Same ****, different team
When and Where: Week 11 at home
Last season: Ran out of defenders and lost in the divisional round to Washington.
Added: DJ Reed, Roy Lopez, Avonte Maddox
Lost: Kevin Zeitler, Carlton Davis
Players added or lost in order of snaps played last season.
Top draft picks: Tyleik Williams, Tate Ratledge, Isaac Teslaa
Biggest question facing this team: How big of an impact will the new playcallers be?
Including the playoffs, the Lions scored 28+ 11 times. The league average for points per game was 23, and for yards per game was 337, the Lions failed to reach those totals just twice last season. It helps that the Lions were 1st in offensive plays, but Ben Johnson was pretty good at his job.
But now he coaches the Bears. His replacement is John Morton, who was an offensive assistant for the Lions in 2022 under Johnson, so Morton has some familiarity with the team. But his last and only play calling job in the NFL was at the Jets OC in 2017. It went so well that he was completely out of football for a year after it. Morton has spent most of his career coaching for either Jon Gruden or Sean Payton, who have underwhelming coaching trees considering their success and longevity.
Campbell also had to replace his defensive coordinator, Aaron Glenn, who now coaches the Jets. To replace him, Campbell promoted from within, naming LB coach Kelvin Sheppard DC. Sheppard has only been coaching since 2021, entirely with the Lions under Dan Campbell and Aaron Glenn. Everyone has to start somewhere, but a Super Bowl contender giving playcalling duties to a guy with four years of coaching experience is a choice.
Successful team loses both coordinators and replaces them with two guys light on experience? We have seen this story before. The Eagles promoted from within with Brian Johnson, and brought in Sean Desai, who had just one year of playcalling experience but had worked under several successful coaches. We know how that worked out. The 2023 Eagles won 11 games because they had too much talent to be bad, and the 2025 Lions will also win a lot of games because of the talent they have. But like the 2023 Eagles, the 2025 Lions have their sights set higher than win a bunch of games in the regular season.
Dan Campbell has earned the benefit of the doubt, which is good for him because these replacements leave a lot of doubts.
