Detroit Lions fans are no stranger to watching a terrible team play football. Modern Lions history has two eras: mediocrity and atrocity, often alternating between the two each decade. 1971-1983 was mediocrity, 1984-1990 was atrocity. 1991-2000 was mediocrity, 2001-2010 was atrocity, and then 2011-2020 was mediocrity again. So a team like the 2021 Lions, who finished 3-13-1 is not a historical outlier. In just your author’s lifetime, the Lions have had ten such teams that won five games or less. The Honolulu blue and silver losing that many games is not weird. What’s weird is that this was one of the most likable and most fun Lions teams of any record that I can remember. Huh?
Though the season didn’t really begin until September, in my mind it started in January 2021, when Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell were hired as GM and head coach, respectively. So much of the tone for the season was set by what happened immediately afterwards. On Holmes’ side, it was the trade of Matt Stafford which triggered the full-on rebuild. By the time April rolled around and the Lions’ depth chart at WR was “50/50 shot these receivers are real people and not just names ripped from NCAA Football 14”, it was clear what this sort of season would be: a flaming, dumpster fire tank job. The roster was left gutted and expectations plummeted like a couch thrown from a ten story window.
On Campbell’s side, the tone was kneecaps. Particularly, bitten kneecaps. Campbell’s zany press conference that emphasized his approach to coaching spread like wildfire to all corners of the NFL internet and engendered two responses from those who saw it. One group of Lions fans were motivated and were prepared to run through a brick wall for Campbell. The other group, mostly those outside the fanbase, saw him as the sort of psychotic meathead who represented a marriage of the franchise’s historical failure with the backbreaking culture of work that exists surrounding football coaching. To that group, Campbell seemed to be a walking mistake from the moment he was hired.
The offseason rumbled along, with the Lions going through the draft without many major headlines, and Campbell assembling a generally lauded collection of assistant coaches. Few people had many expectations as the pre-season began to wrap up. “Just don’t go 0-17” was the general consensus among a lot of fans, with Detroit’s opening day roster being one of the weakest in the NFL.
What unfolded from there was strange, terrible, lovable, and … fun?
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So you fell for a 3-13-1 team?
I entered this season in a state of indifference. After a decade of watching nearly every minute of every Lions game, because the Stafford era was simply a cardiac shock each week for sixteen Sundays in the fall, this year was poised to be the opposite of that. The team was going to suck, and it was going to be one of those “let’s get it over with” years where you really just wish you had a “simulate to next season” button out of the Madden video game that could allow time to skip ahead. It didn’t seem like the team would be worth watching on a weekly basis, and also living in Canada at the time and not likely to get many Lions games on my TV (they show Bills games in the Toronto area), I wasn’t planning to watch much. Maybe flip on a shady Russian stream for 30 minutes until it got too ugly, but that was about it.
Yet I found myself routinely intrigued by the competitiveness of the games each week. That started with the comeback against San Francisco in Week 1, and then continued to Week 2, when I was planning on having my television tuned to the CBC for Canadian Election coverage (that was Election Day 2021) for most of the night, but the Lions leading at halftime of Monday Night Football in Green Bay made me keep flipping over until the Packers finally pulled away. Ditto the heartbreak against the Ravens a week after that, the Vikings a few weeks later, and then the Rams a few weeks after the Vikings.
Each week didn’t bring with it a win, but it brought something a little sweeter to the mind: hope. Hope that this is the right coaching staff, because the Lions might not have been winning, but they were playing surprisingly competitive games with teams vastly better on paper than them. Games that didn’t cease to be competitive even after the number of viable NFLers in the Lions lineup who would be on the roster of a playoff contending team dwindled and the players replacing those injured Lions were names that might’ve been confused with that of the guy who delivered a pizza to my apartment last night. Those practice squad-caliber players were playing far above their talent level and seemed to be loving the coaches who appeared responsible for their stunning level of play. That’s what brought me hope.
