Detroit Lions 2025 NFL Season Preview and Picks: Is Dan Campbell’s Super Bowl Window Closing?

Scott Kacsmar08/08/2025 - 12:57 pm

(Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)

The Detroit Lions had a legendary regular season for their franchise in 2024, finishing 15-2 and outscoring their opponents by 222 points. But as we’ve seen so often in the NFL in the 21st century, these regular-season scoring juggernauts crash out in the playoffs, and that’s what Detroit did in its first playoff game, losing 45-31 at home to the upstart Washington Commanders.

Just like that, the dream season for Detroit was over. No chance to see how they would have fared at home against the Philadelphia Eagles, who they did not play in 2024. No dream Super Bowl against the Chiefs in New Orleans.

Detroit comes back in 2025 with the same Super Bowl expectations, and the best news is the healthy return of their best defensive player, Aidan Hutchinson, after he broke his leg five games into 2024.

But going into his fifth year, head coach Dan Campbell has to show he can still get the job done without both of his coordinators as Ben Johnson (Bears) and Aaron Glenn (Jets) got head coaching jobs elsewhere with the job they’ve done the last three and four years.

But the sportsbooks still like Detroit, which has the fifth-highest odds to win Super Bowl LX (+1100 at FanDuel), and the Lions are still favored (+155 at FanDuel) to win a tough NFC North that sent three teams to the playoffs last year. They all lost their first playoff game too, so that was a twist after such a great regular season.

As the final team in our NFC North previews, we’ve been talking with the Bears, Packers, and Vikings about how this division is ripe for change after such a great 2024 season.

When you change coordinators, head coaches, and starting quarterbacks, and you go from playing the 2024 AFC South/NFC West to the 2025 AFC North/NFC East, that should cause some shake up as Detroit looks for a third-straight division title. The Lions also haven’t had four winning seasons in a row since 1969-72.

The culture has changed in Detroit and expectations have never been higher for the Lions in the Super Bowl era. But after suffering playoff heartbreak for the second year in a row, we are going to dive into the reason why most Super Bowl windows are so small, and why the Lions are maybe running out of time to get it done with this core group before more significant changes come and more challengers arise in the NFC.

We’ll end with our best Lions bets for the 2025 season, our 16th team preview of 2025. Halfway home.

Previously on LIONS: Dream Season, Nightmare Ending

The Lions took their blown lead in the 2023 NFC Championship Game in San Francisco well. They came back stronger, though it took four weeks to see the vision after a slow 2-1 start where they barely edged out the Rams in overtime on opening night and dropped a 20-16 game at home to Tampa Bay.

But against the Seahawks in prime time, Jared Goff and the Lions made history when they completed all 19 of their pass attempts, a single-game NFL record, in a 42-29 win. That set the offense on another level, and they embarrassed the Cowboys in Dallas in a 47-9 win in Week 6.

Unfortunately, that game was a turning point for the season as well. Aidan Hutchinson, who started so strong with 7.5 sacks in five games, broke his leg and was lost for the season. Without him, Detroit struggled to find another pass rusher to step up and that’s exactly the kind of player you need to go on a Super Bowl run. Despite missing 12 games, Hutchinson still led the Lions by 3.5 sacks over anyone else.

But it really became an injury-ravaged defensive unit in Detroit. They had just five players play at least 58% of the defensive snaps for the season – the 2022 and 2023 Lions each had eight such players.

That’s probably a big reason why defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn got the job with the Jets this year. His unit did pretty well despite the injuries. Of course, holding the Titans (14), Jaguars (6), and Colts (6) down on the scoreboard doesn’t necessarily prepare you for a red-hot Jayden Daniels in the playoffs or when Josh Allen came in with the Bills and dropped 48 points in Week 15, which was the only other loss for the Lions in 2024.

Oddly enough, all three losses were at home, and the Bears almost upset Detroit on Thanksgiving if not for the worst clock management in NFL history that led to Matt Eberflus getting fired and replaced with Ben Johnson, but let’s let that potential butterfly effect play itself out first before we declare that to be the turning point in the fortunes of Detroit and Chicago.

But even without Hutchinson, defense wasn’t necessarily on the minds of people who were skeptical of the Lions getting to the Super Bowl. That was on quarterback Jared Goff, who had his best season ever in 2024 (72.4% complete, 4,629 yards, 37 touchdowns, 68.4 QBR, etc.), and let’s reiterate he was not the team’s downfall in the 2023 NFC title game. His skill players dropping big passes and Jahmyr Gibbs were the offensive issues that day.

