An Unrecognizable Team
The Detroit Lions have lost their identity
From the middle of the 2022 NFL season to the middle of the 2025 NFL season we could generally expect the Detroit Lions to look a certain way. Over that period, spanning 51 regular season games (exactly three regular seasons’ worth of games), the Lions were an astonishing 40-11. They were one of the best teams in the NFL and they achieved it by having a familiar formula.
The Lions didn’t lose games they were heavily favored in and they never lost back-to-back games. They ran the ball well and had a strong OL, boasted a good run defense, and were effective on special teams. The team was precise, well-coached, and well-organized, committing few sloppy penalties and managing the game state as well as any team in the league. The Lions went for it on fourth down at a high rate and converted them routinely. More than anything else, the Lions played with heart and gave it their all, every single game.
But since the Lions’ 2025 bye week, the formula has crumbled and as a result, so has the team’s play. Detroit is 3-5 since the bye and their closest game in that span was an overtime survival at home against the 2-13 New York Giants playing a backup QB. This is a totally different Detroit Lions team, one without an identity, from the #1 seed last year to, after Sunday’s loss against Pittsburgh, likely out of the playoffs entirely. Such a fall from grace forces everyone who observes this team to take a step back and examine all that’s unfolded, the mistakes and the frustrating errors in the team’s process. In this piece I’ll look at offense, defense, and the coaching to analyze where things have gone wrong and the big picture questions ahead:
[CONTENT NOTE: Zach Payne and I have still been publishing our Lions podcast this season, called the Payne & Drain Show. There were fewer wins to talk about this year but we have posted weekly episodes throughout this entire Lions season, breaking down each Lions game and results around the NFL and will continue into the offseason. You can find us on many different podcasting platforms.]
[Detroit Free Press]
A good offense, but without its greatest strength
I haven’t written about the Lions since the season preview, but I am not exactly pleased to admit that this reads as awfully prescient:
Beyond the schedule, the most obvious way this goes wrong is the IOL isn’t up to the established standard and it causes the offense to tumble. If Glasgow is unable to rebound at a new position and the young G’s come in below expectations the Lions could be in trouble. They may find themselves in a situation where routine pressure is coming up the gut, preventing Goff from having the necessary time to operate, and where they are unable to maintain a consistent running game at the same time
Yay, I got the prediction right but boooooooo the worst case scenario came true. The 2025 Lions’ offense has been an odd unit to discuss because it doesn’t feel right yet it’s 3rd in total offense (YPG), 2nd in scoring at 30.1 PPG, and 4th in EPA/play. This is still a top notch group, even if the vibes are often negative and the offensive line is not up to its established standard.
Which shouldn’t be dismissed because the offensive line was the offense’s heartbeat. As great as the skill position players were, no individual weapon towered above the rest to define the offense like Calvin Johnson or Barry Sanders did in days of yore. Likewise, Jared Goff was great over the prior three seasons, but was never seriously in the running for an MVP. What stitched together the offense and gave the group its identity was the physical, mauling offensive line that powered the rushing game and gave Goff the time he needed to work.
The Lions leaned on their OL for everything from 2022-24. They trusted it could pick up tricky blitzes, which allowed the offense to slice up aggressive defenses like Brian Flores’ Minnesota Vikings. They trusted it to open holes to turn 3rd & longs into 4th & shorts and convert those 4th downs once they got there. Look no further than some of Detroit’s most thrilling wins in the Campbell era, like the win over Green Bay last season when the team went for an all-or-nothing 4th & 1 on the ground and smashed the Packers’ face in to get the first down. Or the 2023 heart-stopper against the Chargers, when the Lions ran it on 4th & 5(!) and picked it up.
For all the talk about Ben Johnson’s departure, Johnson’s favorite play-call was the 3rd & medium run to set up manageable 4th downs. The Lions didn’t stop doing it when Johnson left. It’s just that they stopped converting them, in part because Frank Ragnow retired, because Graham Glasgow is another year older, and because they have had (essentially) two rookies/practice squad players at guard.