The team played with the “nothing to lose” swagger of a man who found a $50 bill on the street walking into the casino and now is laying it all on the line at the Blackjack table. That kind of football is fun to watch and it embodied the fanbase that embraced it with open arms, a fanbase who also feels we have nothing to lose, precisely because the previous 60 years of Lions football has won nothing. The coach in charge, that crazy, psychotic, caffeine-aholic, kneecap bitin’ motherfucker dialed up trick plays with a frequency I have never seen before from an NFL team. Entering a season where I felt there was little reason to watch and was just counting down the days until the 2022 NFL Draft, tuning in just to see what Dan Campbell was going to call this week was worth it. If we’re going to suck and lose a lot, why not have fun? Why not howl and wave your cowboy hat as you ride the atomic bomb down to earth? That’s what this Lions season was.
(Photo credit: Steven King, Getty Images)
House money seasons are often the best sort of seasons to follow, where you expect nothing and are pleasantly surprised when a few things go right. This wasn’t just a house money season though. It was definitely a pleasant surprise that the Lions weren’t the worst team in the NFL (Lions were only 27th out of 32 in point differential!), but what made it feel so good was that creeping feeling of hope, returning after years away. Of course there are the cynical Lions fans, or those who have lost all feeling entirely, that will never let hope return until the next playoff victory (a justified feeling), but for those who have even the slightest bit of emotion left in us, it’s hard not to feel a tiny bit of hope.
Those cynical Lions fans I just outlined are probably snickering at me, but it is worth noting that the Lions are not really a team where hope has a poor track record of performance. Rather, it has a poor track record of appearance. This is not the Toronto Maple Leafs we’re talking about, or the Cincinnati Bengals, or the Minnesota Vikings, or the Cleveland GuardIndians, or some other franchise that is defined by fielding a lot of good teams yet always seeing them fall apart painfully in the postseason. That’s the feeling of being bitten by false hope.
To the contrary, Lions history has very few moments of hope existing, period. The thing about being sandwiched between decades of atrocity and mediocrity is that neither world produces much hope. The Millen years were entirely hope-free once it was clear the new TV talking head GM was not a front office wizard, as were a lot of the 80s. Mediocrity brings with it hope at the beginning, like the magical 1991 Lions season, or 2010-11, when the team breaks out of the cellar and finally makes the playoffs, pulling you back in. But within a year or two it becomes clear that you’re just a forever 9-7 team and hope escapes from the balloon. That’s what the Lions have been since 2015, a team good enough to flirt with the playoffs if you got 16 healthy games from Stafford, but not good enough to be a Super Bowl contender, and with the wrong people in charge.
Matt Patricia was the living embodiment of a lack of hope. Whatever (false) hope existed when Quinn and Caldwell worked as a tandem evaporated over the course of 60 minutes against the Jets in Patricia’s first ever game as Lions head coach. And then for 42 games after that we had to sit through the slow feeling of a Dementor-like being sucking all hope from our body. Watching former Lions players dance on Patricia’s grave after his firing was a healthy bit of schadenfreude, but it wasn’t a substitute for hope. Outside of the biggest Campbell lackeys, those who bought in at the memorable press conference, we were left without hope for the sixth straight season entering fall 2021. Now, we have some.
Each game wasn’t just the feeling of excitement when punter Jack Fox zipped a fake punt pass for a first down, but it was the tiny feeling of hope slowly convincing us that maybe, just maybe, this is the group of management and coaches to turn it around. That tiny feeling weaseled its way into our brain every time some no-name scrub made a crunching tackle, or Amon-Ra St. Brown torched a corner, or Penei Sewell had another sack-free game, or Dan Campbell’s staff out-coached the coaching staff of a team going to the playoffs.
We didn’t want to give in too much, and there’s no reason for blind faith yet, but it made the season watchable. And it made a 3-13-1 team with the league’s second worst record so damn likable. They weren’t good, and NFL history likely won’t have much memory of this squad, but it was the first time I can say I had some degree of “fun” watching a Lions season since 2016. A season that I wanted to fast forward through was worth playing out in real time. Not often can you say that in Lions history, but through some concoction of surprise and swagger, we could say that this year. And that’s how I fell in love with a terrible football team.