But in a Week 10 game in Houston on Sunday Night Football with the nation watching, people saw Goff throw five interceptions in one game. He still got the win, which is hard to do, but that one game basically took him out of MVP consideration he deserved and instilled that stigma in people’s minds that he’s bound to screw this up eventually.

It just wasn’t a huge talking point going into the playoffs because the defense made Sam Darnold stink up the joint so bad in Week 18, a battle for the No. 1 seed with Minnesota, that it looked like the Lions still had the right stuff to get this done. There were even reports that Hutchinson might be able to return if the Lions reached the Super Bowl.

But in that divisional round game against Washington, a 9.5-point underdog, the Lions had no answers for Daniels, who dazzled that night. The Lions also turned it over five times with Goff (four giveaways) throwing a pick-six during a wild second quarter that saw him possibly get concussed. He returned to the game, but he had the kind of day he couldn’t in the playoffs.

However, the Lions were hanging around in the fourth quarter at 38-28 with the ball at midfield and over 12 minutes left. That’s when offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, maybe afraid to trust Goff on that night, dialed up a trick play where wide receiver Jameson Williams seemed determined to throw the ball no matter what he saw. The result was an interception, turnover No. 5, and the Commanders turned that into a touchdown drive (45-28 lead) and never looked back.

It seems like five turnovers is the magic number with this Detroit team right now. Five Goff interceptions in Houston, five turnovers in the playoffs, and they even turned it over five times in last week’s Hall of Fame Game to open up the preseason with a 34-7 loss to the Chargers.

You don’t need to be smart to know five turnovers is a losing strategy in the long run. But after that playoff loss, this is the kind of thing that will stick with Goff until he proves he can be that flat liner a la Eli Manning/Joe Flacco/Nick Foles and get through a full Super Bowl run for his team without screwing it up.

He may not have time on his side either. However, he does seem to have a wonderful wife if you watched Quarterback Season 2 on Netflix. You shouldn’t feel sorry for him when his season ends earlier than expected.

After watching Sinners and Quarterback S2, there is one metric where I'll rank Goff (#1) and Allen ahead of Mahomes… pic.twitter.com/BbWjzNNqoT
— Scott Kacsmar (@ScottKacsmar) July 8, 2025

Is Dan Campbell’s Super Bowl Window Closing in Detroit?

Detroit Lions Dan Campbell Jared Goff — Tag team, back again. But for how much longer?

The title is not clickbait. The idea of a short Super Bowl window in Detroit was also mentioned in the introduction to last year’s Detroit preview:

“If you’re a Detroit fan, then you have to be thrilled about getting to finally experience a winning team with expectations. But there is a fear that things were set up perfectly last year for that elusive Super Bowl, it didn’t happen, and sometimes that window is only a season long.”

The Lions got better as a team in 2024, but they finished further away from the Super Bowl than they did in 2023 when they had a 17-point lead in San Francisco and could see facing a Kansas City team with weaker receivers that they already defeated on opening night. Maybe that was the golden opportunity. Maybe that’s as good as it gets to reference my fifth-favorite Jack Nicholson movie.

Because what happens in 2024? Suddenly, Aidan Hutchinson breaks his leg in Week 6, you’re injured everywhere on defense, and this hot-shot rookie by the name of Jayden Daniels is dropping touchdown after touchdown on you in the divisional round.

Then you get to 2025, both coordinators left for better jobs, one of them helps the Bears turn things around, your center (Frank Ragnow) retires, another young quarterback (J.J. McCarthy) has stepped up in your division, and after you lost to Washington, the Eagles crushed them in the title game and now have all the confidence in the world of repeating this year, so you lose early again in January.

By then it’s 2026, and some other team is ready to throw Jameson Williams a fortune (wide receiver pass optional). Then those players like Hutchinson, Jahmyr Gibbs, and Sam LaPorta are all thinking about resetting the market to become the highest-paid at their position. With inflation, that’s going to be about $45 million per year for the edge rusher and over $20 million per year each for the running back and tight end.

Oh, let’s not forget that Jared Goff’s cap hit is $69.6 million in 2026 and Penei Sewell, your stud tackle, is $28 million. Good luck keeping all of that together as this is the cost of doing business in today’s NFL. Unless you have one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, your window isn’t open for very long.

