Two Detroit Lions players spent most of their 2024 offseason rehabbing from injury. Now, they’re hoping an offseason of rest and reflection leads to a big 2025.
The unfortunate reality of football is that for many players, the offseason is not spent to prepare for the upcoming season but recuperate from the previous ones. The 2024 Detroit Lions season was an extreme reminder for viewers that injuries are commonplace in this sport, and sometimes the best medicine is rest.
But that can mean tough results for the season ahead. While the healthy players are getting on-field reps and strengthening their understanding of the scheme, injured players often spend their days off the field and inside the treatment room. That internal work gets them back on the field as soon as possible, but it often leaves them behind everyone else. It’s why you often hear players say it takes over a year to fully recover from a serious injury.
Two Lions players won’t have to deal with that this year—and for the first time in a while for both.
Tight end Sam LaPorta may not seem like a player constantly dealing with injuries, but as an NFL player, he has yet to really get any rest for the body. Before his rookie season, he was consumed by preparation for the draft. The next season, he was dealing with a serious ankle injury. This year finally provided some relief… and rest.
“My first offseason I had ankle surgery. So I was trying to prepare the body for my second season,” LaPorta said. “This season, I came out pretty healthy, which is great. I got to take some time off, just let my body relax for the first time since basically fall camp of my senior year at Iowa. So, it’s kinda a long stretch, but took a couple weeks to relax and then hopped back on the bike and started going again.”
It’s been a tougher road for veteran defensive tackle DJ Reader. He hasn’t played a full season since 2018, and along the way he’s had a pair of torn quads that required intensive rehab. But as he enters his 10th year in the NFL, he believes—yes, the offseason trope—he may be healthier than he’s been in a long time. That has allowed him to pursue avenues to improve—something he believes is still necessary, even for a player with his experience
“It was probably my healthiest offseason in a minute, when I haven’t gotten cut open or anything happened,” Reader said. “So I think just sticking to the routine of just working. I think, like you said, I go to the couple offseasons when I was healthy. Knowing that I can explore a couple of different things this year with being healthy—like when you’re in that rehab phase, you’re just rushing back. You’re just focused on the rehab and what that may be to get you back playing and how hard that grind is.
“But when you got an offseason, you really going to explore yourself, learn a lot more about yourself, figure new things out. I think in this league and every other professional sport—or even in business—just life, old dogs got to learn new tricks. You might have your routine, but you got to learn something new to figure it out to stay around. So I think that’s what you do.”
The two players figure to be critical players on their respective sides of the ball. LaPorta is already a Pro Bowler in his young career and is coming off a pair of 700+ yard seasons with at least seven touchdowns in each. Reader remains one of the most underappreciated nose tackles in football, and while his best days may be behind him at 30 years old, he will still be a big fixture in Detroit’s run defense. He’s also an important mentor for Lions first-round pick Tyleik Williams.
“He sits beside me at meetings, so it’s cool to just hear his answers,” Reader said of Williams. “He doesn’t talk very loud, but he knows the answers to a question. So me being a vet sitting beside him—it’s always fun just watching the rookies be like, ‘I don’t want to get it wrong.’ I’m like, ‘Who cares?’ We’re in a room, so it’s been fun just sitting there watching him talk about it. But he’s really, really smart. He picks up the playbook really well. Can’t wait to get to see him moving around and just see what’s going on. I watched him a little bit at Ohio State. We was just really impressed with his game.”