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Ten assorted notes on the season
We’ve now reached the point where the narrative ends and the analysis needs to start. Here’s a hodgepodge of ten thoughts on the season from your diehard fan author:
1. Jared Goff is not the answer at QB, but he may not be an anchor either. Taking on the Goff deal was the most controversial part of the Stafford trade, especially since the structure of the deal largely mandated that Goff be on the roster in both 2021 and 2022, with a huge cap hit in ‘22. Midway through the season, it looked like a noose around the team’s neck. Goff was not capable of throwing more than five yards past the line of scrimmage, took killer -12 yard sacks with regularity, and was turning it over nearly as often as he produced touchdowns. But once Campbell’s play-calling got rolling, Goff wasn’t bad at all. Splits:
first nine games: 66.1% completion, 8 TD, 6 INT, 6.3 Y/A, 84.0 rating
last five games: 69.6% completion, 11 TD, 2 INT, 7.1 Y/A, 107.1 rating
He cut down on the picks, threw down the field more, and completed more passes. Having St. Brown get open with such regularity was a big part of that no doubt, but Goff was better, any way you slice it. Those last five games doesn’t mean that Goff should have a long-term future in Detroit. Unless he suddenly becomes a Pro Bowler next season, the Lions should still be looking to use the out in 2023 to waive Goff and get out from under the contract, but he also didn’t appear so bad that the team can’t improve considerably next season with him at QB. My take on Goff having watched him for a full year is this: he’s not going to make your team better, but if you give him a couple weapons, he also probably won’t kill your team either. The Lions still need to look for the QB of the Future, but I’m fine going into 2022 with Goff as QB.
2. The Lions’ offense has a lot of pieces for a future contender already in place. If we hope to get this team into the playoffs in 2023, I feel like a lot of the pieces that would be on that hypothetical playoff offense are already on the roster. At RB, there are questions about D’Andre Swift’s durability, but I really like him as a piece of a playoff RB rotation, a 500+ yard rusher and a 400+ yard receiver this season. At TE, the depth needs desperate help (please not Four Years, $22.6 M For Jesse James help though), but TJ Hockenson is a legit playoff-caliber starting tight end. We have two years of evidence on that. At WR, nothing more needs to be said about Amon-Ra St. Brown, other than that he could be a Pro Bowler as soon as next season and looks like a new Golden Tate in the making. OL is probably close to done already (see point #3).
So really you’re looking for depth pieces at RB/TE, maybe a new guard depending on how the offseason plays out, but in terms of marquee pieces, it’s two areas: a big outside WR to complement St. Brown, and a QB of the Future. Of course, saying “all we need is a good QB!” in the modern NFL is like saying “all we need for Thanksgiving Dinner to be ready is a turkey!”, but it will definitely help whatever young QB ends up coming to Detroit to have such a strong existing framework of a productive offense in place around him. When they pick that QB is one of the big questions of the offseason, but I think they can plug that WR hole this offseason for sure, whether it’s through free agency or the draft (Treylon Burks? Chris Olave?).
3. The Lions could have a dominant OL soon. The OT tandem of Taylor Decker, who has been a quality NFL tackle for years now, and Penei Sewell, who was superb after a bumpy start to the campaign and at age 21, looks the part of a future All-Pro guy, appears excellent. Toss existing All-Pro center Frank Ragnow back into this when he gets healthy, as well as guard Jonah Jackson, who had a fine second NFL season, and that’s 4/5ths of a great OL that could take your team to the postseason as a strength. The last guard spot may be a bit cloudy because they may try to get out from under the Halal Vaitai deal (though Vitai was solid this year), but I’m very optimistic about this group. They sustained major injuries, yet improved as the season went along, and allowed a Who Dat guy like Craig Reynolds to rush for 4.4 YPC. The running game was pretty decent this season, despite only a limited threat of the pass through much of the campaign, and as the passing game improves and the OL gets healthier, it could be very dangerous. Somewhere Matt Stafford is wondering why he never got this.