It’s not that same elite OL anymore and that has been one of Detroit’s undoings in their defeats, be it the Week 1 embarrassment in Green Bay, the second half unraveling against KC in October, the bellyflop against Philadelphia, or Sunday against Pittsburgh, when Goff was sacked for a safety and the offense ran for a stunning 15 total yards. Even crazier, Detroit attempted only 12 runs in that game, a number that would’ve been unthinkable in past seasons.
The Lions’ offense has felt like it is searching for a rhythm throughout this season. There were games of all-out brilliance, but many games where they went through long lulls and struggled to find ways to pull themselves out. The struggles of new OC John Morton led to his demotion from play-caller to Dan Campbell himself. Campbell was better than Morton, and did well to activate Jameson Williams as a proper weapon, but Campbell ran into the same realities with Morton in games where the OL was getting its ass handed to it.
A frustrating number of 3rd & Long screens were dialed up in an attempt to circumvent the pass protection problems. They still went for it on 4th down a ton, but were not remotely as effective at converting them without the strong OL. In games where they couldn’t establish the run and get chunks on 1st down, the offense broke down altogether because the play-action pass wasn’t at their disposal. Add it all up and the team went half the season never converting a 3rd & 10 or longer.
The talent was/is still there at QB and at the skill positions. When given room to run, Jahmyr Gibbs is the best of the best at RB in the NFL. When not given room to run, David Montgomery can maximize every yard (and should’ve been used more this season). Amon-Ra St. Brown’s drop problems in the second half of the season were baffling, yet he will still likely finish with over 1,250 receiving yards + double digit TDs. Jameson Williams elevated his game to look like a feature receiver at points in the second half and has cleared 1,000 yards. Even Isaac TeSlaa has emerged as a red zone threat and Sam LaPorta was his steady self pre-injury.
Most of all, Jared Goff remains efficient, accurate, and effective. The talent at those positions is good enough that the Lions were able to sustain a high-scoring, high-producing offense without its heartbeat. But there were few games where you would’ve been able to confuse this year’s offense with the 2023 or 2024 offense. The absence of Ragnow was always evident. The change in the calculus of the play-calling was also noticeable.
Despite the missing offensive line, the offense is not what sank this team. It hurt them in the games it faltered, but with the season on the line in the last few weeks it has continued to produce at a decent enough rate. It should have been enough to bank a couple more wins and firmly insert the team into the playoff discussion as the final weeks of the year arrive.
Likewise, I feel good about the offense in the coming years. The skill position core is young and locked up, with Isaac TeSlaa only likely to grow into more of a weapon. Goff should age reasonably well, as he is seldom injured. The Lions will have to rebuild the offensive line around Sewell (I do think Ratledge will be a good long-term guard, even if the pass pro needs to improve), but it’s a nice place to start from. If they can regenerate in the trenches, this should be a dynamic, productive offense for years to come. It’s the defense, the side of the ball that undid the team down the stretch this season (again), that’s another story…
[Yahoo! Sports]
Something’s gotta change on defense
If we refer back to the season preview, the section I wrote about the defense is the most disappointing part:
Using our guidepost of those first 12 games from last year, I’m going to set the baseline as top 10 in scoring and total defense as the bare minimum expectation. Anything worse than that and it’s disappointing, much like on offense. If they get that leap from Terrion Arnold and Kelvin Sheppard hits the ground running, there is a world where the Lions exceed that baseline and challenge for a top 5 defense. They have possible stars at every level of the defense and have built up depth too.
Right now the Lions are towards the middle of the league in EPA/play on defense, with a sharp downwards trend over the second half of the season. It’s not great to be middle of the league in EPA/play considering that metric has often been more favorable to the Lions than total defense (YPG). I hand-waved away Detroit’s sub-par total defense finish last season during the season preview as a creation of all the injuries but put in a row it now looks like this just is the Dan Campbell defense:
2021: 29th
2022: 32nd
2023: 19th
2024: 20th
2025: 23rd
In fairness, Campbell’s defenses always seemed predicated on the idea of letting the opponent drive the field but being able to force field goals and get takeaways to limit points against. At times it has worked, but the fact they regularly get gashed and every season give up a ton of yards has always spoked me. Last year’s defense managed to execute the plan well, finishing in the upper ranks in points per game against despite giving up yards. I never liked the concept, but at least there was some proof of concept.
