An ESPN simulation of the 2024 NFL season ended with the Detroit Lions winning Super Bowl 59. Details here.
On Monday, Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell said after an offseason of not hiding from the fact that winning the Super Bowl is the goal this year, they are done setting their sights on the Lombardi Trophy and focused on goals that come well before that.
“I just told the team, ‘Let’s not talk about it anymore,’” Campbell said. “And it’s just this: Of course we do (want to win a Super Bowl), who doesn’t?”
We are not beholden to those same restrictions. The Super Bowl is the ultimate goal for this franchise, and for the first time in a very, very long time, that feels attainable. A predictive model over at ESPN agrees.
Over on their website, Seth Walder published an article that used ESPN’s FPI (Football Power Index) to simulate the 2024 NFL season and in the end, they had the Lions beating the Kansas City Chiefs to win Super Bowl 59. Here’s a look at some of the other projections, as detailed by Walder.
“Quarterback Jared Goff proved he was “good enough for f—ing Detroit,” continuing the relentless efficiency that he showed in offensive coordinator Ben Johnson’s system in 2023 by finishing in the top three in QBR,” Walder wrote. “Cornerback Carlton Davis III bounced back to be a critical part of the Lions’ secondary, and defensive end Aidan Hutchinson took another step toward stardom, recording 14 sacks and forcing four fumbles.
“The combination led the Lions to 13 wins and the top seed in the NFC. Detroit took care of upstart Chicago in the divisional round before settling the score in the NFC title game with San Francisco to advance to New Orleans and Super Bowl LIX.”
Now, there’s an important caveat to the methodology here. Walder ran the FPI simulation 20,000 times, but the selection of the Lions as Super Bowl winners was not the result of the most popular outcome for those simulations. Rather, Walder just randomly picked out one simulation of the 20,000 (he calls it No. 515), and that one just so happened to have the Lions as Super Bowl winners.
Still, going by FPI’s overall probabilities, the dataset has the Lions with a 10.3 percent chance to win the Super Bowl, only behind the 49ers (15.8%) and Chiefs (11.9%). They also have the third-best odds to make the Super Bowl (17.6%).
In other words, gone are the days of “So you’re saying there’s a chance” memes are over. There’s actually a real chance.