4. Here’s looking at you, Aaron Glenn. Things went downhill a tad with the defense in the last few weeks of the season, but it’s remarkable what DC Aaron Glenn did with the defense this season. While the offense scuffled early in the year, this ragtag defense kept them in games week after week. Looking at the roster, my eyes still can’t believe it. In the absence of the few notable pieces this defense had to begin with, we were treated to several pleasant surprises, be it corners Amani Oruwariye and Jerry Jacobs, or edge rushers Charles Harris and Julian Okwara, or DT Alim McNeill. Veteran leadership from Tracy Walker and Alex Anzalone helped too, but it was Jalen Reeves-Maybin’s transition from special teams ace to intriguing starting LB that personifies what Glenn was able to do. The defense needs a massive infusion of talent in the offseason to get the team closer to the playoffs, but if 2021 is what Glenn was able to do with a horrendous roster, imagine what he can do with a talented one. Just please, don’t hire him this offseason @DenverBroncos.
5. Don’t kid yourself, everything is a need on defense. Yes, Glenn improved the defense compared to last year, shaving nearly five points per game off last season’s Patricia Horror Show scoring defensive average, but don’t trick yourself into thinking any part of this defense is set for the hypothetical 2023 Lions playoff team. There are intriguing pieces at nearly every position, but that’s all they are- intriguing pieces. There are no Penei Sewells or Amon-Ra St. Browns on this defense yet, and so every position is a position of need entering free agency and the draft.
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6. But… if one position isn’t “of need”, it would probably be corner. Not because the Lions have long term solutions, but because they already have a long list of guys who will need snaps next season and have reasons for optimism. Jeff Okudah’s return from his Achilles injury will be one of the most awaited developments of 2022, Ife Melifonwu deserves a longer look if his body can deliver him a clean bill of health, Jerry Jacobs also merits a second season when he returns from his injury, and Amani Oruwariye was Detroit’s best corner this season, developing from “ehhhh” to an interception artist in the second half of the year. This is a young group— all four of those guys I mentioned are 3rd/2nd/1st year players— but that’s already a lot of hungry mouths to feed. Depth may need beefing up, as injuries already reared their heads this year, but I think there are enough upside pieces here to say it’s less of an area of concern than any other spot on the defense.
7. That was a pretty good 2021 draft? It’s never a good idea to grade a draft after just one season, but there’s a whole industry of idiots devoted to grading drafts as soon as they happen, so at least this won’t be the dumbest exercise out there. After one season of football, the returns are pretty solid on Brad Holmes’ inaugural draft class. He had to nail the 7th overall pick, and it sure looks like he did in Sewell. Despite being baby-aged for an NFL offensive lineman, he quickly matured and allowed just one sack the whole year and looks like a cornerstone you build around regardless of if he’s playing LT or RT.
The multitude of mid-round picks looks like a mixed bag with one home run. Mining Amon-Ra St. Brown out of the fourth round is a grand slam-level home run, while the rest is messier. Alim McNeil looks most promising as an interior rusher, but still was bumpy. Melifonwu and Levi Onwuzurike both struggled with injuries that derailed their seasons, while Derrick Barnes plays a very tough position for a young guy to learn (LB) and was eased in. If Sewell and St. Brown become Pro Bowlers (which looks likely), and McNeil grows into a quality starter, that’s a good draft. If that happens *and* you get another starter out of Melifonwu/Onwuzurike/Barnes, that’s an excellent draft. But overall, it’s a good sign for Holmes considering how crucial the 2022 draft is for this rebuild.
8. Dan Campbell: analytics guru. I was never a Campbell hater, but the one thing I didn’t expect Campbell to be is the savviest analytics head coach in the league when it comes to in-game decision-making, yet here we are. Campbell was an NFL player, talks about drinking enough caffeine in a day to do lasting damage to his heart, and looks like The Dude Lebowski, none of which screams “this guy understands what the computers say about coaching a bad team” but looks can deceive you. A big part of why this team was so likable is Campbell gets that element of the game.