As the 2025 season winds down, we are back in a position where the Lions have a problematic defense that is putting immense pressure on their offense. My podcast partner Zach Payne pointed out on our show last week that Detroit’s defenses under Campbell have often gotten worse as the season has gone on, which has now happened definitively in three straight years (in 2021/2022 the defense was pretty bad the whole year).
It’s easy to point to injuries as the reason and there’s no question it was a big factor last year. But I’m less sure of that overall because the 2023 Lions were quite healthy and this current defense, while missing the starting safeties, has the rest of the defense in good shape. The whole front seven is healthy, as is the nickel and one of two starting corners. Terrion Arnold is injured but Rock Ya-Sin has been acceptable in his stead.
The safety injuries explain why the long Pittsburgh runs on Sunday went for 45 yards instead of 15 yards but it’s very alarming that the Lions are giving up a number of 15 yard runs in the first place. Especially when run defense has been the strength of the defense for years and so many resources have been committed to stopping the run, at the expense of the pass rush. Giving up the edge has been a continual problem during the season and now they have struggled to defend 12 and 13 personnel sets, which is strange because a base 4-3 defense should be better situated to deal with offenses going heavy on tight ends.
When you add the problems against the run to a pass defense that has rapidly deteriorated, you get a grim picture. Pass rush has been hit or miss throughout the year, with blitzes being ineffective at rectifying the fact that the Lions don’t have many good organic rushers on the D-Line besides Aidan Hutchinson. And then there’s the pass coverage itself, which for most of the year remained indulgent on man coverage before switching dramatically to mostly zone against Pittsburgh, to disastrous results.
Pass coverage has been the most consistent weak spot of the Lions in the Campbell era and here we are again. Despite being solid or even great during the first half of the season, it has imploded in the second half. They did not allow a 300+ yard passer in the first 10 games but have since allowed 399, 234, 376, 368, and 266 yards through the air. Combine that with the run game, which was creakier than I had wanted to see in the first 10 games, also falling off a cliff and the Lions have allowed 400+ yards in four of their last five games.
They haven’t been good enough in the trenches, haven’t been generating turnovers at a high clip, and continue to have the same conundrum of wanting to run primarily man coverage with mediocre (or worse) corners and never seeming to practice zone coverage enough to lean on it when the corners are struggling. More than anything, what has made this defense an infuriating watch is their inability to perform in the big moments. Over the past four games the Lions have allowed opponents to convert ten consecutive 4th down attempts(!!!!) and 3rd down hasn’t been much better. Mix that with their own offensive struggles in the red zone and on 4th down and you get this:
In totality, this is a defense that has been arguably championship caliber just once in five seasons and due to injuries, it didn’t finish as a great unit (2024). Everything else has been somewhere between “bad” and “worst in the NFL”. Considering the amount of premium draft picks, free agents, and even trades (Carlton Davis) that they’ve spent trying to fix the defense, these results aren’t good enough.
Dan Campbell expressed his desire to remain a man coverage defense after Aaron Glenn’s departure, seemingly as a personal philosophy, and stayed in-house with his DC hire in Kelvin Sheppard. After five seasons of mostly below-average play under a similar defensive scheme and a concerning year where the defense regressed at key spots despite being decently healthy, I think it is time for Campbell to give up the reins. You can keep Sheppard on staff if he wants to move back to coaching linebackers, but bring in a veteran defensive coordinator with a proven track record of success who will take the keys to the car and install his system.
Unlike on offense, the way this franchise coaches and evaluates talent on defense isn’t getting the Lions to the promised land. Even in that 2023 season that haunts every Lions fan, the defense was poor enough that I remain skeptical that they would’ve had much shot in the Super Bowl against Kansas City. That they haven’t progressed meaningfully in two seasons and are right back in a situation where a rickety D is dragging down a prolific offense is the best argument for change. I think it’s time to try something new on defense and take this team in a new direction. Its offense has long since deserved a defense to match.
