Detroit previously. He is in a system that was designed specifically for him. That matters. That matters significantly when we are talking about bounce back narratives.

Now, let's talk about the running back situation. Detroit's backfield has been overhauled, and there is genuine intrigue here about what that looks like. A healthy David Montgomery represents a legitimate one two punch in that backfield if the organization invests appropriately. That sounds obvious, but it is not. Most teams do not actually know how to utilize a traditional power running game within a modern offensive architecture. The Lions do. They have proven this. When Montgomery has been healthy, he has been exactly the kind of productive north south runner that complements what they want to do with play action and deep shots. If he can stay on the field, this offense becomes significantly more balanced and significantly harder to defend.

The receiving corps remains dangerous, even if some of the supporting cast has changed. Detroit still has weapons that can make plays in space. The question mark is always depth and maintaining that production when the primary options draw the consistent attention they deserve. But again, in a Goff led system that has proven it can distribute the ball and find open receivers through progression, this is manageable.

What troubles me most about Detroit's projection for next season is not their offensive capability. It is the defensive side of the ball. And I want to be very precise about this. It is not that the Lions cannot build a competent defense. It is that building a competent defense takes time and investment, and the Lions have been in a position where they have had to make tough choices about where their resources go. When you have a limited amount of salary cap space and you have legitimate weapons on offense that you want to maintain and extend, you sometimes have to make sacrifices on the other side. This is the fundamental problem that every playoff contender faces.

But here is where the narrative gets interesting. The Lions are built to score quickly and efficiently. If they can create even a marginally serviceable defense, one that can keep them in games, one that can force occasional turnovers and create some pressure situations, they are positioned to be dangerous. Because they can win games on the scoreboard. They can win games in a shootout. They can win games where the defense is not particularly impressive because they trust their ability to move the ball and put points on the board.

This is where I would tell you that looking at their Over Under win total for next season, you have to understand the context of their division and their schedule. The NFC North has improved, and we all know that. But the Lions have the offensive firepower and the schematic advantages that can allow them to compete in that division at a high level. When you look at a team that finished eight and nine, that has retained its core offensive weapons, that has access to proven game plans that move the football, you are looking at a team that is probably sitting somewhere in the ten to eleven win range in their over under.

If the over under is set at nine wins, that is a fade for me. I am taking the over. I am trusting that the infrastructure improvement that we have seen in Detroit is real, that Ben Johnson did not leave to coach somewhere else because that was just a lark, and that Jared Goff and this offense are positioned to be a factor in the NFC playoff picture. The Lions are not going to bowl you over with their defense. But they might just out score you before you even realize what happened.