So many coaches coach a 3-14 team the same way you’d coach a 14-3 team when it comes to in-game decision-making, when the computers are decidedly in opposition to that idea. In fact, whether you should go for it on fourth down is highly dependent on whether your baseline probability of winning the game is 10% or 80%. If it’s 80%, you want to play more conservative, lengthen the game, and ensure there are more possessions. If it’s 10%, you need to take a ton of risks to level the playing field, cut down on the number of possessions, and you probably aren’t going to win by kicking field goals and punting from the 40 yard-line. Campbell understood that, and in the process, the Lions went for it on 4th down more than any team in NFL history, which delighted the computers and the analytics crowd. You probably didn’t see it coming when Campbell was talking about kneecaps, but this head coach’s existence was a symbolic truce between jocks and nerds.
9. NFL, the league of parity. I really don’t have a lot of NFL takes this season because I didn’t watch much non-Lions pro football until recently (consequence of trying to work and go to school full time). But the one take I have about the state of the league from watching this Lions season is how it confirmed to me more than ever that the NFL is the league of parity. Specifically, that every team outside maybe the top ten squads are complete frauds. The consistency with which this Lions roster challenged teams either in or on the periphery of the playoff picture was baffling. Minnesota finished 8-9, only a game out of the playoffs, and yet went 1-1 against the Lions and were one 54-yard FG from going 0-2. Same for the 8-9 Ravens, the 9-7-1 Steelers, the 8-9 Browns, and the 7-10 Falcons, all of whom went down to the wire with the Lions. The Lions are nowhere close to contending for the Super Bowl, but based on this season and how low the bar is to making the playoffs after the recent expansion, they really are not that far from being a fringe 8-9 playoff contender.
10. Please, fewer injuries next year. Every NFL team goes through injuries, so let’s not act like I’m shocked that the Lions had some guys go through it when it came to their health. But man oh man were they ever hit hard by the injury bug. Just look at the cornerback position, which got devastated in a way that I can’t really remember any other singular Lions positional group being affected like:
Jeff Okudah: tore his achilles, OFY week one
Ife Melifonwu: injured mid-game week two, did not return until late November
Amani Oruwariye: broken finger, OFY week 15
Jerry Jacobs: tore his ACL, OFY week 14
That’s four young corners, three of which playing well at the time of their injury and one (Okudah) who was desperately in need of a bounceback season to get his career back on track after a disastrous rookie year and got slapped with a season-ending injury before it even really got started. Just brutal.
The injuries also seemed to disproportionately impact the few players on the roster who were known to be good before the season. Frank Ragnow, Taylor Decker, Romeo Okwara, Trey Flowers, TJ Hockenson, D’Andre Swift, and Jared Goff make up about 80% of the names that an NFL fan might’ve known on the Lions roster preseason, and yet all missed at least three games, with the first four missing huge chunks of the season. It’s not crazy to believe that just slightly better injury luck could’ve netted the Lions a few more wins (like say, not having Tim Boyle play QB against the Falcons).
Bonus #11: Get a better backup QB than Tim Boyle. I was planning to do only 10 takes, but writing the ending bit of the take #10 reminded me of a point I wanted to make… how the hell did Tim Boyle ever wind up in the NFL? Boyle was an objectively awful college quarterback at the FBS level, throwing 1 TD to 13 INT at UCONN(!!!!), arguably the worst FBS program out there, leading him to transfer to Eastern Kentucky, a middling FCS program, where he then was firmly mediocre, 11 TD to 13 INT on 61.5% completion and 6.5 Y/A. In other words, every bad Big Ten QB I’ve watched for the last 15 years who then went on to have a career as a distinguished auto salesman in the Greater Cedar Rapids Area had a better college football track record than Tim Boyle, a man who started three NFL games this season. Astonishing. He is not an NFL-level QB and he should not be on the Lions’ roster next season. Injuries are a natural part of football and Holmes ought to splurge for someone who at least can give you a fighting chance to win a game. Maybe Shaun Hill is still available…
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A quick offseason preview
I will undoubtedly write some more Lions content during the meat of the offseason, but here’s a quick primer on my big questions:
The OC hunt: Anthony Lynn is out the door, so the big question is who takes over for him, regardless of whether Campbell keeps play-calling duties. Joe Brady is a big name on the market to track, and this will be a big chance for Campbell to correct the only major coaching staff mistake from last offseason.