[ESPN]
Coaching and self-reflection
Building off that point, I want to talk briefly coaching and the team’s need for self-reflection. The harbinger of the season that unfolded for me was in the preseason, when the Lions showed up for their first preseason game in Canton against the Chargers and were terrible on special teams. It continued throughout the preseason and at the time was quite strange. The Lions had been strong on special teams in 2024 and returned the same kicker, the same punter, the same punt returner, and the same special teams coordinator.
The problems didn’t stop in the preseason, as the first half of this Lions season was marred by kick return ineffectiveness, kick coverage problems, field goal mishaps, and sloppy penalties. The Lions have usually been great on special teams under Dan Campbell and suddenly, they were bad. I can’t tell you why, but it’s a fitting introduction into the rest of the team. The execution and the precision that we’ve grown so accustomed to has been gone. Pre-snap penalties on offense, false starts, illegal shifts, too many players on the field. Mind-numbing.
Clock management, timeout usage, and 4th down decision-making has declined as well. I chalk this up more to Dan Campbell’s responsibilities as a play-caller, because they weren’t nearly as bad before he took up the play sheet, but it’s a repercussion of seemingly whiffing on the OC hire in the offseason. Altogether, it hasn’t felt liked a well-coached team, the first time I have said that in the Dan Campbell era. There were major growing pains in year #1 but by the end of the season, I felt like it was a well-coached team that was playing above its talent. This year’s team feels like less than the sum of its parts.
Which has contributed to the unlikability of the group. I tweeted about this on Sunday and I got push-back from some. To be clear, this is mostly a vibes thing. There have been many more worse Lions teams in my lifetime, but they didn’t frustrate me like this one because I had lower expectations and knew those teams just weren’t very good. This team has too much talent to look like this and the standard established by previous editions of this team is very far off from the level of play we’ve been seeing. I haven’t enjoyed watching them play much this season and that part sucks.
The public comments from some members of the organization have only contributed to this. Sheppard’s quote from last week, claiming that Detroit’s run defense was good if you deduct the plays where they were bad, was frightening at the time but now sounds like a delusional coach in the wake of the Lions being paved by Pittsburgh on the ground. Or there’s GM Brad Holmes trash-talking beat reporters and calling them out by name at a press conference in February 2024 for doubting his genius, only to put two uninspiring drafts together since then. Or Dan Campbell saying “we’re good” about not adding EDGE help in the summer only to see that position be a continual problem all season.
Add in Amon-Ra St. Brown’s continued podcasting while dealing with an epidemic of drops, or Dan Campbell and Aidan Hutchinson now appearing in roughly 25% of all ads on television, and you get the feel of general arrogance from the group that rubs me the wrong way. This team hasn’t felt like the Detroit GRIT group that won our hearts but a franchise that patted itself on the back a little too much after going 15-2 despite all the injuries. That, more than anything else, has driven my apathy towards this team. It’s made me wonder if the humbling of this season was a much needed medicine to bring the group back down to earth and reset their focus.
The fact this group of coaches and players has shown us more is the reason for hope. Again, there are a lot of good players on this team, which makes the performance of this season so disappointing. I don’t believe in “Super Bowl windows” for the most part in the NFL, because they can re-open rapidly. The Rams seemed to be in big trouble a couple years ago when they crashed and burned to a 5-12 record. Fast forward to now and the Rams nailed a few drafts in a row and rebuilt into an elite team. The Eagles did the same thing to rebuild their defense. If Holmes manages to reprise his 2021-2023 draft success, the Lions can very easily get back on top.
It will require a correction. Some of the help may come from getting a 3rd or 4th place schedule next year rather than this gauntlet (something I talked about pre-season). But work will have to be put in across the organization, at every level. Blame is equally distributed in my eyes, from the FO’s over-indulgence in project draft picks to the coaching staff’s subpar performance to individual players stagnating in their performance to bad luck from injuries and the schedule. Everyone has to work harder to reclaim their identity and find the execution that made them great in 2023-24, as well as building a better defense than they’ve had before. This era of the Detroit Lions is not finished but they need to look in the mirror to get back. The fans ought to expect it.