Goff is very good, a top 75 all-time kind of quarterback, but he’s not Patrick Mahomes. He might not even offer a real edge over Caleb Williams and J.J. McCarthy, who are playing on cheap rookie deals, if the coaching and situations in Chicago and Minnesota bring out the best in those players who were also high draft picks.

This is why you can’t blow that 17-point lead in the NFC Championship Game. You never know when you’ll get another shot.

The other reason the title was never clickbait is this is Year 5 for the coach-quarterback duo of Campbell and Goff in Detroit. They came together in 2021. If you’ve been reading our season previews about the Five-Year Rule, discussed most prominently in the Baltimore Ravens, then you know what I’m going to say next.

The Five-Year Rule: No team has won its first Super Bowl starting the same quarterback for the same coach for more than five seasons. This is actually true all the way back to 1950.

If a coach-quarterback duo is going to win a title together, it’s going to happen in five years or not at all. What usually happens is they peak early, then someone has to go. Maybe the coach’s message has grown stale, and he’s taken them as far as he could. Maybe the quarterback just doesn’t have it in him to finish a season on top.

The Lions rebounded well last year after a tough playoff defeat. But they’ll have to do it again this season, and they’ll have to do it without the coordinators that Campbell’s trusted the last three years when Detroit’s had winning records.

The Five-Year Rule doesn’t mean the Lions can’t be any good after 2025, but you only get so many opportunities with the core group you have now to win this thing before players get too expensive to keep, players get hurt and are never the same, or players age out past their prime.

This is just the cold reality of the NFL, and it’s why the 2025 season should be an all-in case for Detroit to get the job done. Trade a first-round pick in October for a veteran if you have to.

You never have as much time as you think you do.

Detroit Lions Offseason Review

Let’s meet the new coordinators replacing Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn, and the additions to the offense and defense that will try to help them keep things running smoothly.

Offense: Will the Lions Still Roar (and Score) with John Morton?

Continuity is always so important for offensive chemistry to stay intact. That’s why you like to keep the same play-caller, the same receivers for the quarterback, and the same offensive line (when it’s a good one like Detroit’s is).

The Lions lose Ben Johnson’s creativity, but they are at least making a safe pick by promoting John Morton, who was with the team in 2022. He’s been a senior offensive assistant (2022) and was the passing game coordinator the last two years in Denver for Sean Payton, who has also been an influence on Campbell’s coaching career (Saints assistant in 2016-20 before taking the Detroit job). Morton is 55 years old and played wide receiver in the NFL briefly in the 1990s.

But this is Morton’s biggest coaching job ever, and it’s only the second season where he’s an offensive coordinator for an NFL team. His first was with the 2017 Jets, an offense that ranked 31st in yards per drive with Josh McCown as the primary quarterback. Not great, Bob.

For Goff, this is his 10th NFL season, so he should be in his prime and has seen just about everything from defenses. However, you can’t deny his two worst statistical seasons are his 2016 rookie year and his 2021 debut season in Detroit. What do those seasons have in common? They’re both his first years with those teams, so uncertainty was a factor. But they’re also his only two seasons where Sean McVay and Ben Johnson didn’t oversee his offense. This will be the third such season for Goff.

But at least Goff has worked with Morton for one year before. Morton also inherits one of the most talented offenses in the league with a strong line, great running back duo, and plenty of weapons to throw to.

In fact, the Lions could have their best receiving corps yet with Sam LaPorta going into Year 3, Jameson Williams coming off a breakout year, Tim Patrick a little healthier after his major injuries in Denver, and they drafted Isaac TeSlaa in the third round. Again, Gibbs and David Montgomery return to the backfield.

One major question mark is center after Pro Bowler Frank Ragnow retired this summer. The Lions could move 33-year-old guard Graham Glasgow to center, a position he’s played before in his long career. Second-round rookie Tate Ratledge would then play right guard, which veteran Kevin Zeitler handled in 2024. Is that better than having Ragnow last year and Glasgow playing guard? Probably not. But it shouldn’t be a disaster.

Still, I think you do have to worry about lacking in creativity without Johnson, which could hurt the offense in the red zone and at coming up with those explosive plays. Throw in a change up front and Goff could press a little more and possibly end up throwing more interceptions without Johnson’s guidance this year.

Hiring a former assistant to a higher role is a safe pick, but it’s rarely going to elevate your offense as that person is likely a lesser version of the coach you replaced. That’s why he was working underneath him after all.

So, you should expect the Detroit offense to take a step back this year after such an incredible 2024, but the Lions should still move the ball and score plenty of points.

Defense: Who Is Kelvin Sheppard?

