Pride of Detroit
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but injuries were a major factor in the Detroit Lions’ play in 2025. After suffering an injury-riddled year in 2024 and still winning the NFC North and the NFC’s top seed, injuries were too much to overcome in 2025. One of the biggest injuries to hit the team was to young star safety Brian Branch, who played in 12 games before missing the rest of the 2025 season.
Branch has been one of the best players not just on the Lions’ defense, but on the entire team in his short career. From playing nickel in 2023 to moving to safety in 2024, he’s improved and become a staple of this defense. If he didn’t suffer an injury last season, I got a feeling he would’ve been re-signed already, or at least discussions would’ve been had to get that moving along. Now that he suffered a brutal Achilles injury, his future in Detroit, and arguably the NFL, is questionable.
Branch is still young, 24 years old, and he could easily recover from this injury, but Achilles injuries are challenging to return to being the same player you once were. I don’t believe the Lions have any doubts that Branch can return to form, but they’ll want to see it before making any future moves with him. With that being said, let’s take a look back at how Branch did in 2025 and how his 2026 season could play out.
Previous season previews: RB Jahmyr Gibbs, RB Sione Vaki, OT Penei Sewell, WR Jameson Williams, EDGE Aidan Hutchinson, DL Levi Onwuzurike, and CB D.J. Reed
Coming off a Pro Bowl season in 2024, Branch had lofty expectations in 2025. Being paired with fellow safety Kerby Joseph made them arguably the best safety duo in the NFL. Branch was poised to upgrade from Pro Bowler to All-Pro in 2025. The Lions got him some help in the secondary, signing cornerbacks D.J. Reed and Rock Ya-Sin, and bringing over safety/nickelback Avonte Maddox to give them a veteran in the room and valuable depth, along with a young safety in Thomas Harper.
With the upgrades around him, along with the multiple players returning from injury who were down in 2024, Branch and the Lions had big expectations heading into 2025. If Branch could have a stellar season, he might even have jumped linebacker Jack Campbell as the first player from the 2023 NFL Draft class to get a contract extension.
12 games (12 starts)
Stats: 75 total tackles, nine pass deflections, five tackles for loss, two and a half sacks, one forced fumble, and one fumble recovery
PFF defensive grade: 77.5 (13th out of 104 qualifying Safeties — minimum 265 snaps)
PFF coverage grade: 74 (16th out of 104)
PFF run defense grade: 82.6 (t-9th out of 104)
PFF tackling grade: 87.7 (6th out of 104)
Branch had the worst year of his career so...