Handling the cap? Lions enter the offseason middle of the league in cap space, but that could go up if a few moves are made. They can gain $4.2 M from jettisoning Vitai (but it’s more likely his deal is restructured) and $10+ M from waiving Trey Flowers, and I think you have to do at least one of those. Free agency isn’t how you build your team, but it is a route to get better talent onto this defense (and maybe land a WR) to make the Lions more competitive in 2022.
The most pivotal draft: The Lions locked up the 2nd overall pick and now will get one of DE’s Aidan Hutchinson or Kayvon Thibodeaux. It’s possible they will get their pick between the two should the Jags go with OT Evan Neal at 1st overall. I don’t have a take on Aidan vs. Kayvon yet, but I am arguably more interested in the other picks than that one. Obviously, you need to hit on the chance to get an elite edge rusher (IMO the most valuable non-QB commodity in the NFL), but that Rams first rounder somewhere in the 20s + your 2nd rounder (pick 34) and 3rd rounder (pick 66) are massive pieces for the rebuild. If there’s one fanbase that knows the damage that can be wrought by whiffing on mid-round picks, it would be the Lions. Holmes cannot become Martin Mayhew in that way. This draft will swing the rebuild one way or another.
Closing thoughts on this strange season
I’ve outlined why I had a lot of fun watching this team, and how it gave me hope again, but the calendar year 2022 is going to tell us a lot about whether having that hope was a Lucy With The Football Moment or whether it was something more legitimate. This year was a “no expectations” season that pleasantly surprised. Next season the bar will likely be set at “we expect improvement”. How the offseason goes probably determines the extent of improvement that is expected but I’d like to see more than three wins as a start.
The schedule is pretty favorable, not going to lie. You draw the NFC East, which includes the struggling New York and Washington franchises, Carolina and Seattle, two teams in a lot of flux as your conference opponents, and then the Jets and Jags out of the AFC. Not to mention Minnesota and Chicago twice each in the division, neither of whom looked too mighty this season. Between those 10 games, it’s not crazy to think the Lions could go 5-5. Probably not going to do well in the other seven assuming Aaron Rodgers is still in Green Bay, but a solid draft and some smart free agent signings could get this team into the range that a lot of NFL teams sit. 26 out of 32 NFL teams won at least six games this season. Very reasonable to think the Lions could jump up into that group next year.
This offseason means a whole lot, which is what I’ve tried to stress. If there was ever a time to dive headfirst into the world of draft scouting as a Lions fan, this would be the time to do it, with a nice array of draft capital and some hugely consequential decisions to make. The draft really is a strange exercise, of paramount importance yet we really don’t get to find out who “won” the draft until five years later (let’s just say that the Lions did not win the 2011 Draft like the pundits said after it concluded). So I’ll be watching intently, but reserving any opinions until we start to see the players on the field. Getting outraged on draft night is generally a waste of energy, unless your team is picking Mike Williams in the high first round.
(Picture Credit: Paul Sancaya/AP)
Overall, I’m not totally sold on this new management group. Why would anyone be? It’s only been one season and the team won three games. But for all the reasons I’ve outlined, I’m pretty pleased with the direction this season went. Detroit sports fans in recent years know the sensation of tracking a rebuilding year, in the words of Taylor Swift, all too well. However, in being very familiar with rebuilds, we’ve come to know what a “good” rebuilding year looks like, and this was close to exactly that: a season with a lot of close, competitive losses to lock up a high draft slot, while still seeing progress from young players and enough signs to feel confident in management. The first part of that is certainly true, with the Lions losing a ton of one score games en route to the #2 overall pick, saw progress from guys like St. Brown, Sewell, and McNeill, and I’m encouraged enough by management to feel alright. That’s a good year one in the books.
It’s only year one though. It feels like this was the type of the season that begins the road to glory, but a 3-13-1 season on the surface also really isn’t much different from the first Millen year either (2-14). At the end of the day, this is still a bad football team that is far from Super Bowl contention. Drilling deeper, there are the seeds of hope planted. 2022 will determine whether those seeds sprout or whether they die off like every other time in Lions history post-Bobby Layne. If nothing else, at least the seeds are planted. It’s fun to have hope again.