Not to sound like a downer, but the Lions really stayed in-house for the defensive coordinator role, giving it to linebackers coach Kelvin Sheppard, who’s been with the team since 2021. You may remember his name as a third-round linebacker picked by the Bills in 2011, and he actually played his final NFL season with the Lions in 2018.

But to be honest, the defensive results in Detroit in the Campbell era have never been that great, so they probably should have aimed a bit higher for someone to come in and stir things up. Aaron Glenn was well received by the players, his defenses got better each year, and he did a very respectable job with the injury hand he was dealt in 2024.

He’s certainly not irreplaceable, but Sheppard takes over a defense that must find some pass rush outside of Hutchinson. Detroit only used three draft picks in the top 170 picks this year, and the only one on defense was Ohio State’s Tyleik Williams, a defensive tackle who many thought was a reach at No. 28 in the first round. His pass rush is going to need work.

The Lions used free agency to throw some darts at the secondary, adding veterans like D.J. Reed (Jets), Avonte Maddox (Eagles), and Rock Ya-Sin (49ers). But the Lions would best be served if corner Terrion Arnold, their 2024 first-round pick, steps up in Year 2. He gave up 4 touchdowns without a pick as a rookie while allowing 7.3 yards per target. Plenty of room for improvement there.

Best Bets for the 2025 Lions

We’ll find out a lot this season about Goff and Campbell with the coordinator changes. They may quickly find out much like the 2023 Eagles did that they should have gone out and hired stronger candidates instead of thinking they were fine with promoting known commodities. The Eagles likely never win the Super Bowl last year without getting Kellen Moore and Vic Fangio.

But the Lions would be a good regression candidate regardless of their coaching staff. Teams that win 15-plus games simply don’t repeat that success the next year. Of the seven teams to win 15-plus games, only the 1985-86 Bears (15-1 to 14-2) did not decline by at least 4 wins the next year.

Even the 1984 49ers, who finished 18-1 and won the Super Bowl, added Jerry Rice and still finished 10-6 in 1985 and lost their first playoff game. Picking Detroit to slide back to a 10-7 or 11-6 record against a tougher schedule was always logical.

It should be a tougher schedule:

Detroit opens in Green Bay, a team it barely beat last time after a late fourth-down conversion in a 34-31 game, and Jordan Love had a bad groin the last time they met at Lambeau.
Detroit is in Baltimore on a Monday night in Week 3, which is always a tough place to play.
Back-to-back road games in Cincinnati and Kansas City in Weeks 5-6 means the offense better be firing on all cylinders.
Tampa Bay comes to Detroit for Monday night in Week 7; the Bucs beat them 20-16 at Ford Field last year.
They’ll see J.J. McCarthy for the first time after the Week 8 bye, so we’ll see if he can do better than Sam Darnold.
Really tough back-to-back road games against Washington and Philadelphia in Weeks 10-11, the NFC finalists last year.
A chance to get hot at home in a 3-week stretch against the Giants, Packers (Thanksgiving), and Cowboys.
Week 15 at the Rams could be tough if Matthew Stafford is healthy.
Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers are in Detroit in Week 16, and that team could have an elite defense.
Just four days later, the Lions are in Minnesota on Christmas before going to Chicago for the finale.

Four road games against teams favored to make the playoffs in the first six weeks is definitely tough, and that’s not even considering the later road games with the Commanders, Eagles, Rams, and if the Vikings or Bears are good or not this year.

Those NFC North games will be crucial, but I’m going to side with the Lions having a 10-7 season that’s good enough for the playoffs, but it won’t get them over the hump to a Super Bowl in Year 5 for Goff-Campbell. I’m not even convinced it’s good enough for the NFC North as the Packers should be right in that 10-11 win mix.

But we’ll see if Campbell can prove me wrong, and maybe he’ll walk away with a Coach of the Year if this team is great again after he had a good case last year by sweeping the winner (Kevin O’Connell) with the No. 1 seed on the line.

Also, I think the Detroit defense will be too mediocre for Hutchinson to win DPOY, but he is my favorite case for Comeback Player of the Year. It’s also worth throwing some shares on Sewell (+600 at FanDuel) to win the new Protector of the Year award for best offensive lineman.

NFL Pick: Detroit Lions under 10.5 wins (-135) at FanDuel
NFL Pick: Detroit Lions to make playoffs (-184) at FanDuel
NFL Pick: Aidan Hutchinson to win NFL Comeback Player of the Year (+270) at FanDuel

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